There’s nothing like seeing other parts of the world first-hand to give one a different perspective on “home.” A Sonoma State professor who did just that last summer with his students in the international Semester at Sea program, reports back.

The Semester at Sea program offers educational voyages that go completely around the world, and shorter trips, such as the summer voyage in which Rocky Rohwedder participated. Rohwedder, a professor of Environmental Studies, explains how that was structured.

That sequence was set up to ease the touring students into new cultures, by beginning with western European nations that have much in common with the United States. But as they traveled eastward around the Mediterranean, Rohwedder recounts, the changes became more dramatic.

As he traveled, Rocky posted regular blog entries from the trip, with many photographs embedded. In this one, he is seen with his son Ryder, in a public marketplace in Fes, Morocco.

Click here to find out how to apply for a semester at sea.

Sonoma County inventor James McElvaney (right), has developed a system to convert organic waste into energy and other beneficial byproducts, one that creates the energy that powers it in the bargain.

Bob Hillman, McElvaney's partner in their start-up,  Bioconverter LLC,  sees their new technology as a tool to capture greenhouse gases while also combating invasive, non-native plants, such as the Ludwigia, or Creeping Water Primrose, now prevalent in the Laguna de Santa Rosa.

The company offers a more comprehensive explanation of their processes on the FAQ page of their website, but you can read an overview here.

The primary process of bioconversion takes place in a series of vertical tanks, such as those seen at left.  In addition to the environmental benefits of bioconversion, Hillman notes that it has the economic potential to actually fund some of those productive outcomes.

There’s one simple thing an individual can do to greatly reduce their carbon footprint:  eat less meat.

Another current trend in the efforts to counter industrial agriculture is grass fed beef and cage free poultry. That may result in healthier and tastier animals, but Hope Bohanec (right)  is not persuaded that it’s a practical response to the need to feed the planet.

Beyond reducing the creation of greenhouse gases, Bohanec can envision a scenario in which land now devoted to animal husbandry in one form or another could be converted back to oxygen-generating forests.

The following links will take you to the studies referenced by Bohanec in the report above:

United Nation's Food and Agriculture Committee 2006 study Livestock's Long
Shadow.
University of Chicago report comparing switching to vegan diet with switching to a hybrid car.
Carnegie Mellon University found that the average American would do more for
the planet by going vegetarian one day per week than by switching to a
completely local diet.

Hope Bohanec  has been active in Animal Rights for over 20 years, organizing successful campaigns with Sonoma People for Animal Rights (SPAR) throughout the '90s. In 2002, she founded Vegan Voices, focusing on education and outreach for farm animals. Hope was the Sonoma County Coordinator for Proposition 2 and soon after that victory, fused Vegan Voices into the new Farm Animal Protection Project (FAPP). She has now offered her organizational talents to In Defense of Animals (IDA) as their Grassroots Campaigns Director, One of their projects, World Go Vegan week is later this month, Oct. 25-31.

Just two years after being leveled by a tornado, Greensburg, a tiny town in the middle of Kansas has become a model for green rebuilding.

Nearly 95% of the town's homes and other buildings were destroyed by the storm, as seen in this photo, taken a week after the tornado hit.

The green rebuilding of Greensburg, Kansas cannot be attributed to an unlikely enclave of progressive thinkers in the American heartland. Rather, says Daniel Wallach, (right) founder and Executive Director of Greensburg GreenTown, the fact this has happened in a small, deeply conservative town makes it even more significant.

FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) was quick to respond to the Kansas tornado that flattened Greensburg, in part to improve their public profile after the Gulf Coast hurricanes. But Wallach says the agency had to be persuaded at length to buy into the green vision that the community shared.

There's an extensive photo gallery of the damange caused by the tornado and the new buildings that have emerged in its wake on one page of the Greensberg GreenTown website. Another page hosts their design competition for eco-friendly homes. "The Chain of Eco-Homes"  has attracted 150 entries, which can be viewed and voted for online. The winnign design will be built as part of the town's ongoing effort to promote itself as "a living science museum" on green consrtruction and muncipal planning.