greenguys

Politics Disrupt Change

2009-10-19T13:16:00.000-07:00

In Canada two film makers partially backed by the Conservative Fraser Institute exploited a low income family in Indiana. The film makers want the environmental war to be more of an cultural war between the rich elites and the poor working class families of “middle America” like the family in Indiana. Nothing could be further from the truth as we shall see during the next couple of decades. But we must change our coal and oil based economy over to a more environmentally and job friendly economy.

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The film makers tactics are similar to those used by the anti-Obama health care plan zealots. “Anything but the facts”, should be these group’s motto. Since the facts don’t support their position these groups are going to rely on fear and anger to divide our nation. Most liberal groups and Obama himself, as demonstrated in his speech to both houses of Congress, unfortunately cannot either rely on facts or arguments against the distortion of the truth. The representative who yelled “You Lie” became a superstar of the fanatic right.

If we really want change we will just have to do it by ourselves without the strong backing of the US Government. The Senators and Representatives won’t give the citizens of this country the appropriate legislation that will rip our country out of the hands of the current energy giants and health care companies. These legislators get paid by the very companies that refuse to change for the betterment of our society. During his last campaign Senator Max Baucas received more than a million dollars in campaign contributions from heath care companies. How can he write fair and appropriate legislation for the upcoming health care plan.

The cap and trade bill is the most important legislation introduced so far that could change the course of our country’s self destructive path. But to imagine it will pass strong and intact is a fantasy. The same Senators who receive campaign contributions from health care companies also get money from the current coal and oil companies that control our energy production. These legislators only care about their jobs which they can maintain by campaign contributions are not loyal to their actual employers: Us!

For the next couple of decades it will be up us to make the right decisions that create real change for our environment and our economy. We cannot wait for the legislators to cut the oil and coal umbilical cord. They are too afraid to venture out into the real world.

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What else don't we know?

2009-10-14T18:10:00.000-07:00

Too many layers of information hiding too many secrets does not benefit us but we still pay for it and seem powerless to change it.

A Bush era email sent by the EPA 2 years ago was just released to the public. For two years only a select group of people were allowed to read it. Did the information contained in this email contain information that could threaten our national security. I don’t think so.

The 2007 EPA document was prepared as part of the Bush administration's response to the Supreme Court's April 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA. The office of Vice President Dick Cheney, the Office of Management and Budget, the Transportation Department, Exxon Mobil Corp. and others in the oil industry didn’t like what it said so it was buried. It concluded that greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles were endangering public welfare and needed to be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

Luckily that information has been know for decades. And we also knew that during the last administration President Bush and Vice President Cheney would do whatever they could to stop any efforts made towards combating global warming so hiding this information didn’t change the course of history.

What if there are other pieces of information we don’t know about that are floating in cyberspace or hidden in some filing cabinet from the last administration or from any other administration that could possibly effect the course our country heads in the future. We have paid for all of this and it directly or indirectly affects our lives so lets see it. What’s with the closed door meeting and the classified documents. Were the Senators in the meetings on health care also discussing national security issues? Or were they discussing which industry or special interest group should benefit the most from treating the sick and injured.

Unfortunately we will never know what actually happened in those meetings even though we paid for the “debates” and the final bill will greatly effect all of our lives. Instead of the networks broadcasting the endless stream of idiotic and demeaning shows filled with slickly produced commercials selling worthless products every evening they could provide some shows with crucially important information that could possibly change our lives for the better.

Entertainment is a needed and soothing relief from the daily grind but is it just another layer of information keeping us from the important truths that will enormously effect our lives now and in the future. How about a sitcom staring Senator X and industry representative Y telling the truth? Now that would be funny and entertaining.

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Apple Leaves US Chamber of Commerce

2009-10-09T09:38:00.000-07:00

Apple is the fourth major US corporation who has recently left due to differences regarding policies over climate change. Pacific Gas and Electricity, PNM Resources and Exelon have all left because they agree with Apple.

Apple "supports regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and it is frustrating to find the chamber at odds with us in this effort," said Apple vice president Catherine Novelli, on Tuesday.

In response a spokesman for the Chamber said, "The US Chamber of Commerce continues to support strong federal legislation and a binding international agreement to reduce carbon emissions and address climate change."

And he continues, "While we'll continue to represent the broad majority of our membership on this goal, we recognize that there are some companies who stand to gain more than others with the current options on the table," said chamber spokesman Eric Wohlschlegel.

The most meaningful word in that first quote is “international”. What Mr. Wohlschlegel is really saying is that Apple’s products are manufactured overseas where greenhouse regulations are weak and thus overhead expenses are lower. So the US should still be able to pollute as much as it wants to in order to be competitive. An extremely anemic and amoral argument at best.

The US Chamber of Commerce as a representative of the US should become the world’s role model for corporations in combating global warming. It is our responsibility to lead other nations to uphold strict environmental standards, the US needs to take a long terms approach to this issue.

It is not entirely true for The US Chamber to say our uncompetitiveness and therefore job loss would occur if the US followed stricter environmental rules. In the far east where most electronics are manufactured the cost of living is much less than it is here in the US and therefore the wages are much lower. Whether this is appropriate and whether companies like Apple take advantage of this situation has nothing to due with environmental laws and therefore for this discussion is misleading.

Discussing health care relative to the cost of manufacturing would be much more appropriate. Specifically the automotive industry in this country demise was in a large part due to the US’s major competitors based in countries where their heath care is for the most part “socialized”. Just the mention of socialized health care would cause the US Chamber and its members to scream in utter agony.

Not facing the real truths behind US corporations lack of competitiveness in the world market will only prolong the inevitable, we will lose millions of jobs but not because we follow strict environmental standards. Our inability to face facts and release old false ideals that for years have been upheld by our falsely supported economic system and ridiculously enormous military industrial complex will actually be our demise.

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Ganges River Dolphin

2009-10-02T09:52:00.000-07:00

The Ganges River Dolphin may not end up becoming extinct like its cousin the Yangtze River Dolphin. Maybe humanity has learned a valuable lesson, time will tell. The Yangtze River dolphin became extinct in 2007 due to agricultural and industrial poisons being dumped into the river. This dolphin earned the distinction of becoming the first aquatic mammal in 50 years to disappear from our planet, let hope the Ganges Dolphin is not the second.

The Ganges dolphin, a cousin to the more well know saltwater bottle nose species, has a long thin snout, tubby belly and oversized fins. It is almost blind but has excellent sonar and can leap out of the water if in a joyful mood, something not seen lately.

According to Conservationists at the World Wildlife Fund about 2,000 dolphins have been killed in India due to untreated sewage dumped into the river and being drown in fishing nets. Near where the dolphins swim the Ganges contains 60,000 fecal coliform bacteria per 100 milliliters which is 120 times greater than the safe bathing limit and astronomically beyond the safe drinking water limit. The dolphins have not volunteered for the job and are really not being paid much attention to as the canary in the coal mine. This would partially explain why 1,000 children die each day of diarrhea sickness in India.

In one town on the river a change has been made with wonderful results. The river is now cleaner next to Raja Karna. Instead of poisonous chemical fertilizers the farmers are using home made organic compost. They also built a small but successful sewage treatment plant. So due to these simple and easy changes the population of the Ganges River dolphin has more than doubled from 20 to 55. A miracle, no, just simple common sense and a willingness to take a small step and think out of the box.

If the rest of the citizens in towns along the Ganges River could emulate the behavior of the farmers in Raja Karna then possibly a unique and as like all organic matter on this planet including humans, irreplaceable species could live for many more generations. No more extinctions.

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The Real Cost of Going Green

2009-09-29T17:10:00.000-07:00

The next extremely important step towards significantly reducing global warming and its effects will soon take place on the floor of the US Senate. They will debate and then vote on the cap-and-trade climate bill, the Waxman-Markey act. The House passed the bill late spring and now the senators, some of who still think that global warming is a hoax, will engage in a very contentious debate.

Unfortunately we had to witness and listen to this summer’s health care embarrassing circus like “debate” performed on the Senate Floor, in town hall meetings and blasted on talk radio. The President’s speech to both houses of Congress finally cooled off some of the nonfactual hate filled possibly racist rhetoric spewed continually in all possible venues. For the debate on “greening of America” the confused will switch their fear laden protests of governmental takeover and death panels to horrific job loss and economic collapse.

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Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck will lead the hysteria despite having lost their war supporting the monopolistic medically ignorant grossly unfair health insurance companies. (Unfortunately I have first hand knowledge of this since my daughter is autistic; would be easier to get paid care if she had self induced heart problems due to poor eating habits than her externally caused or genetically based neurological disorder.)

The real facts: We have a “energy efficiency gap”, the amount of our consumption of fossil fuels does not increase our standard of living. Some of us see the earth as a giant smorgasbord, leaving half our uneaten food, energy, on our plate and then throwing it in the landfill. We need to conserve more which automatically saves us more money. The Congressional Budget office said this bill will only cost the average family $160 per year in 2020, $.44 per day. Limbaugh and Beck keep citing a study that put the cost at $1767 per year. But no amount of searching on the internet can produce that study but it doesn’t exist. There is not going to be any world and/or US economic collapse, the facts just don’t support that catastrophic kind of thinking.

When the economic argument proves fruitless the talk will most likely regress to the loss of personal freedom fears heard during the health care debate. I read a comment where one person thought he would be forced to drive a Prius and live in a tiny New York Style apartment, live like the Europeans. Aside from the fact that if everyone who owns a car did drive one that maintained at least 45 mpg the environmental crisis level would be much lower no one is going to loose their choices of how they want to live. The environmental costs will just directly be translated into the appropriate and fair economic costs. Massive fossil fuel producers won’t continue to avoid paying for the environmental damage and for related health care costs due to pollution and pass it on to the consumer. We will actually obtain more personal freedom from spending our money to better our lives and not the lives of the Board of Directors of XYZ oil company.

If the Waxman-Markey Act does not pass or if the Senate dilutes the final law we will all lose. No one can hide from air and water pollution or the effects of global warming no matter how high their fence is or how far from the city you live. We will all suffer.

Subsidies for Oil & Other Fossil Fuels

2009-09-27T13:21:00.000-07:00

President Obama and all of the G20 nations including Russia, India and China agreed to phase out subsidies for oil and other fossil fuel producers. By 2020 the world’s largest and most profitable companies will no longer receive tax payer dollars to help them stay in the black. 11 more years of almost $300 billion per year split among them will no longer be available. $3.3 trillion is all they will get and not a cent more. The American Petroleum Institute is not happy about this and frankly either am I. "The Obama administration and Congress now face many difficult choices if they choose to comply with the G20 commitment to phase-out fossil fuel subsidies," the API said. Yes, the US and the other G20 countries have very difficult choices to make. They will now have to figure out how to spent $300 billion per year in possibly more appropriate places instead of giving it to super profitable companies. Companies who now easily keep us addicted to their environmentally damaging products because of the low prices available due to the subsidies. This situation is analogous to the tobacco companies complaining about cancer warnings they must put on their products. These industries can’t just make money, they need to have their cake and force everyone else to make it for them. “Eliminating such subsidies by 2020 would reduce greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming by 10 percent by 2050,” leaders said, citing data from the International Energy Agency and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. As I mentioned above I am also not happy about this, but obviously not for the same reasons. 10% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is not enough. Somehow these vultures need to be forced to pay all of us back and do it without further economic and environmental damage. During the summer of 2008 when gas prices approached $5 per gallon the CEO of one of the largest Oil and Gas Companies said, “No one is being forced to buy our product”. He forgot to add that when we do purchase his product that we are being forced to pay them double, once at the pump and again when we pay our taxes. After decades of past administrations and congress giving in to these thieves President Obama and the current G20 finally have the fortitude to say no more even though subsidies should have never begun. So I say to the American Petroleum Industry and it’s fellow band of immoral greedy inscrutable miscreants complaining about the phasing out of subsidies, “this is only the beginning of your end”.

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Senate Allows EPA to Buy Polluted Town

2009-09-25T17:38:00.000-07:00

We, the US taxpayers, have just bought Treece, KS in the southeast corner of Cherokee County. It cost around 3 million dollars. Around 100 people still live there so each of them will get around $30,000. If each person in the US actually had to pay their fair share right now it would cost each of us about 1 cent. Since there wouldn’t be enough room for all 300 million of us to live there and since the town is too polluted for anyone to live in we don’t actually have to move. Lucky us.

No so lucky for them. Most of them have lead poisoning. Lots of people in that part of Kansas probably also have lead poisoning. The vast majority of the lead and zinc mines closed over 30 years ago but the mess they left is still there. In 1983 the area was declared a superfund site.

115 square miles containing enormous piles of what looks like gravel, except its not. Its called Chat, mountainous piles of dirt filled with lead, zinc and cadmium particles. These heavy metals become air born and land in school yards and backyards where kids play. Kids get the toxic metals on their clothing and hands and it works it way into their bodies: lead poisoning.

To date about $90 million has been spent to clean up the mess left by the mining companies. The mining companies that haven’t disappeared and/or closed down and/or are hiding were forced to pay for about 10% of the cost. It will take another 15 years and $70 million to finish the clean up. So in total it will take almost 40 years and approximately $160 million dollars to make Cherokee County “safe’ to live in again. Who would actually want to live there? No me and I am guessing, but probably not you.

Please join me in raising our glasses of NON-plastic bottled water in a hopeful toast that our current plan for reducing the causes of and the effects of global warming does not mimic the previous plan used to clean up superfund sites. Because if it does we can kiss our planet goodbye.

Murder Charges for Toxic Dumping

2009-09-22T17:08:00.000-07:00

In 2006 Trafigura, an oil-trading company, dumped tons of toxic waste in one of the world's poorest countries, Ivory Coast. (The toxicity of the waste is under dispute not the dumping.) This month Greenpeace claimed that the dumping caused thousands to became ill and also caused miscarriages, birth defects and death. One of the world’s most well known environmental organizations wants Dutch courts to bring charges of murder, manslaughter, negligence and conspiracy against Trafigura.

Trafigura, which last year had sales of $73 Billion, approximated twice the GDP of the Ivory Coast, has already agreed to pay millions to settle a lawsuit brought by 30,000 Abidjan residents who suffered short term illnesses. But they deny that anyone suffered severe long term illnesses or death due to the dumping.

The sludge which was dumped at 18 sites around Abidjan, including drains and lagoons, was the by-product of processing “dirty oil” bought at a Mexican refinery. The processing took place on board an oil tanker off the coast of Abidjan not in the EU because the EU has outlawed this environmentally unsafe practice.

In 2006, the year that Trafigura used the City of Abidjan in the Ivory Coast as their toilet, its poverty rate was 50%. The nation ranks 164 out of 177 countries ranked on the United Nations’ Human Development Index. The UNHDI rates the overall economic health of a country. Only 13 other countries received a worse rating than the Ivory Coast.

To admit that I find that it is unbelievable that this horrific crime can occur at the beginning of 21st century would probably put me in the “very naive” category. Sometimes deviant behavior seems plausible when an individual’s or a group’s life is threatened or when they desperately need food, or medical attention. But to commit a heinous act simply to add a relatively miniscule amount of profit to your bottom line is truly evil.

I don’t believe in nor has history shown that an “eye for an eye” prevents any further malevolent acts. Usually is actually escalates a conflict. So if the Board of Directors of Trafigura were forced to live out the rest of their lives in one of the lagoons in Abidjan filled with their toxic sludge most likely future atrocities would still occur. But the rest of us might feel just a bit better.

We are Frozen in Hatred

2009-09-17T09:31:00.000-07:00

"Injecting race into the debate over critical issues facing American families doesn't create jobs, reform our health care system or reduce the growing deficit. It only divides Americans rather than uniting us to find solutions to challenges facing our nation," President Jimmy Carter said yesterday. Repair and protect our environment should be added to the list of critical issues that won’t be addressed if Americans can’t remove prejudices from their hearts. Absolutely nothing will be accomplished or what is accomplished will be so anemic it will not help anyone.

This statement by President Carter relates to the blog I posted a couple of days ago concerning comments by Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich. Professor Ehrlich declared in no uncertain terms that its our behavior not science that is holding us back from restoring our planet. We all know what is wrong and have the science to prove it but we just can’t seem to change our behavior from self-destructive and selfish to self sustainable and altruistic. Our egos and self righteousness destroy our ability to provide the common sense solutions to solve the urgently critical problems that face us.

The United States is now lead by an African American President. The election was fair and just. The votes were counted and no one disputes the election. (Some fringe elements pursue the insane notion that he is not a US citizen but to address that is akin to continue to look for WMDs in Iraq). We cannot allow the citizens of this country who are controlled by “Hate” deny the rest of us our right to a fair chance for excellent health care, a prosperous economy, good green jobs and a healthy environment. American cannot regress: A enormous step away from our shameful past of forcing some people to the back of the bus has been accomplished, we can never let it happen again.

Do the Right Thing for Those Who Follow

2009-09-13T21:03:00.000-07:00

"Basically, absolutely nothing is happening," Stanford University ecologist Paul Ehrlich said. "We don't need more scientific evidence that we're screwing ourselves. We need to get beyond the cultural discussions we're having now."

The problem, Ehrlich said, is clearly not a need for more natural science. Rather, it is the need for a better understanding of "human behaviors and how they can be altered to direct humanity toward a sustainable society before it is too late."

“We’re screwing ourselves”, “absolutely nothing is happening”, “direct humanity toward a sustainable society before it is too late." said the 77 year old distinguished professor at one of the most eminent universities in the world. He has received dozens of ecological and environmental awards. His bibliography spans 30 years and includes sophisticated analysis using all the ecosciences to examine the current state of the world relative to population and ecology.

Doesn’t really want to make you jump for joy, does it?

Right to the point. No more debate is needed, we have all the proof we could ever want. The problem is our behavior. We, certainly including me, act like the dogs in Pavlov’s experiment.

“The phrase "Pavlov's dog" is often used to describe someone who merely reacts to a situation rather than using critical thinking.” Our use of “critical thinking” has been beaten out of us. Anyone and everyone who either wants our money, our vote and/or our soul has been after us since the day we were born. Relentless advertising; first from newspapers, TV, radio and now the net has been used to manipulate us regarding every decision we make. Unfortunately most of the “ends” of our manipulated “means” aren’t beneficial for the environment and thus eventually harmful to us.

Do we understand why it was so easy to manipulate our behavior toward the “dark side”? According to Erhlich we don’t have the time to figure out why we went the wrong way. We need to immediately make a quick u-turn and help “direct humanity toward a sustainable society”.

Here at the beginning of the second century of the industrial revolution we are now literally facing the cumulative poisons that have been injected into our land, water and air. Time to push all the self-destructive behaviors out of our souls and act in favor of those who will inherit this planet. The benefits our actions will not be felt by us, whether we ever understand why we acted as we did is no longer applicable. As procreative beings we owe to the ones who follow us to do the right thing.

“Roadway” Created in Arctic due to Global Warming

2009-09-11T17:19:00.000-07:00

The Northeast passage along Russia’s Arctic coast from North Korea to Siberia is now open. Calling all pollution spewing, tranquil disrupting, overwhelmingly enormous freighters, your ocean freeway through the previously quiet home of the endangered polar bear is now yours to destroy. Civilization has reached a new level, we all should be so very proud.

To all the naysayers who believe Global Warming is just a hoax, absolute proof is now just an ocean freighter’s ride away. "We are seeing an expression of climate change here," said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. "The Arctic is warming; we're losing the sea ice cover. The more frequent opening of that Northeast Passage is part of the process we're seeing." Ex-Vice President Cheney now that you are retired, hopefully forever, you might want to take a cruise along the Northeast passage. Maybe if you see first hand what your environmentally destructive policies have created you might change your mind about the existence of global warming. Though we won’t hold our breath.

The passage opening up this summer due to global warming could of easily been predicted if the United States took time during the last three years to pay more attention. I guess the past Administration was too busy fighting an “oil war” instead of doing what it could to reduce our use of oil. “For the last few years, including this year, navigator Roald Amundsen's famous Northwest Passage has been navigable. Then in 2007, the more crucial deep water channel called McClure Strait opened up and now the Northeast Passage”, Serreze said.

Now that President Obama is running the show maybe his legislation will, at the very least, slow down the horrific effects of global warming. We need to do what we can to help speed up the process and keep the naysayers and foot draggers at bay. The selfish are a tenacious bunch so we have to be even more diligent than them unless we want the entire Arctic to become a “roadway’.

Hunting Polar Bears

2009-09-09T16:17:00.000-07:00

This story was found in the folder marked: No Hope for Humanity.

Polar bears are classified as endangered species.

Polar bears are being killed due to man-made global warming. Polar bears are being killed due to man-made pesticides. Polar bears are being killed due to man-made high powered rifles so their heads can be cut off and put over someone’s fireplace.

According to the UN over the last 10 years nearly 9,000 polar bear specimens were exported for commercial purposes. These specimens included 2,849 skins, 108 skulls, and 1,249 claws. Under Canadian law the hunting of polar bears by tourists and the commercial trading of polar bear parts is legal.

Endangered species have different classifications and that is why Canada’s polar bear hunting laws and commercial trading of polar bear parts is not illegal.

There are three different classifications: Appendix I, II and III. Polar bears are classified under appendix II but should be put at appendix I so the senseless and horrific hunting will stop. (Hunting for sustainable subsistence by native peoples of polar bears is not controlled and should not be controlled under these classifications).

Please contact the US Fish and Wildlife Department and tell them to change the classification. Please tell them that hunting and trading body parts of any animal, let alone an endangered animal, is a bad idea. For some reason I think they probably already know this but apparently unless they are verbally assaulted with this information they won’t do anything about it.

Only about 25,000 polar bears left: May they procreate to their heart’s content and then die of old age.

Orangutans, 3000 die every year

2009-09-08T17:58:00.000-07:00

With only 50, 000 left it’s just 17 year until extinction. They have been around for about 10,000 years and up until about 20 years ago there was approximately 500,000 orangutans living in an area from Southeast Asia to Southern China. “We” directly or indirectly killed off 90% of the population due to, you guessed it, deforestation and other human activities. Now the remaining population lives in Borneo.

Orangutans share 96.7% of our genes and are smart enough to use tools and teach learned behaviors to their offspring and other Orangutans. They are so human like It feels like loosing a member of our immediate family. Just to give you some specific examples the following are some homo sapiens characteristics that the Orangutans exhibit. They can make rain hats and leakproof roofs out of a leaf found in their natural habitat. Two different Orangutans learned 30-40 sign language signs both in captivity and in the open wilderness. Zoo Atlanta has a touch screen computer monitor where the orangutans play computer games. And finally a 2008 study showed that orangutans are the first non-human species documented to use 'calculated reciprocity' which involves weighing the costs and benefits of gift exchanges and keeping track of these over time.

But are their lives worth more than deforestation? We apparently decided they are not. Logging, mining, settlements and road construction take precedent over these extraordinary animals, second to none to humans in intelligence. Some might argue that in the case of intelligence relative to environmental issues Orangutans might even surpass humans.

Indonesia, which includes Borneo, loses 4.5 million acres of forest every year due to deforestation. The Nature Conservancy is currently working with our Federal Government and local governments in Indonesia to stop illegal logging and protecting Orangutan habitats but the situation is dire. A previously unknown Orangutan nest was discovered that could could possibly add some needed numbers to the dwindling population but they still are a very endangered species.

Carolyn Enquist, a scientist with the Nature Conservancy the excellent conservation organization mentioned above, studies the concept of adaptation for plant and animal populations who are effected by effects of global warming and processes that cause global warming. Unfortunately for some plants and animals global warming has already caused permanent damage, partial and/or complete extinction. Lets hope its not too late to save the remaining Orangutans and possibly help them increase their population.

President Obama Can't Wait for Congress

2009-09-04T20:11:00.000-07:00

Too many lobbyists representing hundreds of special interests groups fill the halls of our capital persuading our legislators to act in ways good for them but not for us. The Congress will never really legislate in favor of policies that are 100% environmentally beneficial unless there is something in it that helps with their next reelection. Global warming is too far advanced for President Obama to diplomatically persuade Congress to act quickly. He needs to light a bonfire underneath their seats or rush ahead and let them catch up.

Proposing limits for greenhouse gas emissions and ambient air quality standard regulations are two specific examples where the EPA is moving like molasses in wintertime and should be moving like lighting. The problem, as previously stated, lies both with Congress’s special interest saturated legislative behavior and President Obama’s overly diplomatic relationship with Congress. We deserve action now not after environmental disasters become irreversible.

Regulations limiting, not just proposing, greenhouse gas emissions need to be put into law now. Its not good enough for the EPA to simply declare that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. Industries that provide energy using “dirty sources” need limitations on the amount of greenhouse gasses they produce. They need regulations since they will not do this on their own.

In 1997 the EPA created ambient air quality standards for fine particulate matter, soot. Soot causes illnesses costing billions in health care expenditures and approximately 20,000 annual deaths. Its very simple, the less soot, the less illness. Most soot comes from coal fired power plants. Ambient air quality standards are not good enough, we need regulations to protect us. The EPA is literally giving these plants a license to murder. Another frustrating and seemingly malicious facet of this dilemma is allowing more new coal fired plants to be approved under these worthless standards as opposed to having them be approved under strict regulations. It appears as if the EPA is giving these “dirty” plants an unfair advantage over new green clean technology by allowing them to slide in without health protective regulations.

President Obama shouldn’t let the Congress empowered EPA to work directly against our health and directly for the seemingly impervious lobbyist protected “dirty” energy producers. Clean green technology doesn’t stand a chance if our country continues to be controlled by special interest groups that let the obscenely rich get richer and the rest of us get stuck with higher health care costs and irreversible lung cancer. We need to make the death of the Bush administration create a environmentally healthy “birth” for us.

Rainforest Still Disappearing

2009-09-02T12:33:00.000-07:00

The rainforest is still disappearing at a an alarming rate despite the massive efforts of many to reduce the rate of deforestation. In February, 2008, the Brazilian government announced that the rate of deforestation has increased not slowed down. During the last five months of 2007, more than 1,250 sq. miles,(an area equivalent to the size of the state of Rhode Island), was deforested.

Unfortunately no one involved in the defense of the Amazon can even imagine deforestation being stopped; the only goal is reduce the slaughter of an area with 10% of the world’s carbon stores in our ecosystem. By continuing to remove the natural fauna one is continuing to release excess carbon into the atmosphere which accelerates global warming. Deforestation of the Amazon is also permanently damaging an area where the the largest collection of living plants and animal species in the world live. To date, at least 40,000 plant species, 3,000 fish, 1,294 birds, 427 mammals, 428 amphibians, and 378 reptiles have been scientifically classified in the region. The numbers are astounding and they just represent what scientists have named but not what actually exists.

The main source of deforestation of the Amazon are human settlement and development of the land. 91% of the deforested land is used for cattle grazing and the rest is mostly used for farming. This occurs despite what environmentalist C.M. Peters stated in 1989, “One hectare in the Peruvian Amazon has been calculated to have a value of $6820 if intact forest is sustainably harvested for fruits, latex, and timber; $1000 if clear-cut for commercial timber (not sustainably harvested); or $148 if used as cattle pasture.” This valuation is in terms of what the worth is for the Peruvian Citizens, not for the corporations like Asia Pulp and Paper who have brutally deforested the land for years.

Reading through the history of Asia Pulp and Paper is analogous to reading the criminal history of a brutal and maliciously ambitious drug cartel. No outside force has been able to stop their continuous onslaught of the world’s most valuable and essential forests. The company has been involved in illegal logging in Cambodia and Indonesia and hasbroken agreements with 3 major environmental organizations.

According to the Asia Times Online, “Asia Pulp and Paper's business model is a tactically aggressive one: it turns huge profits by quickly stripping forests bare, exploiting age-old forests and indigenous peoples, and leaving town before the environmental consequences are felt. By the time communities and governments lodge complaints and lawsuits, APP has divested itself of local interests and assets.”

They had agreements with Forest Steward Ship Council, the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Rainforest Alliance. All agreements were cancelled by the environmental organizations when APP, Asia Pulp and Paper, did not follow through with the original environmental policies stated in the agreements. It appears that APP was just using these organizations to hide behind. They agreed to change it behaviors but its deforestation of restricted lands was discovered and the agreements were dissolved. Boycotts of APP’s products were called for by various hotel associations. APP threatened with lawsuits but wasn’t aware of the public support for the boycotts. They were caught red-handed with their entire body in the cookie jar and still tried to weasel out of it. Even now on the homepage of their website it reads “Care for Tomorrow, we support actions for economic, social and environmental sustainability”. This situation being similar to members of the last US Administration telling the world that the Iraq war was started to protect our freedom when they originally told us it was to protect us from weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. A bold faced lie.

Unfortunately in today’s amoral political and economic climate many do not care for the truth even if it causes horrific environmental or other types of damage: If it hurts their pocketbook and popularity they will say anything to protect themselves. Even though such maliciously powerful and desperate entities are loose in our world trying to deprive us of our environmental freedom we still have a mighty weapon in our possession that can stop them dead in their tracks: our wallets. If we don’t buy their poison they can’t sell it and if they can’t sell it they will not brutally strip our lands to get it.

African Lion disappearing in Kenya

2009-08-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

The most alarming fact of this wildlife population study is that the population decrease is happening just as fast inside the National Parks as outside the National Parks. The wildlife population declined 41% between 1977 t0 1997, and since then the rate of decline has not slowed. The study was commissioned by the Kenya Wildlife Service, which manages the Kenya National Parks. The Kenya Wildlife service said the drastic decline could leave Kenya without the African Lion by 2020, the lion being Kenya’s “symbol of national strength”.

Unfortunately the study has attracted little attention. Kenya is still dealing with the results of the 2007 presidential election. The conservation community has also been relatively quiet about the study since it’s really not new news since Kenya has always mismanaged it’s wildlife programs. There also have been other rarely read studies in the African Continent reporting their wildlife population is also on the decline in protected areas. Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa are the exceptions but if the trend continues the wildlife population in Africa will resemble the wildlife population in Europe; mostly invisible.

Aside from the mismanagement and political problems what else is causing the wildlife population to decrease? Overpopulation: the African Continent is expected to grow rapidly, it’s population could increase by more than a billion people by 2050. What to do about overpopulation is such a complex and controversial subject with many religious, race and geopolitical components I would rather not write about it now but just acknowledge it’s specific effect on the wildlife population in Africa. Part of the proof that overpopulation is one of the causes of wildlife population decline can be drawn from studying wildlife populations in southern Africa, especially Nambia. It has a low population density and a stable wildlife population.

One possible solution that has had some minor success in Kenya is community involvement. There has been wildlife population increases at the Shompole conservation area and tourist lodge which is managed by the Masai community. For this project the Kenyan government relinquished part of control of the area so the community could be directly involved and therefore would be directly rewarded for it’s efforts. This situation would be analogous to a US community project where the neighborhood works together to keep their business district clean and safe so it will reap the rewards of increased revenue and property values.

Unfortunately this type of successful community involvement in Kenya relative to safeguarding the wildlife population is rare. Placed in between a massive population explosion, poorly managed national parks, political unrest and poaching, ultimately the African Lion might only be seen in a zoo.

Beluga Whales dying of cancer

2009-08-27T12:55:00.000-07:00

In the St. Lawrence Estuary in Quebec hundreds of Beluga Whales have died of intestinal cancer over the last 30 years. Aluminum smelters dumped their poison into the Estuary until 2004, then Canada finally shut them down. 5 years latter Cancer is still killing the Whales, “Cancer is the consequence of a lifetime of accumulating mutations,” said Daniel Martineau, a professor of pathology at the University of Montreal., who added that the deadly disease “is exactly what you would expect to find in animals that are eating from these sediments.”

The poison in the sediments where the whales feed is called POPs. POPs are a combination of various chemical waste products including PCBs that are a by-product of the manufacturing process of aluminum. The whales eat mussels that have absorbed the POPs in the sediment and the poison works it way into the Beluga’s intestinal tract after years of eating the mussels. “Often the POPs interact directly with an animal’s DNA by disrupting its structure and leading to mistakes in replication. These mistakes accumulate over the animal’s lifetime, leading to tumors and, possibly, death. In other cases, the chemicals attach to DNA and turn genes on or off. Pollutants can also contribute to cancers by distracting an animal’s immune system, allowing certain types of viruses to cause tumors.” Carol Meteyer, a wildlife pathologist with the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis.

Here is the really sad part. “Mothers dump their contaminant loads to their first born pups,” said Gina Ylitalo, a research chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle, Washington, who led the study. So that is why it could take another 20 years or so for the cancer to die out. Unfortunately the cancer just doesn’t disappear after you shut off the poison faucet.

It is fairly rare for wild animals to be killed by cancer but the case of the Beluga whales in Quebec is not the only incident. Scientists have seen it in California sea lions along the central coast, North Sea flounders and in Ohio’s Black River catfish. Elevated levels of POPs were found in these mammals and fish; in the case of the sea lions it was 85% higher than in sea lions who did not have cancer.

The cancer found in the Belugas can be looked at as another example of the canary in the coal mines. Scientists say that the cancer patterns found in the Estuary could reveal cancer patterns found in human populations. When both people and mammals are living in an area where there is an abundance of cancer causing POPs cancer will most likely show up first in the mammals. This should set off an alarm for us to quickly move in and hopefully save some lives. Unfortunately not enough people are paying attention to helpless mammals. Usually people have to start dying in order for someone to pay attention.

I, obviously, am not saying it’s somehow OK for the mammals to be our canaries in the Estuary. But if in general, “society” was aware that aggressive monitoring of the planet’s animal’s health could possibly help safeguard their own maybe more attention would be paid to their well being. Sad scenario for sure but at this point we will continue to try for the best but take what we can get.

Do we know why?

2009-08-24T16:51:00.000-07:00

Previously I have written about the processes used by specific companies to simultaneously preform a task, i.e. kill weeds, create profits and cause environmental harm. I have never suggested these specific companies or industries maliciously cause environmental harm only that it is a secondary by-product of their company’s practices. In most cases they are surely aware of causing environmental harm but do not change their practices.

I recently read a letter to the editor in the August 15th-21st 2009 issue of The Economist magazine. This letter profoundly states the case not for examining the tools used which can cause an inhumane outcome but to attempt to understand why people are so easily manipulated into engaging in processes which eventually result in their or someone else’s harm.

Here is the most relevant portion of the letter written by Dennis Sandole, Institute of Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University in response to an article about genocide in Rwanda.

“The deepest conundrum is what makes groups of people, defined by religion, class, race or any other attribute, so vulnerable to political manipulation that they can be easily persuaded to commit diabolical acts against other groups. Until we solve that core problem, would-be manipulators will always find one medium or another, from the printed word to the latest form of e-communication, to demonize and proscribe the hated “other”.

Now to apply this complex, challenging and important question to the subject of environmental harm. “Groups of People” from the quote would apply to both the manipulators and the manipulated. People not involved in the production or sale of products harmful to the environment are the manipulated. And so people involved in the sale and production of products harmful to the environments would be the manipulators.

Why is the possible? According to Dennis Sandole it is not due the extraordinary communication tools available to the manipulators. It is an “attribute” commonly found in the character of each group of people which allows them to either manipulate or be manipulated.

I would love to hear your answers to this question as I agreed whole heartly with Mr. Sandole. Many regulations are passed and many warning are given but to date most people seem to maintain their current behavior. In the meantime I can do some research to discover what psychologists and sociologists think of the destructive and self-destructive behavior portrayed by the manipulators and the manipulated.

For now I will and I hope you will more thoroughly remove yourself from either group. This should begin to undo the destructive actions of all of our behaviors and hopefully lead to a cleaner and thus less harmful environment.

Frog are great indicators of environmental health

2009-08-21T13:13:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a wonderful suggestion from a member of the greenhomexpress facebook fan club, I checked out the site amphibianark.org. Even if you have ranidaphobia, fear of frogs, you still can certainly appreciate the contribution they make to our ecosystem and as indicators of the planet's environmental health.

First some fascinating and terrifying frog (amphibian) facts: 50% of the approximately 6000 species are threatened with extinction. 165 species are already extinct. 500 species will become extinct in the near future, too late to save them. And the really sad news: it appears with current efforts and spending levels only about 50 species can be saved. So, if we stay on course it should only take us about 100 years to wipe out about 90% of a species that has been around for about 400 million years. Astonishing!

In the following paragraph I will briefly describe how frogs are vital components of our ecosystem. Just to be clear, this is for informational purposes only since I personally believe that if something exists on our planet and we did not create it, i.e. build it, pour it out of a test tube, etc, then it belongs here regardless of what we understand about it. Actually, I will quote amphibianark.org since they do such a great job of explaining it. “Amphibians feed primarily on insects and other invertebrates. It was estimated that a single population of ~1,000 cricket frogs (Acris crepitans) could consume almost five million invertebrates in one year. Clearly they serve as significant predators of small invertebrates, as abundant prey for larger predators, and as a vital link in the food web between the two. In areas of the world where amphibians have declined, there has been an increase in invertebrate pests that damage crops and that carry human diseases.”

How we, humans, benefit directly from amphibians: They provide vital bio-medicines. Some of the categories of medicines that amphibians have contributed to are analgesics, antibiotics, stimulants for heart attach victims, antidepressants, medicines for stroke, seizure, Alzheimer’s, cancer and HIV infections.

How we should benefit from amphibians: They have been compared to canaries in the coal mines. They have very thin skins and are susceptible to environmental contaminants. Amphibians might be able to warn us if certain unsafe environmental conditions exist. Some environmental and scientific organizations do this now, i.e. The Natural Defenses Resource Council, but it is clear that all of us need to pay more attention. For example, Atrazine can chemically sterilize tadpoles at levels well below the EPA maximum allowable level for drinking water. And Atrazine has been found in more than 1 million American’s drinking water above the maximum amount set by the EPA. So the obvious conclusion is since Atrazine is sterilizing amphibians and it’s in our drinking water, Atrazine might be sterilizing us. So we should pay very close attention to the amphibian population.

There are many time consuming and expensive processes we can become involved in to help rectify this horrible situation. But, as always, the simplest and quickest involves being extraordinarily environmentally careful when spending your hard earned money. Please make sure you are not allowing your health and the health of your loved ones to be controlled by a company that thinks its expendable.

greenhomexpress.com

More on Atrazine, the very bad and the sinful

2009-08-20T11:27:00.000-07:00

Back on August 5th I wrote about Atrazine, the herbicide that is used in 80 countries including the US but is banned in the EU. In 2004 the EU banned it's use because studies showed that Atrazine could interfere with human reproductive processes. Our EPA said the data was insufficient to determine if atrazine could cause reproductive problems in humans.

The Very Bad

A new study was just released and it said "The common and highly-used herbicide atrazine can act within the brain to disrupt the cascade of hormone signals needed to initiate ovulation." "Collectively, the results of this study – along with a prior study by the same research group – demonstrate that exposure to atrazine in adults can disrupt the surge of hormones needed to trigger ovulation in rats. This mechanism is similar in rats and humans, suggesting that disruption in humans is at least possible." Environmental Health News, August 20th, 2009.

The other news out of the study was that as soon as the rats were no longer exposed to Atrazine the disruption of the surge of hormones stopped.

The Sinful

Now armed with that final piece of information, why isn't Syngenta, the company that manufactures Atrazine, removing Atrazine from the marketplace and siting this study saying that there isn't any long term permanent health problems? Essentially they could take the money and run.

Lets say we can climb into the heads of the Board of Directors of Syngenta and imagine what they are thinking. My guess, being the cynical environmental watchdog, is that they are thinking along the following lines.

They might be thinking they can roll the dice and think the dice are fixed. They can still manufacture Atrazine, make lots of profits and wait until another study proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that their product does interfere with the human reproductive system. (I am not saying in general terms that I think capitalism is bad, I am saying making money and putting people's lives at risk is bad.) And if people complain about the long term effects they can site this current study. If you believe this might be their reasoning I would suggest to you that the only conclusion is that they are indeed sinful.

The simple truth: Syngenta is manufacturing a chemical that is used to kill organic matter. It is a weed killer. Logically if it kills organic matter there is that possibility that it could kill us.

We don't need it, plenty of farmers grow food without herbicides and we don't want it, let them roll the dice with their own lives.

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Only Buy Surfboards Made in the US

2009-08-19T11:15:00.000-07:00

If you buy a surfboard please either buy a used one or one made entirely in the US.

Why?

The reasons and my story: I went shopping for a surfboard the other day. It has been at least a decade or so since I bought a surfboard, so I was very uneducated about what has occurred in the last couple of years. Just like all the other purchases we make this one originally seemed simple. Unfortunately, it turned very complicated very quickly.

First heres some important background information on surfboard manufacturing. Previous to December 5th 2005, virtually all surfboard foam was made by Clark Foam using polyurethane. TDI was the reactive agent used by Clark foam in making polyurethane. TDI is a Carcinogen. The EPA shut down the company after 45 years in business. The circumstances surrounding the closing of the plant are very controversial and an important topic to be addressed in another blog. So after December 5th 2005, if you bought a new surfboard, it was either made using another type of foam other than PU with TDI as a reactive agent or was not manufactured in the US.

When I was talking to the salesperson at a local surf shop he pointed out that some of the surfboards were in fact made in China.

The insane irony of this should now jump off the computer screen and smack you in the face. Why would the US allow the importation of surfboards made using TDI? But not let a manufacturer use TDI in the production of surfboards here in the US. Does this mean it's "OK" for workers outside the US to be exposed to cancer causing chemicals? No it is not "OK". So the US should ban the import of those surfboards. Very simple. But they don't.

The surfboards made in China were, of course, much less expensive than the surfboards made in the US. But, as I have pointed out before in other blogs relative to other products, the price difference did not include the environmental costs. In this case not only are there environmental costs due to the carcinogen TDI but also due to the large carbon footprint caused by international transportation of this product. As I said, this purchase originally seemed simple but turned very complicated.

I ended up buying a used surfboard made in the US after 2005.

Poisoning Dolphins

2009-08-18T12:46:00.000-07:00

“The fact that this chemical, (triclosan, a germ-killing chemical), is found in the environment and is being detected in a top level predator, (one-third of the bottlenose dolphins tested off South Carolina and almost one-quarter of those tested off Florida,) certainly warrants concern,” said Patricia Fair, a research physiologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and lead author of the dolphin study, which was published online in the journal Environmental Pollution in May.

Triclosan is a germ-killing chemical found in hundreds of products, including liquid hand soaps, toothpaste and deodorants. The amount of Triclosan found in the dolphins has disrupted the hormones and growth and development of other animals that had similar amounts in their blood.

And to those who say we need this chemical otherwise we won't rid ourselves of infectious bacteria.

"In the first known comprehensive analysis of whether antibacterial soaps work better than plain soaps, Allison Aiello of the U-M School of Public Health and her team found that washing hands with an antibacterial soap was no more effective in preventing infectious illness than plain soap. Moreover, antibacterial soaps at formulations sold to the public do not remove any more bacteria from the hands during washing than plain soaps." August 15th, 2007. U-M stand for University of Michigan. Notice the date, 2 years ago.

The obvious conclusion: We don't need antibacterial soaps or any other products that contain Triclosan. We are poisoning one of the most intelligent and precious animals on earth with something we don't need now nor have we ever needed.

As I mentioned before the easiest way to stop this type of insanity is with your pocketbook. If we don't buy this poison then it will be impossible for someone to sell it. It will be too late if we wait for the EPA or other similar organizations to react, they wait until the damage is done. We can decide now.

greenhomexpress.com

More unfortunate news about pesticides

2009-08-05T20:28:00.001-07:00

Would rather write about something else since I posted a similar story this morning but the following news story just came out today.

“Rural residents who drink water from private wells are much more likely to have Parkinson’s disease, a finding that bolsters theories that farm pesticides may be partially to blame, according to a new California study.” Environmental Health News, August 5th, 2009

We really don’t have a choice, it either organically grown foods and environmentally safe products or we suffer the consequences.

What is a life worth?

2009-08-05T09:55:00.000-07:00

On August 3rd I wrote about industrial chemicals that are introduced into our environment even though that have no known natural analogues. This means they are unlike any natural occurring chemicals, and their effect on us and the environment is unknown. Testing of these materials takes place, but it is rarely long term or comprehensive enough. So, we are at risk.

Here is a specific example of one that was let out of the lab too soon and is now used in 80 countries including the US but was banned by the EU in 2004.

Atrazine is a herbicide that may cause a variety of cancers and harm human and animal reproductive and hormone systems. The word “may” in the previous sentence is a relatively small word with only three letters, but it is a very large word for Syngenta. It translates into billions of dollars for Syngenta, the manufacturer of Atrazine. Since no governmental or private scientific organization has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Atrazine is carcinogenic or harmful to reproductive systems Syngenta feels they have the right to produce it.

What about our rights? The EU felt the risk was too great 5 years ago so it banned Atrazine. This was not some arbitrary decision. Studies were done, results were examined, and finally a decision was made. This was a well thought out decision in favor of possibly saving lives.

Syngenta’s corporate goal is to increase crop productivity, a good thing. While possibly causing human and environmental harm while doing this, a bad thing. Simple solution: Stop doing the bad thing. Last year Syngenta’s sales were 11.6 Billion. So they make a little less and possibly save some lives; sounds like a more reasonable course of action then what they are doing now.

The irony in all of this is quite scary. Syngenta works to increase crop productivity to better feed an ever increasing world population. Also possibly decreasing world population by introducing a herbicide that could disrupt our reproductive systems.

In the meantime I’ll stick to organically produced products.

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Our bodies can't figure out what we are doing

2009-08-02T12:39:00.000-07:00

"This is the dilemma. Our sentry system through evolution has been designed to spot dangers in a certain range, like a snarling animal. We have no perceptual system for subtle molecular level impacts on nature or temperature change on a global scale. We literally don't know the consequences of what we do." Daniel Goleman, author of the book Ecological Intelligence, from Scientific American April 2009.

We think we are smarter than or are not paying enough attention to evolution. Why do we allow industry to use approximately 100,000 industrial chemicals that have no known natural analogues? Do we really need these chemicals? The processes that use these industrial chemicals do not benefit us, they only benefit those that make money from them otherwise they wouldn't exist. In the meantime our bodies are trying to figure out what they are.

Our brains are constantly working to protect us from scaring ourselves to death. My goal is certainly not to work against that survival technique but I do think we should be aware. We really do need to take a very active role in what is allowed in our environment. 100, 000 "new" chemicals floating around in our environment is just too many. I personally think that one "new chemical" is one too many. Many chemicals that were once used in our environment have been banned because there was conclusive proof that they caused cancer. I say, lets not wait for conclusive proof.

The easiest and quickest way we can eliminate the new and unknown is to use our wallets. We can start with the simplest purchases, items we buy on a daily basis. Food!! Only buy organically grown food. We don't need food grown using "new" chemicals. Bodies like ours have been digesting food grown without unknown substances for hundreds of thousands of years, we don't need them.

Next, things you buy on a weekly basis, products you use to clean up the mess you made cooking and eating the food. Look at the labels on these cleaners. Do you recognize the ingredients? If not, don't buy them. We also have been cleaning up after ourselves for a long time without these super cleaners, we don't need them either.

Next week start with some other products you buy, clothes, etc. Take it one simple step at a time and you will be amazed how "green" you can get.

greenhomexpress.com

Reverse the brainwashing

2009-07-30T17:06:00.000-07:00

Buying a very high milage car, new or used, i.e. Prius, Civic Hybrid, or a high milage non-hybrid car isn't the key to happiness but either is owning a SUV.

The reasons you have convinced yourself not to buy one.

(Assuming you have the "appropriate" funds and need to buy a car.)

Waiting for the car manufacturers to come up with a miracle as in a plug-in hybrid or a fully electric vehicle that is "practical and affordable."

Kept calculating the costs of your current car vs the costs of the "Prius" without calculating the actual and very real environmental cost differential caused by the significant difference in MPG.

Convinced yourself you need the "whatever" that another car with a much higher MPG can't give you, i.e. enough seats for 8, (even though you almost always drive alone), enough horsepower to tow a small house, enough speed to win the Indy 500, enough status to get you a movie deal and enough of whatever the advertises think you might need to make you feel happy.

Owning a "status" car will not make you happy. (I know you are thinking that even a Prius has become a status car but even that will also not make you happy. But it will lower the negative environmental impact of most people's driving habits.) You are not genetically hard wired to achieve happiness from owning a "status" car. As I previously mentioned you were brainwashed by advertisers to think owning a "status" car will bring happiness. Before the 19th century cars didn't even exist and people still found happiness. In fact, I know this might not exactly be a practical idea since our entire transportation system would need to change but I believe that most of us would be happier if we could just toss our car into the recycling bin.

This previous explanation holds water with many other products besides cars. You don't need chlorine bleached toilet paper, surfactant filled dish washing liquid, artificially perfumed hand soap to bring about internal bliss. But...how do you feel when a beautiful butterfly glides by? Brings a sense of wonder and elation, doesn't it.

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45, 000 Uncertified Abandoned Wells

2009-07-28T07:28:00.000-07:00

"The report, (from the Alberta Environment), said there were more than 45,000 uncertified abandoned wells at the end of 2008, compared to less than 25,000 uncertified wells in 2001." Calgery Herold, July 26, 2009.

Drilling more than before, making a bigger environmental mess, still not taking responsibility and we get stuck with the dilemma. The "drillers" and their money can't be bothered. They are off to wreck someone else's backyard. Do you think the CEO of XYZ oil company has a rig set up in his backyard.

Actually the joke is on all of us now, except some of us just realize it. I guess some thought they could go back to their ranches in Texas or wherever and clear some brush, hike around and say they were concerned about the environment.

But now it's inescapable, the destruction is everywhere. Actually it always has been everywhere it was just easier to ignore. Sure there is some progress and more people are concerned but please don't fool yourself. Big brother is watching out for his self. Big brother will just keep moving further away and will change the channel or gas will stay under $3 a gallon. Please don't wait until you can only find a polar bear in the zoo.

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Songbirds, Bees and Butterflies, going, going....

2009-07-26T10:27:00.000-07:00

Just read a revealing and enlightening commentary on our society's disregard for the negative effects that industrialization has had on our environment.

Commentary: Remembering Songbirds, Bees and Butterflies.

Will we really wake up one day from our partially self-induced delusional daze and realize that the essential and irreplaceable are gone? Wondrous inhabitants of our shared planet becoming extinct within the blink of an eye after having been here for thousands of years.

Partially self-induced unless you believe humankind is sub-consciously suicidal. Don't believe it's possible for "someone else" to manipulate hundreds of millions of people into being self destructive? We are living it right now in Iraq. The cost will be permanent in terms of "lives" and dollars regardless of the outcome in Iraq and in our "battle" to save and then restore our environment.

The author, Dale Bryant, mentions the old wives' tale about the frog that won't notice he's in a pan of boiling water so long as the water is cool in the beginning and heats only gradually. That seems frightening true for many people when you examine the behavior of most of our society but there are some who have looked over the edge of the pot and can see the flames. We should listen to them when they tell us that there isn't much time left before the water starts to boil.

greenhomexpress.com

We have poisoned breast milk

2009-07-24T07:48:00.000-07:00

How many people know that women have poison in their breast milk? Please be honest, no one can hear your answer unless you scream it from your rooftop like I just did, just tell the truth: Did you know that women have poison in their breast milk.

Call me uniformed, naive, foolish, whatever, but this morning I read an article stating how by banning certain substances that are used in manufacturing and agriculture the amount of poisons that are currently found in breast milk has been reduced. So now we can really call ourselves members of a civilized society because we were able to reduce the amount of poison found in breast milk.

So now I will say what is hopefully on everyone's mind who is reading this blog.

What in God's name is poison doing in breast milk!!

Breast milk is arguably the most sacred substance on earth. Without it life would not exist. (Except of course for artificial breast milk; but a discussion of that would bring us off topic, though not completely off topic when you really think about it.)

Why did we do this and for those of us who weren't completely aware of this, why did we allow this to happen? You have heard of mind over matter, well this is money over life. Like in the movie "Damn Yankees" we have sold our soul to the devil. Greed has ripped the humanity for ourselves and everything around us right out of our being.

We don't own our lives, life is a gift to us as is the earth and everything on it.

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Cap & Trade Bill, it passed but do you understand it?

2009-07-22T13:08:00.000-07:00

The cap & trade bill passed on June 26th and will have an enormous effect on our environment and economy. I have seen polls that say more than 50% of people in the US don't really understand it and so thought it would be very important to discuss it here.

I found a debate transcribed on pbs.org that explains the bill and the possible results from both perspectives, pro and con, with clarity and sophistication and without too much political rhetoric. I will present a slightly condensed version of the debate below.

I am for the bill, as one would know if you had read my previous blogs, and will insert my comments in "red".

The debate is between Karen Harbert, president and CEO of the Institute for 21st Century Energy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Daniel Weiss, director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress and is moderated by Judy Woodruff of PBS.

DANIEL WEISS: This bill is about two big things: first, shifting investments into clean-energy technologies of the future, wind and solar power and energy efficiency; second, it's about saving consumers money.

EPA just came out with a study earlier this week that said it would save the average household about $84 in utility bills every year, and so it's going to create jobs, and save people money, and, by the way, fight pollution.

And "by the way, fight pollution", what do you mean by the way...that's the whole point!!!! And what does pollution cost us? How much money is poured into the health care system to pay for the effects of pollution?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Karen Harbert, you point out that you and the chamber want cleaner energy, but this is the wrong way to do it.

KAREN HARBERT, U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Well, we do think it's the wrong way to do it. We want to have a cleaner environment, but we also want to have a healthy economy.

And I'm afraid that this legislation will make it more expensive for businesses to do business here at home. It will make them less competitive overseas. And that's not really smart policy, and particularly not at this economic juncture in our...

What about an environmental tax on imports whose manufacturing processes create more "pollution" than products made in the US produce. Is Karen saying if others countries get to pollute then it's ok if we do? If US manufacturers are held to a higher environmental standard than manufacturers overseas then either don't bring the products in or charge them a pollution tax.

T

he issue of cost

JUDY WOODRUFF: Why do you think it's going to cost businesses more? The president today was arguing that ultimately Americans are going to pay less or, in the short term, Americans are going to pay less for energy.

KAREN HARBERT: Well, the reason the bill is 1,200 pages and growing as we speak is because it's very complex. And they're proposing a number of offsets to industries that are going to bear more costs. And if they're going to be bearing more costs, they're going to pass those costs onto the consumer.

American business is not in the business of philanthropy, and so they're going to have to have somebody pay for these things, so it's going to be the consumer and the taxpayer.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The consumer is the one who's going to pay the bill?

DANIEL WEISS: Well, I appreciate Karen's arguments, but the Congressional Budget Office and EPA said the cost is going to be small overall, about the price of a postage stamp for overall products costs. And for electricity, the average consumer is going to save money. So I'm going to listen to the CBO and EPA and their independent analyses of what this bill will do.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said that what this will do is this will actually jump-start our economy and help get the recovery going because it will stimulate investments in new industries.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you know that's wrong?

KAREN HARBERT: I don't know that mandates stimulate anything. Mandates are mandates to change behavior, and they're going to bring up costs for the business community to actually operate. If energy is going to be more expensive and products are going to be more expensive, that is, frankly, a cost that the consumer is going to bear.

So the cost of the postage stamp, though, is interesting. The Congressional Budget Office said, We didn't take into account what was going to happen after 2020.

2020 is when all the allocations aren't free any longer and there's real costs, so I'd like the CBO to actually do an analysis of the full bill and take into account some of the job losses that are going to go overseas.

DANIEL WEISS: Well, it's important to note, they also didn't take into account the savings from reducing the threat of global warming: fewer droughts, fewer floods, less smog, less tropical diseases. None of that's included.

Yes!!!!! Thank you. How much does a drought cost? What is the cost of smog? Those are the real costs!!! The same can be said of toilet paper made from either virgin forests or post consumer paper, as I have said many times. The price at the cash wrap is not the real cost. We have to think of our children and grand-children. How much will a drought cost them.

Nor does it include energy efficiency. So the number is a conservative, cautious one that doesn't include many of the benefits of this bill.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, in other words, there are other savings in this bill that aren't even...

DANIEL WEISS: That's right, that no one calculated

How cap and trade would work

JUDY WOODRUFF: Let's talk just briefly about cap and trade. Most people still don't exactly understand how it would work. Explain how it would work and why you think it's positive.

DANIEL WEISS: A cap-and-trade system is a tried-and-true mechanism that we use right now to control the pollution that causes acid rain. What it does is, it puts a limit on pollution, and everybody has to have a permit for every ton of pollution they emit. The less you emit, the fewer permits you have to buy, and the more money you save. The more you emit, the more permits you have to have.

KAREN HARBERT: It's a very simple mechanism; that is without a doubt. But I don't understand why that takes 1,200 or 1,400 pages to explain it to the American public.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But is your disagreement that people don't understand it or that you think the way it works is not the way that will serve your interest, the interests of members of the Chamber of Commerce who you represent?

KAREN HARBERT: Well, quite frankly, we've seen it operate in Europe, and it caused price increases in Europe, it caused job-shedding in Europe, and we still haven't seen any environmental benefit from that. In fact, CO-2 has gone up in Europe.

So we have a living, breathing example right across the Atlantic Ocean. We should learn from that. We should do this smartly. It's not that we shouldn't do something; we just need to do it more smartly.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Dan Weiss, we heard the president say that this is going to create jobs. How can you be certain that it will do that?

DANIEL WEISS: Well, we did an economic model, done by the University of Massachusetts, that factored in all the provisions in this bill and calculated it will create at least 1.7 million new jobs. And these are jobs in things like manufacturing of steel, the construction industry, people going to work putting in new windows. These are jobs for the most part that can't be outsourced.

And, Karen, you'll be pleased to know that people are starting to catch on to cap and trade. The Washington Post just had a poll today that said more than half the people in the country support cap and trade as a way to reduce global warming pollution and about 75 percent support action now. So you'll be pleased to know the American people are catching on.

Unfortunately we won't really know if this works until implemented for a number of years. And, not to constantly repeat myself and bore you to death but all the costs need to be calculated including the environmental costs.

Effects on the U.S. economy

JUDY WOODRUFF: What about the jobs question, though, about whether jobs will be created and, if so, how many?

KAREN HARBERT: You know, there are as many analyses of this bill as there are flavors of ice cream. The National Black Chamber of Commerce also did an analysis and ran an economic model, and its conclusion was, after you take into account the green jobs that it may create, we're actually going to lose between 2.3 million and 2.7 million jobs.

So I think your question is a good one. How do we know? And what is the right answer? We need CBO and others to do a thorough economic analysis of whatever this bill is going to look like tonight.

Exactly, how do we know? But if we wait until the Republicans implement a plan it will be too late. The Bush II administration left us 16 years behind, 8 years destroying any legislation that could help the environment and/or the economy and another 8 years of wasted time that the economy and environment could be improving.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Just quickly, Karen Harbert, the president also said that this legislation provides assistance to businesses and families to make the transition to cleaner energy. Do you buy that?

KAREN HARBERT: You know, I'm not sure that's good news that right now what we're proposing is that it's going to be -- the costs of complying with this regulation are going to be so high that now the taxpayer has to pay American business to stay in business. I'm not sure that really makes sense.

Why is the taxpayer paying American business to stay competitive? So it means that the regulatory scheme is too onerous and too expensive to just stay in business.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What about that argument?

DANIEL WEISS: Well, we've used this system before to reduce the sulfur emissions that cause acid rain, and it came in at one-quarter of the price that EPA predicted, not to mention the even more higher price that the utility industry predicted.

I don't know what she's talking about with taxes and people paying business and all that sort of thing.

What this bill does is, it provides a smooth economic transition for companies and families to move into a clean-energy future. As the president said, the country that controls the clean-energy technologies of the future are going to be the ones that dominate the world economy.

We're behind. We've spent eight years doing nothing. Germany leads in solar energy; China's going to be leading in wind. We need to catch up. And this bill will launch the investments that will do that.

Exactly!!

KAREN HARBERT: The American economy is actually number one in wind. We produce more wind than any other country in the world, and I hope that continues to grow.

But when you take wind and solar together in this country, they provide 1.3 percent of the nation's electricity. So we need to approach this thoughtfully, constructively, and don't rush it so that we bankrupt our economy.

Bankrupt our economy, that's so ironic that she would say that. Our economy is already bankrupted thanks to in large part the previous republican administration who's political philosophy is similar to hers. The republicans screamed deregulation and it's screaming it now. Well what happens when you let these large corporations run amuck. She is right, "American business is not in the business of philanthropy". Most of them are in the business of short term profits. And who pays for the mess they create? We do, the consumers, the taxpayers. We get to pay for cleaning up the mess now and we are sick and tired of it. Lets keep them making a mess now so our children don't have to pay for it latter.

greenhomexpress.com

I left my compost in San Francisco

2009-07-21T13:07:00.000-07:00

If San Franciscans can do it we all can certainly do it. The city just pasted a resolution that asks, not really asks since a small fine will be imposed if someone doesn't comply by 2011, their citizens to put all their compost material into a third bin provided by the city.

To dispel any notion that this is some sort of socialist plot to ask people to do something that is not for their individual short term gain and also that somehow is related to Obama's campaign promise to keep our the country's economy from collapsing, consider what happens to food scraps and plant clippings in our landfills. Methane. Methane is very very bad stuff. It is 20 time worse of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Greenhouse gasses cause global warming which is suffocating our earth and really pissing off the polar bears and every other living organism, including humans, not to mention possibly eventually making our home, the earth, no longer inhabitable. This eventuality might sound a bit far fetched to you so please read my blog from the 20th of July which lists a few of the known effects of global warming.

The people and city of SF walk the talk. They have 2020 as their goal for zero waste. Every city on the planet should have the same goal. Reducing or eliminating methane is not the only benefit of eliminating landfills.

A June 2008 report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a group focused on environmentally sound community development, said a zero waste approach is one of the fastest, cheapest and most effective ways to protect the climate. Cutting waste sent to landfills and incinerators would be like closing 21 percent of U.S. coal-fired power plants, the report said.

By the city's count, it currently diverts 72 percent of its waste, best in the nation. If recyclables and compostables going into landfills were diverted, the city's recycling rate would jump to 90 percent.

Lets hear it for the people by the bay.

greenhomexpress.com

Global Warming is Real

2009-07-20T10:08:00.000-07:00

On July 17th I explained how deforestation contributes to global warming. Some people don't believe that or at least have their doubts so I will present some indisputable facts and let you decide.

Every time we cut a tree down we release carbon into the environment and remove the ability of that tree to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Carbon is a greenhouse gas which means, along with other gases in the atmosphere, it forms a barrier and traps heat as it is radiated from the earth. The more heat that is trapped the hotter the earth gets. If we, humans, put more carbon into the atmosphere than would normally be there by burning fossil fuels and deforestation then the earth becomes hotter than it normally would be. Please take a look at the following facts from National Geographic and other scientific organizations.

• Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius) around the world since 1880, much of this in recent decades, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

• The rate of warming is increasing. The 20th century's last two decades were the hottest in 400 years and possibly the warmest for several millennia, according to a number of climate studies. And the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that 11 of the past 12 years are among the dozen warmest since 1850.

• The Arctic is feeling the effects the most. Average temperatures in Alaska, western Canada, and eastern Russia have risen at twice the global average, according to the multinational Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report compiled between 2000 and 2004.

• Arctic ice is rapidly disappearing, and the region may have its first completelyice-free summer by 2040 or earlier. Polar bears and indigenous cultures are already suffering from the sea-ice loss.

• Glaciers and mountain snows are rapidly melting—for example, Montana's Glacier National Park now has only 27 glaciers, versus 150 in 1910. In the Northern Hemisphere, thaws also come a week earlier in spring and freezes begin a week later.

• Coral reefs, which are highly sensitive to small changes in water temperature, suffered the worst bleaching—or die-off in response to stress—ever recorded in 1998, with some areas seeing bleach rates of 70 percent. Experts expect these sorts of events to increase in frequency and intensity in the next 50 years as sea temperatures rise.

• An upsurge in the amount of extreme weather events, such as wildfires, heat waves, and strong tropical storms, is also attributed in part to climate change by some experts.

The report, based on the work of some 2,500 scientists in more than 130 countries, concluded that humans have caused all or most of the current planetary warming. Human-caused global warming is often called anthropogenic climate change.

• Industrialization, deforestation, and pollution have greatly increased atmospheric concentrations of water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, all greenhouse gases that help trap heat near Earth's surface. (See an interactive feature on how global warming works.)

• Humans are pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than plants and oceans can absorb it.

• These gases persist in the atmosphere for years, meaning that even if such emissions were eliminated today, it would not immediately stop global warming.

• Some experts point out that natural cycles in Earth's orbit can alter the planet's exposure to sunlight, which may explain the current trend. Earth has indeed experienced warming and cooling cycles roughly every hundred thousand years due to these orbital shifts, but such changes have occurred over the span of several centuries. Today's changes have taken place over the past hundred years or less.

• Other recent research has suggested that the effects of variations in the sun's output are "negligible" as a factor in warming, but other, more complicated solar mechanisms could possibly play a role.

What's Going to Happen?

A follow-up report by the IPCC released in April 2007 warned that global warming could lead to large-scale food and water shortages and have catastrophic effects on wildlife.

• Sea level could rise between 7 and 23 inches (18 to 59 centimeters) by century's end, the IPCC's February 2007 report projects. Rises of just 4 inches (10 centimeters) could flood many South Seas islands and swamp large parts of Southeast Asia.

• Some hundred million people live within 3 feet (1 meter) of mean sea level, and much of the world's population is concentrated in vulnerable coastal cities. In the U.S., Louisiana and Florida are especially at risk.

• Glaciers around the world could melt, causing sea levels to rise while creating water shortages in regions dependent on runoff for fresh water.

• Strong hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, wildfires, and other natural disasters may become commonplace in many parts of the world. The growth of deserts may also cause food shortages in many places.

• More than a million species face extinction from disappearing habitat, changing ecosystems, and acidifying oceans.

• The ocean's circulation system, known as the ocean conveyor belt, could be permanently altered, causing a mini-ice age in Western Europe and other rapid changes.

• At some point in the future, warming could become uncontrollable by creating a so-called positive feedback effect. Rising temperatures could release additional greenhouse gases by unlocking methane in permafrost and undersea deposits, freeing carbon trapped in sea ice, and causing increased evaporation of water.

Even if you only partially believed one the preceding facts how wrong could you be if you, as in all of you, took one tiny step to possibly decrease the rate at which global warming is proceeding.

You don't even have to drive a little less this week but slow down, just ease your foot off the accelerator just a fraction of an inch and and burn a gallon less of some fossil fuel or buy some toilet paper made from post consumer paper and save some trees from being eliminated by deforestation.

greenhomexpress.com

More on deforestation & global warming

2009-07-17T17:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I wrote how deforestation contributes to global warming. This is a follow-up for yesterday's blog explaining in more detail how deforestation drastically increases global warming.

It is vital to understand this since many companies make a very lot of money turning virgin forests into toilet paper and therefore will publish some very convincing PR to keep you using their unnecessary product when companies like Seventh Generation are producing an equally as good product not made from virgin forests.

It is well known that the US and China are numbers 1 & 2 on the list of countries that emit the most carbon into the atmosphere. #3 on the list is a shock, Indonesia. Indonesia has very little industrialization compared to the US and China but it is #3 on the list because it has lost 40% of its forest since 1950.

Here is the scientific explanation from Roger D. Stone's article in the Washington Monthly on why Indonesia is #3 on the list: (please read this slowly and a couple of times until you understand this, its extremely important...you never know when there might be a pop quiz), Plants remove carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide, from the atmosphere and turn it, via photosynthesis, into organic matter: leaves, bark, roots, and so on. This "fixing" process is most intense in dense tropical forests, which cover only 7 percent of the earth’s dry land but store (in the plants themselves and in the rich soils below) about 45 percent of all terrestrial carbon. Chopping down the rainforests removes this carbon-absorbing buffer while releasing vast amounts of stored carbon into the air as the brush is burned off.

So not only does deforestation remove carbon from the atmosphere but it releases stored carbon into the atmosphere. One of my favorite analogies to this is the Bush II presidency. Not only do we have to make up for the 8 years he spent removing environmentally protective legislation but we have to make up for 8 years of the benefits those pieces of legislation would have provided for the environment. So we actually have 16 years of beneficial environmental work to make up. The same goes for carbon: If we continue to practice deforestation we are crushing our atmosphere twice with one blow.

The bottom line is: Use toilet paper and paper towels made from post-consumer paper!!!!!! You have absolutely nothing to loose and everything to gain, as in "Saving our Atmosphere", not a bad return for such a simple act.

greenhomexpress.com

Deforestation causes massive global warming pollution

2009-07-15T12:54:00.000-07:00

"Deforestation causes more global warming pollution than all the combined emissions of cars, trucks, buses, airplanes and ships in the entire world." Allen Hershkowitz, Senior Scientist NDRC.

Please read the above sentence over again just to make sure it is absolutely crystal clear to you because when I first read this I didn't believe my eyes. I bet you one case of post-consumer toilet paper that if you asked 100 of your closest friends what causes more global warming pollution; deforestation or the combined emissions of cars, trucks, buses, airplanes and ships they would all say the combined emissions.

The following forests are at risk because of a product you use for an average of 3 seconds: ancient forests, old growth forests, virgin forests, second growth forests, natural forests, high conservation value forests, temperate forests, tropical and sub-tropical forests and boreal forests. Literally millions of acres destroyed in Brazil by cutting and conversion for the manufacture of pulp made into toilet paper and other tissue products by Kimberly Clark and Proctor & Gamble.

Before you buy another roll of virgin toilet paper and paper towel please think about the real cost of what you are doing, not just the actual price you pay at the checkout stand, but the "earth cost".

Antibiotics for healthy animals, another absurdity

2009-07-14T14:05:00.000-07:00

"The Obama administration announced Monday that it would seek to ban many routine uses of antibiotics in farm animals in hopes of reducing the spread of dangerous bacteria in humans. " New York Times, 7-14-09

Feeding antibiotics to healthy animals to encourage growth so the meat industry can make more money off of each animal. But what about the customer's health? What kind of insane customer service is that. Possibly poisoning your customers so you can make more money in the short term. Don't you want to keep your customers healthy and/or alive so they will come back and shop again.

(Not to try to convince you not to eat meat regardless but; FYI from John Hopkins University: Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment. A meat-based diet is acidic and it is best to eat fish, and a little chicken rather than beef or pork. Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer. )

Unfortunately this short term approach has been frequently used in many industries. Convince customers they have to use their cleaning products if they really want their dishes, clothes, etc. really clean. But don't tell them that what makes for clean dishes makes for dirty oceans. Maybe they should think long term as in longer life span and healthier happier lives. A novel approach for some, not for Seventh Generation who's been doing just this for decades.

greenhomexpress.com

Simple Lifestyle Changes vs. Extravagant & Costly Ideas to Tackle Climate Change

2009-07-13T17:08:00.000-07:00

A festival was held in Manchester UK this spring to provide a public forum where anyone could present their ingenious ideas to tackle climate change. All ideas were given a forum, from incredibly sophisticated and expensive to simple and immediate.

The professor who invented one of the first machines to harness wave energy proposed having a fleet of ships to spray seawater into the sky to increase cloud cover which could reduce the earth's temperature.

Another free thinker proposed tipping large amounts of lime into the ocean. This, he claimed, would increase the sea's ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as well as reduce the dangerous acidity which has also been a byproduct of decades of emissions.

The idea I liked the best came from a psychotherapist who led "carbon conversations" to encourage people to change their high carbon lifestyle. So very simple and inexpensive it seems literally insane for everyone on our planet not to engage in such discussions. Multiply the carbon lifestyle changes of these few people by a billion or so and the reduction in global warming could be astronomical and immediate.

Anyone care to help save a couple of million trees? How about some toilet paper made from 80% post consumer paper? It's really as simple as that.

greenhomexpress.com

Corporate Transportation and Global Warming

2009-07-11T07:34:00.000-07:00

Fascinating article in the NY Times discussing public transportation and how the poor planning and implementation of has significantly contributed to global warming.

Unlike many cities in the US cities located in "third world" countries have taken it upon themselves to tackle the problems of global warming caused by corporate driven transportation systems. The article describes how almost a decade ago the city of Bogota, Columbia built a Bus Rapid Transit system that has allowed the city to remove 7000 smaller buses from its roads reducing the use of bus fuel and the harmful exhaust by 59%.

Versions of these systems are being planned or built in dozens of developing cities around the world — Mexico City, Cape Town, Jakarta, Indonesia, and Ahmedabad, India.

And now for the startling fact:

Subways cost more than 30 times as much per mile to build than a B.R.T. system, and three times as much to maintain. And bus rapid transit systems can be built more quickly. “Almost all rapidly developing cities understand that they need a metro or something like it, and you can get a B.R.T. by 2010 or a metro by 2060,” said Walter Hook, executive director of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, in New York.

Aren't taxpayers funding a subway system in Los Angeles? How did that project get funded and who's benefiting from that? We need to control our own destiny and take it away from people who are using our money to benefit themselves.

greenhomexpress.com

We must do our part to make up for the irresponsibles.

2009-07-08T13:28:00.000-07:00

What you don't know about could kill you.

They were so many underhanded environmentally harmful actions taken by the powerful that we who care have no choice but to work harder to make up for their irresponsible actions. The following story illustrates one of many behind the scenes actions taken by Bush II during his 8 years of anti-environmental policies.

"A recent meeting was the latest action in a long-running campaign aimed at influencing environmental standards for perchlorate and implementing major new cleanups and liability costs for the military and its subsidiaries. It all began in an obscure but powerful office established by the Bush-era Department of Defense." Environmental Health News, 7-8-09

Ray Dubois, a Bush pentagon official from 2001 to 2004 created the Emerging Contaminates Directorate. Basically this was a Bush Ploy to allow the Pentagon to influence the EPA. Dubois wanted the EPA to get out of the Pentagon's way. For example, allow Pentagon contractors to release a chemical called Perchlorate into the environment during manufacturing even though it could adversely effect human health.

Hopefully Obama will remove the Emerging Contaminates Directorate. But how many other similar departments were created during the Bush II years? Can the present administration eliminate or even find them all.

Sound hopeless, but only if we stand still. You can rest when you, your children and their children are safe.

greenhomexpress.com

Climate Change Impact on Hunger

2009-07-06T09:52:00.001-07:00

"Climate change's most savage impact on humanity in the near future is likely to be in the increase in hunger … the countries with existing problems in feeding their people are those most at risk from climate change," Oxfam International.

Fortunately, my family, friends, and I have plenty to eat. I never have had to think about going without food. But, for many people hunger is just a normal way of life. If we all could put our wants and desire aside for just a brief period of time, we could help stop this unfortunate lifestyle.

A simple way to contribute to helping those going without a meal and preventing climate change is to buy green friendly products.

Important questions before you make a purchase:

Did the manufacture of this product contribute to global warming?

What is the real cost of the product, not just the actual purchase price but the global price?

Was the product manufactured, including all packaging, by using organically grown materials and/or with the highest post consumer material possible?

Will any of the ingredients of the product cause environmental harm while they are being used or after their use?

Help fight hunger by stopping global warming.

greenhomexpress.com

For Water: Single use Plastic vs Reusable Plastic vs aluminum vs Stainless Steel

2009-06-30T12:56:00.000-07:00

Stainless steel is the best and single use plastic is the worst. Take some time each day to prepare to bring your water with you.

Eighty-six percent of single use plastic water bottles sold end up clogging landfills, and they take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade, according to the American Recycling Institute. Plus, transporting bottled water from far-flung places like Fiji and France to U.S. stores takes another bite out of the planet, gobbling up about 1.5 million barrels of fossil fuels a year.

Stainless steel bottles keep drinks cooler longer and fresh tasting. Stainless steel water bottles are the best choice health-wise. There are no known safety issues; stainless steel is non-reactive so the bottles do not leach and do not have to be lined. Stainless steel is recyclable in all communities that recycle.

Aluminum and reusable plastic bottles both have possible health issues. Aluminum bottles need a inside liner to keep the water safe and its hard to keep it from wearing away. Some Plastic reusable bottles have health issues and some have wear problems. Stick with stainless.

greenhomexpress.com

Global Warming is Killing Polar Bears

2009-06-26T14:35:00.000-07:00

The Cherokee, like most Indian nations, believe that we don't own the Earth, but are Mother Earth's guardians. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution we have done a very poor job. During the last 30 years the Arctic Sea Ice has decreased by 40%. Polar bears are staving and drowning because of our actions. Global warming is real. For eight years the Bush administration refused to enact any policies that could possibly decrease global warming; in fact they reversed any policies that were already in place. So we are 16 years behind where we should of been not just 8. We can't wait one day longer. If you don't believe me just ask the Polar Bears.

greenhomexpress.com

Phosphates, No Way

2009-06-25T11:05:00.000-07:00

You won't find any phosphates in products found on our site. Check the ingredients of anything you buy, but you probably already know that. Phosphates are water-softening additives that are used in some laundry detergents, not ours, to enhance the performance of surfactants. They can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea if ingested, and because it is corrosive, it can cause severe skin irritation. When phosphates enter waterways, they act as a fertilizer, spawning overgrowth of algae. This overabundance of aquatic plant life eventually depletes the water's oxygen supply, killing off fish and other organisms.

greenhomexpress

Chlorine Bleaching Toilet Paper, Very Toxic

2009-06-24T17:17:00.001-07:00

Some companies use chlorine to make their toilet paper white. To be totally fair these same companies also use chlorine to remove lignin from the wood which helps shelf life, feel and strength of toilet paper. The chlorine bleaching process creates very toxic by-products like Dioxins. The Dioxins end up in our drinking water and soil.

Populations exposed to high levels of dioxins have increased risks of birth defects, cancer, diabetes and heart disease. You can learn more about studies on dioxins at the Nation Institute of Health.

greenhomexpress

Soft Toilet Paper

2009-06-23T13:23:00.000-07:00

The harvesting of millions of trees for toilet paper is caused by the desire for softer versions, which require the fiber from standing trees. Some of these trees are even being harvested from rare old-growth forests in Canada. The impact of this harvesting is two-fold; first, reducing the number of carbon-dioxide absorbing trees available and, second, destroying habitats for endangered species. Old growth trees which absorb carbon-dioxide and provide homes for our precious wildlife are more important than the softness of toilet paper.

greenhomexpress

Waste of Trees

2009-06-23T10:10:00.000-07:00

Americans could save more than 400,000 trees if each family bought a roll of recycled toilet paper...just once.

greenhomexpress

greenguys

Politics Disrupt Change

What else don't we know?

Apple Leaves US Chamber of Commerce

Ganges River Dolphin

The Real Cost of Going Green

Subsidies for Oil & Other Fossil Fuels

Senate Allows EPA to Buy Polluted Town

Murder Charges for Toxic Dumping

We are Frozen in Hatred

Do the Right Thing for Those Who Follow

“Roadway” Created in Arctic due to Global Warming

Hunting Polar Bears

Orangutans, 3000 die every year

President Obama Can't Wait for Congress

Rainforest Still Disappearing

African Lion disappearing in Kenya

Beluga Whales dying of cancer

More problems for Polar Bears

Do we know why?

Frog are great indicators of environmental health

More on Atrazine, the very bad and the sinful

Only Buy Surfboards Made in the US

Poisoning Dolphins

More unfortunate news about pesticides

What is a life worth?

Our bodies can't figure out what we are doing

Reverse the brainwashing

45, 000 Uncertified Abandoned Wells

Songbirds, Bees and Butterflies, going, going....

We have poisoned breast milk

Cap & Trade Bill, it passed but do you understand it?

T

he issue of cost

How cap and trade would work

Effects on the U.S. economy

I left my compost in San Francisco

Global Warming is Real

More on deforestation & global warming

Deforestation causes massive global warming pollution

Antibiotics for healthy animals, another absurdity

Simple Lifestyle Changes vs. Extravagant & Costly Ideas to Tackle Climate Change

Corporate Transportation and Global Warming

We must do our part to make up for the irresponsibles.

Climate Change Impact on Hunger

For Water: Single use Plastic vs Reusable Plastic vs aluminum vs Stainless Steel

Global Warming is Killing Polar Bears

Phosphates, No Way

Chlorine Bleaching Toilet Paper, Very Toxic

Soft Toilet Paper

Waste of Trees