EcoNewMexico.com

Do you hike, bike, ride a dirtbike, ATV or OHV in the Santa Fe National Forest? If so, the Forest Service wants to hear from you, really! After years of study the Forest Service has written a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for five alternative Travel Management Plans in the Santa Fe National Forest. This is your opportunity to share your reasoned and informed opinion of how to best manage motorized travel in the Santa Fe National Forest. Read below for the travel plan alternatives, DEIS and public meetings.

SFNF Travel Management Plan Alternatives

How would you recognize a hero if you met one? Most heroes don't wear capes (that I've seen) so spotting one could be tricky. I recently met a local hero, who is responsible for creating the very popular Dale Ball Trail System in Santa Fe, NM. I really wasn't sure I would recognize him. Fortunately, this hero was wearing a name tag.

Stewart Brand, editor of The Whole Earth Catalog, author of How Buildings Learn and founder of The Long Now Foundation has written Whole Earth Discipline: An EcoPragmatist Manifesto. I'm generally leery of manifestoes, but given Mr. Brand's resumé I decided to chance reading it. I'm still considering Whole Earth Discipline (and have incurred the wrath of my local library by keeping it overdue). Brand makes three statements in his book - Cities are Green, Genetic Engineering is Green, and Nukes are Green. Is he radical, practical or both?

Repo Man is a great road movie in the apocalyptic genre that starts in Los Alamos, NM and includes some amazing lines. “The more you drive, the less intelligent you are” has been a constant point of reference for me over the last 6 years while commuting 60 mile each way to my job in Albuquerque. The commitment to a daily fall down La Bajada ( a 2,000 foot drop in elevation South of Santa Fe) was a decision I made weighing commuting times for different urban areas against the quality of life they offered. Compared to many commutes back East, Santa Fe to Albuquerque seemed like a breeze.

I sometimes envy landscape architects – they have some pretty clear problems to solve, and everyone likes plants. But one of the benefits of working at a large multidisciplinary design firm is that I can wander around the office and see what my colleagues are up to. Since we all speak the language of design we can usually talk pretty coherently across disciplines. I get to live the life of a landscape architect vicariously, but still escape at a moment’s notice when the going gets rough.

Each November the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) holds its national conference and expo, known as Greenbuild, in a different city. The USGBC is the source for LEED certifications, a method for quantifying sustainability in buildings that has arguably transformed the building industry over the last 12 years. This past year in Phoenix, 27,000 fanatics and their suitors convened to share ideas, fears, successes and failures, working towards a greener, more sustainable built environment.

For many years high speed rail has been only a dream for most Americans, but that dream is slowly gaining momentum. Thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) several high-speed rail projects will now have funds to complete their projects.

Big City dwellers may take public transit for granted, but out here in New Mexico we're just getting familiar with it. The NM Rail Runner has been running between Santa Fe and Albuquerque for just over a year. Now, thanks to shortfalls in local tax revenues weekend train service may be eliminated. Of course, it was weekend service that helped popularize the NM Rail Runner in the first place. Argh!

Observing the news over the past year I've come to a (probably obvious) realization or two. Climate Change is rapidly growing in global awareness, importance and the discussion has become heated (pun intended). It appears that our planet is rapidly approaching a point of change (cultural, economic, environmental, etc.) driven by climate change. Change brings uncertainty, so governments, companies, and people have chosen to either fight change or promote their vision of change.

The Santa Fe Community Convention Center (quite a mouthful) has just earned the LEED Gold certification. This means that the new convention center 'was designed (by Santa Fe-based Spears Architects and Fentress Architects) and built using strategies aimed at improving ...