As I look out the window at a chilly and foggy San Francisco afternoon, I can still feel the warm Mar Vista sunshine on my face. I look forward to our next stay, to harvesting a meal from the organic garden, and to another walk along “one of the most beautiful beaches in all of North America.”

From the website: Mar Vista Cottages at Anchor Bay is “a project to ensure that a bit of our coastal past is not lost to modern development.”

Mar Vista Cottages at Anchor Bay from Chad Reese on Vimeo.

June 2010 vacation to Mar Vista Cottages at Anchor Bay. Production, post and voiceover by Chad Reese.

In May of this year, I was living in San Diego and helping a group called San Diego Growers determine best-practices for a regional food hub and distribution center. The formal USDA definition of a regional food hub:

A centrally located facility with a business management structure facilitating the aggregation, storage, processing, distribution, and/or marketing of locally/regionally produced food products.

During my time working with San Diego Growers, I was able to conduct surveys and compile economic data on various food hubs around the country.  I turned my economic analysis into a Triple Pundit piece on the developing movement. The story, titled “San Diego Regional Food Hub Cultivates Local Markets,” was picked up by others within the good food movement, the food hub movement and USDA.

For this month’s Triple Pundit contribution, I focused on growing food in urban areas. The 3p article, titled “From Skies to Soil: A Brief Review of Urban Farms,” weaved together many agricultural trends, juxtaposing growing food in multistory buildings with aquaponics, hydroponics and other greenhouse technologies with “the myriad countless dirt lovers and permaculture do-it-yourselfers that thrive on personal relationships with the detritovores that comprise the web of life.”

The premise of the article: Waste = Food. I traced the vertical farming movement from Nancy Jack and John Todd’s groundbreaking 1993 book “From Eco-Cities to Living Machines: Principles of Ecological Design,” to The Plant, a 93,000 square foot salvaged meatpacking facility that is vertical farming’s current embodiment.

By the way, here is the link to all of my Triple Pundit contributions. Let me know what you think. Leave a comment or contact me for more info.

I was recently staring at my computer monitor, scanning my email inbox, trying to focus. I heard the familiar “plunk” of a Gchat message and shifted my attention to read the note. A friend had sent me a link, and I clicked on it. A new browser tab opened and I scanned the webpage. “Wow,” I replied in the chat, “that’s neat.”

Back to task. Staring at emails.

Then my phone chirped with the sound of an incoming text. I picked my phone up, read my brother’s message and replied in agreement that we should catch up with a phone call sometime the next day.

I was about to put the phone down when I noticed the familiar Tweetdeck bird in my phone notifications. I opened the application and saw somebody had re-tweeted me on Twitter. Pretty cool. Oh, somebody else had written something on my Facebook wall.

I resisted the temptation to open Facebook or listen to a new voicemail. Instead, I put the phone down, remembering the information I’d been searching for was actually in my school mail, not in my personal Gmail inbox. I went to the upper right corner of my mail settings, switched accounts and scanned the new emails in my inbox. There was an email with new information about a team meeting, including a street address. I clicked on the message, copied the address and tabbed to my Google Calendar, adding the address to a calendar event. I knew the address would be essential when navigating to the location by phone later in the week.

I took another sip of coffee and gave a song on my Pandora station a thumbs up. Oh man, I’m so behind in my reading! It’s so nice out, I should be reading in Golden Gate park right now. I need to buy more coffee.

For fun, I decided to ask “The Oracle” a question. I opened a new browser tab and typed into the Google search field: “What’s the purpose of twitter?”

One of the top results was from Yahoo! Answers. Somebody had already asked a question very similar to mine a year before: “What’s the purpose of twitter? Is it another form of facebook?”

There were five (5) answers, but I found the first one most entertaining.

“No,” Answerer 1 replied, “it is not like facebook. twitter is where you can type what you feel! and talk about different topics. but it has no games”

Sounded reasonable to me. Case closed. Time to go buy more coffee.

I’ve had the pleasure of volunteering at multiple garden builds. Last month NBC San Diego arrived at a build and documented the process of creating a garden. Watch me shovel and rake soil in the NBC video.

A few days ago I participated in another installation. Within a few hours the volunteer crew built wooden raised beds, amended the soil and constructed a compost bin. The onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, garlic chives, eggplant, French tarragon, bell peppers and flowering plants were barely in the ground before butterflies began to arrive.

The Finished Raised Vegetable Beds

In addition to the garden installs, VGSD offers a series organic vegetable gardening classes that cover lawn removal, soil amendment, bed preparation, planting, irrigation, composting and harvesting your garden. Watch a short video to learn more about the VGSD gardening classes.

Victory Gardens San Diego (VGSD) is a project of San Diego Roots Sustainable Food Project, a 501(c)3 California non-profit corporation.

I had the opportunity to explore IRC’s latest experiment in local self-reliance during the recent Cultivating Food Justice event in San Diego: a demonstration aquaponics system. The site of IRC San Diego’s Fairmount Aquaponic Farm is surrounded by raised vegetable beds in the urban heart of City Heights.

The Fairmont Aquafarm in City Heights

The term “aquaponics” describes a symbiotic growing system involving fish and plants, and derives from the words aquaculture and hydroponics. Aquaculture is the process of growing aquatic animals, and hydroponics describes growing plants by immersing their roots in nutrient-rich water. IRC’s demonstration system contains tilapia in two tanks that are connected to multiple hydroponic vegetable beds. The closed system cycles ammonia from the fish through beneficial bacteria that convert the ammonia to nitrates; the plants in turn absorb the nitrates and seem to be growing quite happily.

The "Ebb and Flow" Aquaponics System

IRC San Diego plans to host a monthly workshop called “Building an Ebb and Flow Aquaponics System” at the Fairmont Aquafarm. Contact IRC for more information.

San Diego imports about 80% of its water, and roughly a quarter of that supply comes from northern California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta via a 444 mile aqueduct. However, a host of issues related to Delta water – including the threatened Delta smelt and the Sacramento River Chinook salmon – preclude the possibility of unrestricted pumping of Delta water for use in the south. The decline of both fish species in the Delta is linked to water pumping, pollution and other invasive species.

The California Aqueduct

The Colorado River is another key source of water for San Diego, reaching the region via a 240 mile aqueduct and accounting for over 60% of the city’s imported intake. In the early part of the aberrantly wet 20th century, the river was divided up. Since that time, the river’s water flow has been steadily trending downward. Even as the population of southern California continues to grow, the amount of water allocated to San Diego via the Colorado River has plateaued.

Not optimistic prospects for San Diego County, with a population of more than three million people and an average daily per capita water use of about 150 gallons. To further compound things, David Pierce, Analyst at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Climate Research Division, claims climate change will alter the cycle of snowfall and melting in the Sierra Nevada mountains (which accounts for 23% of the region’s water) and will lead to a drier American Southwest. San Diego County is projected to add 700,000 people to its population within 30 years.

“When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”

To begin the dialog on how to adapt to a changing water landscape, in December 2010 San Diego Coastkeeper convened a panel of water experts for its “Signs of the Tide” series. The evening with water experts, called “San Diego’s Thirst for Water,” underscored the need to address water procurement options. Bruce Resnik, an environmental lawyer formerly of San Diego Coastkeeper, David W. Pierce of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Climate Research Division, Jared Criscuolo of Below the Surface and Brook Sarson, a rainwater harvesting and water reuse professional at H2OME provided valuable insight into how to effectively maintain a local water supply via reduction, recycling and reclamation. Although the technological ability to solve San Diego’s challenges are at hand, the panelists noted the need for political will to meet those challenges with appropriate technology and conservation efforts.

There are many different manifestations of the ideal economy, ranging from communism to free market capitalism. Economists, heads of state and “Joe the Plumber” all have their unique perspective on how society should work, but there is general agreement that the most efficient economies balance markets and corporate power with an “administrative organization” to coordinate, set standards, maintain and distribute public goods. The big debate is not if one extreme is better than the other, but how to effectively combine them.

The neoclassical economic model developed in the 1930’s concentrated on the relationship between “firms” and “households”. Self-interested, optimizing and autonomous individuals have evolved into modern-day Pareto efficient Every-people that are no better or worse off than their counterparts. But what does that mean to you, to me, or even “Joe the Plumber”?

The November 27 to December 3 edition of The Economist reports on a 2006 study conducted by the London School of Economics that measured happiness—or lack of it. The “Depression Report” was revisited this year by British Prime Minister David Cameron, who asked the Office of National Statistics to measure the country’s “well-being.”

One of the original study’s authors, Lord Richard Layard, argued once an economy reaches “purchasing-power parity”, economic growth no longer adds to happiness. However, researchers at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania disagree and can find no statistical study to justify Layard’s claims.

Another doubter of Layard’s claim is Angus Deaton, a researcher at Princeton University. Deaton points to the graph on the left, which measures “Life satisfaction and GDP per person at Purchasing Power Parity”. Deaton explains that the graph shows “an extra dollar is worth less to the rich than the poor.” He plotted the data on a logarithmic scale (graph on the right) to show each increment as a “100% increase in income per head” and shows a continuous relationship of income and happiness regardless of the wealth of the country.

Whether the pursuit of happiness is the right of the individual or should be encouraged by Big Brother is a deeper matter, and is explored in the article.

But why is Denmark an outlier on both graphs?

From a BBC article titled “Denmark ‘happiest place on earth’” dated Friday, 28 July 2006:

“Denmark came top” of an 80,000 person worldwide survey to map out subjective well-being, “followed closely by Switzerland and Austria. The UK ranked 41st. Zimbabwe and Burundi came bottom. A nation’s level of happiness was most closely associated with health levels. Prosperity and education were the next strongest determinants of national happiness.”

More recently, the Danish Institute for International Studies, DIIS, just hosted a seminar called “Gross National Happiness – A Concept Relevant to Danes?” An excerpt from the seminar description:

“The guiding development philosophy of Bhutan is ‘Gross National Happiness’. Pronounced by His Majesty the 4th King in 1972, Bhutan is the only country in the world to measure its well-being by Gross National Happiness (GNH) instead of Gross National Product (GDP).”

The quest for society’s perfect well-being metric continues…

Green companies become more competitive primarily by investing in resource and energy efficiency. By slashing costs and reducing waste and energy use, companies will free up resources to invest in projects that require more capital. The companies that invest in environmental initiatives — and it’s important to note that Winston differentiates between business investments and costs — are the equivalent to runners that overtake competitors during an uphill section of a race: doubling down on slashing waste and spending more money on R&D, for instance, bridges the complimentary solutions of business and the environment. The world, Winston states, is an increasingly precarious place. Climate change, water shortages and the rise of middle class in China and India are a few specifics that Winston cites as driving up resource pressures. The need for business to embrace “the green wave” is immediate and permanent.

The four main areas that Winston focuses on in “Green Recovery” are: get lean on energy and resource efficiency; get smart by using environmental data about products and value chains to save money, innovate and generate competitive advantage; get creative by asking new questions, and; get employees engaged by asking them to help solve challenges. Winston advises managers and leaders to “but get lean on stuff, not people” because layoffs undermining morale and create short-term productivity drops. In contrast, cutting out stuff saves money and can avoid the need to lay off employees. Winston also encourages companies to build the right culture for environmentalism and to encourage employees to think in ways that disrupt the status quo. The benefit of building a culture of excitement and empowerment is a sense of ownership by employees and the benefit of many people, thinking in concert, creating many unique solutions to similar problems.

“Green Recovery” is focused on the general corporate manager, but the book is divided into sections on facilities, distribution, IT, telework and waste.

The San Diego Roots Farm @ Suzie's

Less than a month ago, on Memorial Day, the first Roots volunteer work party met at the farm to begin clearing the field for planting. The clearing and prepping continued on a regular basis until Saturday, June 26, when San Diego Roots opened its doors to the public with a fundraising event called “Grow the Farm Celebration!” Well over 100 participants toured the farm and mingled while enjoying food and drink from Sea Rocket Bistro, Starlite Lounge, SoNo Trading and Stone Brewing Co.

Roots Farm @ Suzie’s continues the tradition by hosting a monthly community gathering on the first Saturday of every month. Starting at 2pm the group hosts tours and facilitates potluck dinner, followed by a movie under the stars. The first gathering is on Saturday, August 7, where they will show “The Real Dirt on Farmer John”. Check out the Roots website for more information.

Keep up to date with the farm by reading Field Notes, a blog by the farm manger Misha. Roots Farm @ Suzie’s strives to cultivate crops on minimal amounts of water by using permaculture best-practices.

By the 2009 BP Sustainability Plan, the OMS rollout was implemented in 70 refineries and petrochemicals plants and was 80% complete. The incidence of injury at sites managed by the OMS was down 75% from the decade before. Although fatal accidents still occurred in 2009, the 2009 Sustainability Report claims “98% of BP employees consider that line management is receptive to honest information about safety.”

The BP 2009 Strategy Presentation (PowerPoint PDF) was surprisingly lacking in its focus on environment, safety and social implications. Although the presentation reported “safe, compliant and reliable operations: our No. 1 priority”, the majority of the report focuses on corporate simplification, including a significant reduction in senior management.

The presentation table of oil spills greater than 1 recorded barrel (p.6) declined from 2000 to 2007, with a plateau at 2007 and 2008. To say that the table’s trend toward zero is now skewed is an understatement of record proportions. “Collaborative and open innovation models”, along with a “long-term commitment to research and development” (p.12), are also reported as major motivations.

From 2008 to 2009 the focus shifts from simplifying the business and restoring revenues to cost efficiency and safe operations. Deepwater oil resources and reserves do not make up a large part of the overall plan – conventional oil is still the dominant supply of oil. Mention is made of “inherently reliable facilities to monitor, predict and manage corrosion to increase operating efficiency”, but the main focus of the presentation is on “pushing reservoir limits” and increasing production in the Gulf of Mexico. BP has the largest remaining resources of all the major players in the Gulf of Mexico.

As noted in the “Protected Areas” section of the BP website, BP quotes the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) definition of a protected area as ‘a clearly defined geographical space, recognized, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values’. BP expands upon the definition by attributing to protected areas (which can be private, governmental or public), characteristics of biological diversity, ecosystem services, climate change mitigation strategies and places of spiritual and community significance. If the environment around a potential oil extraction site is deemed sensitive according to the BP’s definitions, a “high-level risk assessment” is performed. If a site is deemed acceptable to exploration after performing a risk assessment, the site is continuously monitored under the conditions of the Operating Management System.

Although oil from the free-flowing Deepwater well has covered over 100 miles of coastline, and the recent “top kill” attempt to plug the well has failed – and oil may continue to flow unabated until August – the Gulf of Mexico was not one of BP’s major operating sites “located adjacent to or within” a protected area.