T E R R A

[lurveyblog-blog]

Tumblr Giveaway!

I’ve had these unused Chrome goodies kicking around for a while, I thought I’d pass them along to fellow rad tumblr-folks. Three people will be picked at random to get one of the following:

Citizen Messenger Bag

Hip Pouch

Cellphone Case

Rules are:

Reblog this post and follow this blog.

Must be from USA (because of shipping costs)

Have your ask button open so I can contact you.

Ends June 30th. Rad! -Lurvey 

[peaceintheswirl-deactivated2014]

[terrarva]

Clear Quartz Crystal Ball Giveaway

This orb of clear beauty was originally cut and shaped from a much larger piece of Harlequin Quartz. Consequently there is a small inclusion of Lepidocrocite toward the outside, running along one of the many glistening fractures within. Though the inclusion is small, it brings a high-vibration to this sphere and wards strongly against negativity. Whether used in spellwork, as a scrying tool or simply as a meditative gazing orb, this sweet quartz promotes self-love, healing of past and self-punishing wounds, and brings deep balance to one’s emotional place of being. Purity is palpable in the presence of this dear one, and it has been cleansed in the light of every full moon for 20+ years.

Measuring 3” in diameter, it weighs in at 1 lb. 7.375 oz.

The random drawing will be held on January 21st, and the winner announced by 11pm Pacific.

There may be image changes within this offering over the weeks. Now and again my camera “skills” hit their mark, and I may pass that moment on to you.

In order to qualify as a participant, you must be following me. Likes do not count. Feel free to reblog as many times as you like, while simultaneously having mercy on your followers regarding spam on the dash. ;-) Having said that … reblogging will statistically increase your chances. I suppose the phrase to meditate upon here would be, “All things in moderation.”

My heart sings with the peace of giveaway. For one of you out there … it is meant to be.

~Eve

[devilsknob-blog]

I am afraid to let a significant other truly inside because then I can not manipulate situations with half truths and conceding. I lie to myself oftentimes, for what I think is the betterment of the relationship when in fact it eats away from the inside. I have been sexist because I have thought...

[terrarva]

reblogging myself to remember. it has been a year since I first came to this understanding, and I still struggle every day to recognize and reform the oppressor inside

[growfoodraisehell-deactivated20]

I went to Saltillo Plaza in East Austin today, and planted a garden.  Using my shovel, I upended the top two inches of soil to weed the space, before laying compost and garden soil.  The bricks offer foot steps to access the veggies when they’re grown.

I planted broccoli, red and green leaf lettuce, and radishes.

Forcing people off of the land and privatizing the commons made slaves of everyone.  Now we must work mindless, meaningless jobs so we can pay rent on the planet on which we were born.  Retaking the commons and entering into relationships with the land, will set people free.

[Decolonize] Everywhere! Oh, and fuck you, Monsanto!

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(via Fiorenzo Omenetto: Silk, the ancient material of the future | Video on TED.com)

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(via Eben Bayer: Are mushrooms the new plastic? | Video on TED.com)

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Trash pile in the North Pacific is the size of Texas

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11th grader has discovered a wa to make plastic bags degrade 43% in 3 months

[truthcafe-deactivated20120719]

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truthcafe:

By Yuka Ito (AFP) – 6 hours ago

TOKYO — Environmental group Greenpeace warned Thursday that marine life it tested more than 20 kilometres (12 miles) off Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear plant showed radiation far above legal limits. The anti-nuclear group, which conducted the coastal and...

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Fish Consumption Advisories

As of December 31, 2007, there were 54 fish consumption advisories in Virginia, 39 for PCBs, 20 for  Mercury, and one for Kepone. Five advisories are for both PCBs and Mercury and three others have overlapping PCBs and Mercury segments and one for Kepone and PCBs. The fish consumption advisories due to mercury are attributable to DEQ fish tissue monitoring in certain waterbodies that have environmental conditions which have been associated with increased potential for bioaccumulation of mercury in fish. These environmental conditions include low pH, low DO and high organic matter.  Many of these waterbodies are swamp waters (Class VII) and have little or no industrial or municipal dischargers and have not been sampled before. The Virginia Department of Health issues fish consumption advisories.  Additional information can be found in Chapter 6.5.

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[thegreenurbanist]

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sustainable-sam:

thegreenurbanist:

“Eight Greenpeace activists who climbed a smokestack at a coal power plant in Pilsen (Chicago) Tuesday morning vowed to stay atop the plant indefinitely.

“We’re going to stay up here until Edison International and the city understand we can’t continue to have old, dirty coal plants in the city of Chicago,” protestor Kelly Mitchell, a city resident, said by cell phone as she sat atop the smokestack at the Fisk Generating Station at 1111 W. Cermak.”

Down with coal in Chicago. 

[speakerforthetrees]

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sustainable-sam:

It’s potato planting time again in the north of Sweden where activists are occupying BASF’s potato warehouse and are blocking the exit in order to hinder the German chemical company from planting the risky GMO potato “Amflora.”

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In Your Office

Copy and print on both sides of paper.

Reuse items like envelopes, folders and paper clips.

Use mailer sheets for interoffice mail instead of an envelope. Use mailer sheets for interoffice mail instead of an envelope.

Set up a bulletin board for memos instead of sending a copy to each employee.

Use e-mail instead of paper correspondence.

[terrarva]

Precautionary Principle + Cap and Trade Pollution Policy

My intention in writing this is to briefly inform y’all on some key environmental issues that may come up in any conversation you find yourself having about our group and why this shit matters, and more specifically, why our approach (direct action/community involvement) is important. In order to understand that, it’s important to understand how the government functions in regards to the environment. Their idea of sustainability is completely different from ours. The system in place now is capitalist; it does not take folks living in any given place into account, unless they pay for the right to stop pollution from happening. It is also incredibly reactionary. If something hasn’t blown up in their face, if some scientist has not proved seven million times that this chemical creates that result in a very specific environment, then they do nothing about environmental issues. There is an alternative philosophy I’d suggest familiarizing yourself with called the precautionary principle. It states that if there is a significant risk of irreversible damage to an ecosystem as a result of human behavior, regardless of conclusive scientific evidence, then we should not conduct said behavior. Conclusive is a tricky thing to nail down, of course. The more I read about experiments, the more fallible they became over the course of this semester. The main thing to remember about any experiment is that it is only as good as the person who conducts it. Honesty is a hard enough quality to come by, add to that threat of loss of livelihood and respect of your peers… eh. Anyways, what is considered conclusive is hard to discern in the first place, and especially so when entire economies are called into question. This is why the precautionary principle has become more popular. It creates a way of approaching environmental issues when there is conflicting evidence, bad science, no data, or a myriad of other shades of gray to interpret. The general idea is pretty conservative, and while it has been applied in Europe minus the irreversible part (to some extent), it is generally not used here. Certain court cases have used it as the basis for their arguments against opening new manufacturing plants, for instance, with some success. But this idea of being proactive, taking less environmental risks and finding solutions to problems before they start is incredibly unpopular from an American capitalist point of view, for obvious reasons. The precautionary principle provides an answer to endless debates about whose data is better, or what data is actually telling us. Again, science is extremely fallible. It is not beyond the human mind, it is not superior to other systems of thought that we have come up with. It is especially difficult within a society dedicated to profits and progress to argue that, of course, because scientific reasoning has provided us with the world we now live in. The next important thing to understand is the actual methods our government uses to regulate the environment. This system is called “cap and trade.” If you don’t know what that means, it works like this: first, the EPA tests all the chemicals they know are toxic or pollutants in some way. They test what dosage the environment around the discharge pipe (in a stream, for instance) can withstand without ecological destruction, and then what the long-term base level of that chemical can be. The idea is to gauge how much an ecosystem can contain without disastrous effect. They do this for every chemical already known to cause issues, and then they sell permits to whoever can pay for them to dump specific chemicals into the environment. Businesses buy as much of the pollution rights as they will need to run their operations, of each pollutant they will release. I was led to believe that usually these are split up somewhat equally between all polluters on a river, for instance, and then those that need less permits can put them up for sale to those who want to use more. Theoretically, anyone can buy these credits and they don’t have to be used. Citizens or environmental organizations are allowed to buy them, too, and then keep whatever amount of pollution out of the stream/forest/whatever. I think there are a million obvious issues with this system but I’ll go over the ones that are the most fucked up in my opinion: #1: Unpermitted pollution, from spills, accidents, some uninformed person throwing something with pollutants inside it into the environment, or just from companies dumping more than their permitted loads. Some protections against this are built in, and there is usually monitoring on site to make sure the levels are what they should be. But of course, there are at least a hundred ways this could still go wrong. #2: This is an incredibly capitalistic, fucked up way of viewing pollution. First of all, business interests are put on the same level of importance as human health and ecological survival. That makes whatever company is producing something equally as important as human beings suffering health issues (cancer, asthma, and so on), and equally as valid as sustaining the planet we live on, which we are 100% dependent upon for survival. What’s more, setting things up in this way ensures that whoever has the most resources has control over what pollution is released. It is systematically flawed, and should absolutely be abandoned. It is classist in the extreme, and pro-business… pro big business in particular. For if you put such things up for sale, whoever has the most resources has the most advantage, and almost all of the time those resources are held by giant companies and corporations, the government, and a few extremely wealthy individuals. In short, the government is selling control over our environment to the highest bidder. #3: There is something fundamentally wrong with asking the question “How much shit can we dump into the environment and not have to deal with it?” Our data might be flawed, for starters, and we only test for effects we can conceive to measure in the first place. This is why there’s such a big problem with hormone mimickers, because we never thought to check and see if plastic would release estrogen-like substances. I mean, of course not, why would we? We’re not that fucking smart. So besides unintentional side effects of the chemicals we know are toxic, there’s also plenty that are controversial, or that may react differently in the presence of other naturally occurring substances, or with other chemicals that may be released somewhere else within the environment. So, in general, this is a capitalist, disrespectful and short-sighted way to deal with pollution issues. It allows for the most “economic success” possible without killing everything in sight.

[iancheong]

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newleft:

fastcompany:

WOW!

theatlantic:

Meet a Gargantuan Wind Turbine, the 7-Megawatt V164. You could fit the entire infield and outfield of Yankee stadium inside the area that this enormous machine sweeps. Twice! Read more.

“The annual output of the V164 is estimated to be 30,000 megawatt-hours, which is roughly equivalent to 2,787 households’ electricity consumption.

This is all very different from the small-scale beginnings of the wind industry. In 1979, Vestas’ first turbine was the V10-30kW model, which produced about 40,000 kWh. That is to say, the V164 is expected to produce 750 times as much energy as the V10.

Another way of looking at this is to consider Altamont Pass, Calif., the world’s largest wind farm with over 5,000 turbines when it was built in the 1980s. The entire combined annual energy production of Altamont is 1.1 TWh. The citizens of California could get the same amount of energy from just 36 of the new turbines. Thirty-six machines would replace 5,000.”

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