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Excerpt from Do One Green Thing

Pest-Free, Locally

by Mindy Pennybacker | Nov 7, 2012

Excerpt from Do One Green Thing / Pesticides contaminate the soil and water, spread in the air, and kill birds, fish, amphibians and beneficial insects such as honeybees. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizers oversturate the soil and run off into waterways, causing increased proliferation of algae, which results in oxygen depletion, fish kills and oceanic dead zones.

Organic farmers are not permitted to use genetically engeneered seeds. Genetically engineered crops–corn, soy, cotton and canola–threaten seed diversity, because their pollen has been found to drift, spreading these genes to other plants. The damage is the dilution of diversity of crops, which are humankind’s seed banks against famine. Buying locally grown produce such as breadfruit, lilikoi, mangoes and apple bananas not only supports the local farmers who grow them, doing so ensures that you’re buying fruit that lacks the harmful pesticides proliferating in our global agriculture.

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This week

Derelict Downtown

For as long as we can remember, Chinatown has been notorious for drugs, homelessness and filthy streets. Some claim nothing has changed–and that it never will.

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Hoopili miss

The fate of some 1,525 acres of land at Hoopili in ‘Ewa may have been decided last Wednesday in Hawaii’s First Circuit Court. The decision might have gone differently, but the appellant attorneys’ strategy seemed to collapse as Judge Rhonda Nishimura picked it apart based on technical errors.

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Last Thursday, May 9, the Caldwell administration revealed its action plan for solving Honolulu’s homeless problem. But at the City Council’s budget meeting the same day, Budget chair Ann Kobayashi wanted to know where the money for “Housing First” (see Cover Story, pg.

Do it Wright

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Street Disconnect

The Honolulu City Council held a special Committee on Transportation meeting on Tuesday, May 7, to go over its Complete Streets initiative with input from the department directors of Design and Construction (DDC), Planning and Permitting (DPP) and Transportation Services (DTS). At prior meetings, including the Moiliili workshop, community members pressed the idea of combining Complete Streets with Caldwell’s repaving projects, which Dan Burden of the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute and some councilmembers have said makes sense.

Stopping Growth

Not much to agree with my friend Doc Berry (“Limits of Growth,” April 17). None of the scenarios he posits will ever materialize.

Get it together

In your Diary of May 8 (“End of the 27th)” you reported on SB 1214, passed by the Legislature. In their nimble way, the Legislature tacked the wheel boot prohibition on a bill that was intended to abolish the Commission on Transportation.

Look both ways

On Friday, May 3, at 3:45 p.m., I was driving town bound through the Wilson tunnel on the Likelike. I was parallel to another car, and there were several other cars following closely behind me.

Thank you!

Congratulations Honolulu Weekly on the recent Pai award for investigative reporting (“Boss GMO,” Jan. 4, 2012).

Truth be told

When the biofuel guys say that costs are “confidential” (“Big-foot Biofuel,” May 8), I reply that since I am the one who is going to end up paying the cost, I have a right to know. Frankly, when everybody tries to hide the costs, I smell rat …

Nature’s beauty

The Foster Botanical Garden never ceases to inspire for an urban setting it is like a step back in time (“See the Flora,” May 8). If Koko Crater Botanical Garden contains the world’s largest plumeria collection as suggested, it may be thanks in part to the Prussian born Dr.