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Saving Tarboo Creek – Scott Freeman

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Saving Tarboo Creek
One Family’s Quest to Heal the Land
Scott Freeman

Genre: Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: January 24, 2018

Publisher: Timber Press

Seller: Workman Publishing Co., Inc.


“A moving account of a beautiful project. We need stories of healing in this tough moment; this is a particularly fine one.” —Bill McKibben, author of  Radio Free Vermont When the Freeman family decided to restore a damaged creek in Washington’s Olympic Peninsula—to transform it from a drainage ditch into a stream that could again nurture salmon— they knew the task would be formidable and the rewards plentiful. In Saving Tarboo Creek , Scott Freeman artfully blends his family’s story with powerful universal lessons about how we can all live more constructive, fulfilling, and natural lives by engaging with the land rather than exploiting it. Equal parts heartfelt and empowering, this book explores how we can all make a difference one choice at a time. In the proud tradition of Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac , Saving Tarboo Creek is both a timely tribute to our land and a bold challenge to protect it. 

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Saving Tarboo Creek – Scott Freeman

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Trump Asks African-American Reporter to Arrange Meeting with Congressional Black Caucus

Mother Jones

During a chaotic and rambling press conference on Thursday, April Ryan, an African-American journalist with the American Urban Radio Networks, asked President Donald Trump if he would be arranging a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus to discuss actions he might be taking to help inner cities.

“Well I would,” Trump said. “Do you want to set up the meeting? Are they friends of yours? Set up the meeting!”

The bizarre exchange follows Trump’s repeated claims that he is the “least racist person” people would ever meet.

Following the press conference, Ryan appeared on MSNBC to discuss Trump’s comments. “I’m not a facilitator, I’m not a convener,” she said. “I am a White House correspondent. I am a reporter—a journalist.”

She did go on to note that many of the CBC members she covers were eager to meet with Trump about the administration’s policy agenda. Indeed, shortly after the press conference concluded, the CBC tweeted the following:

Ryan said on MSNBC that she would be happy to cover such a meeting between Trump and the CBC as a reporter. But she added: “I will not convene, facilitate, nothing.”

Watch:

This story has been updated with April Ryan’s MSNBC comments.

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Trump Asks African-American Reporter to Arrange Meeting with Congressional Black Caucus

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5 Healthy, Green Home Hacks

If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleepingwith a mosquito. ~Dalai Lama XIV

No. Really.

A lot of people ask me if one small change in their daily habit is really going to make a difference and to that I reply, of course!

Lets face itit can be overwhelming trying to change all of your (bad) habits at once, but my motto is to take baby steps. Its more fun. Its more do-able. And, youre more likely to stick with your new habit over the long run.

To get started, here are a few reuse home hacks that will not only help heal our beautiful planet, but will pad your wallet with some generous savings.

But first, listen to myGreen Divas at Home radio show segment. Then read on for more!

Now do I have your attention?

1. Clean with Microfiber Towels vs. Paper Towels

Paper towelsmay be the default for tackling household cleaning tasks, but absorbent microfiber towels can do anything paper towels or wipes can do, and microfiber usually does a better job of whisking up dirt and grease. They wont scratch surfaces, leave no lint behind, and can be washed about fifty times. Buy several so you can throw them in the wash and grab another as you clean.

Reducing yourpaper towel usewill help conserve trees and cut down on the pollution produced in the bleaching process. Using one roll of paper towels per week, at $1.25 per roll, will cost you $70 per year. A stack of reusable microfiber towels is about $19.99. Thats an annual savings of around $50.00!

2. Reuse Plastic Snack Bags

Do your part to reduce the over 20 million disposable snack bags that end up in landfills each year. Most families spend $85 a year on disposable plastic baggies according to the Sierra Club. Plastic disposable Ziploc bags make convenient food storage and freezer bags, but discarding them is a waste of money and resources.

The Blue Avocado (re)zipSeal Reusable Snack and Sandwich Bags can easily extend their life tenfold. PVC-, lead- and BPA-free, each (re)zip features a unique double-lock closure that keeps liquids and food fresh inside. Using just onere(zip) at least twice a week can eliminate over 100 disposable plastic baggies per year. With a one time investment of $5.95-9.95 vs. repeatedly purchasing new resealable bags equals long-term saving of hundreds of dollars.

Or, try Baggie Wash; the first-of-its-kind dishwasher accessory that allows you to easily clean and reuse your zipper-style food storage bags 50 times.Bag-E-Wash fits any make/model dishwasher and adjusts to fit any Ziploc style reusable bag from sandwich size up to gallon size bags.Just one box (30) of gallon size bags washed and dried with Bag-E-Wash and reused 50 times each keeps 1,500 bags out of our landfills & oceans. This equals asavings to you of $150.One time investment of $5.95-9.95 vs. repeatedly purchasing new resealable bags = long-term saving of hundreds of dollars.

3. Recharge Your Power

Did you know Americans purchase nearly three billion dry-cell batteries every year? Many of these contain toxic heavy metals like cadmium, mercury, andlead. Cadmium can cause damage to thekidneys, birth defects, andcancer. Mercury and lead are very potent neurotoxins. Whenbatteries end up in the landfill, these toxins can contaminate water supplies.

Newer pre-charged and ultra-low self-charge batteries are even more efficient and cost effective than their rechargeable predecessors. For example,some brandscan be used right out of the package and recharged up to 2,100 times. At around $21 for a four pack of AA batteries and charger, youre looking at less than half a cent per battery; a long-term savings of roughly $983.50 over each batterys lifetime.

4. BYOB

An estimated 500 billion to one trillion plastic bags are used annually worldwide. More than 14 million trees were chopped down to manufacture the 10 billion paper grocery bags used in the U.S. in 1999. Thats more than one million per minute!

Less than five percent of shoppers in America are using canvas, cotton, or mesh bags. Take a reusable cloth bag to the store. If not for you, do it for sea life. Of all known species of sea turtles, 86 percent have had problems of entanglement or ingestion of marine debris thousand years to decompose. Does this mean paper bags are more environmentally friendly than plastic? Although recycled more often, the production of paper sacks produce seventy percent more air pollutants and take up more space in the landfill than plastic bags.

5. Use Reusable Cutlery vs. Disposable

To reduce environmental impact, tryPreservespurposeful plastic products which utilize recycled plastics from yogurt cups into toothbrushes, storage containers and cutlery consisting of #5 polypropylene plastic (safe food grade material) thatsBPA-freeand dishwasher safe.

Another smart choice for plates and cutlery is bamboo. It is a fast growing, abundant, woody, perennial, evergreen plant that can grow three to four feet in one day! It can even be used for construction of houses, bridges, fences and furniture due to the durability of its short fibers.

Bonus:

Listen to the latest full episode of theGreen Divas Radio Show! It’spacked with fun and useful information from a lively conversation with Mariel Hemingway and Bobby Williams about creating mindful and sustainable relationships to eating sustainably with Dr. Karen Lee and one of our fav green dudes Rob Greenfield talks about living a zero waste life.

Catchthe latestGreen Divas Radio Showand other green, healthy and free radio showsdaily onGDGDRadio.com(or get theGDGD Radio app)!

Written by Green Diva Lisa Beres | Main image viaShutterStock

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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5 Healthy, Green Home Hacks

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Here’s How to Get Rich or Die Podcasting

Mother Jones

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Christoph Hitz

Despite a successful career in public radio, Alex Blumberg says he never showed any “entrepreneurial spunk.” That changed when he left a comfortable post at NPR’s Planet Money and, together with Matt Lieber, began to court venture capitalists to help launch a podcast incubator. The resulting company, Gimlet, has attracted at least 4 million monthly listeners and $1.5 million from investors. Its portfolio of highly produced shows includes StartUp (the first season told the inside story of starting up Gimlet); Reply All, which takes on internet culture; and Mystery Show, in which host Starlee Kine solves seemingly trivial problems. Surprisingly Awesome, the newest show, sets out to make dull topics, like free throws or mold, interesting; it’s the brainchild of Adam Davidson, Blumberg’s former cohost at Planet Money, and filmmaker Adam McKay. Blumberg talked to Mother Jones about the biz.

Mother Jones: Why leave a comfortable job at Planet Money to go off on your own?

Alex Blumberg: I don’t know. Why do we do anything? laughs. I was 40-something years old. I hadn’t shown any entrepreneurial spunk up until that point. I thought that there should be a way of identifying talent and then helping that talent make shows and those shows find audiences. I kept on thinking, well, somebody should do it and waiting around and no one did.

MJ: What did Gimlet look like back when you launched StartUp with Matt Lieber?

AB: We didn’t really have an office. So we had these two business calls, I remember, where we were both walking around the streets of Manhattan on our cell phones like a block apart from each other. Every time a siren would go by, it was just awful. So we finally we paid for a place in an incubator. Two little chairs and a desk. StartUp launched and went pretty well, and that helped us raise the rest of the money.

MJ: You’ve describe Gimlet as “the HBO of podcasting.” What did you mean by that?

AB: Right now, there are lots of podcasts that are cheaper to produce, and many of them are great; I love a great “friends shooting the shit” show. But where there’s an opportunity is in the more highly produced way, where you are reporting and sifting stuff out and cutting, honing things. I come from that. I feel like those take more work and you’re polishing them a little bit longer, fussing with them a lot more. That’s sort of why I said HBO of podcasting: We’re not going to produce tons of it, but the content we produce, we’re going to try and make it stand out in some way.

MJ: Did you expect StartUp to do so well?

AB: I didn’t expect it to strike that kind of chord with the number of listeners that it did. Like, ‘Oh my God, you are describing the journey that I’ve been on making my productivity app,’ or whatever. There are tons of businesses that exist in the United States. An insane number of people who are in business for themselves. And then there are people on board feeling they’re at key early stages of companies. So I think there are a bunch of people who can sort of relate to the feelings of it, but hadn’t really heard those feelings brought out before.

Reply All: “The Man in the FBI Hat”

MJ: What do you learn about your own company’s journey by looking at Dating Ring’s journey, as you did in season two?

AB: We were able to raise money much more quickly than they were. It felt like it took forever at the time, but then talking to Dating Ring and talking to other start-ups—we were a little bit of an anomaly.

The other thing was that being old wasn’t such a bad thing. laughs. When I was 25, I felt all this pressure to succeed, and I’m keenly aware of who’s ahead of me and who was behind me—and it fucks you up! With me being in my 40s, I knew who I was.

MJ: Gimlet started at an interesting time, at this golden era of podcasting—46 million Americans listen to at least one podcast in a given month. Do you think it’s just a fad, or is it here to stay?

AB: Radio was supposed to die in 1945, when TV came along. It turns out that radio grew and grew, and it’s a bigger business today than it has ever been. People really like to listen to other people talk; sometimes listening is the only thing you can do. Audio is the only medium you can consume while you’re multitasking. Now that everybody has a smart phone and everybody’s car is going to be connected, it’s a brand new world.

MJ: What do you think people get from listening instead of reading or watching media?

AB: I think people want companionship. Radiolab is sort of like hanging out with the hosts. They’re like friends you want to have that are like teaching you stuff and they’re telling great stories.

MJ: Public radio has this reputation of having the predominantly white, male voice. How do you plan to tackle diversity at Gimlet?

AB: It’s something that I think about pretty much every day. How do we make it a non-homogenous place technically? Right now, it’s not. Podcasts should look like America. And I feel like, ideally, that’s what you’d want your company to look like. I think that’s right and makes sense from a business perspective.

MJ: How do you guys plan on doing that?

AB: You start to realize why companies in the beginning look the way they do: You’re drawing from your own personal connections when you’re starting something. You see it in small businesses all over. One ethnic group has a store franchise and then like the one that opens is a cousin. When you’re launching a business, you just really want to know somebody deeply to help in how you do it laughs. We recruit people. We’re trying to train people up. We’re reaching out to this interesting alternate world of the non-public radio podcasters who just come to podcasting because they like podcasting.

MJ: What about in terms of the content you produce at Gimlet?

AB: One of the things that I think audio is best at is creating empathy. I know that might sound a little crazy but I actually truly believe it. When you’re hearing somebody and you’re not seeing them, your brain naturally creates a version of them. Then you feel closer to them because you’ve created them. You’re not sitting back and judging them, saying they look different from me on a subconscious level. Some of the shows we’re planning in particular are going to be conversations between all kinds of different people that are a lot about trying to create empathy.

MJ: How did your newest show, Surprisingly Awesome, come about?

AB: I’d worked with Adam Davidson at Planet Money for many years and knew what an incredible talent he is. And also Adam McKay makes really funny movies, and I thought, the show they wanted to do will be in a nice sweet spot for podcasts in general. A lot of people listen to podcasts because they want to learn something and be entertained along the way, and I feel like this is perfectly in that zone.

First episode of Surprisingly Awesome

MJ: What’s a topic that the show would cover?

AB: Free throws. A free throw seems boring but then when you sort of dig into what’s going on and the history and psychology and the social anthropology around the free throw—it’s interesting.

Mystery Show: “Belt Buckle”

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Here’s How to Get Rich or Die Podcasting

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France Scrambles to Secure Upcoming Climate Talks After Deadly Attacks

Mother Jones

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On Saturday, just a day after terrorist attacks in Paris left at least 129 people dead and hundreds more injured, the French government vowed to forge ahead with a long-scheduled international summit on climate change.

The summit, which is scheduled to start in just two weeks, will take place at an airport in the northern suburbs of Paris, not far from the stadium that was the site of multiple bombings on Friday. There, world leaders plan to hash out final details of the most wide-reaching international agreement ever to combat climate change. White House officials confirmed to Politico that President Barack Obama still intends to attend the talks, as scheduled prior to the attacks. Dozens of other heads of state are expected to be there as well.

“The summit will go ahead with reinforced security measures,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said. “This is an absolutely necessary step in the battle against climate change and of course it will take place.”

Christiana Figueres, who chairs the UN agency overseeing the talks, released a similar statement on Twitter:

Even prior to the attacks, 30,000 French police officers were scheduled to secure the event, according to Radio France International. More than 10,000 diplomats, non-governmental organization employees, and journalists are expected to attend the summit. Specific new security measures have not yet been made public, but Politico quoted an unnamed French official who said participants should expect “extremely tightened security” following the attacks.

Paul Bledsoe, a former climate advisor to President Bill Clinton, also told Politico that the attacks could actually improve the odds that the talks reach a successful outcome.

“The resolve of world leaders is going to be redoubled to gain an agreement and show that they can deliver for populations around the world. The likelihood for a successful agreement has only increased because of these attacks,” Bledsoe said.

On Thursday, just a day before the attacks, Secretary of State John Kerry appeared to butt heads with his French counterpart over what the exact legal status of the agreement will be. Other questions remain as well, such as how wealthy, heavily polluting countries such as the United States will help developing nations pay for climate change adaptation. But overall, the Paris talks are expected to yield a better outcome than the last major climate summit, in Copenhagen in 2009, which failed to produce any meaningful action to curb greenhouse gas emissions or prepare for the impacts of global warming.

Meanwhile, on Monday French officials said they would block a series of rallies and side events that were scheduled to take place outside the main negotiations. Environmental groups are scrambling to work out how to change their plans following the attack. Several groups involved in organizing protests and rallies that were intended to coicide with the Paris talks confirmed to Mother Jones that a hastily arranged meeting to hash out a plan will take place on Monday evening, Paris time. Will Davies, a spokesman for Avaaz, one of the main advocacy groups involved, said that despite the flurry of activity, plans for global marches in cities other than Paris were still going ahead as scheduled.

Stay tuned for more updates on this story.

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France Scrambles to Secure Upcoming Climate Talks After Deadly Attacks

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The Kentucky Derby Is Fueled by Tamales, and Other Gems From a Great New Podcast

Mother Jones

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When you think about the Kentucky Derby, what flavors come to mind? A refreshing mint julep? Pillowy biscuits propping up salty glazed ham? The sweet tang of pickled shrimp? Or how about…tamales? As radio journalist Tina Antolini discovered, that’s the dish that best embodies “the backside” of the Derby, where horse walkers, grooms, stable cleaners, and trainers live and work. The majority hail from Central America, and due to the migratory nature of the job and a lack of kitchen access, they rely on hot plates and crockpots to re-create their traditional cuisine.

Tina Antolini Photo by Pableaux Johnson

Antolini dug into this Derby subculture for an episode of Gravy, a new biweekly podcast from the Southern Foodways Alliance that explores a changing American South through the lens of food. The podcast’s host and producer isn’t exactly a good ol’ girl; Antolini grew up in a coastal Maine town full of “lobstermen and artists.” Her mom, a cookbook editor, would spend “three hours making a complicated deal for dinner,” so she developed an early interest in all things culinary. Jobs at pier-side seafood joints and upscale restaurants fortified her passion—food would become a theme in her reporting for New England Public Radio and later for the podcast State of the (Re)Union, for which she is still a senior producer.

Having a Yankee host doesn’t seem to have detracted from Gravy‘s allure. The podcast, along with its quarterly print version, won Publication of the Year at the 2015 James Beard Foundation Awards—a.k.a. the “Oscars of the food world.” Dorothy Kalins, chair of the awards committee, commended Gravy for its “humor and style” and for “giving voice to the unsung characters who grow, cook, and serve our food.”

But don’t come looking for recipes—Antolini rarely gets into ingredient lists. Rather, she uses food as a launchpad for stories about race, culture, health, and business. “The food has to take us somewhere,” she told me. Episodes have covered water wars from the perspective of feuding oyster farms, the buried history of black culinarians, and military vets who turn to farming. And Gravy transcends geography. As illustrated by the Kentucky Derby episode, “the themes we are dealing with in these Southern-based stories,” Antolini says, “are really at the heart of understanding the United States.”

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The Kentucky Derby Is Fueled by Tamales, and Other Gems From a Great New Podcast

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This water lawsuit could be huge and it’s happening in … Iowa?

This water lawsuit could be huge and it’s happening in … Iowa?

By on 12 Jan 2015commentsShare

Ah, Iowa. Frequently confused with heaven, the Hawkeye State is a place of simple yet profound beauty: filled with pink-hued sunsets, rolling hills, golden corn fields, and strapping basketball players. Now, in an effort to preserve the purity of the state’s stunning resources (DON’T give me that look — beauty is in the eye of the freaking beholder, OK?), the state capital’s water utility company is facing off with farmers over fertilizer in an effort to curb water pollution.

Des Moines Water Works sent an intent to sue to three neighboring counties with high nitrate levels in the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers. The utility is fed up with filtering nitrate out of drinking water — it spent $900,000 on the issue in 2013. And the lawsuit just might finally make a difference in a nationwide issue that has been unregulated and out-of-control for years.

Farmers spread nitrogen fertilizer on their corn fields, which becomes nitrate — a colorless, odorless, tasteless compound. Nitrate becomes a problem when it leaks into streams and rivers. In Iowa, underground tile pipes drain the soil beneath farmers’ fields. Those pipes, which are often managed by county governments, bring polluted water to nearby rivers and waterways, and eventually into the unknowing Iowan’s cup of drinking water. Here’s more from NPR’s Dan Charles:

Too much nitrate can be a health risk, especially for infants under the age of 6 months, and it’s difficult to remove from water. …

Bill Stowe, general manager of the Des Moines Water Works, told Iowa Public Radio in an interview last week that “we are seeing the public water supply directly risked by high nitrate concentrations.” …

Des Moines Water Works is now proceeding on the theory that those governments can be held legally responsible for the pollution that their pipes carry.

“When they build these artificial drainage districts that take water, polluted water, quickly into the Raccoon River, they have a responsibility to us and others as downstream users,” he told Iowa Public Radio.

Polluted water is not only a risk to public health — high nitrate levels also wipe out aquatic life from Midwestern lakes all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico.

This isn’t the first attempt to limit run-off. State and federal governments already offer financial assistance to farmers who try to reduce nitrogen leaks. The government-issued dollars can go towards building pollution traps like sediment-trapping ponds and wetlands. (Not only do the wetlands decrease nitrate leaks, they also bolster dwindling waterfowl and bird populations.)

But not every farmer can qualify for the government programs, so Des Moines Water Works is starting to play hard ball. We’ll raise a glass of safe drinking water to that.

Source:
Iowa’s Largest City Sues Over Farm Fertilizer Runoff in Rivers

, NPR.

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This water lawsuit could be huge and it’s happening in … Iowa?

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Why Did the Enclosed Mall Die?

Mother Jones

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Alex Tabarrok links today to a BBC piece on the death of the American shopping mall. But it’s really about the death of the enclosed American shopping mall. So why did enclosed malls go the way of the dodo starting in the early 90s? Here’s the author’s crack at an explanation:

When the 35-year-old Cloverleaf Mall in Chesterfield, Virginia, closed in 2007, the Chesterfield Observer noted that while it had been a popular hangout for families in the 1970s and ’80s, “That all changed in the 1990s. Cloverleaf’s best customers, women, began staying away from the mall, fearful of the youth who were beginning to congregate there. People said a former Cloverleaf manager started seeing kids with huge baggy pants and chains hanging off their belts, and people were intimidated, and they would say there were gangs.”

OK. How about Amy Merrick in the New Yorker earlier this year? What does she think?

As any cubicle dweller knows, people like natural light and fresh air and, when deprived of them, feel oppressed. So are people alienated by those older malls, with their raw concrete, brutalist architecture and fretful, defensive air? Developers have a shorthand for this style: the “classic graybox.” In his talk, Rick Caruso flashed grim photos of their façades. He lingered on a picture of a deserted food court; you could practically smell the stale grease. “Does this look like the future to you?” he asked.

Here’s Neil Howe in USA Today:

There is a generational story behind what’s happening to shopping malls. And if you want to know how it will end, you have to pay attention to each generation’s role….What most impressed the G.I.s (and the Silent Generation who succeeded them) about malls was their enormous efficiency….Then came suburban Boomers, who grew up with these newly minted malls as kids. As they matured, many Boomers soured on what they regarded as the soulless and artificial consumerism of malls and began to champion what business author Joseph Pine calls the “experience economy” — turning stores and restaurants from mere retail outlets into places that mean something (think Rainforest Cafe or Build-a-Bear Workshop or L.L. Bean). That thinking not only inspired more stores to include a “tourism” component, but it also drove the surging popularity of lifestyle centers in the early 1990s.

….But Xers soon changed the mall scene. This strapped-for-cash generation helped popularize “category killers” and was the first to adopt online shopping. Millennial teens who arrived in the late 1990s began to show less interest in malls in part because their parents deemed malls too dangerous.

The lack of reasonable explanations suggests that nobody really knows the answer. It certainly remains a mystery to me. There’s no question that shopping spaces of all kinds have been hurt in recent years by the rise of online retail, and that mall development in particular was hurt by the Great Recession. But the switch away from enclosed malls began in the 90s, and it wasn’t because people were tired of shopping. Nor was it because suburbs started to die. It was because enclosed malls were replaced by outdoor “power centers” and “lifestyle centers.”

But why? I still don’t know. Is it due to the decline of traditional department stores, which served as anchors for enclosed malls? Are stores like Target and Best Buy simply unsuited to be anchors for enclosed malls? Is it cheaper to build outdoor malls? Was it really because people started to see malls as dangerous, as two of the stories above imply?

And how does this play out in less temperate climes than Southern California? No new enclosed mall has been built near me since (I think) 1987. That’s not too big a deal, since even in winter it’s no chore to shop at an outdoor shopping center. But what about in the suburbs of Chicago? Or Detroit? Or Kansas City? Do people really want to shop at outdoor lifestyle malls when it’s ten below zero? Do enclosed malls make a sudden comeback when the weather is bone-chillingly cold and then die again in the spring? Or what?

Perhaps this is just one of those mysteries: consumer tastes changed in the early 90s, and they changed because that’s what consumer tastes do. Radio Shack used to be pretty popular too.

Still, it’s an interesting mystery. I wish there were a good explanation, not just a few obvious guesses that amount to little more than a shrug of the shoulders. Why did enclosed malls die? Somebody needs to come up with a definitive answer.

POSTSCRIPT: One thing I should note is that although few (no?) new enclosed malls are being built, older malls that have been shut down don’t all turn into the infamous dead malls that have gotten so much attention lately. A fair number of them are renovated and reopened. I’m not sure what, if anything, that means. Just thought I’d mention it.

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Why Did the Enclosed Mall Die?

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The Green Radio Revolution is Here

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The Green Radio Revolution is Here

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Our Message to Secretary Clinton

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Our Message to Secretary Clinton

Posted 15 September 2014 in

National

As Sen. Harkin held his final steak fry with Secretary Clinton headlining, Fuels America ran advertising on a full-page of Sunday’s Des Moines Register and on Iowa radio. The ads thanked Sen. Harkin for his unwavering support of renewable fuels — and updated Secretary Clinton on the overwhelming progress that safer, cleaner renewable fuels have made toward bringing Iowa and America greater energy security and economic prosperity.

Secretary Clinton,

For nearly forty years, the Harkin Steak Fry has been a signature part of Iowa — just like Tom Harkin himself. Senator Harkin’s support has helped make Iowa a world leader in safer, cleaner renewable fuels.

We’re grateful to Senator Harkin for his leadership, and are proud to welcome you to Iowa for the last Harkin Steak Fry. As one great Iowa tradition ends, another is growing.

Since 2007, Iowa has doubled its production of renewable fuels. We now support over seventy three thousand jobs, and produce almost as much fuel for the United States as we import from Iraq. But Big Oil is attacking the Renewable Fuel Standard. They want more Middle East oil and less Iowa ethanol in our gas tanks.

Secretary Clinton, you know firsthand how America’s addiction to Middle East oil threatens our national security.

Iowans need to know if you’ll stand up for the one energy policy that can end that dependence — with Iowa leading the way in the production of safer, cleaner alternatives.

Read the press release.

View the ad.

Listen to the radio version.

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Our Message to Secretary Clinton

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