In celebration of Oliver’s first birthday (if you are new to greenerMiami, you’ve got to know that he was named through a contest on this site!), we scheduled a shoot with Mandy & Me in Sarasota, and I took my photos during this time, as well.

My dream is to have Mandy & Me take photos of my family every chance I get! The photos are incredible. As I was wandering around their site, I even found “the backstage”…something special they do for weddings. How fun!

These are just a small selection of the photos that Mandy took of me and my family. And for those of you that have followed Oliver since before he was born, there’s a shot of him on his 1st birthday. Enjoy!

More photos can be seen on the About Rebecca Carter page and on RebeccaCarter.net.

Turns out, my experience was nothing compared to what local resident Alex recently experienced:

Hi Rebecca, I normally do most of my produce shopping at the farmer’s market but I recently saw a segment on TV about the Publix in Dadeland having the largest organic section, so I headed over there today and got some great things.

Everything was wonderful until my mom and I were at the register and I told the bag boy that I would be using my own bags and he politely said okay and went onto another line. Then a guy who was next to us goes to the cashier, "Why do you let these kind of people steal the jobs from the bags boys, that’s what they’re here for!!!!" And the cashier agreed and said, "I know right, you offer them help but they think they’re too good."

Well, my mom pretty much exploded with anger and explained why we do what we do and the cashier rudely replied, "Psst, yeah whatever." Everyone in the line could see what was going on and I am sure they were completely discouraged from ever bringing their own bags in fear of being humiliated by the Publix employees and customers.

How does one react to being treated like a smaller person when you’re actually making a difference? I’m scared to even go back into that Publix.

Best Regards, Alex

I have to admit that I have some days that I am commended for bringing my own bags to Publix by my cashier & bagger. Most of the time, however, it is an extremely stressful experience. What’s missing is a system for bringing your own bags – a way to let the cashier & bagger know that you don’t want to use disposable bags. And some training on the employee side to understand that this is an important issue to some customers.

The fact is, however, that Publix and other grocery stores will have no reason to do any of this until a decent percentage of their customers actually bring their own bags. Right now, I’m told by a cashier at my local Publix, it is me and one other lady. In order to affect the change, we need more people to bring their own bags! (Visit reusablebags.com for a wide variety of bags for this purpose.)

We contacted Publix regarding this matter. Here’s what they said:

"Publix customers are encouraged to discuss any opportunities with their store manager or by contacting the Publix Consumer Relations Department. For Consumer Relations, the phone number is 1-800-242-1227." You can also contact them online. Make sure to have your store name or number available when you do so.

Alex recently wrote us back after another trip to the same Publix.

I actually went to the same Publix yesterday and they now have a ton of grocery canvas bags where you check out. (I didn’t see those last time.) The bag boy was totally nice when I said I’d be using my own bag. Whatever didn’t fit in one bag he put in a paper bag for me. I had a much more delightful experience this time.

Have you brought your own bags to the grocery? How did it go?

First of all, to see Robert F. Kennedy, Jr speak in person was incredible. What an amazing speaker. You may see his entire speech here. I was especially intrigued by his discussion on the level of mercury in our bodies, and how it can be tested. Just a week or so later, I found that Ted Danson is discussing the same issue through his non-profit, Oceana.

Want to know what your mercury levels are? RFK Jr.’s org Waterkeeper & GreenPeace have teamed up to offer you this service. For $25 you can order a mercury testing kit. You send them some samples of your hair, and in a few weeks, they’ll send you back your results.

I was disappointed to find out, however, that Bobby made a similar speech two years ago to the Sierra Club. I guess I thought I was experiencing something extremely unique. It may be naive on my part – as someone like Robert F Kennedy, Jr. must make speeches daily across the country and the world.

The Governator also was an interesting listen. And though I stopped recording just before he said "Let’s say Hasta La Vista Baby to GreenHouse Gases," I did catch some interesting moments of his speech, which can be seen in entirety here.

I do hope that we can get to the point soon where we can get beyond the basics of trying to convince everyone that climate change exists, and what it is, and move on to more solutions & ideas. General themes that were discussed today:

ECONOMY, ECONOMY, ECONOMY

I should have counted how many times I heard the term "The Great State of Florida" today. Not that I don’t agree. Crist pointed out that Florida’s economy is directly affected by the environment. Tourism is our #1 industry and what brings people here time and time again has everything to do with our environment.

It was made clear that Florida has the potential to be the leading producer of ethanol – and it seems like it’s probably one of the new goals of the state. (Ahem, sorry, Great State.)

ENERGY EFFICIENCY

Alternative energies are great, but first and foremost we should be looking at efficiency – not wasting the energy we use!

GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS

We’re gonna reduce ‘em, baby.

A COAL PLANT NEXT TO THE EVERGLADES? WHO’S IDEA WAS THAT?

It was mentioned more than once today that the Florida Public Service Commission recently voted down an FPL request for 2 new coal power plants in Glades County. Thank you Florida PSC!

What to expect tomorrow:

1) Some pretty cool speeches. Watch them LIVE or later in the archives.

• Theodore Roosevelt IV – 9:00 a.m. Friday, July 13
• Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures – 9:30 a.m. Friday, July 13
• California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger – 12:00 p.m. Friday, July 13

2) Governor Charlie Crist will sign into action some incredible policies. Supposed to be a secret surprise until tomorrow, the press did their research and found out ahead of schedule. From the Miami Herald article:

Florida will adopt California’s car-pollution standards — the toughest in the nation — and become the first state in the Southeast to enact targets for reducing greenhouse gases, under executive orders Gov. Charlie Crist plans to sign Friday in Miami.

Drafts of the orders released Tuesday would require the state secretary of environmental protection to immediately adopt rules to limit pollution-causing emissions for cars, diesel engines and electric companies. The orders also impose tough new energy conservation goals for state agencies, demand better fuel efficiency from state-owned vehicles and require state cars to “use ethanol and biodiesel fuels when locally available.”

But the most optimistic step in Crist’s green agenda is the requirement to lower the amount of carbon dioxide in the air to 1990 levels by 2025, and 80 percent lower by 2050, in spite of what is expected to be a near doubling of the state’s population.

Here’s what the governor had to say about the basic concept and the "leak":

Well, to those of us who have been pushing for what seems like eternity for Florida to take action on global warming, the last couple months have been flat-out surreal.  First we have our newly elected Governor, in his first State of the State address, actually declare that climate change is not only real (duh) but that it is “one of the most important issues that we will face this century.”

That’s a real quote.  From the Governor of Florida no less.  I’m not kidding – look it up yourself if you like.  You could have knocked me over with a feather.

Now top that with not one, not two, but three conferences either hosted or attended by Florida Cabinet members over this summer on the very issue of Climate Change.  It’s like someone flipped a switch (or made a really popular movie out of a slide show) and now everyone wants to be green.  Kermit’s day has finally arrived!

Anyway, the point of this post is really to let you know that the big show – a star studded event that so far includes union pariah, turned greenest governor ever, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the environmental super-dude Robert F. Kennedy Junior, and Theodore Roosevelt IV – descendant of The Teddy himself and the Chair of the Pew Center for Global Climate Change – will be hosted in the “canary in the coal mine” for climate change.  Yep, Miami. Tomorrow. Check it out yourself at myfloridaclimate.com.

The agenda page of the website just published and includes a pretty good compilation of experts in various fields.  Unfortunately not too many from Florida.  The State may be slow to realize the importance of this problem (better late than never at least), but we have some great people with lots of experience in academic circles and local government.  Hopefully we’ll hear a bit of that in the late Thursday session.

Although the cynic in me wants to make this conference no more than a tour of the next Atlantis, I’m truly hopeful that we can focus this event (and the inevitable international media spotlight) to finally get our Country on track and join the rest of the world in trying to come up with a real plan.  And quick.

A conference registration fee of $85 entitles registrants to attend all daily sessions as well as luncheons. The fee is $25 for students. A separate fee of $45 covers a keynote dinner on the evening of March former Florida Governor Bob Martinez will be the keynote speaker.

Check out the full agenda, then visit the conference website or register directly.

Photo Credit: Cayobo’s Flickr

You have an option of one of two courses, a short 1-day course this Friday, December 1 from 10 am – 4 pm, or a comprehensive 2-day course this weekend, Dec 2-3 (also from 10 am – 4 pm).

Here’s what she told me about the courses:

Learn to make your own high-quality biodiesel fuel from waste restaurant
fryer oil, and build the equipment to do so at home.

In the two-day weekend class, we’ll cover the basic process, safety, the
chemistry of quality control, quality testing, fixing emulsions made in
washing, dealing with bad quality/high free fatty acid oil, dewatering
oil and biodiesel, ethanol biodiesel, disposing of wash water and
glycerine, and techniques to improve your process (glycerine remix
prewash, two-stage production). If you have already experimented with
making biodiesel, we’ll cover a lot of troubleshooting and
problem-repairing techniques.

The Friday class is a shorter version of the two-day class and will
include less hands-on time and may skip a few the advanced topics, for
those who can’t attend a weekend class.

At the very end of the two-day class, we’ll also build some processors
similar to  the Appleseed processor.

Sign up for the classes here: 1 day $60 (Friday, Dec 1), 2 days $120 (Saturday-Sunday, Dec 2-3). They are located in Ft. Lauderdale  right off of I-95 on Stirling Rd. When you register you will receive an email with the exact location, suggested reading materials, and even what to wear.

Still not sure? Read what some past class participants have to say. You can see more about Girl Mark and Biodiesel at GirlMark.com and BiodieselCommunity.org.

I had the pleasure of seeing it last week at a special WLRN event. It has beautiful footage, but also tells a very important story. In this one-hour special, you’ll see underwater footage of healthy reefs, and suffering reefs. You’ll get to see what local organizations and individuals are doing to improve the situation.

Don’t miss Saving Our Reefs tonight at 8pm. But, if you do, don’t worry, you can catch it again on Thurs. Nov 16 @ 10pm, Fri. Nov 17 @ 11pm, Mon. Nov  20 at 9pm and Sun. Nov 26 at 2pm. While this program will only be shown locally right now, it is planned to have a national release in January.