Twister, wall cloud, cyclone, call it what you want, on May 4th 2007 one of the highest recorded winds ever produced from a tornado struck the small town of Greensburg, Kansas. The storm was nearly off the scale, a class EF-5 tornado, called by the National Severe Storms Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. The hurricane like winds well over 210 mph, leveled 95% of the town structures and took the lives of eleven people. That was about two years ago, now the town is living up to its name. The rebirth of the farming community has taken a green approach of sustainability with a renewable sense of energy production and conservation. From platinum LEED’s , (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), certified public buildings, a futuristic Arts Center with solar panels, wind turbines and a green glass facade to city hybrid fleet vehicles, Greensburg is setting an example of green collar mindfulness Al Gore would be jealous of. A steady parade of journalists, The Discovery Channel, bloggers of all shapes and forms and also your environmentally concerned tourists flood Greensburg to see what the earth friendly buzz is about. The call for an unconventional energy path is getting louder with every rebuilt home using bamboo flooring to solar panels. The newly under-construction city hall is making use of sustainable technologies in tandem with the application of recycled materials for rebuilding the public recreation areas fallen victim to the killer tornado. We all need to give Greensburg two very high green thumbs-up for showing us all an alternative path to follow.
Motoring madness has met its match. The United States has long since been considered a ‘petroleum playground’ with urban moms cruising down the road in an empty Chevy Suburban with a carrying capacity of a small village in Africa. According to the The Seattle Times, the governors of California, Oregon and Washington are lobbying to create a “green freeway” along the western coast of the U.S. spanning 1,382 miles. This heavily used blacktop is to be serviced by alternative fueled stations. These green pit stops would have pumps providing ethanol, biodiesel, natural gas, and even hydrogen pumps to service cars like the Honda FCX Clarity, a newly introduced hydrogen fuel cell motoring marvel, getting a whopping 74 mpg, (according to the Honda Motor Company), when compared to 20 mpg for the Chevy Suburban fossil fuel burner. The stations would also carry swappable batteries and charging stations for those buzzing about in electrical cars. When will this futuristic renewable Route 66 begin? Washington state will be first at the starting line, with Oregon and California drafting closely behind this coming summer.
Coyote, Canis Latrans, the Latin term for barking or singing dog, is usually more active at dawn or towards dusk, about the time predators to the colorful song birds awake for breakfast and retire in the evening after dinner. Why the connection? For the simple reason that our ancestral canine, and would-be foe, is a song bird’s best friend. By going after morsel meals like feral cats, skunks, raccoons, and other predators preying on the songful avians, less hatchlings have fallen prey and the populations are slowly making a comeback thanks to the nomadic pack animal. According to Kevin Crooks of the University of California at Santa Cruz and Michael Soule of the Wildlife Project in Hotchkiss, Colorado, in a survey done near the burgeoning metropolis of San Diego, there was a significant increase shown in native bird populations in the vicinity of several coyote packs. Next time people blame the “singing dog” for “Fifi’s” disappearance perhaps they should pay more attention to the song bird’s melodic chirp.
