In this week’s New York Times Charles Duhigg detailed the problems public drinking water and wastewater utilities face when they attempt to raise rates to upgrade and repair infrastructure. Duhigg cites an EPA estimate that “$335 billion would be needed simply to maintain the nation’s tap water systems in coming decades.”  Surprisingly, he did not mention a number of proposed and existing options to help meet some of those funding needs, none of which involve raising rates to households or businesses.

Last year, citing the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) 2009 report card, which gave our nation’s drinking water and wastewater infrastructure a grade of D-, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore) introduced H.R. 3202 – The Water Protection and Reinvestment Act. The Act, which currently has 29 Democratic co-sponsors in the House and 4 Republican co-sponsors, would establish a trust fund to “provide a deficit-neutral, consistent and protected source of revenue to help states replace, repair, and rehabilitate critical drinking water and wastewater treatment facilities.” The Government Accountability Office issued a report identifying sources of revenue for the trust fund that could total as much as $10 billion annually, none of which involve raising water rates. Supporters of the legislation include the ASCE and the American Public Works Association; however, the bill is not without its detractors.

The American Water Works Association (AWWA) criticized the legislation at a hearing last summer. The Association’s primary objections center on federal control of a fund that would be distributed primarily through grants. Instead, the organization would prefer low-cost financing and subsidies for local water systems that would be administered at the state level through a Water Infrastructure Bank.

A limited but more immediate source of funding comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the federal stimulus funds allocated last year), which has $6 billion designated for the Clean Water Revolving Fund and the Drinking Water Revolving Fund administered by states. You can track funded projects at this government web site and you can find more information about stimulus spending at this private site. Together these sites offer a fairly comprehensive look at stimulus spending on a project-by-project basis in each state.

Of course all of us can support our municipal water systems by not buying bottled water and drinking tap water instead. Investments in municipal systems have declined, in part, because of our increased support of bottled water, which is both unwarranted and extravagant. For the average price of a bottle of water you could get about 3,000 gallons of tap water. The money Americans spend on bottled water is money our municipal water and wastewater systems desperately need. Alternately, states could enact fees on beverage containers that would be designated to fund water and wastewater infrastructure improvements, similar to the way New York State’s Bottle Bill designates fees collected on certain bottles to support trash and recycling infrastructure.

Certainly, increasing rates is appropriate in communities where they have been set too low, but clean, clear water is so essential to public health and well being that it warrants public funding.  Proposals to accomplish that, such as the Water Protection and Reinvestment Act, deserve close scrutiny and support.

I hit Google to see what I could find in the way of Fair Trade vendors in New York City. My plan was to generate a list of stores that sell Fair Trade-certified chocolate, print it and go shopping. Boy was I wrong. I couldn’t find a Web site that would generate a list of places in Manhattan that sell Fair Trade chocolates.

So, I hit the cold and windy streets of Manhattan.  My first stops included Duane Reade, which had one brand, and Gristedes, which had none. I expanded my search to include Organic Certified and Rainforest Alliance Certified. The differences between these certifications have to do with how the plants were raised and how the farmers and workers are treated. I looked for and bought only bars that had one or more of the three logos below.

I went to Fairway, figuring surely THEY would have something that was at least organic. Nope. I couldn’t find any of these labels on any of their chocolates. Finally I went to Whole Foods and found the mother load! They had variety, offering not only milk and dark but also flavored chocolates. I checked out Food Emporium and found a nice selection there as well. I did find one brand at Trader Joe’s but the line was so long that I left it at the store (sorry Trader Joe’s).

Finally, we held the tasting. Who knew that there could be so much variation in chocolates? We got a good lesson in how taste is in the mouth of the beholder. Thirteen of us tasted 11 bars and stuck to the basics – plain milk and plain dark chocolate. We used rice cakes and water for a palate cleanser. We evaluated the feel, smell, texture and taste, and gave each chocolate an overall score of 1-10 with 10 being the highest rating. We started with the lowest cocoa content and tasted our way to the highest. Here are our overall results, with the chocolates listed in order of increasing cocoa content.

The bar with the most points and highest average score was the Skinny Bar Dark. My personal favorite was Green & Black’s Milk chocolate. It should be noted that 2 people forgot to score the Newman’s Own Milk chocolate so the points were lower but the average score was also lower. The best comment of the day was about Divine Dark chocolate – “Very middle of the road, like a reliable but boring boyfriend.” We all agreed that all the chocolates lacked a certain something although what that something was varied from person to person.

As I found out, socially responsible chocolate is not at all readily available. Whole Foods goes to great effort to source Fair Trade and Organic items, but of course not everyone has the luxury of a Whole Foods in his or her community (neither can a lot of people afford Whole Food’s prices). I live in the nosebleed section of Manhattan (Washington Heights) and I work in Murray Hill. A trip to Whole Foods takes me in the opposite direction from home once I leave work. While I might go out of my way for a special occasion like Valentine’s Day, shopping there on a regular basis is probably not going to happen.

Given how difficult it can be to find socially responsible chocolate, I was set to write as the conclusion of this post that going out of my way to find it is just not worth it, but the ethical implications of industrial chocolate are just too heavy. Beyond the ecosystem impacts of industrial chocolate production, human rights violations such as child labor abuse associated with most cocoa farms are common and unfortunate. When I buy chocolate, I’m supporting a whole system of politics and people behind that chocolate. I want part of the pleasure I derive from eating chocolate to be the knowledge that I’m not adding to someone else’s abuse.

Buying Fair Trade and Rainforest Alliance Certified chocolates is an easy way to ensure that your purchasing power supports chocolate growers with sound human rights policies. From now on it will be Green & Black’s Milk Chocolate for me.

Peter Hanlon is the Outreach Associate for Network for New Energy Choices, a program of GRACE.

As 2009 drew to a close, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) quietly issued a decision that will dramatically decrease the destruction of fish within Long Island’s south shore estuary.  Tucked into the large expanse of salt marshes there, the E.F. Barrett Power Station can silently kill more than one billion fish and other marine life specimens every year.

Of the billion killed each year by the five-decades-old power plant, more than 30 million are winter flounder, a species whose numbers are today at a fraction of their historic levels due to habitat loss and overfishing. In fact, the stocks are so decimated that last year the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission required New York and other Mid-Atlantic states to impose drastic reductions to their commercial and recreational winter flounder harvest.  Meanwhile, the owners of antiquated power plants have been allowed to recklessly destroy aquatic life, virtually thumbing their noses at the highly regulated commercial and recreational fishing industry, and at taxpayers who have invested billions of dollars in the restoration of the nation’s rivers, lakes and oceans. The Barrett station alone accounts for 40 percent of the winter flounder destroyed by New York’s power plants.

So we were thrilled to learn on December 23 that Barrett’s owner – currently National Grid – will be required to install equipment that will drastically reduce the plant’s harm to marine life.  The bad news is that Barrett is not the only culprit on Long Island; the region’s five thermoelectric power plants together can destroy 10.6 billion marine organisms every year, or more than one million every hour.

So how is it that a power plant can so efficiently devour fish?  It all comes down to cooling.  Power plants must cool the steam used to turn their turbines and produce electricity.  As a result, they require large quantities of water to cool the equipment and keep everything running smoothly and safely.  For example, the E.F. Barrett plant sucks in nearly 300 million gallons of estuarine water brimming with microscopic life every day.  Fish eggs, larvae and plankton, all of which are essential to the aquatic food chain, are vacuumed into intake pipes, exposed to extremely hot water and toxic chemicals, and battered about by mechanical equipment.  Few, if any, survive.  Larger fish and other marine life that drift into the powerful currents rushing into the plants’ intake structures become trapped on screens intended to keep them out of the cooling system, and are injured and sometimes killed as a result.

For some it’s easy to dismiss the death of billions of eggs and larvae because the fact is that very few survive to adulthood.  Most fish in their early life stages are eaten by other animals, starve, or die from exposure to pollution or shifting water temperatures.  But just because an egg doesn’t grow to eventually end up on the end of a fishing line doesn’t negate its importance.  Eggs and larvae are a critical source of food for birds, mammals and other fish, and eggs that survive to hatch as young fish not only serve as prey for other wildlife, but become important predators themselves.

The solution is simple: destructive, antiquated cooling systems that simply withdraw and then discharge water – called “once-through” cooling – can be replaced by systems that recycle their used cooling water in what’s called a “closed cycle” system – much like a car radiator.  The result is a stunning 95 percent drop in the amount of water that the plant needs to withdraw and, in turn, a 95 percent drop in the amount of aquatic wildlife harmed and killed by the plant.  In fact, if any of the Long Island power plants were built today, they would be required to use this technology.

The primary reason the carnage has been allowed to continue is a lack of federal leadership. According to the Clean Water Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should have created regulations that require all existing power plants to use the “best technology available” to minimize the destruction of aquatic life.  In other words, the EPA should require closed cycle cooling.  However, weak draft regulations and a resulting series of lawsuits have left us where we are today: with the EPA trying, once more, to piece together a new set of rules to compel power plants to end their environmental destruction.

But on Long Island, local groups aren’t waiting for the EPA to act.  Organizations including Citizens Campaign for the Environment and Network for New Energy Choices (the group I work for) are spearheading a campaign to stop the slaughter of Long Island’s marine life by all five of the region’s power plants.  Using New York’s ongoing wastewater permit renewal review of the plants as an opportunity to demand change, we have called on the DEC to require National Grid to replace its plants’ antiquated once-through cooling systems with closed-cycle cooling.

Clearly DEC is listening.  With its year-end decision to require closed cycle cooling at the E.F. Barrett plant, the state may save over a billion Long Island fish every year.

When I emerged from the NYC Food and Climate Summit onto Washington Square Park last Saturday, I was astonished to see  hundred of Santas hovering near the great arch.

At first I thought it was silly, this gathering of raucus, red-jacketed folks chanting “ho, ho, ho,” and “we love Santa.” I learned afterwards that this annual SantaCon gathered 1,000 pounds of food to NYC food banks last year and was aiming to double that amount this year.

In an even broader sense, I like to think of this celebration of a folk hero who gives, gives, and gives some more as a metaphor for this moment, when a burgeoning number of people feel compelled to look beyond their next of kin and give voice to a more universal Santa.

This voice is compelling us to act upon the urgent messages heard loudly and clearly at the Food and Climate Summit: Feed the Hungry!  Heal the Earth!

Consider expressing your inner green Santa by sending bounty to one or more of these worthy causes.

Great last-minute gifts and no angst of crowded malls.  Just a simple click, and you can learn more about their healing missions and make donations or buy sustainable, sustaining gifts on line.

Heifer International: With gifts of livestock and training, Heiffer helps families improve their nutrition and generate income in sustainable ways. They refer to the animals as “living loans” because in exchange for livestock and training, families agree to give one of the animal’s offspring to another family in need. It’s called Passing on the Gift because it creates an ever-expanding network of hope and peace.

Seed Savers Exchange:   This member-supported organization is the largest non-governmental seed bank in the United States.  It maintains the seeds of more than 25,000 endangered vegetable varieties, most having been brought to North America by members’ ancestors who immigrated from Europe, the Middle East, Asia and other parts of the world.  Members have distributed an estimated 1 million samples of rare garden seeds over the past 35 years.

Palms for Life Fund:  Palm in palm with the poor around the world, this organization works with local NGO’s and uses microfinancing to alleviate hunger, support education, adult literacy, and health care for mothers and children.

The Smile Train:  You’ve probably seen the heart-breaking ads of children with cleft palates.  This organization trains local doctors to perform a 45-minute surgery to reconstruct their faces.  The surgery costs as little as $250 and gives each child their birthright:  the ability to smile.

Global Goods Partners:  Creates sustainable livelihoods for women by offering a wide selection of fair trade products including jewelry, home decor, toys, bags and accessories handmade by female artisans.  You can either buy last-minute gifts or make a donation.

Just Food:   Trains urban community members to start and manage Community Supported Agriculture projects in partnership with their farmers.  Also teaches people in under-served neighborhoods to grow and cook their own food.

I met this guy over the summer. He was smart, well-educated, environmentally-minded, multi-lingual and spoke with a French accent. He told me he biked all over London (where he lives) and ate as organically as possible…all good, right? We’d gone out a couple of times and things were going well.

One night we were at a club and I said that I wanted to get some water.

“Oh let me,” he said, returning with two bottles and handing me one.

“Um, thanks. I don’t usually drink bottled water,” I mentioned.  Politely, I thought.

“And why is that?”

Not being one to miss an opportunity, I jumped up on my soapbox and began sermonizing about the evils of bottled water. At some point the conversation led to global warming, and this is where the trouble began, with my date revealing he just doesn’t believe in global warming.

Things got awkward…fast.

You know those moments, where you have to pause and sort of collect yourself from the shock of what you’ve just heard? It was as if someone had poured a bucket of cold water on the two of us. We spent a bit more obligatory time together and then said an awkward goodnight.

I almost didn’t go out with him again.

I thought long and hard about whether I could continue dating someone who wouldn’t accept that we are accelerating global climate change (I know, right?). But he was cute and we liked the same kind of movies and the same kind of music and oh, that accent! I decided I would ask him to explain. After all, English is his third or fourth language.  Maybe there was some sort of language barrier involved.  I could only hope.

Those hopes were quickly dashed as my sophisticated, charming date explained that while he does what he can to take care of the environment, he doesn’t “drink the Kool-Aid” about climate change.

“Global warming has become like a religion and the evidence just isn’t there to support our contribution to it,” he intoned, adding that, anyway,  the proposed solutions would be too costly, global climates fluctuate naturally and besides, how much global influence could we really have?

These arguments sound familiar, don’t they?

They should. All this took place while the Group of 8 was meeting in Italy to discuss global climate change, accompanied by blow by blow news accounts detailing how the world’s biggest developed nations were refusing to commit to capping greenhouse gasses, while embracing a goal of preventing global temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees.

What? Exactly how do we go about the business of preventing global temperatures from rising (assuming that’s something we can even do at this point) without setting goals to limit the emissions underlying the trend?  And how exactly do we convince people to care about this when our governments clearly don’t? It made me think hard about our climate change policies and how grounded in science they may or may not be.

In The New York Times last February, Andrew Revkin pointed out the tendency for advocates on both sides of the climate debate to engage in hyperbole. Both sides, he warned, “…will rally their supporters and entrench their opponents, and we will be no closer to progress.”

According to Revkin, surveys indicate that roughly 60 percent of Americans are not involved in the discussion about climate change because they either don’t know about it or don’t care. So how do we engage that 60 percent? In arguing about whether the evidence proves our beliefs about climate change, how much do my date and I – and other people who are already engaged – push others out of the discussion?  The fact is, we can each find illustrations and “evidence” and competent scientists to support our positions, right?

In Communicating Climate Change: Why Frames Matter for Public Engagement, Matthew Nisbet writes that we need to reframe the discussion. He’s right. We don’t make headway when we talk in “the end of the world” terminology. There are much more positive ways to reach out to our fellow citizens: for example by appealing to our shared interest in a robust economy, improved public health, and preservation of our vital natural resources; by inspiring a sense of stewardship; and, most of all, by replacing fruitless argument with sincere, respectful dialogue.

According to Nesbit, Al Gore’s We Can Solve It campaign, which seeks to, “…unify U.S. citizens by framing climate change as a solvable and shared moral challenge,” is an example of a successful approach to engaging those who might not otherwise pay attention.

Change.org uses social media to reach wide audiences and educate people. The ability to reach people in new and widespread ways may prove critical to engaging that 60 percent of Americans who are simply not paying attention to the rising alarm about climate change, and proposed policies and legislation to address it.  But, by whatever medium they get the message, what most people need is a reason to sit up and care. Days like Blog Action Day are meant to bring a widespread audience to the discussion and hopefully will reach some of that 60%.

Nisbet notes, “Policies to address climate change will bear directly on the future of Americans, impacting their pocketbooks, lifestyles, and local communities. These decisions are therefore too significant to leave to just elected officials and experts; citizens need to be actively involved.”

This sentiment is echoed by Jim Harkness of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in an interview he gave after the Bangkok Climate Change Talks. Harkness said that although the details of emissions agreements would be worked out by negotiators, “…the mandate has to come from citizens.”

Advocates of climate change legislation need to stop arguing and providing fodder to the naysayers. Those of us who would effect change have to find ways to engage a much greater swath of the citizenry and not put them off by overstating the facts.

The issue of climate change is complex and messy and there are many factors at play – not unlike the whole dating dilemma. I could have taken a hard line stance and stopped seeing the naysayer, but I would have missed out on a summer full of fun times spent getting to know a great guy. My decision to keep seeing him didn’t come from crunching the numbers around his politics; it came from taking the whole package into account and looking at what positive things could come from seeing him.

This is the place we need to get to with climate change, because we all have our views and opinions. There is a lot of work to be done and it will take engaging each other in honest dialogue and focusing on what we all have to gain.

I climb on the coattails, eager to make a good impression. “Mine, too,” I proudly announce, ceramic vessel proffered; it’s a mug, not so grassrootsy-looking as a jar, nor as capacious. I reassure myself by noting that at least it’s clean.

Colin Beavan, the self-described “guilty liberal who attempted to save the world” with a year-long, high-profile foray into extreme green living, begins to extol the myriad virtues of the screwcap jar – it’s light, it seals tightly and doesn’t leak, it’s more conspicuous than a coffee mug, you can see what’s inside it, it’s attractive in a sort of homegrown way, it can also serve as Tupperware. I begin to regret my lowly mug, and make a mental note that next time, I will bring the gnarliest, most salvaged-looking jar I can find.

Since that fragmented moment in the No Impact journey wedged between blog posts, deadlines and press appearances, Colin and his No Impact family have metamorphosed while the world watched – on the Colbert Report, Good Morning America, in The New York Times (and the Green Fork!). And since his book, titled No Impact Man, debuted on September 1st, their lives have fallen under even greater scrutiny – magnified by this coming Friday’s theatrical release of the No Impact Man documentary. And have they ever risen to the occasion! With nation-wide appearances and book signings on the docket, Colin Beavan and Michelle Conlin (and little Isabella and four-footed Frankie, of course) have carried the mantle of sustainability with enthusiasm, inspiration and grace. Together they create a compelling vision of good green living – and all the quirks and hiccups along the road to getting there.

Want to get a look inside their year of No Impact? Find a screening of the No Impact movie near you (or host one!)! New Yorkers – join Kerry Trueman and me at the Angelika theater on September 15th at 5:00, where we’ll field your questions about sustainable food and how it fits into a low-impact lifestyle.

To keep current with Colin, follow his No Impact blog; to find out how you can change the world and even yourself, check out www.noimpactproject.org, a new nonprofit project aimed at enabling a sustainable way of life that makes us happier, healthier and more balanced citizens of the planet.

And now, I’m off to refill my gnarly pickled herring jar, which previously held lingonberry jam made by my friend’s grandmother in Poland, and which has a fish on the lid. Take that, No Impact Man!

Like all domestic goddesses born in the midst of the Green Revolution, my mom has a complex grocery shopping technique that has never been adequately summed up by her explanation, “whatever looks best.” It incorporates all five senses (much to the embarrassment of my twelve-year-old self, when she routinely sniffed the stem-ends of a dozen Costco cantaloupes), and is even synced with the artificial thundershowers in the vegetable section. Dewy, jewel-toned and blemishless, her picture-perfect produce always seemed to have just arrived from some seasonless supermarket Eden.

Which wasn’t far off, if you figure Eden was probably someplace in Mespotamia.

But some ancestral agrarian wisdom – residue of her Tennessee farmgirl past – also nudged her to adhere to the occasional seasonal law: asparagus in spring, summer strawberries, Christmas clementines. These items were dinner table treasures, redolent with rarity…if not always with flavor.

Because it turns out that, according to the new online shopping tool Global Grocer, there’s still a 75% chance that supermarket asparagus was imported from Peru or Mexico, even in springtime. In our supersaturated, season-free food culture, US food imports are rising at dramatic rates (importation of agricultural products has increased 50% since 2004 alone) and decimating domestic family farmers, local economies, the environment, and sometimes our health.

Developed by Food & Water Watch, Global Grocer is an interactive guide to your food and where it might be coming from. Browse the noisy animated aisles, pick your produce item (fresh, frozen or processed), and read the rundown on its origins, including top exporters and the probability that it was imported. Fill up your virtual cart, proceed to checkout, and find out how likely it is that you’ve selected imported fruits and veggies; the array of countries they came from; and how many pounds of jet-setting produce you probably purchase per year.

If these numbers alarm you – and they should – Global Grocer has some advice: shop at outlets that sell local food, and tell your supermarket that you demand country-of-origin labeling.

Though seemingly vestigial in the contemporary supermarket, seasonal impulses like my mom’s could help save small farms and the planet – but only if they’re supported by adequate origin labeling, so shoppers can distinguish between good, local, seasonal food and over-traveled, chemically ripened, unseasonable food.

Any locavore will tell you that embracing rarity, far from being an altruistic sacrifice, is actually a deliciously hedonistic adventure; my mother and I discovered that together – in the garden we learned to grow. But Americans can’t reclaim rarity as a cultural value until we are able make educated decisions about not just what to buy, but where to buy it from – and consequently, when.

Click here to embed the Global Grocer widget on your website.

Not sure what’s in season? Consult Eat Well’s Seasonal Food Map.

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Kate Croft is a dedicated food activist and new member of the Eat Well Team. To find out more about Kate’s passion for local food, check out her photos and signature recipes on her (languishing) blog, Pie in the Sky.