When Chris Samila an Arizona State University student took a trip to Costa Rica to see the Arenal Volcano, he noticed that many homes in Costa Rica used compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).

Instantly, a light went on in his head.

“In the middle of the jungle, they're using CFLs. Why not here?” he asked himself.

Samila, a senior in ASU's School of Global Studies, also began to realize that he and his generation would be the ones most affected by the depletion of the world's resources.

“I really did not realize the global scope of the issue until I began studying here,” Samila says. “The school also opened my eyes to the global economic potential of making America a strong leader in sustainable technology.

All of those thoughts coalesced, with help from the School of Global Studies Student Association and other organizations, to produce the Green Summit, a one-day sustainability event that took place on ASU’s Tempe campus in April 2007.

When he organized last year's first GreenSummit, Chris Samila never imagined that anyone but students would come, and perhaps residents of Tempe and Phoenix.

But they did come, and the summit was so successful that Samila has planned a second summit, set for September 5-6, 2008 at the Phoenix Convention Center.

And it will become a nationwide event, Samila says. He already is planning to hold a GreenSummit in Atlanta next year, and he has his sights set on other cities in the United States.

It's one of the most affordable conferences in America given the wide range of sustainability topics and number of presenters.

“The goal of the summit goes beyond conserving paper,” Samila says. “It is designed to be a catalyst for change.”

The GreenSummit will have a number of components this year. There will be a two-day conference for both professionals and consumers, offering more than 100 educational sessions, and an exhibition hall with more than 120 exhibitors with cutting-edge green products and services.

There also will be networking events, a green industry career fair and green building tours around the Valley.

Samila expects more than 10,000 people to attend, including a delegation from Eastern Europe that the U.S. Department of Commerce is bringing to showcase American innovations and ideas revolving around sustainability.

“This year, we have organized the Green Innovations Expo into 10 categories to help manage the expansive and complex idea of sustainability,” says Samila.

“These categories help define the diverse variety of ideas, products and research in order to highlight how sustainability affects your personal and professional life.”

The categories include Green Building Design, Green Chemistry Materials, Business Products and Services, Renewable Energy, Transportation, Greener Computing, Fashion, and Beauty among others.

Samila says people often ask him how he has the time to produce such a large conference, in record speed, while he is still an undergraduate student.

“My answer is that I'm a ‘permanent senior’ at the moment. I hope this will be a permanent career for me.”

2008 GreenSummit Expo and Conference

The Natural Resources Defense Council's online magazine Onearth featured Chris Samila in an article called, "Most Likely to Succeed" which you can read HERE.

 We have have over 1000 Environmental based Experiments, labs and lesson plans 

for Teachers/Home Schoolers and their students. Search topics like Global Warming (of course), climate change, air pollution, science, ocean etc..

*The site is fun and easy to use

*You do not have to hassle with any login procedure

*Grade ranges are from K-12

*The site is 110% kid safe 

www.greenplanetsearch.com is also: 

*An environmental search engine with over 3000 sites indexed and adding more green sites daily (we are an actual search engine, this is not another Google custom search)

* Original Environment related News Aricles

*Green Website Awards for sites that deliver great content in a unique qnd captivating way

*Submit your Green Website feature

Below is a screenshot of our home page showing  the ECO LESSON PLAN ENGINE on the top of the page.

Directions for LESSON PLANS, go to www.greenplanetsearch.com on the top of the page it will say ECO SEARCH ENGINE.

On the right of that you will see the black which states "switch to eco lesson plans" Click It, then you will see it change to the ECO LESSON PLANS, type in your search and learn!!! 

In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine.

Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today's announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

READ MORE
Site provided by www.mit.edu

More than 265 teenagers from 44 U.S. states and nine Canadian provinces will meet at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff this week to participate as finalists in North America's largest high-school environmental-education competition, the 2008 Canon Envirothon.

The Canon Envirothon is an annual competition in which winning state/provincial teams compete for recognition and scholarships by demonstrating their knowledge of environmental science and natural resource management. The teams, each consisting of five high school-aged students exercise their critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

READ MORE

While Ausra CEO Robert Fishman was far from excited yesterday about the BLM solar moratorium policy, he was perfectly happy to tout his company’s new 130,000 square foot manufacturing facility in Las Vegas. “This is a crossover point for this industry. Ausra’s factory is accelerating Nevada’s and America’s solar future by tripling worldwide manufacturing capacity, relieving the supply constraint that has slowed the industry, and continuing to drive down costs,” Fishman said in Ausra’s press release.

The factory will be the Palo Alto-based companies first North American manufacturing and distribution centers and will supply reflectors, absorber tubes and other components for the company’s solar thermal power plants. At full capacity, the facility will produce more than 700 MW of solar collectors annually.

Site provided by www.treehugger.com

The first Flash Search Engine is an Environmental Search Engine!! http://www.greenplanetsearch.com is now live!

 When Mike Haney first presented the idea behind the technology behind

www.greenplanetsearch.com, he was laughed down. Virtually, of course. “Everyone can

dream,: scoffed one, erroneously.

A few people were intrigued. The combination of Haney’s vision of a Flash-driven search

engine, and the plan to create a dazzling environmental education resource, eventually

attracted a loose-knit corps of collaborators, most of whom have never met in person first

among them Andre Roussille, a French computer programmer, and now part owner of the

company.

The upshot from this collaboration, apart from the stunningly beautiful homepage, is the

only people involved in the creation of the search engine, is that the only people involved

in the development devoted environmentalists, who genuinely wish to disseminate good

information to students and educators.

Later, through a similar serendipity, Mr. Haney teamed up with a veteran journalist who

agreed to lend his services to the site, building from scratch a source of environmental

news and policy analysis.

Advertisers will be strictly vetted by the companies shareholders, limited to companies

that are making a meaningful contribution the planet’s health.

The final result, which was launched this week, is the culminating of thousands of

hours of work, and more than a few false starts.

It boasts easily navigable information, experiments, lesson plans, presented in an interactive and graphically enhanced format,

and has an exclusive global climate change resource section for teachers and kids.

If you would like more information about greenplanetsearch.com, or to schedule an

interview with Mike Haney, please call Mike Haney at 305.531.3746   or e-mail info@greenplanetsearch.com. 

Just a reminder that GREENSBURG premiers this Sunday, June 15th at 9pm ET/PT on Discovery's new Planet Green channel. The 13-part series follows the green rebuilding story of Greensburg, Kansas after a devastating EF5 tornado traveled through the area on May 4, 2007 destroying at least 95 percent of the city. The series features Leonardo DiCaprio as its executive producer, and will be a behind-the-scenes look into the rebuilding of Greensburg as an eco-friendly community which will showcase as a model for the rest of the world to follow.

I have been feeling a little guilty about looking forward to this new series since a disaster had to happen in order to make this series possible. But now with all the recent disasters happening all over the country with more tornadoes and severe flooding causing people to lose their homes, businesses and towns, a series like this is hitting the airwaves at exactly the right time. The community of Greensburg can give hope now to other people by showing how they turned life’s challenges into personal triumphs.

Since Planet Green debuted this past June 4th I have had the opportunity to watch a few of the shows. My eco-ego has enjoyed watching WA$TED the most. I have to admit that watching this show gives me an air of superiority, in that I feel I’m very green compared to the people they profile on the show.  LOL  

Then I watch Living with Ed and my air of superiority gets diminished very quickly, because my actions pale in comparison to Ed’s actions. I don’t do anything even close like riding a stationary bicycle every morning to generate enough electricity to make toast like Ed does.

Compared to Ed, I’m a very light shade of mint green. 

No one can do everything, but everyone can do something...and that's what counts.




 

The nation’s first School of Sustainability was established at Arizona State University. The university, along with the School of Sustainability at its core, has been mounting an unprecedented comprehensive sustainability effort aimed at finding solutions to the most pressing issues the planet faces, and is committed to guiding humanity from its present course of environmental destruction.

ASU is showing how to walk the talk with plans for installing one of the largest rooftop solar-power plants in the United States. The plan calls for 2 megawatts of generating capacity installed on 135,000 square feet by the end of the year.

That's enough to run 4,600 computers and reduce carbon emissions by 2,825 tons per year, or the equivalent of taking 530 cars off the road for a year. Long-term plans call for up to 7 megawatts of solar-generating capacity to be built at ASU in Tempe, with additional solar installations at its campuses in downtown Phoenix and other locations.

"These large-scale solar installations demonstrate ASU's commitment to achieving carbon neutrality through on-site, renewable-energy generation," ASU President Michael Crow said.

ASU is becoming a major player in solar research and sustainability. This is a real-world showcase of its efforts.

Read More @ The Arizona Republic

Base philosophy,

If you imagine for a moment that the earth and everything on it was on a laboratory slide and that through a microscope you were conducting a study in the same way a biologist or other scientist might view microscopic organisms. Your objective was to understand the Symbiotic relationships of the organisms that you could see going about their complex interactions and life cycles.

It would become rapidly clear to you that the relationship between the dominant organisms (Humankind) and everything else was PARASITIC in nature, in other words :

A type of symbiosis where two (or more) organisms from different species live in close proximity to one another, in which one member depends on another for its nutrients, protection, and/or other life functions.

The dependent member (HUMANKIND, the parasite) benefits from the relationship while the other one (EARTH, the host) is harmed by it.

You would determine that at a finite point in time, the HOST would not be in a position to satisfy the needs of the PARASITE and the PARASITE would become extinct. We know this to be true, we extinguish tens of thousands of species every year, through soil erosion, deforestisation, global warming, pollution of Air, Sea, Earth and water.

We have to move to a more sympathetic Symbiotic relationship with our host organism.

A type of symbiosis where two (or more) organisms from different species live in close proximity to one another and rely on one another for nutrients, protection, or other life functions. Both (or all) of the organisms involved benefit from the relationship.

There are many, many ways to achieve this future state, BUT THE COMMON KEY IS THAT WE HAVE TO CHANGE OUR THINKING. WHAT WE THINK, DETERMINES OUR ACTIONS, OUR ACTIONS DETERMINE THE OUTCOME.

With our current actions the outcome is inevitable - EXTINCTION

Join the 11THHOURACTION movement and CHANGE YOUR THINKING