Last month we announced that we reduced our carbon emissions by switching our electricity over to 90% wind power. Today, Ideum has taken the final steps and have become completely carbon neutral.

The process was relatively simple and inexpensive. As I mentioned in the last post, switching over to wind power for our electricity costs us an additional $10 a month, and it required a phone call to our electricity provider. To figure out our complete carbon footprint we needed to look at other activities and services that generate carbon dioxide. Here’s what we found and how we calculated our carbon dioxide emissions.

• Electricity (the remaining 10% from fossil fuels): 1,452 lbs of carbon. (Calculated from the Voluntary Reporting of Greenhouse Gases Program)
• Travel to work: 12,900 lbs of carbon. 5 employees 70 miles total each day, 240 working days, 16,590 miles (Calculated from An Inconvenient Truth > Carbon Calculator)
• Air Flights: 14,500 lbs of carbon. 16 medium, 5 long, and 2 extended flights (Calculated from An Inconvenient Truth > Carbon Calculator)
• Natural Gas: 3,200 lbs of carbon (Calculated from the Carbon Footprint, had to convert English pounds to US dollars)

The total amount of carbon that we needed to off-set was 32,052 pounds. We planted 4 trees around the studio which reduced the number by 52 (13lbs each, calculated from figures found on the Colorado Trees website) leaving us with 32,000 lbs of carbon.

Today we purchased, 16 one-Ton “EarthCooler” Blocks from NativeEnergy, a Native American majority-owned company which helps build “Native American, farmer-owned, and charitable purpose renewable energy projects that create social, economic, and environmental benefits.” NativeEnergy helped make Syriana the first major motion picture to be “climate neutral.”

The cost to off-set the carbon we produce was $12 per ton for a total of $192.00 for our 16 tons of carbon dioxide. Our total cost per-year to be carbon-neutral is about $320 a year, less than $1 day to do our part to reduce global warming.

Update: Check out of new page on becoming climate neutral.

Here’s some more photographs from our trip to Chaco Culture National Historical Park on the Summer Solstice. As I mentioned in the previous post the dancers are Hopi and are from Second Mesa, Arizona.

Deer dancer makes a call.

Three girls with feathers.

The youngest dancer.

A hunter dancer.

The entire group in the Plaza of the great house, Pueblo Bonito.

It was an amazing afternoon at Chaco Culture National Historical Park. We saw two performances of Hopi dancers and took quite a few photographs.

We talked with the two leaders of the group, Bertram Tsavadawa and Ruben Saufkie. They are from Second Mesa, one of a number Hopi Villages in eastern Arizona.

Ruben told us about the importance and symbolism of the dances and their impression of Chaco Canyon, a place that they (and other Puebloan people) consider an ancestral homeland.

He also told us about their water crisis and a recent event in which he and Bert participated in. They ran from “Hopi” to Mexico City to raise awareness about the issue.

It was great to spend an afternoon watching the group dance. Here’s a few photographs, we hope to post more tomorrow.

Ruben Saufkie

Dancers smile.

Colorful feathers.

A young eagle dancer.

An even younger eagle dancer.

We are heading out tomorrow to Chaco Culture National Historical Park to photograph Hopi dancers performing in celebration of the summer solstice. The park which was a major center of ancestral Puebloan culture, is located in the northwest corner of the state.

Back in 2004, I took a number of photographs of another group of dancers on the solstice, the Tewa Dancers from the North for the Traditions of the Sun project. Here’s a few of the shots from that trip.

Valerie Martinez performs the Deer Dance. The park used this photo for its graphic display at the Pueblo Bonito overlook.

Curt Garcia performs the Deer Dance.

A close up of Curt Garcia.

Unfortunately we will miss the sunrise ceremony, but we will be there in time to see two afternoon performances in the great house of Pueblo Bonito. While myself and Kemper will be at Chaco taking photos, Zeke will be a world away at the Ruby on Rails Conference in Chicago. It’s tough to think of two events that could be more different.

We’ll be posting photographs from the solstice later in the week. Perhaps Zeke will fill us in about the conference next week.

Just quick note that the “AutoAggregator” is now operational on Museumblogs.org. This allows us to automatically important short summaries of postings from many of the sites in the directory. There are now 130 postings on the site. Check it out.

Update (6-12-06): We now have 200 posts, but we’re still not bringing in all of the rss feeds. It is complicated, as we explain here.

The museum blogosphere continues to grow, it seems I hear about a new museum blog every week. Climate Change and the Bering Sea is written by Karen de Seve from Liberty Science Center who’s gathering footage for a upcoming exhibition. At the other end of the Earth, the Natural History Museum has an Antarctic conservation blog which has been posting since late summer (February 2006).

Museum Blogging provides “news and insights into the world of museums.” They’re off to a good start and have been blogging since late April. This blog is not to be confused with Museumblogs, our own effort at creating a directory of museum blogs. At the moment, we’re working on a way to automate RSS feeds from multiple blogs. More about that soon.

In other blogs…

The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis shares some Development(al) Thoughts. While the Curator’s Egg talks titles, in the post Title fight the curator asks…

I wonder occasionally how much difference the title makes. Some I have seen are prosaic (â€?Gold of the Pharaohsâ€? – an exhibition of, well, the gold of, errm, some pharaohs) was a smash hit in Edinburgh in 1988. A touring exhibition, I believe. A subsequent blockbuster attempt in 1990, on the Incas iirc, fared less well. I wonder if the title (â€?Sweat of the Sunâ€?) had anything to do with it?**

Assembly tells us about Indigenous Australian Artists in Paris, Art swallows building in Paris. While in Andy Warh-blog we learn that Andy went to meet Bianca to interview Ungaro. “He was wearing a white suit.” High fashion, especially back on May 31, 1977.

Terrain, Touch Tand Symbolic Tables are explored at The Walker’s New Media Initiatives blog. Musematic looks at Widgets from the Rijksmuseum and American Museum of Natural History. ArtLook follows up, adds on and tells us to Get a Widget. (If you frequent the Ideum blog you probably know about our efforts with various widgets.)

RedShift Now’s Field Diaries take visitors to Zambia, the North Pole, and elsewhere. While Science Buzz fills in its readers on the devastation caused by the recent Indonesian Earthquake. (If you want to help you can learn more and make a donation at Medecins Sans Frontieres Doctors with Borders.)

If you’re looking for past round ups here they are: 4 – 3 – 2 – 1.