Sustainable Georgia This Week-James Glave's Eco Shed, Sunbelt Ag Expo, Little Feat Covers Woody Guthrie

This week on Sustainable Georgia we catch up with James Glave, who has written a wise and funny book called Almost Green-How I Saved 1/6th of a Billionth of the Planet. The book is ostensibly about Glave's attempt to embrace sustainable design by building an Eco Shed adjacent to his home (pictured above). But the book is also about his attempts to seek out a green path for himself and his young family and it's filled with the truths and the contradictions rife when you decide to 'go green.'
In Georgia Earth News comes word that Fireman's Fund Insurance has become the first home insurance company in Georgia to offer a green homeowners policy that will will enable Georgia homeowners with conventional homes to rebuild to the latest environmental standards after a loss. While this seems an innovative and helpful idea on the surface, we live in a time when everyone has a green angle to play. It's up to you to weigh the costs and issues and decide whether you think an idea is green, or greenwashing.
Our Sustainable Georgia Shout Out goes to the venerable Sunbelt Ag Expo, taking place October 14-16 at Spence Field in Moultrie, Georgia. For the 31^st year in a row, Farmers will gather on 700 acres just outside of Moultrie at Spence Field to kick tractor tires, compete for livestock prizes, and stroll grounds filled with more threshers, balers, irrigation rigs, and other machinery then you could possibly imagine until you’ve beheld it. From the stock dog competition to the Mennonite women selling pound cake by the slice, the Sunbelt Ag Expo is great fun for farmers and vicarious farmers alike.This year’s event includes demonstrations of such green initiatives as an Auburn University truck that runs on wood chips, organic gardening, and a humane predator program teaching new methods for controlling armadillos, opossums and other critters.
Recycled music comes courtesy of Little Feat, and their version of "This Land Is Your Land."

You Don't Need A Weatherman To Tell Which Way The Wind Blows-Wind Power Pros and Cons This Week on Sustainable Georgia

Sustainable energy and alternative fuels can be a thicket of lofty promises and unanticipated consequences. Much has been made in recent times about the possibilities of wind-generated energy in America. T. Boone Pickens is the most recent high profile convert, filling up commercial media with messages about harnessing the energy of America's Midwestern 'wind belt.' At the same time, over half of our states have passed laws or plans mandating increasing percentages of alternative energy production going forward, most of those leaning heavily on wind energy. While Georgia is not expected to be a major player in wind (biomass alt-fuels are our best bet), we need to watch this issue closely.

Our feature interview this week on Sustainable Georgia is with The Atlantic Magazine Staff Editor Matthew Quirk, who has an excellent piece on wind energy in the October issue of the magazine (John McCain is on the cover). Quirk discusses the major issues affecting the success of wind energy initiatives, mostly centering around challenges of transmission and the innate variability of wind. His cautionary message for T. Boone Pickens and the rest of us is that just like the corn ethanol boom, bust, and unintended consequences, wind energy has definite pluses and definite minuses.

In Earth News this week we check in with the PATH Foundation, which has extended the Silver Comet bike trail all the way to the Alabama border to link up with that state's Chief Ladiga trail. GPB's Edgar Treiguts attended the opening celebration of the linkup and lets us know about this great resource in Northwest Georgia.

Our Shout Out this week goes to Fort Benning, which evades military stereotypes by winning a major award from the State DNR P2AD Program for being a good, sustainable, green citizen in Columbus.

Recycled music features Steve Earle and the Del McCoury Band with the title track from his 2000 release The Mountain, a song about Appalachian coal miners. Let us know what you think about the show, suggestions for a Shout Out to your community, or good interview subjects. You can post here or email us at gogreen@gpb.org.

Community Supported Agriculture, Energy Independence and The Dirty Dozen Brass Band Featured This Week On Sustainable Georgia

Sustainable Georgia celebrates the Autumnal Equinox and bemoans gas lines this week in a broadcast-online pinata bursting with good stuff, including Josephine Bennett's feature on Davis Farms, the Community Supported Agricultural(CSA) project in Roberta, Georgia. We talk about the indirect cost of oil (among other things) with Jay Hakes, Director of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, about his new book A Declaration of Energy Independence. Keely Walker from GPB TV's Georgia Outdoors drops by to talk about their upcoming season premiere next week and give some trenchant facts about fire ecology. The Isla Earth feature covers ongoing developments in the attempt to find a greener form of jet fuel. And recycled music rolls out at the end of this week's program with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and their cover of Marvin Gaye's Mercy Mercy Me(The Ecology). Let us know what you think by posting here, or email to gogreen@gpb.org.

Sustainable Georgia This Week-Dam The Flint River Or Not?

On this week's program we take a look at a controversial initiative that would dam the Flint River as a possible solution for the Metro Atlanta's recent water woes. GPB Bureau Chiefs Josephine Bennett from WMUM 89.7 FM in Macon and John Sepulvado with WGPB 97.7 FM in Rome report to Melissa Stiers on Earth News. Among the high profile opponents of damming the Flint is former President Jimmy Carter, who weighs in. Additionally, we'll talk with Deborah Byrd from Earth & Sky, about their longtime "clear voice for science" feature heard on GPB Radio Monday-Friday at 9:04am and 3:04pm.
Our Shout Out goes out to the Altamaha Riverkeeper for all they do to keep a watch on this great South Georgia Resource, and a reminder that you can join them at their Clam Jam 2008 benefit on October 4. Recycled music features Sheryl Crow's song Gasoline, about a dystopian near-term future where we're all fighting over gasoline, a particularly pointed notion during a week in which Georgians are faced with the highest gas prices in the country, or empty pumps in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike's negative effect on refining capacity.

Correction to Olin Corporation Story Wrap Up In Sustainable Georgia Earth News

In my wrap up to Mary Ellen Cheatham's story on Sustainable Georgia's Earth News segment we mistakenly claimed the Olin Corporation's Georgia plant is in Appling, not Augusta. You can find out more about Olin's Augusta plant by going to their site here, which also links to Olin's website giving their own interpretation of the environmental impact of the mercury cell chlor-alkali process on the local environment, which differs from the views of Oceana, the advocacy group quoted in the story. GPB regrets the error.

Sustainable Georgia Is All Wet This Week

This week's edition of Sustainable Georgia gets all wet, including a story from GPB Bureau Chief Mary Ellen Cheatham about one of the last mercury cell chlor-alkali process chlorine manufacturing plants in America. It's located outside of Augusta, Georgia, and it discharges mercury into the Savannah River (pictured above). If you would like to follow up on this story you can read Oceana's report on mercury-based chlorine plants like the one in Augusta by clicking here.

If you are interested in following up on this issue with regards to the pending legislation, the proposed bill in the US House is House Bill 5580 the Missing Mercury in Manufacturing Monitoring and Mitigation Act , which has been referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Georgia Congressmen Nathan Deal and John Barrow both sit on that committee’s subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous materials. In the Senate this bill is Senate Bill 1818 and has been referred to the committee on Environment and Public Works, where Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson serves as a minority member. You can go to thomas.gov and enter HB 5580 or SB 1818 to check the bill's status.

We talk with Kathy Nguyen from WaterSmart, who has a few common sense ways for us all to save water.

In Georgia Earth News, Melissa Stiers has news about upcoming public hearings about opening up public access to Cumberland Island. You can make a public comment about that issue here.

Our shout out goes out this week to Georgia ForestWatch, who is doing what they can to save our majestic Hemlock Pines from the depradations of the Wooly Adelgid. If you want to help them save the trees, drop by their site.

Sustainable Georgia regularly features recycled music. This week we reach back into the Randy Newman catalog for Louisiana 1927, a song about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Aaron Neville's emotional version was the touchstone and theme to Katrina relief in 2005. We play the song this week to honor the memories of those lost in Katrina, and to acknowledge that the effects of development, levees, petroleum and gas extraction, and climate change may well make this rich cultural region unsustainable in the end.

We hope you enjoy the program. Hear it Saturdays at 12:30p, Sundays at 4:30pm and Tuesdays at 11:30pm on GPB Radio statewide. Hear Sustainable Georgia on demand by clicking here.

Sustainable Georgia Premieres On Radio, Web

Sustainable Georgia is on the air and on the web. The radio program debuts Saturday, September 6 at 12:30pm, right after the debut of Weekend Gazette on the GPB Radio Network across the state. Both programs repeat during the 4pm hour on Sunday, and Sustainable Georgia will re-air on Tuesday nights at 11:30pm. You can also download or stream the program on demand at gpb.org/gogreen.

This week's premiere features Georgia Earth News with Melissa Stiers (including a report on potential environmental impact and litigation over the deepening of the Savannah Harbor from Orlando Montoya), an interview about sustainable design with Georgia Architect John Cheek, a report on e-waste from Isla Earth, and a shout out to the Athens Town Stream Restoration Project. Our recycled music for the week is courtesy of REM.

We hope you enjoy the show, and we hope to hear from you as GPB's Sustainable Georgia moves forward. Thanks for stopping by.