Celebrate Earth Day in Raleigh

This Friday marks Earth Day, and a number of activities and celebrations are planned for the Raleigh area.

N.C. State University will hold an Earth Day celebration from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the Brickyard behind D.H. Hill Library on Hillsborough Street. There will be organic food, vendors and music, and participants will have the chance to power a light bulb by pedaling a bike or make crafts from recycled materials. The festivities will wrap up with “Tree Jam” from 6 to 11 p.m., an event that will be held at the Wolf Village courtyard and feature student, faculty and staff musicians, poets and comedians.

The N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences will also hold an Earth Day celebration from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. featuring live animals, children’s activities and exhibits on water quality and climate change. Bring along your old cell phone and batteries, as the museum will host a recycling center.

And for some Earth Day activism, you could take part in Pesticide Action Network of North America’s national call-in day to Bayer CropScience’s Research Triangle Park, N.C. headquarters. PANNA is calling on Bayer to stop selling agricultural products containing lindane, an organochlorine pesticide that has been banned in 50 countries because it builds up in the bodies of humans and other living beings, causing serious health problems including cancer and nervous system disorders. Click here for more details.

Happy Earth Day!

Public Hearing Tuesday on Dix Property’s Future

In case you didn’t hear the news, there will be a public hearing Tuesday, April 19 to discuss the future of Raleigh’s Dorothea Dix Hospital property. Scheduled for 6 to 8 p.m. at the Raleigh Civic Center, the meeting will be run by the Charlotte-based LandDesign firm, which the city and state hired to gather information before a decision is made about the property.

Developers are eager to get their hands on this prime piece of open space situated between downtown and the N.C. State campus. Mental health advocates would like to see the property continue its historic function by benefiting the mentally ill. Neighborhood and recreation groups that have banded together as Friends of Dix Park want to turn the land into a public park. And some gardeners are advocating for a botanical garden.

Personally, I’d love to see all those interests work out a compromise. Imagine a lush urban park that included a botanical garden (organic, of course) with a residential horticultural therapy program for the mentally ill. With such a plan, Raleigh residents would get a park, plant lovers would get a garden and people suffering from mental illness would get a place to live, work and heal. Developers would even get to build something.

I won’t hold my breath … but wouldn’t it be nice?

Green Presidential Candidate to Speak at N.C. State

David Cobb, the Green Party candidate in last year's presidential election, will speak Friday evening at N.C. State University on the history of corporations and their impact on the U.S. economic, social, political and class systems. The talk will take place from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in 323 Mann Hall. For a campus map, click here.

For background reading on corporations' effects on society, check out the May/June issue of World Watch. The magazine of the Worldwatch Institute has launched a series on the evolving corporation, and the first installment – titled "When Good Corporations Go Bad" – compares corporations' relationship to society with the mutualism and parasitism found in nature.

The evolution of the modern corporation has led to increasingly parasitic form of relations between corporations and their societal hosts, according to author Erik Assadourian. With shareholder pressures and other demands, "most corporations today focus almost entirely on maximizing profits for their shareholders, and they do so primarily by externalizing as many of their social and environmental costs as possible," he writes.

NAS Releases Suppressed Study on Nuclear Waste Pools

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) today released a declassified study that found pools storing radioactive waste at the nation's nuclear power plants – including Progress Energy's Shearon Harris facility near Raleigh – are vulnerable to terrorist attack.

Prompt measures are necessary to reduce the risk, and they should be designed and implemented on a facility-by-facility basis, according to a committee of the NAS Board on Radioactive Waste Management.

The committee based its conclusions on a detailed review of security analyses performed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the Department of Homeland Security, the nuclear power industry and independent experts.

"Within the six-month time frame requested by Congress, our committee of technical experts completed a very sound, evidence-based analysis," said committee chair Louis Lanzerotti, distinguished research professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark and a consultant with Lucent Technologies in Murray Hill, N.J. "We received input both from scientific professionals and the public. Our findings were unanimous."

An attack that partially or completely drains a plant's spent fuel pool could start a high-temperature fire, releasing large quantities of radioactive material into the environment, the committee found. The NAS recommended that two measures be taken promptly to reduce the potential for such fires: reconfiguring the position of fuel assemblies in the pools to more evenly distribute decay-heat loads, and making provisions for cooling water-spray systems that could continue to operate even after the pool or the building in which it is housed is damaged.

Congress commissioned the NAS study over a year ago, but the NRC – which disagreed with the findings – blocked its public release since last summer.

"The release of NAS's study puts to rest any doubts about the danger we all face," said a statement from the Nuclear Security Coalition, a safety advocacy group that includes the N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network. "We applaud the Academy for its scientific integrity and its perseverance in seeing to it that these important findings are made public."

The coalition called on Congress to pass legislation to get nuclear waste out of crowded pools.

For a copy of the report, which can be read for free on the NAS Web site, click here.

Analysis Suggests Corruption in Recent U.S. Election

There’s an impossibly slim chance that discrepancies between the exit polls and the outcome of the latest U.S. presidential election could be due to chance, according to an analysis released last week by a group of scientists.

“The hypothesis that the voters’ intent was not accurately recorded or counted … needs further investigation,” said the March 31 report from USCountVotes, a research project investigating the accuracy of the recent U.S. vote.

Exit polls in the November election showed Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., winning by 3 percent, but President George W. Bush won the vote count by 2.5 percent.

Bush has one of the poorest environmental records of any president in recent history. In his second term he has further angered environmentalists by weakening regulations on mercury pollution and by pushing for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The exit-polling firm explained the discrepancy by arguing that Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the polling. However, this theory is implausible based on the pollsters’ own data, the analysis found.

For a PDF copy of the analysis, click here.

Episcopal Priest to Discuss Religion and the Environment

Can religion save the environment?

That question will be the topic of a public lecture to be delivered Tuesday, April 5 at Raleigh's Meredith College by Rev. Sally Bingham, an Episcopal priest with California Interfaith Power and Light and The Regeneration Project, faith-based efforts to respond to climate change by promoting energy conservation and renewable energy. Bingham's talk will be held at 4 p.m. in Kresgi Auditorium at Meredith's Cate Student Center.

The following morning at 10 o'clock, Bingham will lead a worship service in Jones Chapel on Meredith's campus. And on Thursday, April 7 at 1:30 p.m., she will hold a talk with local religious and environmental leaders at Raleigh's Community United Church of Christ at 814 Dixie Trail. The talk will open with a showing of the Bingham-produced video “Lighten Up!” addressing climate issues, and then she will discuss whether to introduce The Regeneration Project to North Carolina though the N.C. Council of Churches’ Climate Connection program.

Raleigh Gallery Features Green Building Exhibit & Talks

This month's exhibit at the Designbox Gallery at 315 S. Bloodworth St. in downtown Raleigh spotlights ways to make the human-built environment more ecologically sustainable.

Curated by gallery member and green building expert Isaac Panzarella of Consider Design, "It IS Easy Being Green" features the work of designers and engineers who are endeavoring to make buildings, interiors and other products in a manner that minimizes negative impacts on the natural environment.

Tonight's First Friday opening reception features presentations by three local sustainability experts. At 7:30 p.m., N.C. State horticulture professor Will Hooker will discuss how a permaculture-based approach to design connects humans to nature and the magical. At 8:15, Wake Forest architect Gail Lindsey will talk about ways sustainability can improve society and nurture the spirit, followed at 9 p.m. by Raleigh architect Frank Harmon, who will explore how traditional inventiveness combined with advanced thinking in building design is helping create a better future.