I think Ladybugs are one of the prettiest (and handiest) bugs in the garden. Wait - I take it back, when they’re in larvae form they aren’t all that pretty. I found some strange looking bugs on my Cilantro plant today, and came in and Googled “ladybug larvae” — inspired to do this because I had just read about ladybugs in the book: “A Very Small Farm” in which author William Winchester mentions ladybug eggs in on of his daily journals. In Google’s Image results I came across this great collection of the life of ladybugs in photos. Check out the photographer, Helen Roman, here.

Photos © Helen M. Roman - www.hmrprint.com

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And in case you were wondering how long this process takes, below is an excerpt & life cycle graphic:
Info & image from: www.geocities.com/sseagraves/ladybuglifecycle.htm

The life cycle of the ladybug is between four to six weeks. In the spring the adults lay up to three hundred eggs in an aphid colony. The eggs hatch in two to five days. The newly hatched larvae feed on aphids for up to three weeks, and then they enter the pupa stage. The adult ladybug emerges about a week later. However, they usually do not have their spots for their first 24 hours of adulthood. So, if you catch one in your schoolyard without spots, you may have found a brand new adult. There may be as many as six generations of ladybugs hatched in a year.

I started this blog to touch on all the good news that is going on with the environment - because it always seems that the news and papers are just reporting all the bad news - it’s easy to lose hope! Today I came across a great article from the Sustainability Institute touching on all the "good news" about how we’re moving in the right direction:

Ekologiska Byggnvaruhus undertook its own building project named the Trosa house. The home needs has no radiators and not even a conventional heat pump. Solar panels help to warm the south-facing house, with lighting and recycled body and water warmth stored in an accumulator supposed to supply most of the rest of space heating requirements (a wood-burning stove is on standby for really cold days. Source: treehugger.com

- The average new house in Sweden requires only half as much energy to heat and cool as the average American new house (per square foot, under identical climatic conditions), and it costs less and is more solidly built. Sweden imposes stricter energy standards on construction than the U.S., but is more flexible in letting builders attain those standards by any structurally-sound method.

- In arid Senegal a program of interplanting millet and peanut crops with nitrogen-fixing acacia trees is doubling crop yields, and at the same time improving soil fertility, reducing erosion, and catching and holding more water.

- Israel has pioneered water-use technologies so efficient that over the decade 1968 to 1978 agricultural output nearly doubled, while water use per acre of irrigated land fell 21%.

- Companies are learning that they can make money cleaning up their environmental act. The 3M Corporation in St. Paul Minnesota has redesigned its manufacturing processes to eliminate each year 90,000 tons of air pollutants, 10,000 tons of water pollutants, a million gallons of waste water, and 15,000 tons of solid waste. In the process the company saved $200 million. A Goldkist poultry plant came up with procedures that used 32% less water and generated 66% less waste and saved $2.33 for every dollar spent to institute the changes.

- The World Bank has gone into the national park business. While financing a large dam on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, the Bank insisted on protecting 800,000 acres of forest on the watershed above the dam. The trees regulate water runoff and prevent the dam from silting up. Since many endangered species live there, the forest has become a tropical research station, bringing in foreign exchange from visiting scientists.

Some of the best news comes in the field of energy, both in technologies to save it and in renewable, solar-based ways to obtain it.

- The typical top-mount-freezer automatic-defrosting refrigerator on the U.S. market in 1972 required almost 2000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. The most energy-efficient model now available, with the same features, uses only 800 kilowatt-hours per year. Research prototypes are in operation that use only 250 kilowatt-hours.

- The average 1986-model car in the United States travels twice as far on a gallon of gas as the average new car of 1973.

- Since 1973 the U.S. has saved the equivalent of 10 million barrels of oil per day through simple conservation measures. Even at today’s low oil price, that saves us $30 billion every year. The amount of oil saved by conservation since 1973 is 5 times the amount saved by shifting to coal-burning and 10 times the amount taken up by nuclear power.

- Since 1980 13,000 windmills have been installed in California. Together they generate over 1000 megawatts, the equivalent of one nuclear power plant (and they were built much more quickly than a nuclear power plant could be).

- Low oil prices have not killed off solar technology. Production of solar collectors in the United States is rising at the phenomenal rate of 30% per year. Shipments of sun-powered photovoltaic generators tripled between 1982 and 1984.

- Industrial cogeneration — the joint production of electricity and steam, which is twice as efficient as electric generation alone — now amounts to 15,000 megawatts in the U.S., or the equivalent of 15 nuclear power plants. At least 16,000 more megawatts of cogeneration are currently under construction.

I conclude from stories like these that the environment can indeed be improved and some ingenious people are working hard to improve it. High productivity in a healthy environment is certainly possible. But it isn’t guaranteed, not until this kind of good news is multiplied manyfold everywhere on earth.

The news items here were selected from three sources (which contain plenty of bad news too). If you want to read more, they are:

Lester Brown et al., State of the World 1986, W.W. Norton, 1986.

Robert Repetto, World Enough and Time, Yale University Press, 1986.

"New Alchemy Quarterly", Winter 1986 issue, New Alchemy Institute, 237 Hatchville Road, East Falmouth MA 02536.

Here’s an inexpensive way to plant your seeds this year - collect your discarded toilet paper rolls, and cut them in half and fill with soil for instant seedling "pots". As they are bottomless and will decompose once planted, they are the perfect starter pot for seedlings - and they don’t cost a thing.

President Obama signed legislation on Monday setting aside more than 2 million acres as protected wilderness. This new law adds the largest amount of acreage to the preservation system since 1994. Colorado land protected under the wilderness bill includes protection of nearly 250,000 acres of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park and 66,000 acres of red rock sandstone canyons, cliffs, streams and waterfalls in western Colorado. Land has also been protected in California, Idaho, Michigan, Utah, Alaska and other states across the nation. Additionally, more than 1,000 miles of rivers in nearly a dozen states were designated as wild and scenic. The law expands wilderness designation into new areas, which blocks nearly all development.

Environmental groups and lawmakers are hopeful that the law will strengthen the national park system, restore national forests, preserve wild and scenic rivers, and restore balance to the management of public lands. The opponents, mostly Republicans, feel that the legislation is a "land grab" that blocks energy development on vast swaths of federal land.

An interesting way to look at the cost of building renewable energy sources, this article from Forbes talks about Robert Kennedy Jr.’s cost comparison of investing money in renewable energy versus investing in bailouts and importing oil. Read a clip of the article below:

Robert Kennedy Jr. lent some star power to Colorado’s efforts to promote renewable energy on Thursday, joining Gov. Bill Ritter and Sen. Gail Schwartz at a new energy expo outside the state Capitol.

Kennedy said Colorado has shown the best leadership on renewable energy in the country, but he mostly spoke about his vision for the whole country becoming more reliant on wind and solar power.

He compared spending money to develop renewable energy to early investments in the Internet and telecommunications grid, which triggered innovation and economic growth.

Kennedy, a strong supporter of environmental causes, said it would cost $700 billion to develop wind and solar energy to power the country, about the same amount that was spent on the Wall Street bailout. He also said it’s about the same amount spent to import oil each year.

"Once we build it, it’s free," Kennedy said of the energy. "We don’t have to go to Saudi Arabia."

Read full article »

I’ve always been curious if toilet paper is made from recycled paper, or if it’s made directly from trees – well now, the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) has provided a handy list of toilet paper brands (and other paper products) that use (or don’t use) recycled paper to make their product. Some of the more commercial brands such as Kleenex, Charmin and Cottonelle make their toilet paper directly from virgin tree pulp, while other brands such as Best Value, Green Forest and 7th Generation make it from 100% recycled paper pulp. Here’s the breakdown:

Toilet Paper If every household in the United States replaced just one roll of virgin fiber toilet paper (500 sheets) with 100% recycled ones, we could save 423,900 trees.  SEE OTHER PAPER PRODUCT LISTS
365 (Whole Foods)		100	>80	PCF
Ambiance		100	80	PCF
April Soft		100	80	PCF
Best Value		100	<40	PCF
Earth First		100	80	PCF
Fiesta		100	80	PCF
Green Forest		100	40	PCF
Marcal		100	40	PCF
Planet		100	80	PCF
Pert		100	<40	PCF
Seventh Generation		100	80	PCF
Sofpac		100	40	PCF
Charmin		0	0	ECF
Cottonelle		0	0	ECF
Kleenex		0	0	ECF

This is a neat toy - and also a good learning tool - a jumping frog toy that runs on solar power. The kit teaches about solar energy through the assembly of the solar cell, plastic body, gears and parts.

Check out this solar frog toy plus other solar toys & lights at: www.mrlight.com

Another great solar project has been installed in my neighborhood: Colorado’s sunshine is paying off for the Denver Museum of Nature & Science in Denver. About a year ago, solar panels were installed on the museum that are capable of offsetting more than 135 tons of carbon dioxide a year, equivalent to planting 11,500 trees.

The solar panels alone also can generate 134,500-kilowatt hours of electricity a year – enough to power 30 homes. The solar array has also become a teaching tool to promote green energy.

Photo from: www.namastesolar.com

This isn’t really news, and not sure if these little capsules are re-usable, but what a cute idea. These tiny capsules pictured above are one of the latest fads in Japan: keychain plants. Each one sells for around $10 and features real, live plants that grow in a tiny arboretum until they become too large to be contained, after which they can be transplanted to a larger pot.

Did you know that you can stop getting phone books delivered? If you’re like me, you use Google for most everything you’re looking for, and it seems strange to keep getting new phone books every couple of months, only to sit in a dark closet until the next set come along. Recycling them is good, but not getting them is even better.

If you don’t use phone books, you can contact the companies and opt-out of having them delivered.

Simply call the numbers and tell them you want to opt-out of delivery.

AT&T/YellowPages (formerly SBC and Bell South):
1.800.792.2665 - for Denver 1.800.499.7928

Verizon:
1.800.888.8448

Dex:
1.877.243.8339

Yellow Book:
1.800.373.3280 or 1.800.373.2324

The major players use a tactic called “saturation distribution” that means that you may get books even if you don’t have a land line.

PaperlessPetition.org is a great resource for other ways to save paper.