New program encourages sustainability in Great Lakes cities

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A new regional initiative encourages green energy use, economic development and water resource protection in more than 70 Great Lakes cities. The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, a bi-national network of mayors promoting the region’s restoration, recently launched the Green Cities Transforming Towards Sustainability program. The program is supposed to protect water and coastal areas and promote low-carbon energy generation and green land use and building design. Officials hope green economic development stimulates local economies.

Wildlife

Gulf spill threatens Great Lakes birds

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The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is thousands of miles away, but experts worry that Great Lakes migratory birds are threatened by it. Minnesota’s state bird – the common loon – and the endangered piping plover are among those in harm’s way.

NASA: Moon may have more water than the Great Lakes

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The fight to keep Great Lakes water in the Great Lakes isn’t just regional anymore. Things just got global, if not interplanetary. That’s because new NASA-funded research suggests that the amount of water locked up in Earth’s longtime orbital nemesis — the moon — could exceed the volume of the Great Lakes. So unless the region conserves every drop it can, I’ll have to listen to my grandkids prattle on about how “The Great Lakes were cool until their volume was marginalized by the discovery of hydroxyl indigenous to lunar apatite, a water-bearing mineral.” Lousy moon-brats.

Echo

Greening of Flint: Mama E faces a dilemma

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On Wednesdays through July, Great Lakes Echo will run a video segment expected to become a building block of a finished documentary on the greening of Flint, Mich. This week, Mama E is in a dilemma: Should she stay in Flint or leave?

Echo

Lower Ontario air emission standards will bring more smog to Midwest

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Ontario’s coal-fired power plants are going off the grid in 2014. Until then, the provincial government has approved maximum air emission limits for the remaining plants. Canadian environmentalists and health officials aren’t pleased, according to a story from Windsor Star reporter Dave Battagello. Activists say the higher limits will “put lives at risk” and worsen the Ontario’s air quality. Windsor, Detroit’s Canadian neighbor, is already one of the most polluted parts of the province, according to the story.

Breaking the seal of the electronic confessional

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Awhile back in this space I groused about Minnesota officials resurrecting the “confessional style” of public hearings. That’s the one where the public shows up and one at a time people privately give comments about controversial issues to representatives of the decision makers. My beef is that such a process robs people of interaction and the synergy that real discussions often produce. It also insulates decision makers from the people affected by their decisions. Now the magic of digital communications has apparently created an electronic version of this wayward attempt to generate input into crtiical public decisions.