Simple Things

I haven't been writing much on this blog lately -- I find that it's practically all I can do to keep up my work blog *and* try to live eco-aware. But today I thought I'd just drop a few lines about some of the simple things you can do to help improve the environment and your lifestyle.

1: Pick it up.
As I walk around my neighbourhood (and other places), I see so much trash on the ground--a bag, a bottle cap, a soda can, a flip-flop. Litter, we usually call it, and some places actually have hefty fines for litterers. Litter fills the gutters, sloshes against the banks of rivers, contaminates the soil, and definitely helps wreck the ecosystem. So, even if you didn't toss it, pick it up. Take a bag with you when you walk and do a little something extra for your locality. I remember when I was a kid, and my family would spend family time together cleaning up trash out of a nearby field. It was good.

2: Lots of magazines? Visit the library.
I don't know about you, but I get way too much junk mail, including catalogs and magazines. Granted, often I enjoy the magazines and some of them I have even subscribed to. But do I really need all that paper in my mailbox, even if I'm going to recycle it? Nope. My solution? The library. My local library subscribes to over 200 magazines, and wow, that's a lot. Not all libraries have so many, but chances are, if you're a big magazine subscriber, they probably have at least one you're interested in. Read it at the library. If there's an article you *have* to have, make a copy and file it at home. One or two fewer magazines a month is a nice step to diminishing your footprint.

3: Reuse that water.
We use lots of water when we prepare food -- boiling pasta, steaming veggies, rinsing lettuce. Don't just dump that leftover water down the drain -- put it to good use. Instead of using fresh tapwater to water your indoor plants or your garden, collect that already used water and put it to a second use. Your plants might even thank you for it!

And there you have it--3 small and simple things you can do to make this world a healthier and happier place.

summer vacation hotspot: garbage island.

ok so garbage island may not bequite the summer vacation hotspot of 2008 for clubmed but it's certainly something for the eyes to behold.

what i'm talking of is a mass of questionable size--reports claim it ranges from twice the size of texas to larger than the continental united states and still growing--floating along in the pacific ocean. according to thomas morton, "garbage island" is in such a remote spot it takes a week to get there. (i don't know how much vacation time you've got but that kind of travel will put me in the red.)

who's thomas morton, you ask? my question exactly. he's important enough or is at least participating in an adventure interesting enough for cnn to notice him. of what i could find out he's an associate editor for vice magazine. seems before he came to know of garbage island he wrote about all kinds of stuff for the magazine. (i'm still investigating how he got caught up in that interest.)

read thomas morton's article oh, this is great that explains a little about it and if you're wanting more, watch what's now a 12-part series on the garbage community. eric lanford interviewed him about the mass on cnn.


news on garbage island isn't anything we didn't already know about. greenpeace, an obvious example, has spoken out about it on several occasions, including this one called the trash vortex in an effort to educate people. treehugger, a personal favourite, wrote the great pacific garbage patch: out of sight, out of mind, in february of this year. other not-so-environmentally-geared sites like npr and wikipedia have collected information to share with their followers also. london's independent put this story out in february of this year about the trash pile the world's rubbish dump: a garbage tip that stretches from hawaii to japan. this is also not the first time i've written about the trash issue. see my stories called caring for our oceans and happy whale.

while there's definitely been a surge in this topic, fact is, this is not a new discovery. it seems the first account came from a sailor named charles moore. moore founded algalita marine research foundation. but the discoveries scientists are finding is what's alarming. it's disgusting to think about the feeding cycle that occurs in the ocean with all the animals feeding off the bits of plastic circling in the trash vortex thinking it's plankton and then we eat the animal and then the trash ends up in our bodies. short story: we're eating our own refuse. that's gross. but this is scary: the impact of all the garbage can have lasting damage to our health including the reproductive systems of women resulting in miscarriages time and again, breast cancer, low sperm count, prostate cancer, and other ailments.

this is not something to be taken lightly. this garbage pile isn't just destroying the natural habit of flipper and shamu--it's affecting each one of us.

what can you do? unfortunately, the situation is so impossible that it will take a major recall of how our society thinks and operates. to quote a favourite tommy lee jones line from men in black: a person is smart; people are dumb panicky dangerous animals. that may not totally play to point but here's how i apply it: as one person we can make an effort to change the amount of plastic we use in our daily life--we're individually responsible for ourselves and our footprint. as a whole society...well, when was the last time you can think of society today agreed on one thing? aside from the fact we live in a democracy, most people don't take too well when they're told what to do or how to act. most folks like to act in a way that flatter them into thinking they're the ones that came up with the idea.

now you see my point?

but don't get me wrong. there is much you can do--separate your trash appropriately; when you see litter, pick it up and throw it out (i've started keeping antibacterial gel in my car which comes in handy for times like this.); cut up those plastic rings that hold your 6-pack of beer or soda together (a personal favourite).

by doing your part you'll be recognized as an example and others will follow. it just might take them a little longer.

note: pictured above is a laysan albatross filled to the brim with bottle caps and other plastic objects. likely the bird mistook the plastic pieces for food. the other is of a sea turtle and his unfortunate run-in with a plastic ring.

do your part: lights out san francisco.

if you live in the san francisco area, join me and the rest of the city in a citywide act toward environmental awareness and energy conservation.

lights out san francisco estimates that turning your nonessential household light off for one hour on a regular saturday night from 8.00-9.00p--peak times for lights to be left on--we can save about 15 percent of the average amount of energy that would have been spent.

that's just for one hour. imagine what could happen if we were more aware of lighting needs and turned them off when they weren't being used.

in that one hour change your lightbulb(s) to compact fluorescent lightbulbs (cfl).

blog action day.

today is blog action day.

bloggers everywhere are making their voices heard (or the sound of clicking keyboard strokes) on the hot topic of our day--the environment.

we're blogging as a critical mass to raise the awareness and urgency of the situation. if we all participate, we can make a difference.

so what are you doing to lessen your carbon footprint? what are you doing to save your planet? what are you doing to do your part in the fight of our lives--saving our mother earth? what's your action plan?

take a stand. be an activist.

start refusing plastic bags at the grocery store.

limit your use of paper and plastic products.

turn the lights off when nobody's home.

recycle.

compost.

leave your car parked--take public transportation.

all it takes is one person. that person is you.



note: this blog is dedicated 100% to the overwhelming issue of global warming. browse through the other entries for tips on how you can lessen your carbon footprint with simple and easy measures.

penguins: suited up for disaster.

it's just really sad. so many creatures are affected negatively by global warming. while the effects are difficult still to see on the mainland they're evidencing themselves clearly in places like antarctica and the arctic.

penguins are running out of space to mate. such a wonderful creature.

don't be silly and think because they're so far away and in an environment very foreign to most of us that our efforts can't help them.

everything we/you can do from changing our lightbulbs to boycotting the plastic bag will have far-reaching effects.

maybe seeing the danger this adorable creature is in will encourage you to try just a little bit harder to minimize your carbon footprint. i hope it will. it wells my eyes with tears.

"do as i say, not as i do."

today is madonna's 49th birthday. happy freakin' birthday.

for the most part, i like madonna.

but then i learned how un-green she is and it all changed. she's truly a material girl--seeming more focused on investments financially than following the lead of her celebrity associates and large money donors to preserve and save our earth.

she sang at the live earth show earlier this summer and spoke as if she truly believed in the cause. maybe she does. but her actions suggest otherwise: she has invested about $2.7 million in companies that damage our environment instead of save or preserve it. (article from fox news below.)

she and jennifer aniston should join forces. together they could be trailblazers in destroying any environmental resources we have left.

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Friday, July 06, 2007

By Roger Friedman

'Green' Means Money, Not Environmentalism to Madonna

Madonna had better clean up her business before she starts cleaning up the world.

The Material Mom is the headliner at tomorrow night's Live Earth show from London's Wembley Stadium. But guess what? For her, the word green means money, not the environment.

Madonna, who seems to be on top of all her many business endeavors, has actually invested about $2.7 million dollars in companies that are creating the destruction that Live Earth is trying to raise awareness about. She has invested in several companies named as the biggest corporate polluters in the world.

It's a cruel irony that Madonna's Ray of Light Foundation owns blocks of shares in companies that folks like Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio would like to see punished and rehabilitated for their attitudes toward global warming, climate control and basic pollution.

The companies include Alcoa, Ingersoll Rand, Weyerhaeuser, and several others associated with oil exploration, digging, and refining including British Petroleum, Schlumberger (a chief competitor of Halliburton), Devon Energy, Peabody Energy, Emerson Electric, Kimberly Clark and Weatherford International.

In 2002, the University of Massachusetts' Political Research Institute ranked Alcoa No. 9 on a list of all-time toxic American companies. And I don't mean toxic as in toxic bachelor. This is toxic as in air pollution.

The same UMass PRI study ranked Ford Motor Company at No. 7 on the Toxic Top 10. Northrop Grumman was No. 17. Weyerhaeuser was No. 42. Emerson Electric was No. 56. 3M Corp was No. 70. Kimberly Clark was No. 96.

You get the picture. Madonna's Ray of Light Foundation has stock in each of these companies. Her last published tax statement claims $4.2 million in corporate stock, and only $620,000 in donations to other charities including her pet project: the Kabbalah Center.

Madonna even has 175,000 shares of Ford Motor Company, which in 2005 — the last year for which Ray of Light Foundation's tax form is available — had only one hybrid SUV in its fleet. Even now, but certainly then, Ford was/is not known as a green company. The only obvious thing Ford and Madonna have in common is Detroit — although it could be argued that only Ford has retained its Midwest accent.

Take Weyerhaeuser Corporation, a "forest products" company that is basically in the business of killing trees for paper and wood for housing. In 2005, Madonna owed roughly 1,100 shares valued at an average price of $63. Since then, the share price is up to around $80. If her number of shares remained constant, she's made a nice profit over the last two years.

But Weyerhaeuser is no friend of the green community. A story posted on the Rainforest Action Network details Weyerhaeuser's ongoing fight with environmental activists who call the Seattle-based corporation "a bad investment" and "one of America's worst environmental performers."

Even if more than half the Network's characterizations of Weyerhaeuser are hyperbolic, one has to wonder why Madonna has put even a penny into the company if she has any feeling for environmental causes. But that's an inconvenient question for the material girl as she prepares to close the Live Earth show live from London.

Worse — public relations-wise — than Weyerhaeuser is Madonna's investment in Alcoa, the Aluminum Company of America. Alcoa is under fire all over the world, especially in Iceland, for building aluminum smelters that some feel threaten the environment.

The Ray of Light Foundation's Schedule of Realized Gains and Losses is revealing in many ways. It shows that Madonna, while eager to espouse politically correct beliefs, simply does not put her money where her mouth is. The Ray of Light Foundation, for example, has only a few hundred shares of one media company: Viacom. Madonna didn't even carry an investment in Warner Music Group, the company that releases her music.

al gore: another look.

this may surprise many of you but last night i finally watched al gore's an inconvenient truth.

if you haven't watched it, please do. rent it. borrow it from a friend or the library. buy it.

in spite of al gore being an energy hog and trying to justify it by saying he has lots of carbon credits, the man is doing a great thing with this movie he's made. he's a great speaker/presenter, and will have you crying and laughing the entire way through the startling and jaw dropping content.

i've gotta hand it to him. he's taken it upon himself to fight this troubling reality by sharing it with as many people as will hear him. now we have a responsibility to act on it. make a change today.

al gore: energy hog and hypocrite?

apparently the truth is too inconvenient for even al gore, the guy who told us we have 10 years to shape up or our planet will be sent free-falling. you know, the guy at the front of the documentary an inconvenient truth.

according to the article below, actions speak louder than words and he's being called an energy hog.

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Al Gore's Mansion Described as Energy Hog
By Susan Jones
CNSNews.com Senior Editor
February 27, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - Former Vice President (and global warming aficionado) Al Gore deserves an award for hypocrisy, says the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.

The group, which studied Gore's electric and natural gas consumption, says his mansion in Belle Meade area of Nashville "consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year."

In his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, Gore urges Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home, the group noted.

"The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) a year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh-more than 20 times the national average," the Tennessee Center for Policy Research said in a news release.

Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh -- consuming more than twice as much electricity in one month as the average American family uses in an entire year. Gore's average monthly electric bill topped $1,359, the research group said.

Likewise, the natural gas bills for Gore's mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 a month last year.

"As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk the walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use," said Tennessee Center for Policy Research President Drew Johnson.

In total, Gore paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for his Nashville estate in 2006, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research said.

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Gore isn't quite as green as he's led the world to believe
updated 12/7/06 @ 5.45p ET

Al Gore has spoken: The world must embrace a "carbon-neutral lifestyle." To do otherwise, he says, will result in a cataclysmic catastrophe. "Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb," warns the website for his film, An Inconvenient Truth. "We have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tailspin."

Graciously, Gore tells consumers how to change their lives to curb their carbon-gobbling ways: Switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs, use a clothesline, drive a hybrid, use renewable energy, dramatically cut back on consumption. Better still, responsible global citizens can follow Gore's example, because, as he readily points out in his speeches, he lives a "carbon-neutral lifestyle." But if Al Gore is the world's role model for ecology, the planet is doomed.

For someone who says the sky is falling, he does very little. He says he recycles and drives a hybrid. And he claims he uses renewable energy credits to offset the pollution he produces when using a private jet to promote his film. (In reality, Paramount Classics, the film's distributor, pays this.)

Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.

Then there is the troubling matter of his energy use. In the Washington, D.C., area, utility companies offer wind energy as an alternative to traditional energy. In Nashville, similar programs exist. Utility customers must simply pay a few extra pennies per kilowatt hour, and they can continue living their carbon-neutral lifestyles knowing that they are supporting wind energy. Plenty of businesses and institutions have signed up. Even the Bush administration is using green energy for some federal office buildings, as are thousands of area residents.

But according to public records, there is no evidence that Gore has signed up to use green energy in either of his large residences. When contacted Wednesday, Gore's office confirmed as much but said the Gores were looking into making the switch at both homes. Talk about inconvenient truths.

Gore is not alone. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean has said, "Global warming is happening, and it threatens our very existence." The DNC website applauds the fact that Gore has "tried to move people to act." Yet, astoundingly, Gore's persuasive powers have failed to convince his own party: The DNC has not signed up to pay an additional two pennies a kilowatt hour to go green. For that matter, neither has the Republican National Committee.

Maybe our very existence isn't threatened.

[...]

The issue here is not simply Gore's hypocrisy; it's a question of credibility. If he genuinely believes the apocalyptic vision he has put forth and calls for radical changes in the way other people live, why hasn't he made any radical change in his life? Giving up [...] one of his homes is not asking much, given that he wants the rest of us to radically change our lives.

Peter Schweizer is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy.

"and to my children i leave..."

powerful message from flex your power.

watch their ads nearly begging everyone to be more energy efficient.

we must take better care of this earth.

little thoughts.

three things to think on and remember.

one.
energy to create.
pollution to dispose.

two.
the more i use the more that has to be created.

three.
from edmund burke: nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

act.
change how you characteristically think about your day and in the end you will change the world.