Articles by Erik Hoffner

What else might we do with our time?

Every week, 30 million people tune in to at least a couple hours of American Idol. Whether this show has truly "jumped the shark" this year or not remains to be seen, but I submit that if a portion of these folks would join the ranks of the American Idealists instead, we'd all be in for a more interesting Wednesday night.

Idealist.org's brand new connections platform is already linking up 28,000+ people who are meeting up to build community in their towns and cities. It's worth a visit just to read the myriad of quirky personal profiles, and hey, you just might find a gathering to join on a Wednesday ...

What are you doing to respond to the climate crisis?

Orion magazine has a brand new section, of interest to all Gristmill readers, where folks from all over are encouraged to write in and share what changes their families, communities, churches, etc. are undertaking to respond, now, to the climate crisis, peak oil, etc. I've seen so many ripe ideas posted on Gristmill, BioD's plug-in hybrid bike being a good example. So have a look at some of these great ideas and initiatives (a clustered, renewably-powered, affordable housing community in Missoula, for example) in the first installment of this section, called Making Other Arrangements, and share your own projects and ideas.

May become U.S.’s first large offshore wind project

This just in: the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs has weighed in on Cape Wind's Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR), saying that it "adequately and properly complies" with the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act. The project can now advance to the state permitting process. I believe it is the first U.S. offshore wind project to have a certified final environmental impact document.

Sky Islands getting crispier

Just when you thought Arizona couldn't get any hotter, right? Yesterday's NYT article on how that state's Sky Islands, the uniquely biodiverse plateaus, are changing due to higher heat regimes is borne out not only by news of such destructive fires but also by daily observation on the ground. A friend who works for the Sky Island Alliance in Tucson says her staff, while out ripping up roads or monitoring wildlife corridors, has been noticing that species are disappearing from islands, being squeezed out by the changes.

It really brings home that no matter what kind of activism we're involved in on a daily basis, whether it's knee-deep in a watershed or coordinating youth development efforts in inner-city neighborhoods, we've all got to turn out with our friends and families and Step It Up in April. It all comes back to the climate.