The Grass IS Greener on the Other Coast of the Country

I just returned from a trip to the West Coast, with my husband and sons to visit my brother and his family in San Jose. While we were there, we stayed in a "Green Hotel" in San Francisco, went thrift shopping for clothes, and visited an organic vineyard in the Los Gatos/Santa Cruz area. I will be writing a blog about the great clothes I found, our sustainable stay at the Orchard Garden Hotel, and our visit with the wine maker. But first I wanted to mention something that really struck me as unique to the visit: the presence of green articles in the newspaper almost daily in the San Jose Mercury News.

Being in the center of the world's high tech industry, I expected to see plenty in the news about computers and other technologies. Being in the state governed by Supreme Eco-steward Arnold Schwarzenegger, I expected to hear a lot about sustainability and climate change. But the combination of the two brought much more than I expected: DAILY reports on green topics. Reports about efforts to persuade industry to recognize global climate change and to invest in addressing it. Reports about the technologies being developed to solve it. Here in Silicon Valley, California was the right combination: brilliantly persuasive people (politics), and brilliant people finding ways (technology) . I was really impressed and energized by the articles that spread out in front of me every morning at my brother's table.

Upon return home to a cold and rainy East Coast, I thought maybe it really wasn't all that greener over there. Maybe it was just that I was on vacation and actually had free moments to sit down and soak in a newspaper. And if I did that here, not far from Cambridge after all, I might just catch a lot of the same news. So I did a little experiment to see if it was just my daily routine or if there really is just a shortfall of green news on the East Coast.

To be fair, my experiment was not exactly the same as reading a newspaper. Instead I searched three newspaper websites for articles dated April 6-12, 2007 (the dates I was on vacation) with the keywords: "green sustainable climate change global warming environment". Here are the results (which may reflect more on each newspaper's websites more than their actual printed papers):

San Jose Mercury: 15 Articles
Boston Globe: 0 Articles in the one-week timeframe, 1 Article in the past month (March 18)
Providence Journal: 1 Article (April 8)

See for yourself:

San Jose Mercury News
04/06/07

• WASHINGTON - Global warming will permanently change the climate of the American Southwest, making it so much hotter and drier that Dust Bowl-scale droughts will become common, a new climate report concludes.
• Warming threatens natural wonders

04/07/07

• Bleak U.N. report on global warming derided as too soft

04/09/07

• We back Boxer's global warming bill

04/10/07

• Sheryl Crow goes green for college tour
• Kerry, Gingrich debate global warming
• Planting trees falls short at saving the world
• Trial starts in industry challenge to states' authority over auto emissions

04/11/07

• ConocoPhillips join coalition for greenhouse gas emissions caps
• Pizarro: `Green Challenge' offers hope for planet
• Larry Hagman backs green causes
• New solar panel design traps more light
• Editorial: More haste, less thought rule if lawmakers move too fast on global warming

04/12/07

• Schwarzenegger gives Washington a pep talk on going green
• Survey finds 81% worried about global warming

Boston Globe
03/18/07

• A choir of voices joins to preach saving the earth

Providence Journal
04/08/07

• 5 environmentalists to be honored

It seems to me we have a lot of catching up to do out here! I hope to be part it!
Meanwhile, enjoy all the articles!