| Dear
EarthTalk: A friend of mine in Connecticut
raves about the “Green Drinks” events she attends
there every month to meet up with other eco-interested locals.
How can I find out if there are any such gatherings in my
area?
-- Janet McIntosh, Dubuque, Iowa
| |
A
Tucson, Arizona Green Drinks event. In the U.S. alone,
such events are held in some 223 cities every month,
bringing together local people of varied ages, backgrounds
and careers to network around mutual interests in
environmental issues.
© kretyen, courtesy flickr |
Every
month green-minded people in 460-plus cities around the
world meet up at informal social gatherings called Green
Drinks. Started in 1989 in London by Edwin Datschefski and
friends, the concept has spread like wildfire, with some
350 different Green Drinks chapters worldwide today. The
events are designed to be low-key, unstructured and welcoming
of all viewpoints on environmental topics. Many participants
have found jobs, made friends, developed new ideas, done
deals and had moments of serendipity and inspiration at
various Green Drinks events.
In
the U.S. alone, different Green Drinks events are held in
223 cities every month. The New York City chapter is the
biggest in the world, with an invite list topping 10,000
people and typical attendance in the hundreds. Green Drinks
events are also popular in the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany,
Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Japan, New Zealand, Chile,
Puerto Rico and Australia. Melbourne, Australia currently
holds the record for the world’s biggest Green Drinks
event, with more than 1,700 participants showing up on the
first night of the city’s February 2007 Sustainable
Living Festival.
“People
from different fields come together with a mutual interest
in environmental issues and cross-pollinate and drink in
a very low-key social atmosphere,” says Margaret Lydecker,
who started New York City’s Green Drinks chapter in
2002 and currently serves as the U.S. point-person for the
events. Lydecker—who has personally helped start upwards
of 100 different chapters, including one in Kabul, Afghanistan—says
the events have been a big catalyst for connectivity, community,
collaboration and change in the environmental sector in
New York and beyond.
In
the U.S. and Canada, most mid-sized and large cities already
have thriving Green Drinks chapters. You can likely find
one somewhere near you, wherever you live, by searching
under the “Find City” link on the GreenDrinks.org
website, and clicking through until you get a schedule of
upcoming events in your particular city. If there isn’t
yet a Green Drinks chapter in your region, by all means
start a new one.
Heather
Burns-DeMelo, who had started a local/green happenings website
for Connecticut called CTgreenscene.com, was inspired by
Lydecker in 2007 to start a Green Drinks chapter where she
lives in Connecticut’s Fairfield County so that green-minded
people in the area could connect in person. “The web
is great,” she says, “but face-to-face is key
to growing the movement.”
According
to Burns-DeMelo, setting up the chapter was easy—she
just emailed Green Drinks founder Datschefski from the greendrinks.org
website with a request to start a new chapter—but
getting people to come to the initial events was more challenging.
She and friends set up sign-up tables at local community
events, found a restaurant willing to host, sent a press
release to local papers, hung fliers and posted notices
on her website and others. The hard work paid off: 65 people
showed up at the first event on a gloomy Wednesday night,
and the chapter has been growing by leaps and bounds ever
since.
CONTACT:
Green
Drinks.
Dear
EarthTalk: Which parts of the United States
are or will be hardest hit by global warming?
-- Aliza Perry, Burlington, VT
| |
Washington, DC's famous cherry trees are now blossoming
earlier due to global warming-related temperature
increases. But this pales in comparison to the much
more serious impacts of more and fiercer hurricanes
in the Southeast, major Midwest floods, shrinking
glaciers in the West and rising sea levels around
the nation's coastlines.
© celestria, courtesy Flickr
|
It’s difficult
to predict which areas of the U.S. will suffer the most
from global warming, but it’s safe to say that no
regions will be unaffected. Scientists already point to
increased severity of hurricanes on the East Coast, major
Midwest floods, and shrinking glaciers in the West as proof
of global warming’s onset.
Of course, America
couldn’t have asked for a better poster child in the
fight to stave off global warming than Alaska, which is
undergoing dramatic landscape changes as a result of warming-induced
temperature increases, glacial melting and sea level rise.
Even Alaska’s conservative elected officials can no
longer deny that human-induced warming is affecting their
state. The picture isn’t looking too rosy in the western
continental U.S. either, which is already facing some of
the country’ largest temperature increases. The signature
glaciers in Montana’s Glacier National Park may be
all gone within just two decades.
A recent report
by two leading nonprofits, the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization
and the Natural Resources Defense Council, details how the
11 U.S. western states together have experienced an increase
in average temperature during the last five years some 70
percent greater than the global average rise. The hottest
part of the region has been drought-stricken Arizona, where
average temperatures have risen some 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit—120
percent greater than the global rise—between 2003
and 2007. Researchers also found that the West has experienced
more frequent and severe heat waves, with the number of
extremely hot days increasing by up to four days per decade
since 1950.
In the Midwest,
seemingly minor increases in temperature have already wrought
major effects. In 2006 Lake Erie didn’t freeze for
the first time in history, which led to “lake effect”
snowfalls as more evaporating water was available for precipitation.
Likewise, changes in the lake’s water temperature
have begun to alter fish populations, which in turn affect
birds and their migratory patterns. Despite localized heavier
snowfalls, though, the region is generally suffering from
a drying trend. Farmers worry that the result will be lower
crop yields and thus more expensive food for American consumers.
On the east coast,
coral reef bleaching, heat waves and increased hurricane
intensity are just some of the warming-related hazards Floridians
have had to deal with in recent years. Washington, DC’s
famous cherry trees are now blossoming earlier due to temperature
increases. Further north, milder-than-typical winter temperatures
have been linked to subtle changes in ocean currents. In
New York City, the average temperature has increased about
four degrees Fahrenheit since 1880, and could get 10 degrees
hotter by 2100, according to a study commissioned by the
federally funded U.S. Global Change Research Program.
But the bigger
problem for New York City, as well as other low-lying areas
around the nation’s coasts, will be sea level rise:
Climate models predict that sea level around the Northeast
is expected to rise between 3⁄4 inch and 3 1⁄2
feet over the course of this century.
CONTACTS:
Rocky Mountain
Climate Organization; Natural
Resources Defense Council; U.S.
Global Change Research Program. |
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