The switch to digital is mentioned on the local TV channels about 100 times a day. But you may not need to buy anything to keep watching.

From the New American Dream Web site:

By now, you’ve probably heard that television has been Congressionally mandated to make the switch to run exclusively digital by February 17, 2009.  Conspiracy theorists might find it curious that the government ordered the switch while simultaneously trying to stimulate the economy.  The switch forces full-power television stations nationwide to purchase all kinds of new equipment in order to comply.  Additionally, commercials have been running about the switch for about a year now, confusing viewers into thinking they must buy new converter boxes or televisions in order to continue being entertained by their favorite programming.  However, most people don’t actually need to buy anything at all.

We have a special OurGreenCommunity.org article on the switch on the schedule for next month. Watch for it!

Is your office green? The EPA has a nifty calculator that:

[...Is] designed to assist office-based workplaces in making decisions to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The calculator estimates GHG emissions from a variety of sources, including recycling and waste disposal; transportation (both company- and employee-owned vehicles, as well as rail and air travel); and purchased electricity.  In addition to estimating emissions, the calculator includes examples of carbon-cutting actions such as recycling, waste prevention, and green power purchasing.

The calculator is available as a downloadable Excel file on the WasteWise website.

You know times are tough when the Whole Foods Market – a/k/a  ”The Whole Paycheck” — has in-store displays trumpeting how competitive its prices are. Be that it may, there’s a widespread perception that choosing local and/or organic foods will put your grocery budget on life support.

Can you eat green for less green? The Grist blog argues that your best intentions don’t have to be abandoned if you follow some guidelines:

Lately, the world news has been filled with stories of hungry people struggling to feed themselves as food prices rise dramatically. Even in the U.S. and other wealthy countries, where the situation is not as dire, people have been altering their eating and spending habits to adjust to the higher bills.

It can be hard to focus on eating greener when the very staples you need cost more than usual. Fortunately, there’s a veritable cornucopia of ways to green your grocery list while keeping your costs in check: everything from prioritizing organic purchases to cutting down on meat to buying local and growing your own food.

After all, if you are what you eat, then you also eat what you are — so eat green.

Click for their ideas.

In recent years personal computers have become as common a fixture in homes as a refrigerator. But many PCs are on much more than they are in use, and that uses unnecessary energy. The situation has not gone unnoticed and there is a fix on the way, according to the New York Times:

Microsoft, the nonprofit Climate Savers Computing Initiative and a start-up called Verdiem are combining to put a spotlight on the energy-saving opportunity in PCs, and distributing a free software tool to consumers to help them do it.

The potential savings in both dollars and pollution is huge, analysts say, when the estimated one billion PCs in use globally are taken into account. The research firm Gartner estimates that 40 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions resulting from information technology and telecommunications are attributable to PCs. Data center computers account for 23 percent, and the rest is attributable to printers and telecommunications equipment.

“If you are going to tackle climate change and curb energy use, you have to deal with consumer devices like PCs,” said Andrew Fanara, a product development expert in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program, which promotes energy-efficient products and practices.

For more than a decade, the federal Energy Star program has developed voluntary power-management standards for PCs, and suppliers like Intel and Microsoft have steadily improved the energy efficiency of their chips and software. But Mr. Fanara estimated that less than half of PCs met those standards, in part because more energy-efficient hardware adds slightly to production costs.

Here’s the rest of the story.

The water may be blue around it, but the city is green, green, green. In San Franciso, Mayor Gavin Newsom has taken further steps to be mocked by the rest of the countryset an example when it comes to making the city more environmentally sustainable.

As reported by Greentech Media, Newsom on Monday signed a couple of pieces of green law, including one that:

[...] analysts consider to be the nation’s toughest green-building standards.

The standards set out to improve energy efficiency in new and existing buildings to help achieve the city’s goal of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. [...] The new ordinance modifies the city’s building code, requiring applicants for residential and commercial building permits to follow a city-approved checklist and rating system, such as one created by the nonprofit Build It Green or the ratings system created by Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (also known as LEED). Companies would also be required to obtain certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Newsom is also getting on people who don’t pull out their recyclables, according to the San Francisco Chronicle’s SFGate.com Web site:

Garbage collectors would inspect San Francisco residents’ trash to make sure pizza crusts aren’t mixed in with chip bags or wine bottles under a proposal by Mayor Gavin Newsom.

And if residents or businesses don’t separate the coffee grounds from the newspapers, they would face fines of up to $1,000 and eventually could have their garbage service stopped.

Scientific American has a package of stories on China’s Olympics effort and the nation’s environmental issues.  Some factoids from the stories:

The Chinese have been burning coal for centuries. Venetian trader and explorer Marco Polo said that one of the most surprising sights during his travels through Asia in the 13th century was the Chinese practice of burning a strange, black rock for heat—and the mountains along the Silk Road that smoldered due to underground coal fires, like the ones burning throughout the country today. In fact, these underground blazes burn through an estimated 20 million tons of coal a year, the equivalent of the entire coal production of Germany last year.

…

Smog cloaks cities, rendering them all but invisible from the sky, which in many spots is little more than a blue patch amid a blanket of haze. And it’s not just confined to China: as the pollution builds it forms a brown cloud, visible from space, that takes about a week to cross the Pacific to the western U.S., where it accounts for as much as 15 percent of the air pollution.

…

A long-term Chinese love affair with cars—reminiscent of the U.S. in the 1940s and 1950s—is blossoming. And there seems to be a growing predilection for gas-guzzling sport-utility vehicles, whose sales climbed to 370,000 last year, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. “I am quite ashamed because my family has two SUVs,” admits one Beijing resident who wouldn’t give her name. “My sister bought [one because it is] a sturdy car for her baby and my brother bought [one] to be cool.”

Will climate change hit some Americans harder than others? A new report suggests so, pointing out that the realities of where you live and how much money you have (or don’t have) will determine how you can adapt to the changing environment. From the Grist blog:

A new report finds that African-Americans in the United States will suffer the effects of climate change more severely than white Americans.

They are twice as likely to live in cities where the heat-island effect makes already-high temperatures more severe. They’re also likely to be “fuel poor.” Increases in energy demand due to greater use of air-conditioning and population growth are more likely to affect them.

“There is a fierce urgency regarding climate change effects on the African-American community,” Ralph Everett, the co-chair of the Commission to Engage African-Americans on Climate Change, told Reuters. “People need to understand what is at stake — our very health and well-being.”

Here’s the rest.

Many see solar as the best answer to global energy needs, but there hasn’t been an efficient way to store the solar energy for use after dark.

MIT prof Daniel Nocera says the key is electrolysis.  The Boston Globe explains:

Nocera and the other researchers based their work on a compound made from cobalt and phosphate, both readily available. When the sun is out, electricity from solar panels can be fed to the compound in water, causing the water to split into hydrogen and oxygen. The elements create a chemical fuel that can be recombined to create energy later, when the sun is not shining.

Application of this solution is a decade away, according to the scientists involved.  They’ve opened their research to the scientific community. 

“I open-sourced it right away,” Nocera tells NPR. ”Because it’s easy to do, you’ll have the entire community across the world begin working on this.

NPR’s coverage is here.  The Boston Globe story is here.

With the mortgage market meltdown and the increased costs of commuting, there are those who — somewhat gleefully, it seems — predict that the decades-long flight to ever-further flung suburbs is rapidly and painfully coming to a close. From Business Week online:

The suburban landscape has been marred by foreclosures and half-built communities abandoned in the subprime aftermath. But James Howard Kunstler, author of a dozen books, including The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape, thinks there’s a bigger threat to those far-flung neighborhoods: the scarcity of oil. As Kunstler sees it, oil wells are running dry and the era of cheap fuel is over. Given the supply constraints, he says the U.S. will have to rethink suburban sprawl, bringing an end to strip malls, big-box stores, and other trappings of the automotive era. Kunstler, 59, predicts a return to towns and cities centered around a retail hub—not unlike his hometown of Saratoga Springs, N.Y. But the shift to this new paradigm, he says, will be painful.

Here’s the rest.

In a sizzling piece that’s No. 1 on the New York Times Web site, columnist Thomas Friedman rips into the idea of dumping the gallon federal tax on gasoline:

It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: “Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.”

Here’s the rest.