Articles by Erik Hoffner

Clinton & Obama to be queried on CNN tonight at 8pm EST on climate

Dem hopefuls Clinton and Obama will participate live tonight in The Compassion Forum, a discussion of "pressing moral issues that bridge ideological divides" including poverty, AIDS, Darfur, human rights, torture, and ... drumroll please ... climate change.

The pair will field questions from CNN and Newsweek talking heads as well as from members of the faith community. The Rev Sally Bingham, of the very cool Interfaith Power and Light Campaign will be asking the climate questions. Go get 'em, Sally!

And for the interest of any political strategists out there, this forum is slated to be broadcast on Church Communications Network to tens of thousands of people in 1,000+ congregations nationwide on April 20, the Sunday evening before the PA primary.

High-end use for urban trees saves landfill space

A company in North Carolina is making some good things from urban trees which have to be cut down for one reason or another: high-end lumber from what was once considered good only for firewood or mulch. They process 15,000 to 20,000 board feet a year of local urban lumber from private land for use in homes, sheds, barns, farms, or woodworking projects.

It's estimated that 2 million board feet of lumber is wasted annually in the local landfills in the Charlotte metro area due to storms, land clearing, maintenance, or disease. I'm sure much the same can be said for other cities.

Anyone doing good things with unwanted wood in your neighborhood?

The Dream Reborn: diverse speakers and audience with a common vision

Jennifer Oladipo is a writer from Louisville, Ky., whose recent Orion article "Global Warming is Colorblind" was just reprinted in Utne Reader. She was in Memphis last weekend to see firsthand what the green jobs movement is about. (To read more Grist coverage of the Dream Reborn conference, see Pat Walters' dispatches from day one and day two.)

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The hopeful skeptic in me was the part most drawn to The Dream Reborn conference hosted by Green For All last weekend in Memphis. So once I arrived, I stuck to what I deemed the practical path, sessions with titles like "Show Me the Money" and "Green-Collar Job Training Programs: Examples and Models" that would delineate exactly how to make this green economy happen.

Although I didn't attend sessions explicitly linked to civil rights, in other ways the conference kept true to its implied promise that it could effectively and sincerely link the green collar jobs movement to the one personified by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The decision to hold the conference on the 40th anniversary of King's death -- in the very city where he was gunned down -- spoke volumes for the weight organizers had hoped the conference would carry.

The faces of green

King references and quotes, though often inspiring, were expected. What I found more potent was a simple glance around the room. Organizers had hoped 70 percent of attendees would be people of color, and eyeballing the plenary sessions, it appeared that they were dead on.

Texas forum on what’s new, April 10

For the interest of those who haven't given up entirely on biofuels, I humbly present the National Algae Association forum in Texas on April 10. This meeting will serve as an update on what's new in this promising branch of the nascent sustainable biofuel movement: biodiesel from cultured algae (outside of biodiesel from waste oil, that is).

This week's Renewable Energy World podcast had an interesting interview with the principal of one algae-fuel company, Solix Biofuels. Like all the companies, they have a whole array of challenges to figure out, from competitor algae to stress regimes that are optimal for producing oil. It's actually tough to grow algae -- who knew?