Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Builds LEED Campus

everGREEN landscape architects (Santa Barbara, California) is glad to see the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation move forward with one of the greenest building projects in the northwest.

The greenest elements for the new Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation headquarters in Seattle is a 1.5 acre green roof for the parking garage (owned and operated by Seattle Center), which is already complete. The foundation says the “living” roof is the largest of its kind in Seattle and will eventually be sustained by Seattle’s wet climate. The campus will also have extensive green, sustainable landscaping to knit the campus with the neighborhood.

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California Adopts America’s First State‐Wide Green Building Code

(July 18, 2008)
California enacted the nation’s first state-wide green building code. It sets a solid floor from which to build even stronger standards in the future. The new code could have been stronger, but the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) urged the Building Standards Commission to adopt it because it sets a powerful precedent and presents the opportunity for stronger revisions in the future. NRDC will work with the Commission and partner organizations to ensure that stronger green building standards become reality in California.
(for the full story)

One of the first insurance offices in the country to have a green roof

As the first and only Green Roof AP in Santa Barbara, California, everGREEN landscape architects is happy to announce State Farm Insurance has a lofty idea to deal with climate change - an 8.5 acre green roof atop it's regional headquarters.

Green roofs are becoming more mainstream as a way to improve the environment, the work place, and worker satisfaction (including less absenteeism). Also, with the energy savings come big economic reasons to go green.

Mexicans plant 8 million trees

Mexicans went out and planted more than 8 million trees across the country on Saturday as part of a government push to shed its reputation for environmental mismanagement and rampant illegal logging (estimated at 64,000 acres per year).

Packs of volunteers, including oil workers and schoolchildren, trekked into fields and forests up and down Mexico wielding shovels and wheelbarrows full of government-supplied saplings. They planted a 8.3 million trees, the environment ministry said.

EU Bans Pesticide & Nicotinoids linked to Bee Colony Collapse

In light of recent European bans of a pesticide linked to Bee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), at least one key bee expert is calling for a ban of the same pesticide in the United States. The European Union’s tough stance on chemical regulation is the latest area in which the Europeans are reshaping business practices with demands that American companies either comply or lose access to a market of 27 countries and nearly 500 million people.

In June, the European Union rolled out new restrictions on makers of chemicals linked to cancer and other health problems, changes that are forcing U.S. industries to find new ways to produce a wide range of everyday products.

The new laws in the European Union require companies to demonstrate that a chemical is safe before it enters commerce—the opposite of policies in the United States, where regulators must prove that a chemical is harmful before it can be restricted or removed from the market. Manufacturers say that complying with the European laws will add billions to their costs, possibly driving up prices of some products.

“In the United States, drastic action is needed,” says Canadian geneticist Joe Cummins, explaining that U.S. farmers and beekeepers shouldn’t have to wait for more evidence or for an air-tight explanation for the complex syndrome, which threatens one in every third bite of food in the United States. Now most apiarists and scientists realize that pesticides are a factor in CCD, he says.

Cummins’ remarks, in an interview with GreenRightNow, come less than a month after Germany’s ban of clothianidin, a nicotinoid pesticide commonly used to keep insects off of corn crops. The German government took the extraordinary action to protect bees and other essential pollinators, stating that there is now enough compelling evidence connecting the chemical to Bee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in that country.

Adamantly opposed by the U.S. chemical industry and the Bush administration, the E.U. laws will be phased in over the next decade. It is difficult to know exactly how the changes will affect products sold in the United States. But American manufacturers are already searching for safer alternatives to chemicals used to make thousands of consumer goods, from bike helmets to shower curtains.

Big Oil Wins Again

In a 5-3 decision, the US Supreme Court ruled that the company should not have to pay (punitive damages) - not a penny more than the actual economic losses—some $500 million—incurred by the fishermen, natives and landowners who first initiated the class action suit almost two decades ago.


Back in 1994, a lower court originally ruled that the company should pay $5 billion to plaintiffs for damages after the mammoth 11 million gallon spill, the nation’s largest to date. On appeal, the 9th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals cut the amount the company owed in half to $2.5 billion. This latest ruling will put the issue to rest.

Writing in dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginburg said the court was engaging in “lawmaking” by concluding the punitive damages not exceed what ExxonMobil has already paid out to compensate victims for direct economic losses. “The new law made by the court should have been left to Congress,” she wrote. Justices Stevens and Breyer joined Ginsburg in dissent.

Big corporate polluters across the country are cheering that now they can violate law, manufacture inferior and hazardous products, and poison people and the environment without fear of financial damages.

This was a dark (and oily) day for the scales of justice.
Meanwhile Exxon is making billions in quarterly profits...

What can you do? Never buy ExxonMobil gasoline again.