Green Travel

How does a rock band offset its carbon emissions from a 32-date world tour in 2009? Well, if that rock band is Pearl Jam, they plant 33 acres of trees around Puget Sound in Washington. The band just donated $210,000 to Cascade Land Conservancy to provide the plantings, which will help to make up for the 5.474 metric tons of carbon used during last year’s tour. The group has been mitigating its carbon output since 2003 and plans to do just that after this summer’s tour. When Pearl Jam rocks out to “Force of Nature,” they mean it.
 

Located near Sacramento, Davis, California, is a city of just over 65,000 people that’s perhaps best known as the first city in the country to create bike lines on their streets. Well, yesterday, they just upped the ante by announcing their intent to cut the community’s carbon emissions by up to 50 percent by 2013. Using the tenets of David Gershon’s book, “Low Carbon Diet: A 30-day Program to Lose 5,000 Pounds,” Davis is creating EcoTeams, peer-support groups to help households reduce their emissions. Cool Portland (Oregon), Gershon’s first pilot program, helped reduce carbon emissions of each household by 22 percent or 6,700 pounds. 50 percent seems ambitious, but kudos to Davis and Gershon for giving it a shot!
 

On the banks of the Mississippi River, Vento Nature Sanctuary is now home to bald eagles, blue herons, and acres of restored wetlands. It’s also popular with rock and ice climbers who like to propel themselves up the steep walls that rise from the river.  Yet, Vento was once a dying rail yard, left to rust by the Burlington National Railroad. Thanks to a grant from the city’s Metropolitan Council and private donations, all contaminated soil was removed and the boundaries of the park were expanded so folks can have more green space to play.
 

One of 34 Boston Harbor Islands that dot the waterfront and are part of a National Historic Park, Spectacle Island had its heyday in the 1840s as a large gambling resort and brothel. As of late, the island was merely a dumping ground for garbage. Then someone had the brilliant idea to create a dike to contain the trash and use the dirt from The Big Dig to reshape the island, providing topsoil for planting trees and other shrubbery.  Today, the heaping mound of soil has created the highest point on the Eastern Seaboard south of Maine. Leaving its smelly past behind, the 105-acre park has a trail system weaving through the interior, beaches to comb for sea glass, and public access by ferry. Local naturalist and Walden author Henry David Thoreau didn’t have Spectacle Island in mind when he spoke of preserving America’s “wild spaces,” but it’s refreshing to see good ole Yankee ingenuity at work.
 

For most of the 20th century, this large plot of land in downtown Los Angeles was used as an immense Union Pacific railroad yard. When Union Pacific closed shop in 1989, the property laid dormant until 2001. As California State Parks hemmed and hawed about how best to convert the space into a park, artist Lauren Bon, backed by a grant from the Annenberg Foundation, had her own ideas. With the help of The Trust for Public Land, they excavated some 5,000 tons of soil contaminated with hydrocarbons and metals, planted more than a million corn seeds, and installed an irrigation system to create her artwork, Not a Cornfield. The large crop has now been harvested to make way for bike trails and fields of wildflowers. Los Angeles State Historic Park is still being landscaped, but close to half of the property is open to the public.
 

The latest trend in urban design is blurring the line between civilization and nature to create parks from contaminated sites, landfills, and abandoned manufacturing plants. This week, I want to focus on green spaces that were once urban eyesores and are now popular spots to walk, bike, and simply be outdoors. For decades, the High Line served as an elevated railway track that brought freight into Manhattan. By 1980, the trains had stopped running and the tracks were sliding into decay that, somewhat remarkable, was also a kind of blossoming. Nature re-established itself as saplings and wind-sown grasses sprouted in the rail beds. The trees took root and so did an inkling of an idea, almost Seuss-like, to create a public space that would be 30-feet high above the city and nearly 1.5 miles long. What a way to see New York, from above!