The Virginian-Pilot
©
VIRGINIA BEACH
The organic wine is uncorked, the preservative-free beer on ice. Now, the record book awaits.
Restaurant owners and environmentalists in four states that touch the Chesapeake Bay, from Virginia to Pennsylvania, will be gathering after work tonight to celebrate Earth Day over a cold beverage and hopefully set a world record: Most people assembled for Green Drinks.
The current record is 1,800 people, established in February 2008 at a Green Drinks event in Melbourne, Australia.
Green Drinks is the name of a global social club for environmentalists, a monthly happy hour first organized in London in 1989 by a group of frustrated designers and eco-professionals.
At last count, there were Green Drinks chapters in more than 430 cities across the globe, including Virginia Beach, Hampton and Williamsburg.
Participants - including academics, activists, yoga instructors, students, government officials, engineers or anyone curious about the environment - crowd into a restaurant or pub near them and exchange ideas, chat, network, listen to expert speakers and, of course, sip a cocktail.
Laura Wood Habr, who owns Croc's, a restaurant in Virginia Beach, spent the past several months organizing the mid-Atlantic gathering tonight. The theme: Earth Day and the Chesapeake Bay.
"Have you ever heard of Earth Day and a happy hour? I mean, it made perfect sense," Habr said Tuesday with a chuckle as she was preparing her restaurant on 19th Street for "a couple hundred people, I'm guessing."
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, with offices in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, got involved and helped spread the word, calling the idea "unique" and "fun."
The foundation will send a speaker to Croc's, as well as to other watering holes along the coast, and encourage attendees to send letters to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency urging a speedier cleanup of the Bay.
Habr said the governor of Virginia has been invited to a Green Drinks event in Richmond, Maryland's governor to one in Annapolis, and President Barack Obama to a happy hour in Washington.
In all, 20 restaurants will be hosting Green Drinks events across the mid-Atlantic. If each venue draws 100 people, "we've got it made." Habr said. "We've got the record and then some."
In Hampton, the Peninsula Green Drinks chapter will be holding its third gathering.
"The events have much more energy than traditional networking events," said Randy Gilliland, a Hampton city councilman who helped organize the chapter earlier this year. "While all are interested and passionate about green/environmental issues, there is no group think."
Sarah McGuire, who coordinates the Williamsburg chapter and works at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, expects a good crowd tonight. "It's a chance to find a kayaking buddy or someone who knows about a conference or professional development coming up," she said. "You should stop by!"
Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com
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EvanJ, how in the world do you arrive
at the conclusion that environmentalists are anti-capitalist?
Capitalism is the use of capital investment for business ventures in the expectation of making a profit. Requiring those businesses to be responsible in the use of natural resources and minimizing detrimental effects on the environment is certainly not a radical idea.
As a matter of fact, it is part of a better business model, by far.
Fishery depletion is a good example of business ignoring long term investment return for short term profit at the expense of a sustainable food supply.
What is the downside of that? Knee jerk reactions of anything that causes business to act responsibly is counter-productive.
When the fisheries are gone, it matters not if you are a capitalist, socialist, communist or fascist. No more tuna for you.
enuff
I am so sick of the current fad of "green" this and green that. Who cares about this prolific lie helped along by the likes of that money-grubbing fame grabbing hypocrite Al Gore. I suggest all you greenies (f.k.a. tree-huggers) go ot this link and get a reality check.
http://www.abd.org.uk/green_myths.htm
There's some proof
Well, that little rhetoric spew is yet more proof these alleged "environmentalist" are actually anti-capitalist. They use the identical rhetoric that extreme socialists have been using through all the 20th century. The word "worker" has just changed to "the planet". How many times does socialism have to fail, usually with massive amounts of human misery, until people drop the concept?
to those who denigrate the environmental movement tactics
This celebratory observance was no more ridiculous than people in 3 pointed hats and carrying tea bags for an anti-tax demonstration.
As a political movement, the lobbying power of environmentalists is pretty small. In 2008 all the environmental groups combined spent about $16M on lobbying, whereas the energy sector alone, which is oil, mining, nuclear, etc., spent about $388M.
If you want to find true agendas, just "follow the money" and it all leads to fossil fuel dominance, deforestation in the third world, opposition to industrial pollution controls, fishery destruction and uncontrolled development because they provide short term profits, even in the face of almost certain future destruction and loss. The cost is then borne by the citizens, not the corporations who renege on their responsibilities and should factor in stewardship as the cost of doing good business. Those instances where stewardship is present is most often when regulatory muscle is applied.
USV...
Way ahead of you! I am going to help the Earth so very much today! I just hope "The Man" doesn't arrest me for "helping".
What's the point in that
Alcohol and water are heavily used chemicals. Are they just giving you an empty bottle and calling it beer?
Sounds Tasty!
Great news, I'll head on down for one. What would I do without Hampton Roads?
Celebration!
To celebrate the honor of Earth day, we should all go poop in the woods. Why continue to overburden our evil, imperialist, dirty sewage systems when we can return fertilization to the earth!? It's just the right thing to do. Environmentalists worldwide - go poop in the woods today! Do it for the EARTH!
Confession of a recovering Enviro-Wacko
In 1969, I organized the very first Earth Day observance at Nichols University in Thibodaux, LA. Yes, I was an environmental activist.
That summer, I volunteered for the Ecology Center of New Orleans. With three years in a Marine Biology curriculum, I was put in charge of investigating the Corps of Engineers Hurricane Protection Plan for New Orleans. Why entrust such an undertaking to someone with so short a resume? Because I was the most qualified person at ECNO. Everyone else was either a pre-law or Poly-sci grad students. There were no qualified 'scientists' there and it is not much better now. I resigned from ECNO when, after I researched the Hurricane Protection plan and found it worth the risks, the ECNO board voted to join a coalition of other groups called the Oyster Shell Alliance which successfully opposed the plan, with eventually catastrophic results.
I still think of myself as an environmentalist, but the ECO movement is a political entity, not a scientific one, even today.