The "Greenest" Convention

With so much technology available, why couldn't delegates gather in their home states and conference everything? Oh, right, how would the lobbyists get their best targets to a party?

But what a way to decrease the carbon footprint on a major city.

This is a great perspective that I wasn't expecting to see:) Thanks Miss Dev.

Didn't know that about this convention. Thanks!

Great article with good research.
Maybe the mistake the DNC made was in touting the Green aspect of the convention.
But....it is still an enormous step forward and an effort worth trying - especially considering the size of this event and the scope of the endeavor.

The lack of trash bins around the Pepsi Center is truly perplexing. It seems that taking care of trash might seem like an affront to the armed personnel, but it would keep them attentive.

Well done. At least they are having a go and with Al Gore their sooon they had to do something !

This is a long over due discussion. I see conservation as a holistic issue. If you really want to be green. You first would have to make it so wind and solar are used everywhere in the world. You would have to make solar cars. All this solar stuff would have to have a battery that can run many months worth of storage in case of long term rain. National Security would have to be in charge of this massive project so the oil companies do not do their usual bit of submarining these inventions. The sad part is in the mean time we would need to do what McCain suggested about drilling at home while we feverishly play catch up and invent ways of really taking advantage of wind and solar.

We are paying the price for refusing to invent a battery that stores solar power effectively, long term and small size battery. In 1975 the ecology movement was trying to get people to further develop solar energy but the oil companies won and nothing was done. It would have been much simpler back then. We waited too long so now the solution is more drastic.

After we manage to play catch up and get both solar cars and all our heating and air conditioning and anything else that can run on solar or wind, we then do all that clean up process spoken of here so once it is clean it is clean. We would have to plant far more trees and return much land back to nature since we now have to make up for years of damage

All this will be very expensive but the cost of continuing to do nothing is the total death of the entire planet. If anyone here remembers "Cosmos" series by Carl Sagan he compares our green house effect to Venus and the other comparison is comparing the death of the earth to becoming like Mars, locked in an internal ice age. Either choice means that there would be no life on earth. Earth would become another dead rock in space. We do not have spaceships that can travel far enough to find a new planet teaming with life like the earth. This is not a throw away planet.

Sadly, as in most cases, no one in America knows where and how the word "green" was seeded. Originally, green denoted an ecological literacy, i.e., the comprehension that everything and all else is connected irrevocably and inextricably to the salvation and protection of Earth's ecosystems, the living, life-giving physical body of a living, ecosystem dependent Earth. Indeed, extant and viable ecosystems are the only environmental issue. Going green is nothing about alternative fuels, new green gadgets and green toilet scubbers; the only issue that is paramount to the continued existence of mankind, who is far more dependent upon oxygen than oil, is the ability of ecosystems and their biological diversity to remain alive and functioning. All the rest is mere chatter and ecological lunacy.

The father of ecology, American Aldo Leopold, professor and stupendous writer gave life to Green the day he witnessed a mountain die. In this revered essay, "Thinking Like a Mountain", highly gifted Leopold used mountain as a metaphor for ecosystem and planet Earth. Upon declaration of the USA government, adrift with ecological illiteracy, ordered all wolves to be extirpated from the western U.S. On that day, Leopold shot and killed a mother wolf and her babies. To paraphrase, he watched a FIERCE GREEN FIRE dying in her eyes as the wolf lay dying. He learned something that day, that only the wolf and the mountain [ecosystem, Earth], knew, something known only to the wolf and the mountain. Without the wolves, the entire ecosystem died. "The cowman who cleans his range of wolves does not realize that he is taking over the wolf's job of trimming the herd to fit the range."

In the absence of the wolf, the deer herds mushroomed without the natural checks and balances of the wolf, the wolf's eco-job for the mountain and Earth. Leopold watched the mountain die. First, the deer herds died of their own too much, too muchness; they consumed all the native plants that held the soil and gave life to the entire system. In the end, all the deer died, all the vegetation died, and the soil and future blew away in the wind. The deer had consumed the ecosystem. Leopold remarked that it looked as if God had a new pruning shears and no other exercise. The mountain then looked like the face and body of Mars, a dead ecosystem, a dead planet about as life=gifting as Mars.

Thus, green was born, and Leopold's masterful, "A Sand County Almanac" became the Bible of the 60's great environmental movement, as American as turkeys and hickory trees. Green was not the big word then, even though books were written & utilized the fierce, big green, over and over; Ecology Now was the American warrior's war cry. The father of ecology and environmentalism is American. Born in the U.S.A.

However, ecological illiteracy is even more rampant today. Deforesting ecosystems, regardless, kills the living, physical body of Earth. Deforesting for behemoth windmill factories and constructing monsterous solar panels all, kill ecosystems, kill Earth. Might as well slather the ecosystems with dead, and hot, hot concrete, as alive as the body of Mars. The superficiality of the new Green isn't going to get the job done as long as mankind continues to kill Earth's living, life-giving body. Only one Green matters in the big picture of all life on Earth, the salvation and protection of ecosystems and their living biodiversity, i.e., native animals and native plants, which altogether with soil and water are an ecosystem.

Leopold ended the most crucial and important words ever written, quoting another great American mind, H. Thoreau with a little twist of his own. For Earth's sake, I'll add my own:

"IN wildness is the salvation of the world and the preservation of all life, long known among wolves and mountains, polar bears, eagles, oak, hickory & sequoia trees, wild lilacs, eagles, songbirds, frogs, lizards, and native invertebrates but seldom perceived by man."

In the end, any instrument, from giant pruning shears to deforesting for roads, construction, buildings, and oceans of concrete, housing tracts, shopping malls, apartment complexes, schools, burger joints, taco stands and skyscrapers are all made of dead earth, and each foot of deforested, paved, cleared, thinned, removed and human disturbances give mankind -- one more food of dead Earth, as life-giving as Mars. In wildness...is the big and fierce Green.

The inside of this convention hall was torn out and totally rebuilt at a cost of millions of contribution dollars. After the convention it will be torn out again and rebuilt to it's original style...again, all at the cost of millions of dollars of contributed funds. BUT, can you imagine the carbon footprint (if there was such a thing!) that this deconstruction-construction-deconstruction-reconstruction will leave!!! Greenest convention ever my butt! And afterwards, how many of these 'Green' advocates will hop on their private jets or pile into their SUVs and burn thousands of gallons of gasoline and jet fuel to go home...Green hypocrites, all of you!

Well, I just have two words "The Happening."

Eventually, nature will get revenge.

"Some carbon offsets are purchased in order to fund projects like wind farms and solar installations; but they're not actually removing any of the pollution produced." Wind farms and solar plants reduce the amount of pollution. This makes the above statement false and discredits the rest of the article as an attack on the Democratic Party. A wind farm means that power will exist that does not need to be produced by coal or oil. Even though the purchaser my be cruising the strip in his Hummer and not reducing their own Carbon footprint, they are paying so that somewhere else there will be a wind farm instead of a coal power plant. It is a way for people to support Green Energy without having to make a compromise in their own life directly.

Discounted Carbon Offsets simply refer to when a corporation like GE decides to sell the wind turbines at a discounted price, or by having volunteers install and maintain the system thus reducing the cost of the project. It took me less than a minute to find that definition, which supports that this article is an attack.

So there's more people gathered in one place for a week. A forest (barring a natural disaster) can clean the air forever. A wind farm will produce energy for over 13 years before there is significant maintenance needed. The argument being made is as pointless as saying, "Wind turbines pollute because they are delivered by a truck that emits greenhouse gases."

Wonderful article and good thing I've finally found it. Better late than never is my maternal refrain.

Our refuse needs to stay safe, too, right? Security risk or not, large groups of hot, hungry adults produce waste, and that needs to be addressed in some way. The piles of litter may disguise the massive black fence surrounding the Pepsi Center compound, but I'd like the disguise to be a little "greener."

It always amazes me how grand schemes that play well in the press releases can leave out the most basic, common sense problems. It's emblematic of our politics and a key observation, thank you.