Paddle to Seattle

Paddle to Seattle Trailer from Ben Gottfried on Vimeo.

Imagine you and your best friend paddling 1300 miles from Juneau, AK to Seattle, WA in handmade, homemade pygmy kayaks that you built together in a bond of brotherly love. The trailer above captures what that may feel like if you are Josh Thomas and J.J. Kelley. Running across whales, bears and the unsuprisingly occasional northwest rain shower the two make a movie that explores both each other, their friendship and the beauty of the shoreline that exposes North America's only rainforest

Adventure "Vandals" Add More Single Track in Forrest Park

With 5100 acres, Forrest Park, within the city limits of Portland, OR, is one of the nations largest urban forests. The park has an amazing variety of natural fauna and wildlife including a native Cutthroat Trout population and 63 mammals including including a population of Bobcats. A mix of old and second growth forest, this park has been a key player in helping to establish Portland as one of the nations Mecca's for green living and outdoor adventure. With this being said, it came as a surprise to me this morning when I heard that "Portland Officials" were now "hunting" for a group of mountain bikers who have taken it upon themselves to build a new mile of single track mountain biking trail within the boundaries of the park.

To the "Portland Officials" credit I do believe that it is imperative to keep this park alive and healthy but to what extent do we limit the creativity of the people using the park as a place for safe and environmentally friendly recreation. The argument that the officials make is that in their creation of the trail these bikers have disturbed the native wildlife and destroyed some of the natural fauna including the habitat of the Northern Pygmy Owl and the destruction of multiple western red cedars.

I don't know how realistic it is that the "Portland Officials" will ever actually apprehend the trails creator/creators but with more and more people in Portland taking it upon themselves to enjoy the unique beauty of an urban temperate rain forest I doubt that this will be the first altercations of recreation vs environment that we hear about in the near future.

The New Energy Messiah

In approximately one day the company Bloom Energy will be unveiling it's supposedly life changing solution to the worlds energy demands. After a little research on Bloom the company and it's idea do seem to carry a bit more clout then the normal energy god send. The product was developed by a gentleman named KR Sridhar who before getting the funding or the time to develop the Bloombox worked for NASA and developed a machine that would create sustainable oxygen stores out of the air on Mars. After completing his project he developed an idea about a product that didnt produce oxygen but used it and sought capital through the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. If this firm rings a bell it's because they are the same firm that funded Google, Amazon, Inuit, Netscape, Verisign and Sun Microsystems when they were technology start-ups. Currently the Bloomboxes are being tested at many high profile locations and have had very minimal problems. Google, Ebay, The City of San Francisco, Wal-Mart and the CIA have all allowed Bloomenergy to place a number of it's Bloomboxes at some of there facilities. With Colin Powel on the board for Bloom they seemed poised to show us something revolutionary when they reveal there new product publicly tomorrow. In other words, this small gamecube sized box of silica wafers painted with two patented substance are stacked on top of each other and when a combination of oxygen and a hydrocarbon hit the surfaces they create a chemical reaction which can easily power the average American home for 7 days a week 365 days a year. Using the gas created naturally in our landfills this box has a very small carbon footprint and is considered a new green energy that as of tomorrow just may revolutionize the way we power our world. Take a look at the video here.

Weather

WOW.. all I have to say is that I hope this weather is permanent

Speaking Bike-n-eese

Approximately 14 days ago I bought a road bike. A Scattante R-330. If you know what that means you know more about bikes then I do and if you don't know what that means you still probably know more about bikes then I do. Living in Portland, I have an opportunity not many people in big cities have and that's a substantial amount of bike friendly lanes, bridges and corridors to commute to safely commute to work. I, like too many others, live on one side of the city (SE) and work on the other side (Beaverton). I drive an dilapidated 98' Dodge Dakota that needs a number of repairs that I can no longer justify paying for, so instead of spending another $400 dollars on some new plugs, wires, wheels and flux capacitors this time I gave the $400 to a 20 something who lives in an upscale apartment under Broadway Bridge and seemed to have received a fairly decent bike from his parents which he posted on craigslist at a substantial discount in order to afford a trip to Vegas (true story).

In the past two weeks my inability to justify my carbon footprint has only been exacerbated by the Portland City Council and Mayor Sam Adams proposal to apply $20 million dollars of the cities transportation budget to improve upon the bike-ways of PDX. To put this in context the average mile of road costs $6 million dollars to complete and the overall cost of the construction of the bike-ways of Portland so far has been approximately $6 million. The city believes that this increase in infrastructure will help to cultivate the PDX bike culture and raise the approximate percentage of the city residents that are bike commuters from 5% to 25%.

Mining the Moon: Energy for 10,000 Years

10,000 Years Worth of Potential Energy in Moons Helium Reserves

In 2004, then President George Bush announced his vision to send another manned mission to the Moon by 2020. To many, the Presidents interest in the Moon, like most of Mr. Bush's interests seemed almost childlike. Most when thinking about the excitement of the lunar landing remeber the space race, as the United States and Russia struggled to demonstrate who's ideologies would be at the forefront of world adoration. Until last Monday, July 20th, the anniversary of the first lunar landing, I had forgotten about Mr. Bush's adolescent day dreams and the excitement of the space race. So began my research into potential reasons that another trip to the Moon might actually prove worthwhile. I knew of little that could be accomplished from such a mission other than a few nice pictures and the stroking of the American pride. To my suprise, I stumbled across information on Moon mining and what seemed like an L. Ron Hubbard esque substance that could potentially yield enough clean energy to power the world for 10,000 years called Helium 3. Scientists believe that this substance laying in the soils of the Moon is potentially pollution free and would generate only slight amounts of radioactive waste. Being dubbed the, "second Moon race" it seems there may be more players in competition for this clean relatively everlasting resource . Since Oct. 4th 1957 when Russia put Sputnik into orbit the United States, France, Japan, China, UK, India, Israel, Ukraine, Russia and Iran have all sent rockets into space. With enough energy to cleanly power the world until the year 12,000 the seond trip to the Moon may shape up to be more then a sight seeing tour.

Opening the Lens to Sustainability

Ed kashi -Nigeria, 2006 Series: Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta

The Prix Pictet is an award presented each year by former head of the U.N. and Prix Pictet Honorary President Kofi Annan. The prize symbolizes the best in combining artistic photography with contemporary sustainability issues. From deforestation to famine the award recognizes images that hope to inspire compassion and action aimed at educating the world on the scars being left on the face of the world by humanity.