Going huge, Ben Johnson blows up: Complete Package

Girdwood, Alaska – On Saturday, March 29, 2008 at the World Telemark Free-skiing Championships hosted by Alyeska Resort in Girdwood, Alaska, Ben Johnson, 34, an extreme telemark skier who makes his home just outside of Denali National Park, Alaska, severely injured himself while skiing to raise money to purchase disabled sports equipment for the Athletes With a Cause charity program.

Ironically, Ben’s efforts to share the joy of skiing with disabled individuals nearly left him paralyzed.

Ben is one of my closest friends and the first person I contacted when I started the Athletes With a Cause charity program. I knew that Ben would put as much energy and passion into helping others as he does into skiing. My life, and this Web site as a product of it, is built on the relationships I have with outdoor athletes and the inspirational things that they do. It seems that every week I hear about some one going big, but Ben is the only person I know that makes going huge a way of life. He lives by the belief that anything worth doing, is worth doing in the biggest way possible. Read more

Northern Nevada Takes on Global Warming, by Nathan Greenside

Reno, Nevada – Northern Nevadans are recognizing their impact on the environment and are implementing the latest available technologies to lower their effect on the planet and find new forms of energy. The University of Nevada, Reno and local companies are working to lower our greenhouse gas emissions and find new forms of energy.The University of Nevada, Reno has taken the first step toward the fight against global warming by signing the American College and Universities President Climate Commitment.

“The broad overarching goal of the American College and Universities President Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) is to achieve climate neutrality for all campuses,” John C. Sagebiel, environmental affairs manager at the university said.

The first step of the ACUPCC is to take a comprehensive inventory of the greenhouse gases being emitted by all the buildings on the university as well as all the cars being driven by students and faculty members. This will include recording all the energy being used for heating, air conditioning, lighting, maintenance and machinery.

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Kicking off spring in Southern Utah

Southern, Utah – With snow still covering most of the trails here in the Truckee Meadows and the Sierra river season yet to start, there seemed no better way to jump start spring than heading into the desert for five days of sun and mountain biking.

Zion National Park in Southern Utah is one of the most beautiful places anywhere. Add miles and miles of single-track and slickrock mountain biking between Zion and St. George and the Zion area is a place everyone should visit.

Jem Trail started us out with a nice easy going climb and a long, pedaly, downhill and a gorgeous finishing mile along the canyon rim of the Virgin River. Next up was Gooseberry Mesa, an awesome mixture of slickrock, single-track and incredible cliff rim views. We ended the Zion portion of our trip on Broken Mesa, a challenging single-track trail over a lava flow and scattered with big lava rocks throughout.

Day 4 found us in Moab and climbing up the Porcupine Rim Trail to the Castle Valley lookout, a sweet slickrock double track climb with one of the best downhill sections anywhere and great views to go with it. On my last day, but only the midway point for the rest of the group, we rode the well known Slickrock Bike Trail, a surprisingly challenging and different ride.

If you haven’t been, Southern Utah is a desert worth exploring.

Single-Stream Gains Steam In Washoe County by Cara Dohnansky

Recycling Pilot Program Gets Results

Reno, Nevada – A pilot program in single-stream recycling involving 900 homes in the Kings Row neighborhood shows higher participation and better efficiency in recycling for the Reno area.

“From everyday collection to environmental protection. Think green. Think Waste Management.”

This was the motto that Waste Management stood by on Feb. 13 at City Hall when results of a recycling experiment provoked talk to move a more efficient recycling program forward.

“Nevada’s below the bar as far as recycling goes,” Chris Good, Assistant to the City of Reno Manager said. “It’s a great time with all of the green initiative to step it up.”

In October 2007, Reno backed Waste Management in a pilot program designed to determine whether recycling rates would increase if participants no longer had to separate their recycling materials from the rest of their refuse. This is known as single-stream recycling and is catching on all over the country. The pilot involved 900 homes in the Kings Row neighborhood in a three month test to see specifically how much recycling rates would increase. Read more

New Plan to Prevent Wildfires by Laurel Winterbourne

Fire Prevention Plan

For the past 100 years, Lake Tahoe management agencies have practiced fire supression, which means that natural fires that clean the forest floor of debris and reduce fuel loads, were put out imediately rather than allowing them to follow their natural course.

In the aftermath of the devastating 2007 Angora Fire in South Lake Tahoe, a new plan is being implemented by the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit to allow prescribed underburning. The Forest Ecosystem Underburn Project will include small controlled fires, monitored by the Forest Service and local fire fighters, to reduce fuels buildup and restore forest health on 3,200 acres throughout the Lake Tahoe Basin.

“Fire is and always has been a natural process in the Sierra Nevada and Carson Valley mountain ranges,” John Wahington, leader of the Lake Tahoe Basin Underburning Project, said. “Typically fires were either caused by natural ignition, such as lightning, or Native American Indians. These fires basically cleaned up the slash on the forest floor.” Read more

This Spring, Clean Green

Spring has sprung, and this year, let nature provide your inspiration. As the landscape goes green, make spring cleaning follow its cue.
Environmentalist Alan Muller of Green Delaware – an organization concerned with environmental and public health issues across the state – offered suggestions to make the yearly ritual friendly to our health, power bills and Earth.
Many commercial cleaning products, he said, make “cleaning” leave a trail of toxicity.
“The most important (part of cleaning green) is not to go crazy with toxic chemical cleaners,” he said. “A lot of people, in my opinion, are exposed to real health hazards from household chemicals.”
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Learning through exploration, and zany glasses

University of Nevada, Reno – Reynolds School Associate Professor, Howard Goldbaum understands the value of exploration as a teaching tool and a way to engage students more fully in a curriculum. He also knows that enabling students to venture out to explore our world is not the easiest thing to do.

To overcome these limitations, Goldbaum uses VR technology, or virtual reality, to take students beyond the sterile, whitewash walls of the classroom and give them a more interactive learning experience. His work with Nevada Humanities, the local arm of the National Endowment for the Humanities, has empowered Northern Nevada K-12 teachers and students to explore Nevada’s history and landscapes without leaving the classroom but also without having to stare at the static pages of a textbook.

“Kids are used to things that are more engaging,” Goldbaum said. “I’m attempting to bring history to life and foster education through exploration.” Read more

Sharing the joy of skiing

Alpine Meadows, California – “Mountains accommodate everyone equally. Gravity doesn’t care if you’re sitting down or standing up.”These are the words of Bill Bowness, former Paralympian goldmedalist and disabled sports coach, which you first see when entering the offices of Disabled Sports USA Far West at Alpine Meadows.

Disabled Sports USA Far West has been helping to share the joy and empowerment of skiing with cognitively and physically disabled people of all ages since 1967 and is the founding chapter of what is now a nation-wide organization.

“We’re the oldest and probably one of the best and most comprehensive adaptive sports programs in the country,” Vanessa Belz, volunteer program coordinator for Disabled Sports USA Far West, said. “We have great instructors that have a passion for teaching skiing to people with disabilities. We teach about 1500 lessons per season to people of all ages, as little as 4 and 5 all the way up through (their) 60’s.”

(Click here to help raise money for an adaptive sit-ski with Athletes With a Cause) Read more

Between the Tides by Nick Manning and Tyler Quintano

Sundarban, India – In December of 2006, researchers from Jadavpur University in Calcutta reported that the first inhabited island has been submerged as a result of rising sea levels and global warming. 10,000 people once inhabited the island of Lohachara in the Bay of Bengal. They have recently become landless refugees. Reports indicate that residents have fled to the larger island of Sagar, which is also eroding into the Ganges estuary. Researchers at Jadavpur said that at least 70,000 people in the Sundarban atoll will become eco-refugees within several years.

In today’s economically connected world, it is imperative to understand how the swiftly changing world is shaping the way in which we live and interact. By presenting the case study of the Sundarbans in a format easily accessible to all ages and backgrounds, we are bringing to light a contemporary story in need of attention. The documentary film uses education to promote practical awareness of a potentially devastating affect of climate change. While the film is made accessible to a broader audience with an entertainment value, it will also be used to indirectly persuade policy makers to make sound decisions on climate change issues. The project also aspires to give the audience the opportunity to confront the idea of how decisions made in one corner of the globe directly affect people living in another. Read more

The secret of green building, by Brian Knight

Click here to take a virtual tour of Susan Smith’s home

Click here to take a virtual tour of Robin and Dave Rittenhouse’s home
Asheville, North Carolina – The secret to green building is a measurable thing that could cut building emissions in half, yet nobody seems to know about it. The term “green building” seems to be everywhere. It means different things to everybody and most people seem to be getting green in the face whenever they hear about it. Still, this is an extremely important topic because like transportation and food, shelter is something us humans must address if we want our descendants to have a chance of survival on this planet. But our buildings produce more pollution than our vehicles.

The vast majority of the energy that our buildings use is from coal. Unlike petroleum, coal supplies are relatively plentiful and cheap, insuring that we will be able to use this dirty energy to power our inefficient buildings for a long time. This is a very dangerous thing. The burning of coal is responsible for environmental and human respiratory problems that would take volumes of books to cover. So what about the secret?

The secret is not a sexy thing. Its actually kind of boring. However, the secret is the most important thing to consider and it transcends the world and works in all climates and on all building sites. Read more

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