February 18, 2009 by Ben.

First of all, a Happy Belated 200th Birthday to President Abraham Lincoln (not to mention Charles Darwin) and joyful Early Birthday Wishes to George Washington. Here, on President’s Day Aft Aft and in the very heart of President’s Birthday Week, we present to you a special Presidential Edition YERT video! During our travels in South Dakota, the roadside attraction capital of America, we stopped by David Adickes’ President’s Park for some quality one-on-one time with our nation’s leaders - in all their 20-foot, sculpted concrete glory. Sure, Mount Rushmore may be bigger and more famous, but where else in the country can you come face to GIGANTIC HEAD with every single US president? Actually, Williamsburg, VA (David has a second park there) but we were in SD, so we decided to bust in to catch some “green” pearls of wisdom from everyone from Lincoln to FDR. We even interviewed President Polk….yes, the President Polk. Best of all, we caught a super-sized face-off - a White House solar panels showdown between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan! Watch the drama unfold below:

Presidentially,

Julie, Mark, and Ben

team@yert.com

P.S. For information about the topics in this video, check out these breadcrumbs:

There’s a great documentary coming out soon called “Road Not Taken” about what happened to the solar panels Jimmy Carter put on the White House (and Reagan took down). To watch a trailer and for more on this story, check out these links:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/27/white-house-solar-panels_n_160575.html
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/01/jimmy-carter-solar-panels.php

See which Presidents have been the best for the environment here:
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/business/the-5-most-environmentally-friendly-presidents-in-us-history/857

Another list of the Best and Worst Presidents for the environment. Oddly enough, Nixon makes both Best and Worst lists of this one. Evidently, as the old saying goes - “when he was good he was very good, but when he was bad, he was horrid.” However, he wasn’t THE worst - that spot is reserved for “you know who.”

To see what kind of “Green New Deal” our current President is conjuring, go here:
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2236134/obama-green-stimulus-dissected
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2236575/obama-stimulus-bill-green
http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ceq/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/21/barackobama-usa-environment

Check out how Carter tried to fix Bush’s environmental/energy mistakes nearly 3 decades before Bush made them. Carter’s “malaise” speech (in which he actually never uses the word) is not terribly uplifting, but it couldn’t possibly have been more prescient then or more relevant today. Check out the speech (and dozens of other fascinating presidential speeches) HERE.

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February 10, 2009 by Ben.

THIS JUST IN:
YERT’s dear friend and Pittsburgh City Councilman, Bill Peduto, yesterday proposed that the City of Pittsburgh become the first city in America to be lit by LED lights. Check out the full article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette HERE and feel free to call or contact Bill and give him some major props. WAY TO GO, BILL!!

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February 3, 2009 by Mark.

(YERT is now on Twitter! Come tweet to us! http://twitter.com/YERTGuy)

Howdy, YERTians! Lots of news today…

YERT at Focus the Nation, 10:30 AM on 2/6/09, CMU in Pittsburgh, PA,
YERT at PASA Conference, 8:30 PM on 2/6/09, State College, PA
YERT hosts Green Drinks in Pittsburgh, 5-9 PM 2/20/09 (Facebook Event Link)

YERT is sharing stories and videos with live audiences all over Pittsburgh, with interest for more presentations popping up all over the state– and the country! We’re exploring opportunities at schools, colleges, and communities in Maine, New York, and New Jersey, and if you send a note to team@yert.com we’ll consider your state, too.

If you happen to be in Pittsburgh, you don’t have to wait– we’ll be presenting at the “Focus the Nation” event at CMU at 10:30 AM on Friday, 2/6/09. YERT videos will also be playing via a big projector during lunch. Stop by and say hi– and catch some of the other speakers dedicated to getting our national carbon footprint under control.

After lunch at the “Focus the Nation” event I’ll be driving out to State College, PA to give a “farming special” presentation for a conference held by the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture. I’ve assembled a few farming-themed videos to share with the audience, including some previously unreleased footage of YERT’s visit with Joel Salatin (also featured in Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”).

I also can’t help but share a few updates from presentations that we just completed…

Ben and I assembled a YERTy presentation all about green business for Dr. Robert Sroufe’s class in the Sustainable MBA program at Duquesne University. We dug up inspiring and thought-provoking highlights from some of our heavy-hitting business-related interviews, including clips from David Korten, Wes Jackson, and Bob Berkebile. We also featured a spectrum of businesses from the light green to the “flip traditional business models upside down” dark green– highlighting TerraCycle, Whole Foods, the Global Citizen Center, gDiapers, and plenty more.

I think it went over pretty well with the students - we were delighted to get quotes like these on our feedback forms:
“One of the best presentations I’ve seen in a long time (& I’ve seen a LOT of presentations).”
“Video was funny but very insightful for the audience. Made me want to do more myself.”
“Everything was interesting.”
“Very entertaining, helpful, and interesting. Thanks for showing it to us!”

Also, the professor that brought us in, Dr. Robert Sroufe, had kind words of his own… “My graduate students were very impressed with the delivery of information… Mark and Ben worked with me before the session to go through a list of companies I thought we should focus on. The video quality and visuals are of the highest quality and look great in a classroom projection system. The video pods… highlight many interesting people and practices that can be brought easily into a classroom and pedagogy.”

Woohoo!

In a few weeks YERT is “hosting” Green Drinks in Pittsburgh, which basically means that we’re definitely going to be there and connecting up with droves of YERTy friends. Eat, drink, and be green. And bowl if you’d like, too. It all takes place at Arsenal Lanes in Pittsburgh from 5-9pm on FRIDAY 2/20/09. Click here for more details! (Or you can RSVP on Facebook)

I also recently gave an “urban-green-styled” YERT presentation for a small but dedicated audience at a New Urbanism meeting, held at the Sierra Club office in Pittsburgh. City Councilman Bill Peduto showed up to give his stamp of approval, and we also were fortunate enough to have pro photographer Larry Rippel taking photos of the event– check out his work in the photo up top, and below!

If you’d like to bring YERT to your school or community for a fun, engaging, educational environmental presentation with plenty of Q&A, please let us know– team@yert.com. We’re exploring ideas for a new presentation for high school and college students that focuses on green jobs. What do you think? Good idea? Bad idea? Worth a shot? Let us know!

Peace,
Mark

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February 2, 2009 by Ben.

So here we are in Louisville, KY in the wee morning hours of Groundhog Day and in the wake of a devastating ice/snow storm that has felled countless massive trees, killed a dozen people, and knocked out power to nearly a million residents of the bluegrass state - some of whom won’t have it restored until mid-February. It just so happens for the past week or two I’ve been editing (or struggling to edit, weather permitting) the short YERT video about, you guessed it, Kentucky. The irony is almost as thick as the sparkling inch of ice coating everything in sight - though I will confess, I love interesting weather and it is certainly reassuring to see winter rear her head in such a memorable way.

Luckier than most of our neighbors, we were only fully without electricity in our house for a little over two days, the second of which we spent at a friend’s house. Still, even twenty-four hours without power in 15 degree weather while in charge of a new baby is enough to make you start to feel a little like Swiss Family Robinson. Ordinarily a massive power failure is a wonderful excuse to turn off the TV, unplug the computer, light a fire and play some cards or some other pastime that calls for actual human interaction. It humbles us before mother nature and reminds us of our shared humanity in a beautiful way. But unfortunately our fireplace here is not functional these days and, for whatever reason, we’ve been a little too stressed to fully appreciate “going camping inside.” So the cards and Pictionary stayed put away and we busted out the hand-cranked LED flashlights and simply tried to stay warm and sleep…and tried to get some work done when we could.

Mostly (almost inevitably) the spectacular beauty and devastation wrought by this ice storm - and it has produced both in spades - has me thinking about how much of this “life without readily accessible power” is in our collective future. Maybe it’s the uncertainty of the current economic climate, or maybe the actual climate climate, or maybe it’s the next door neighbor’s diesel generator running 24/7, but lately every natural disaster that temporarily debilitates our electrical grid feels like a dress rehearsal for the “real thing.” It’s as if nature keeps offering us chances to come face to face with our hypnotic dependence on “cheap and easy power” - to finally snap out of it and overhaul our backward power-hungry “civilization” while we still can - but we’re all too clueless to see it for the wake up call it is. Certainly, it’s been encouraging to witness and experience neighbor looking after neighbor and to know that even during trying circumstances the ability of a community to improvise and muddle through is inspiring. But I do wonder if we’re really ready as a species for the long haul that awaits humanity when most fundamental things that we take for granted start disappearing or falling apart. Is it too much to hope that natural disasters will put us in touch with the boneheaded mistakes we keep making again and again until one day we finally stop banging our head against the wall and learn enough from them to reform our selfish….wait a second, isn’t there a movie like that?

Which brings me to Groundhog Day - one of my favorite movies of all time - and quickly becoming one of my favorite holidays. How can you not love a holiday built around forecasting the remaining length of winter based on a large rodent popping out of its hole (or, these days, being plucked out) and either seeing or not seeing its shadow - with, I might add, 39% historical accuracy (that’s 11% worse than simply guessing)? The forecast calls for clouds tomorrow/today in Punxsutawney, PA. So, what’ll it be, Punxsutawney Phil - an early Spring? These days, that sounds like a blessing…and a curse. Of course, I can take solace in the fact that there’s a 61% chance little Phil is wrong, and winter soldiers on for another six weeks - which, these days, sounds like a curse…and a blessing. For now, it’s time to crawl back into my little Kentucky Family Robinson hole here and try to get some sleep. Power’s back on…for now. Which, these days, sounds like a blessing…and…you know…

warmly,
-Ben

Update 1:32pm:
This just in: A baby named “Yert” - yes, YERT - is being born on Groundhog Day as we speak. I kid you not!! Feel free to post congratulations to the lucky couple (Josh and Mary Kate) on their new-parent blog, Procreation Station. What are the odds?

Update 11:04am:
Punxsutawney Phil has officially “seen” his shadow which means we should have six more weeks of winter. That is, there’s a 39% chance that we will have six more weeks of winter…and a 61% chance that we won’t. Oh, whatever.

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