Happy Mother’s Day to all of the mothers out there…and to our Mother Earth. Enjoy the videos…
Jack Johnson and Ben Harper – With My Own Two Hands
Discovery Channel Commercial I Love The World
(yes I just posted this recently – think of it as “recycling”)
America’s largest Earth Day celebration (so they say) is taking place in cities throughout the country once again this year. The Green Apple Festival is a small music fest held in 8 cities on April 18-20. The way that most of them works is that there are bands at small venues on Friday and Saturday with a large free concert on Sunday, April 20. You’ll notice that there are a lot of jam bands – so if that’s your scene – check it out.
The Green Apple Festival is produced with a minimal carbon footprint. They have a goal of zero waste and are as paperless as possible. Some other initiatives are: use of bio-diesel generators, organic cotton staff shirts, organic food, and encouraging patrons to take public transportation to the events. They are also working with NativeEnergy to offset their carbon emissions.
My wife and I put the kids to bed at their normal bedtime, just this time we did it by candlelight. We weren’t as prepared for Earth Hour as we should have been. We ran around frantically looking for some candles. Finally we found enough to keep us seeing. Once the kids were in bed, we spent the hour talking and playing cards. I think that we need to have an “Earth Hour” more often. I’m a great example of letting the TV be our conversation piece. It’s not as bad when we’re watching quality programs from Sundance’s The Green or Discovery Health or the Science Channel…but I like horribly bad TV. If we’re watching good programs, we have in-depth conversations (and sometimes bitch sessions) about our passion for…[insert earth, health, food, future, climate, children, technology, etc. here]. Other times, I watch bad TV with no redeeming value, yet shutting out healthy conversation. I fully admit to my failures in this department. Perhaps a self-imposed Earth Hour more often would help…or just watch less horrendous TV?
Bedtime for Kiddies
Triple Wicker
On The Mantle
I guess that DoTheGreenThing should have made March the “Lights Out” month instead of this past November. Tonight is the WWF (wildlife, not wrestling) sponsored Earth Hour. Earth hour is a worldwide initiative to “turn off the lights” in cities around the world for one (1) hour starting at 8pm (through 9pm) to heighten awareness about climate change and to inspire individuals, businesses and corporations to take practical action to reduce their carbon footprint. It is more of a symbolic gesture than an actual impact from one night. The hope is that it raises awareness to the greater cause. One person on the news likened it to the Boston Tea Party – sure that might be a little extreme, but any little bit helps. I’m actually glad to see that it has been on the news every night this week and on the radio here. Chicago happens to be one of the flagship cities around the world.
So what are you going to do in the dark? Are you going to have a candlelight dinner? Perhaps read a book? Lynn over at OrganicMania suggests enjoying some organic beer. Not a bad idea. I have some in the garage. I think I’m going to put on a straw hat, suspenders, make my wife call me Jebodiah, and pretend I’m Amish. They’re a pretty sustainable culture, right? The Do The Green Thing site had a great video in November that is after the jump. I encourage you to enjoy the video. Hrmmm…that video is giving me some ideas…
Do The Green Thing: Do It In The Dark (possibly NSFW)
(more…)
I care about peak oil and I like sexy women. So I want to thank La Marguerite for bringing this video to my attention. All kidding aside, the video is very informative and worth checking out. Enjoy Cassandra!
Water. Clean, potable, drinking water. You know – the stuff we flush our toilets with and sprinkle gallon-after-gallon of on our pristine manicured lawns. That stuff we actually pay for in plastic bottles that most don’t recycle or even heavy glass bottles shipped half-way around the world. The stuff we pay for when we can get clean, potable water out of the tap any time of day or night.
Water is something we all take for granted, yet over an estimated 1 billion people worldwide have no access to safe drinking water. Nearly 6,000 children die each day from water-related illnesses. This is where the UNICEF Tap Project comes in. For the next week, March 16-22, restaurants will invite their customers to donate a minimum of $1 for the tap water they would normally get for free. For every dollar raised, a child will have clean drinking water for 40 days. March 22 also just happens to be World Water Day.
If you want to support this initiative, visit TapProject.org and find a participating restaurant near you. If there aren’t any in your area, you can always donate online.
People can survive without oil. We can’t without water. Blood will be shed a thousand times over due to water issues in the coming years. That is pretty much a given. Here in America, there are major water shortages underway in the arid west and also recently in the Georgia region. For those of us who don’t even think twice about wasting water, we need to think beyond our borders and help change lives as much as possible. Okay – I’m getting off my soap box now.
Source: UNICEF Tap Project
According to Plenty Magazine (which is a great magazine, btw), Google Earth is teaming up with ILoveMountains.org to fight mountaintop removal mining (MTR). If you’re interested in learning more about MTR, I posted about this atrocity back in November.
Google Earth agreed to partner with I Love Mountains and included the site’s National Memorial for the Mountains, the project’s first phase, as part of the Google Earth map software. The Memorial appears on a map of the eastern states as a field of 450 American flags spanning the Appalachian Mountains, each commemorating a ‘decapitated’ mountain. Zoom in close to a single mountain and there’s a step-by-step explanation of how machinery literally scrapes away peaks, and aerial photos of a site the size of Manhattan. via PlentyMag.com
If you want to see if your power company gets any of its electricity from the coal obtained in MTR, then just go to ILoveMountains.org and put in your zip code. Here’s what I found out: Your electricity provider, ComEd – Commonwealth Edison Co, buys coal from companies engaged in mountaintop removal. I see my power plants on the map and also see the mine where they get some of the coal. When I click on the mine, I find out information about it. When I dig even further, I see that much of the coal comes from Rawl, West Virginia. Then I get a story about the town and how MTR has affected it. If you’d like to see some video stories, checkout their YouTube group.
I just also found out that there is a documentary called Black Diamonds which discusses MTR. It’s an absolutely disgusting practice which until last year I didn’t realize was happening.
Black Diamonds
Source: Plenty Magazine
Oprah had an episode on Wednesday on freegans. As I watched correspondent Lisa Ling – formerly of The View and also Laura Ling of Current TVs sister – take a trash tour in NYC, I kept thinking how I could totally give that a whirl. A freegan is someone who takes useful items that are headed to a landfill and puts them to good use. This includes groceries.
I guess I could say that I’ve dabbled in this world before. I admit it. I’ve always called it “curb shopping.” I live in a regular middle-class suburb of Chicago. If you drive the neighborhoods on garbage night (especially in the spring and warmer months), you’ll find all kinds of useful items. Have a kid? You’ll never need to buy a giant plastic toy again. Many of my finds aren’t even for myself. I’ll put them on Freecycle [insert link] or just donate them to Goodwill. We had a great unscathed coffee table in our basement for years that someone threw out. Maybe they were hoping someone would stop and pick it up. Sometimes I put items out by the curb and try to place them so someone will stop and take them. If they are still there when I leave for work, I drag them back in the house.
I’ve never really thought about obtaining food this way, though. It does seem logical. After watching the video, I can see how much waste is thrown out from a grocery store. Perfectly packaged dry goods and canned items that could go to a food pantry are just being put in a dumpster. People even get dairy. They show how a dozen eggs are thrown out just because one in the pack is broken. Tons of produce is discarded because one little blemish. Sure – exercise caution and common sense if you’re going to try this.
Mary at In Women We Trust and I were discussing Oprah the morning after the show. She was talking about how wasteful of a society we live in and I wholeheartedly agree. Until we stop looking at this planet as a disposable entity nothing is going to change. Over consumption and unnecessary opulence for vanity and comfort is disgusting compared to most cultures in this world. Mary has a challenge out to Oprah: I have a big favor to ask you Oprah, since you are culture and culture is you, could you do us all a favor and have a show dedicated to Sustainable Standards? Maybe if Oprah can continue to push for change – and believe me she has the power to influence this country – things will start to shift. Get the women who watch her show to start voting with their dollars. The one problem is that Oprah’s empire is built on commercialism and she needs to make changes in her life and her empire. The old adage, “Do as I say and not as I do” doesn’t hold much weight with the average adult.
Reference: Freegan.info
Last night, my wife and I saw one of the only Chicago-area viewings of The 11th Hour. I’m not going to give you a full review here. You can watch it for yourself either at a viewing or when it comes out on DVD on April 15th. By the way, I pre-ordered the DVD – it’s only $5. Buy it and donate it to your library after passing it along to all of your friends (I bought it for under $5 and that includes free shipping from DeepDiscountDVD). I wish that this film had hit a larger market, but the fact of the matter is that another film is titled The 11th Hour and DiCaprio’s group is in litigation over the title.
I will tell you that this is not An Inconvenient Truth. It’s not Leonardo DiCaprio talking for an hour and a half. It’s not a sensationalized film. It is a series of interviews on various topics with the top environmentalist and scientists talking about climate change and the things we do in this world that are detrimental to the planet. They also talk about what you can do as an individual to make a difference. If you want to see some of the indivuals involved, go to the 11th Hour YouTube group. There you’ll find time capsules from many of them.
What I can tell you is that you hear all the time is vote with your dollars. Everyone needs to stop looking at the world as a disposable entity. If they do that, then perhaps they might think twice about disposable consumption. This kinda goes back to Bill McDonough’s Cradle-to-Cradle initiative, too (yes, he’s in the film). C2C is a design certification where the product will be go back to its basic elements at the end of its useful life versus the alternative, which is Cradle to Grave (landfill).
The 11th Hour Trailer
Mr Doyle sent me a link yesterday that I found rather…well…stupid. A German tourist, Jan Philip Scharbert, was photographed spray painting a glacier in New Zealand. He was nabbed by police as he was trying to get on a bus to get away.
It took Scharbert 1.5 days to clean up the damage under supervision…and tourists glaring at him. What an idiot.
I know that on the ice part of the glacier, axes were used to chisel away the paint. What product was used to clean the paint off the rocks that isn’t harmful to the ecosystem?
Source: Boing Boing
