Michelle Obama has made America’s gardening great and she’s now laying down roots so the gardening tradition will continue even after her family leaves the White House this January. Obama created the garden in 2009, and made sure to expand it twice so it will be hard to plow under by the next family. She’s expanding and improving it so it will endure, along with the American values of gardening to discourage obesity, and get kids outdoors.

The garden started at 1100 square feet to more than double in size at 2800 square feet. It has walkways, wooden tables and benches. A stone reads: “White House Kitchen Garden, established in 2009 by First Lady Michelle Obama with the hopes of growing a healthier nation for our children.”

A new endowment by the seed and home gardening company, W. Atlee Burpee Company, and The Burpee Foundation will keep Obama’s dream alive. While there is no White House law that must keep the garden alive, Burpee’s latest $2.5 million donation will ensure that it is tended to and thrives into the future, as Michelle has intended as a legacy to her husband’s time in Office.

Burpee Seeds, officially W. Atlee Burpee & Co., is a seed company that was founded by Washington Atlee Burpee in 1876.

According to Venelin Dimitrov, a senior manager at Burpee, regardless of who moves into the White House, Michelle’s garden can live on: “The idea is to preserve the legacy left by First Lady Michelle Obama,” he tells Green Prophet.

Dimitrov, a specialist in flowers, helped create the special seed blends that were donated for distribution at U.S. national parks.

Honey bees are on a swift decline, and Monarch butterflies are now considered endangered. By encouraging people to plant flowering plants, we can ensure that pollinator food such as fruits and many vegetables that will continue to feed us into the future.

Dimitrov says that it’s also about historical preservation to have a garden in the White House: “Most of the Founding Fathers were farmers and gardeners and it’s a neat idea to have a garden in the White House similar to President Jefferson’s garden in Monticello” where he grew more than 300 varieties of plants.

“If we had established it 100 years ago, every president could have left their mark. Now it has been started by Mrs. Obama and can be there for every Administration after the Obamas. It would be neat to see, 100 years from now, how the garden evolves,” he says.

The mission is to get people up, moving and gardening; but Dimitrov holds off giving us the list of what the White House Kitchen Garden is growing, saying we shouldn’t try to mimic what’s being grown there, since every region and state has different species and varieties that work best locally.

The point is that if our leaders set an example, the people will follow.

There is diabesity and obesity and “from a gardening point of view we would like to see people broaden their horizons by getting outdoors and growing plants.”

What’s exciting to grow? Dimitrov says that exotic fruits such as figs are becoming popular with Americans, as are jujubes and goji berries. There are lots of new fruit that are grown in tough climates around the world. These work well in the US as they are used to drought and do not require a lot of maintenance.

There are traditional vegetables that are high yield and low maintenance, such as cucumbers and melons. Urban farmers with little space should try their hands at vining plants such as peas, pole beans, and tomatoes.

Do garden Jujitsu

Dimitrov says: “It’s like garden Jujitsu. Use plans to fight the elements to your advantage. Use plants for shade if you are exposed to heat — there are excellent tomato species, such as ‘Heatwave II’.

“Morning Glory flowers provide plenty of shade, helping to cut down on energy bills. Even hyacinth bean; let them climb up, creating beauty to your porch, patio or roof, and an impact on your air conditioning use.”

Dimitrov says Burpee cultivates varieties of seeds that grow well in small spaces to give you great output with little requirements in terms of water and attention.

Want to know what to plant? “Bush bean, ‘Beananza’ in your balcony box, tomato, ‘Patio Princess’, cucumber, ‘Spacemaster’ or small okra, like ‘Baby Bubba’, may look tiny, but they can really bring a lot of food to the table,” Dimitrov adds.

Go to Burpee.com to cultivate your next meal and family project.

The post The White House Garden gets support to endure from Burpee seed company appeared first on Green Prophet.

Grab your Michael Jackson face masks and the decongestant of your choice, close the windows tight and stockpile tissues.  The dry, dusty winds of khamsin are blowing across the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa and right into your sinus canals. That image above is the white tile on my balcony one day after being fully swept.  Imagine what my lungs look like.

‎Khamsin means “fifty” in Arabic, a reference to the duration (in days) of this annual weather event where dust-filled windstorms blow sporadically over springtime months.  Storms sometime descend like hurricanes, leaving behind an agitated atmosphere loaded with a fine grit that coats every surface, blocks the sun, and clogs your ears and nose.  In between windy onslaughts, the air stays choked with  sandy particles. The sky turns dingy and the temperature drops.

In Egypt, khamsin usually arrives in April, with windspeeds up to 90 mph carrying vast quantities of desert dust and sand.  Those winds typically raise temperatures as much as 20°C as they whip across desert border towns. In Amman they seem to have the opposite effect.  The winds have cooled as they reach this city’s heights.  The dusty air blocks the sunlight and temperatures quickly drop.

The particles play painterly tricks at sunrise and sunset, tinting the sky orange and coral with streaks of blood red.  Fierce gusts interfere with construction projects and halt some aviation operations:  I hear President Obama bailed on planned helicopter transport from Israel to Jordan, instead resorting to a motorcade, which in turn made for my most recent Surreal Amman moment.  (Play this song link to get the full picture.)

Early morning Friday – everyone in town asleep – I go for a food shop. In a taxi back home, the driver turns on the radio, blasting lmfao’s I’m Sexy And I Know It.  He tucks into some remarkable car-dancing and runs his hands thru heavily gelled hair.  I’m amazed he can still grip the steering wheel with those goo-covered mitts.

We’re speeding along Zahran Street which is mostly empty except for a long line of soldiers dressed in camouflage with rifles and headsets standing every 20 meters for a solid four kilometers.  They’re apparently waiting for Obama, in the early morning dim and dusty air. And as we speed by – windows open – music pumping – more than a few of them start dancing too.

It’s springtime in Jordan.

The post Springtime in Paris Means Khamsin Sandstorms in Amman appeared first on Green Prophet.

It is true that 2012 may be the last year for President Obama’s bold support for clean energy – because in the wake of the Citizens United decision by the bought-and-paid-for plutocratic new Supreme Court, it is the Koch brothers who get to decide  – but oh boy, did he ever get his licks in!

Last year, the US government gave out more loans for clean energy – than even China, which came second in the rankings.

US clean energy investment rose 33% last year to a staggering $55.9 billion – while in China it increased 1 percent to $47.4 billion, according to a study of the industry’s top 20 lenders by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

(Previous story: Solar Grew 69% From Obama Policy )

The Federal Financing Bank alone completed 13 deals worth $10.1 billion for projects – including the Ivanpah solar thermal plant from BrightSource that has the potential to supply a staggering 13% of California’s electricity – for 33 million Californians.

The Obama administration – quite simply – quadrupled all the clean energy ever put on US public lands. This year, its Department of the Interior fast tracked the biggest ever wind farm in North America, a 2,500 MW project.

But US government leadership in renewable energy is now at an end.

The 30% US cash grant expired on December 31st. It had paid actual government cash in lieu of the 30% tax credit for renewable project development, in the wake of the great recession of 2008, when so many companies were felled. It was miraculously extended for one year, but has now finally ended, a victim of the new fossil-fueled Tea Party congress that the oil-billionaire Koch brothers purchased in 2010 to prevent any competition for dirty energy.

Likewise, the Department of Energy’s clean energy loan guarantee program, which had been finally dusted off and funded in 2009 – after sitting around unused in some attic in congress for years.

The Obama administration Department of Energy offered a guarantee that if – after it got a private loan – a renewable company failed, Uncle Sam would take care of repaying the loan. It jump started lending in the US renewable energy world, reviving confidence at a time when investors were badly shaken.

Since so many of these loan guarantees were for solar power projects with purchase agreements in place with electric utilities, and practically zero risks of wind spills or solar meltdowns, most of the nearly $40 billion that this administration guaranteed, is now uneventfully being paid back.

The administration also boldly committed to high risk/high reward loan guarantees, like the one for a completely novel kind of solar from Solyndra, which received $0.5 billion of the $40 billion in guarantees.

But the company failed as traditional solar prices hit the skids, so their product, a novel thin film folded inside an airtight glass cylinder to keep moisture out, was not competitive in the new environment.

And so, latching onto that failure, the program was felled at the end of September by the Koch congress.

Ormat got the last of the “Solyndra” loan guarantees before the Tea Party shut down the program.

Next, the Koch brothers get to pick their president to match – but it was great while it lasted.

Related stories:

Despite Solyndra Bankruptcy, Solar Grew 69% From Obama Policy
BrightSource Offers World’s Biggest Solar Storage Deal
Luz Rises Again – as BrightSource – in California

The post US Leads World in Clean Energy Investment Under Obama appeared first on Green Prophet.

Saudi Arabia has set a staggering national goal to have 20 GW (20,000MW) of solar generation installed over the next twenty years, according to Saudi officials speaking to CSP Today. Although there have been increasing noises from the reticent Kingdom in recent years about adding more renewable power, this is the first mention of hard numbers. These are huge. This would mean installing an average of 1 GW (1,000MW) of solar for each of the next twenty years.

This would make the Kingdom a bigger market than that of the current world leader, Germany.

With an averaged value of solar insolation in Medina in June that equals 7.83 kWh per sq meter per day Saudi Arabian is much more suited to solar than Germany.  The deserts of Saudi Arabia are comparable with those in Southern California that are now sprouting utility-scale solar plants, thanks to funding subsidies in the Obama administration Recovery Act in the US that have escaped cuts with the new congress.

‘Solar is an exciting time in MENA, we are where the oil industry used to be in the 1940’s and 50’s’ said Vahid Fouthi, Director of North Africa & Middle East at BP Solar. He should know. Although the oil industry is raking in huge profits now, the future of oil production in Saudi Arabia is extremely uncertain.

Many of the oil-producing countries are starting to test out solar, even in some cases, marrying solar with oil production itself, swapping solar for the gas used to extract the last drops of dying oil fields. (See Successful Ormat Waste Heat Recovery Test Could Green Dying Oil Fields) Saudi Arabia must be becoming confident of the results, that it is making such a strong statement.

The announcement is sure to drive new visitors to MENASOL 2011,  which is to be held on May 4th and 5th in Casablanca. A two-day conference during the event has been added “to provide senior level executives with critical market intelligence and valuable contacts that will assist businesses to successfully finance develop and build solar projects in MENA to exploit regional and European opportunities.”

Read more on solar power:
Has Saudi Arabia Seen The Renewable Energy Light?
Could Saudi Arabia Become the Saudi Arabia of Solar?
Saudi Arabia to Replace Oil with Sun Power for Desalination Plants

Image of Arabian sun from Shutterstock

The post Look Out Germany! Saudi Arabia to Overtake You as Solar World Leader appeared first on Green Prophet.

According to Wikileaks of private communications within the state department, the administration went right to the source of opposition to climate negotiations. The Saudis.

The memos show that Saudi Arabia was privately pushed hard by the US to accept the Copenhagen Accord, and that climate change was a front burner issue for the Obama administration.

“Saudi officials are very concerned that a climate change treaty would significantly reduce their income just as they face significant costs to diversify their economy,” the US ambassador James Smith wrote, briefing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. However, he alluded to a possible negotiating tactic in the memo. “The King is particularly sensitive to avoid Saudi Arabia being singled out as the bad actor, particularly on environmental issues,” he wrote.

Analysts said the Saudi memos, in particular, show the lengths the Obama administration went to in order to sway a fierce opponent of international climate action.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer, has a long blocked climate talks momentum at the international level, and among key allies like the US. US climate change policy has been effectively neutered by the political polarization created by Fox News and the US Chamber of Commerce, both of which are key advocates for the benefit of the oil industry.

Both use the US Republican party as a proxy, and demand a position against climate legislation as a condition of funding. Saudi Arabia invested in both organizations.

After the Copenhagen summit, there was a January 31 deadline for nations to be “associated with” the accord, by pledging the amounts that they could agree to cut.

“A/S Feltman noted the importance that the President places on climate change, and the Copenhagen Accord,” Smith wrote. “Given that Minister of Petroleum Al-Naimi was involved in crafting the final agreement, A/S Feltman noted the United States is counting on Saudi Arabia to associate itself with the accord by January 31.”

The vast majority,  138 nations, representing 87% of global emissions submitted pledges. Another 8 nations, mostly very minimal contributors: with well under 10% of emissions, refused to be associated with the Copenhagen Accord. Saudi Arabia is one of the few nations that joined neither group.

:: ClimateWire via Scientific American

More on Copenhagen and Saudi Arabia:
Finding the Arab Delegates at Copenhagen
The Middle Eastern View of Copenhagen
The World’s Poorest Protest Saudi Arabia’s Obstructionist Role in Copenhagen

The post Obama Tried to Get Saudis on Board at Copenhagen, Wikileaks Reveals appeared first on Green Prophet.