Tuesday, and Wednesday, April 24 and 25, Step It Up Rally, 5 Corners, Vineyard Haven, Channel 13, at 7 pm. “Step It Up,” a grass roots movement started by Middlebury professor and author Bill McKibben, has reached all the way to Martha’s Vineyard. Island students, teachers, and friends, gathered to rally congress with a message, Step it up reduce carbon emissions by 80% by the year 2050.

US Rep. Bill Delahunt announced that the Department of Agriculture is making available $176.5 million in loan guarantees and $11.4 million in grants to support small business investment in renewable energy nationwide.

Grants are available for up to 25 percent of a project's cost, not to exceed $250,000 for energy efficiency improvements and $500,000 for renewable energy systems. Loan guarantees are available to cover up to 50 percent of a project's cost, not to exceed $10 million.

Applications for grants from individuals in the 10th Congressional District must be completed and submitted to the USDA Rural Development office in West Wareham, MA at 15 Cranberry Highway and postmarked no later than May 18. The deadline for submitting loan applications as well as for loan and grant combinations is July 2. Further information on rural programs is available by calling the West Wareham Office at 508-295-5151 ext 3 or by visiting USDA's web site at http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/rbs/farmbill/index.html.

It's been a while since I've posted on an advergame or newsgame, so here's one that's a little of both. Starbucks and Global Green USA bring us the eco-educational, "Planet Green Game," a fact-filled, Flash-based, multi-media experience that sometimes contains some interaction resembling gameplay. The premise is that you are a citizen of Evergreen, USA, and you must help make your home, transportation, and town greener. In most cases, you do this by correctly answering softball quiz questions, matching identical items, or clicking on things.

http://www.gameology.org/blog/
starbucks_presents_planet_green_game

Goal: (What we want to achieve long term) Implement programs and practices that will achieve or draw us nearer to a zero waste community

Current Status: (Where we are now) Waste management on the Vineyard meets minimum health and safety requirements and complies with applicable state law. The fragmentation of current management systems- whether among towns or between the public and private sectors - potentially increases administrative and operational costs as well as inhibits opportunities to increase recycling and reuse programs and practices.

Go to Island Plan for the rest of the report.

ORLEANS - Massachusetts and New England coastal areas could experience a major red tide bloom this summer given the right environmental factors. Experts say that the latest survey of Maine cyst fields shows that the number of red tide algae wintering over in Maine waters has dropped for the third year in a row.

But those numbers are still roughly three times what they were a decade ago, said Don Anderson, an expert on harmful algal blooms and director of the Coastal Ocean Institute at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

He warned that winds are a critical.
http://www.capecodonline.com/
cctimes/redtide16.htm

Geological time mostly runs incredibly slowly, in measures of hundreds of thousands, if not millions or billions of years. No wonder Bob Woodruff was excited about what happened over the weekend.

On Saturday he and three other experts, in association with the Vineyard Conservation Society, led about 120 people on a geology tour at Lucy Vincent Beach, educating them about what short-term land forms the Wequobsque cliffs — indeed the whole of Martha’s Vineyard — were.

http://www.mvgazette.com/news/
2007/04/20/geology_of_vineyard.php

BOSTON - Gov. Deval Patrick ordered state agencies yesterday to reduce energy consumption by 20 percent in five years in the most recent of several ''green” moves made early in his administration.

He also has supported a plan to build 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound and has committed Massachusetts to the nation's first multistate program to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

http://www.capecodonline.com/cctimes/
patrickorders19.htm

The weather stormed and blew outside but inside Quluaq School we were warm and dry. Students grades 3-12 gathered to hear stories and film from our expedition and learn more about global warming. While Elizabeth and I opened and closed the presentation, Theo, Simon, and Lukie, rose to the occasion, describing the mission of the expedition from the Inuit perspective.

http://www.globalwarming101.com/
content/view/762/