First Prize In Science Fair For Experiment Showing Accelerated Decay Of Plastic Bags -- But Is It Science?

Plastic bags are kind of a shamanic religious icon for environmentalists, a kind of inverted symbol of the adversary. Eco-warriors are inspired to ordeals and psychodramas by the mere symbol, and bringing them up in casual conversation might provoke a nearly pentecostal reaction. Their lip will quiver at the corner and they'll lapse into a kind of two minute hate, babbling obscenities and quoting the prophets Al Gore and Ralph Nader, with perhaps a stirring rendition of the Kenny Loggins classic "Conviction Of The Heart".

But we might be saved from Loggins impressions by aging eco-yuppie scum if the hypothesis of a 16 year old boy is correct. Daniel Burd won the top prize at the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Ottawa last month for discovering and demonstrating a simple method of accelerating the rate of disintegration of plastic grocery bags, and he thinks his data shows that the method could potentially be applied en masse to completely erase a plastic bag with minimal carbon output in 3 months.

He perfected a foul bacterial brew of water, yeast and ground up plastic bags over the course of three months, isolating the microbes that most effectively devoured the plastic and making new brews with those bacteria exclusively, increasing the rate at which the bags got munched up. He found that he could degrade whole plastic bags by 46% in 6 weeks time, and he extrapolates that after another 6 weeks, the bags would be gone.

I'm pretty skeptical. The kid has a nice experiment, but you can't just plot a line on a graph and then keep drawing based on an average, without any hard data. You can't extrapolate new data based on a trend. Simply put, that's junk science. That's pseudoscience. You can't sell carbon offsets with science fair exhibits.

Still, the data is promising, if not indicative of a real interest in environmentalism. Daniel was awarded the princely sum of $10,000 as first prize in the science fair, along with a $20,000 scholarship fund. He suspects that his findings may be the first of their kind, as scientists were unaware previously that the bacterium he had isolated could degrade the type of plastic used in grocery bags. While he hopes to continue his experiment to it's conclusion, he's more focused on academics and student politics, not to mention the intricacies of high school social circles. Only time will tell.

Source: http://news.therecord.com/article/354044

Trees Glorious Trees

There is something about the constancy of trees that I admire. Their towering longevity and inherent grace always gains my respect. Yes, trees are one of my favorites from Mother Nature’s collection. And the fact that they allow me to breathe just completes the perfection of their design.

The process of photosynthesis always used to bore me in science class. It was one of those school facts that had little relevance to my life. Now I realize what the teachers were trying to get me to understand. My life depends on those tree related processes, now more than ever.

In case you too blocked it out in school, photosynthesis is the means in which a tree, plant or any green thing lives. The chlorophyll in the leaves (the green tone we see) soaks up water and carbon dioxide in the air. This absorbed energy is utilized in processing the minerals taken in by the roots to help nourish the tree. After the process is complete, trees release oxygen and water back into the atmosphere.

So, essentially, we breathe in tree waste. We are dependent upon trees for our lives.

Sure, there is natural oxygen in the atmosphere making up about 20 percent of the gases but without the constant replenishment from tree waste, the chemical composition of the air would begin to change drastically. And with the ever increasing carbon emissions adding to the temperature of the planet i.e. global warming, it’s all the trees can do to keep up.

A single medium sized tree provides enough oxygen for one human to breathe in ideal circumstances.

So with carbon, pollution, toxins and goodness knows what else in the air, the situation is far from ideal. And what about all our furry friends? They too require oxygen to breathe. And our fishy friends? Water plants release oxygen into the water which allows them to breathe. We need trees for our continued planetary existence.

And of course, to offset all this bleeping carbon.

The connection between people and trees isn’t some throwback from the sixties or belong to people with flowers in their hair and sandals on their feet. That connection is foundational to everything and everyone.

You might not have an urge to go out and hug a tree after reading this but you might consider a little internal nod to the grand design.

Yes, for me, it’s definitely a case of trees, glorious trees.

Clean Coal Can't Get A Break In City Hall

Call it a strange twist of fate or just a failure of the democratic process to resolve a crisis. Call it a case of NIMBYism, or, perhaps in this case, NUMBYism. Call it whatever you want, but the cat's out of the bag and the truth is out; the famous German coal capture and storage (CCS) project, which proposed to produce electricity through traditional coal-powered means but then capture the carbon emissions and bury them underground, has been releasing CO2 gas into the atmosphere all along.

The plant was opened in September of 2008, and was immediately heralded as a solution to the developing world's growing demand and sharp cost margins. With CCS systems, countries like India and China, which have both relied heavily on coal power plants to fuel their explosive economic growth over the past decade, could retain their existing infrastructure while curbing the wanton release of CO2 into the atmosphere. In other words, coal capture and storage was going to let the developing world have their cake and eat it too.

At least in theory. In a stunning admission, Staffan Gortz, a sort of PR figure for the project, said at a recent conference that the plants have been releasing CO2 gas directly into the atmosphere all along, citing resistance from the public as the main reason that the CCS systems haven't yet come online. "It was supposed to begin injecting by March or April of this year, but we don't have a permit. This is a result of the local public having questions about the safety of the project."

The prospect of a public backlash against clean coal is troubling, and potentially chilling. While numerous environmental profiling teams have shown time and time over that there would be very minimal consequence if any to public health in storing CO2 underground, the grave consequences of recklessly releasing carbon into the atmosphere are all around us, evident at every level of the natural world, and throw the very future of humanity into question. With Vattenfall (the Swedish company that has invested €70m to build the plants) meeting resistance at every turn from an uninformed public armed with veto power to forbid the project from moving forward, the danger is that the quasi-populist meme of perceived undesirability for CCS projects among town councils and city halls might gain a foothold and become a more broadly held position, permanently stunting the spread and adoption of CCS technology and prolonging our planetary nightmare. Unfortunately for us, only time will tell.

(Source: http://m.guardian.co.uk/ms/p/gmg/op/sr9W_6zSGd03e3RtcOrYA_w/view.m?id=137163&tid=120787&chk_my-text=t,1;c,1&cat=Climate_change)

Managing Your Carbs: A Learning Process

I’m a big believer in awareness being the first step to correcting a problem. After discovering what a carbon footprint is, using a carbon footprint calculator to determine the size of your particular imprint, its time to start thinking: “what can I do to make this situation better?” Because no matter how hard you try, you can’t eliminate your carbon footprint overnight and you must understand how offsetting is a great stop gap between awareness and complete elimination of the problem.

Offset is a game of tit for tat, of losing and gaining, of finding balance. For everything you take away, you should give something back. And there’s nothing wrong with being creative about the whole thing. For instance if you are a big paper consumer, maybe planting trees could be your thing. Maybe you don’t have time to plant trees. So paying someone else to plant trees for you could be your thing. Maybe trees are not the way to go at all. Maybe energy reduction is your thing. Maybe you can’t really reduce your energy output anymore so maybe you could help pay for someone’s else energy. Maybe you could support a fund that provides clean energy to people or maybe you could start building windmills.

Maybe a lot of things.

This whole offsetting business is quite involved. There are so many ways to restore a sense of balance to our lives and to the planet as a whole. Reading about what is happening to the planet may be another way to go for some of us. Learning about global warming, how it occurs and what can be done about it. Education is a good second step after initial awareness of the problem. It’s all about choice.

There is a great freedom in being green because there are so many ways to do it.

Managing carbon is the same for me as managing carbohydrates. Something I know I should be doing but sometimes it’s hard and seems an unattainable goal. But I know its good for me in the long run. So I make tiny changes and concentrate on learning what I can do. Cut out a cookie here, walk past a cupcake there and slowly start realizing the effect of my good choices.

Awareness. Education. Balance. Change. Reward.

Whether reducing or offsetting, the management of carbon is a learning process. Realizing we have a lot to understand and research is a good start.

Saving the Planet With Global Yard Sales

It was another weekend of yard sales and thrift stores and the dawning realization that in buying a shirt for 50 cents and a baby toy for a nickel, I have discovered another easy economical way of offsetting my carbon footprint.

Yard sales and reusing goods has become popular for two reasons: everyone is broke and most of us are concerned about the impact we are having on the planet (a.k.a our carbon footprint). Manufacturing new products uses up vital energy resources releases toxins into the air, increasing the nation’s overall carbon emissions and contributing to global warming.

So why do it if we don’t have to?

Sustainable goods with low or neutral carbon footprints are also increasing in popularity but they do little to rid us of the billions of tons of waste we already have. Living in a consumer society as we do, we have an urge to buy things we don’t need from companies we don’t really like at prices we can’t really afford. The end result being, we throw these items away and they clog landfills and reduce recycling rates.

But a yard sale is a form of recycling most of us can get behind.

Yard sales, reuses and recycle as they reduce the amount of unsustainable products in landfills. They save money for customers and make money for the owners. The yard sale process feeds our consumer need to buy but doesn’t cost too much and helps a neighbor get rid of their unwanted items responsibly. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.

The concept of yard sales to reduce carbon emissions has gone viral with waste exchange sites popping up all over the web offering people and companies the chance to dispose of goods in other places than the local landfills. Exchanging goods reduces disposals costs for businesses as it helps ease the carbon emission burden on the planet. Waste.net is one example of this online recycling craze and it offers both exchange as well as purchase of previously used goods and industrial scrap for reuse.

It’s like one huge yard sale for businesses except the yard is the internet and the junk is industrial. A perfect green solution for a consumer society. So rather than thinking a morning at the yard sales is a cheap way to get that extra cooler for camping or save money on clothes your little guy will grow out of in a few weeks anyway, it may be better to see the healthy planet saving job you are doing by spending just a buck to reuse, reuse, recycle and of course, offset carbon footprints.

Get Ready For The 21st Century, It's Gonna Be A Scorcher

Stunning satellite photographs published this week provide the most visually arresting evidence of worldwide climate change yet.

The photographs, taken over the past decade, were kept classified under the aegis of "national security" during the Bush years, deemed too sensitive -- perhaps too damning? -- for public consumption. This month, the National Academy of Sciences recommended that the Obama administration declassify the photos, and they were released in a torrent of around 1,000 of the photographs the following day.

The photos show a stark array of before-and-after comparisons. The single most startling image (shown above) is a shot of Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost point in the United States, historically surrounded year-round by a sheet of solid ice which, during the summer of 2007, receded and finally vanished completely, leaving a coast cloistered by solid ice since time immemorial confronted quite suddenly by the facts of climate change. Other photos in the series show the gradual disappearance of the Bering Glacier and open water on the Beaufort Sea, another location historically covered in an ice-sheet.

With facts like these developing on the ground, it's hard to feel as though your personal effort to conserve energy and shrink your footprint is worthwhile. Climate science suggests that the rapidly accelerating effects of global warming are not only far removed along causal chains from carbon emissions, but are likely precipitated by slippery-slope feedback loops, a global climate in tumbling transit from the balancing-act status-quo of the Holocene interglacial towards a hotter and wetter planetary configuration that represents a great big question mark for life on Earth. In other words, the struggle to save the Earth might be too little, too late, but nothing is ever so certain. Only time will tell, and meanwhile it couldn't hurt to ride your bike to work for a change, eat a vegetarian meal for a week or buy carbon offsets.

(Source: http://gfl.usgs.gov/ArcticSeaIce.shtml)

Generating Electricity With Mixing Entropy: The Weird Science Of Salinity Cells

Physicists have long held that there's energy abounding in naturally occurring chemical reactions, and one of their most prime candidates from which to harness this energy has been the process known as salination, wherein freshwater rivers drain into the salty ocean. The notion of collecting the energy lost to entropy during salination has been only theoretical since the process came to light, however a paper by University of Milan-Bicocca physicist Doriano Brogioli is due to be published in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters describing a power cell that converts this lost energy into electricity.

The strange physics of mixing entropy are intuitive to understand. Imagine you're at a bar, and there's dancing music playing. You're feeling very acutely the long day behind you, so you order a Red Bull and vodka, the perfect drink for dancing. The bartender pours half a can of Red Bull into a glass, then pours 3 ounces of vodka. You are now officially ready to party. But wait! The resulting solution is less than the sum of it's constituent parts! This loss of energy is called the entropy of mixing and is precisely the physical process that the salination cell aims to capture.

The device itself is more difficult to describe. It's functional core is comprised of two electrically-charged chunks of activated carbon that collect negative and positive ions from salt water. When fresh water is flushed in, the ions are released from the carbon chunks, increasing the voltage of the charge and generating electricity. Scientific abstracts and illustrated diagrams are out there, but the weird science of it places real understanding somewhat beyond the reach of layfolks. Suffice it to say, the lab models work, and the science suggests it can be scaled up to provide a new source of renewable clean energy.

As usual, there are skeptics. Many in the scientific community are quick to point out the logistical difficulty in scaling the lab models up from experimental devices to the megawatt-generating plants needed to make capturing the energy inherent in the process of salination worthwhile, noting that the relative scarcity of places where a great deal of fresh water hits the ocean makes the new technology potentially less than ubiquitous. Others such as Fred Schlachter, retired staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in California, go further to say that the figures cited by proponents of the technology don't account for the enormous upkeep and maintenance overhead necessary when dealing with the very corrosive properties of ocean water.

Still, those figures are impressive. Scientists who first described the physics underlying mixing entropy deduced that the potential energy inherent in the process worldwide is equivalent to every river in the world ending in a 223 meter waterfall. Those numbers, along with the presumed success of a large-scale salination plant, suggest that salination energy might one day comprise a significant chunk of the renewable, green energy that offset brokers resell.

(Source: http://www.physicscentral.com/buzz/blog/index.cfm?postid=8192106608311312838)

Recharging to Offset Carbon Emissions

Non rechargeable batteries may seem like a small pebble in the large pond of carbon emissions but the lasting effects they have on our environment en masse is devastating. Clogging landfills with toxic chemicals that leak into ground water, using up metal resources and releasing carbon during the manufacturing process adding to global warming, non rechargeable batteries are cheap, convenient and extremely harmful. Not to mention their effect on the old dead weight of guilt better known as your carbon footprint.

Not everyone can afford solar panels on the roof or a wind generator in the back yard, but we can spend a couple of extra bucks and buy rechargeable batteries. Of course, they aren’t as cheap and less convenient, as they need to be recharged and take time to do so, but they do reduce carbon emissions. We use the same two batteries over and over effectively recycling, reusing and reducing all at the same time.

So what to do with all those non rechargeables we have lying around the house? The ones we feel guilty about putting in the regular trash but don’t get picked up by the local municipality except maybe twice a year? What to do when we are running out of room what with all the broken hairdryers, computers, cell phones, used motor oil and half empty paint cans we are also stock piling waiting for that toxic waste date to show up on the municipal calendar?

What to do? What to do?

Well, turns out there are scrap and salvage yards that will actually purchase these non rechargeable batteries from you for a nominal fee and recycle them along with the large scrap metal waste they collect in the form of rusty pipes, old cars and worn out ovens. Check with local scrap dealers to get specific details for your area. Aaah, another way to offset carbon emissions. Doesn’t it make you want to smile?

And if you are feeling extremely ambitious and even a little flush, you may want to consider the latest in rechargeable batteries, the USB cell battery which actually plugs into your lap top to recharge, reducing energy waste by having a separate recharging unit plugged in.

Finally, I can take my huge box of old batteries out from under the sink and trade them in for just a small pack of rechargeables. One more item off my save the planet checklist.

India Environment Ministry Says Climate Change Is Western Baloney

The chasm between the Indian environmental ministry and the self-evident truths of climate change widened precipitously today when Jairem Ramesh downplayed the danger of climate change and characterised fears of the Himalayan glaciers melting over the next 40 years as "... preconceived notion[s] ... based on the western media".

Speaking at an environmental threats conference in Delhi, Mr Ramesh dismissed predictions that the glaciers might disappear within 40 years as a result of global warming. "We have to get out of the preconceived notion, which is based on western media, and invest our scientific research and other capacities to study Himalayan atmosphere," he said. "Science has its limitation. You cannot substitute the knowledge that has been gained by the people living in cold deserts through everyday experience."

The comments by a close ally of Sonia Gandhi, the ruling Congress party president, are likely to discourage environmental campaigners hoping that India might help forge an agreement at United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen in December.

Earlier this week, Mr Ramesh challenged Mrs Clinton over her appeal to India to embrace a lowcarbon future and not repeat the mistakes of the developed world in seeking fast industrialisation. He said India was not prepared to agree to legally binding greenhouse gas emission caps, although developed countries are not asking for such caps.

Ramesh's flippant dismissal of the matter is in stark contrast to the facts. The scientific consensus has repeatedly reaffirmed the fact that climate change can be directly attributed to the breakneck speed with which the first world industrialised in the 19th and 20th centuries. Still, the climate change denial meme survives, in large part due to the insidious, interdependent relationship of the sleazy, amoral career-politician suits in control of the state and industrial business interests whose revenue-model relies on exercising free license to poison you and spurn catastrophic climate change, all the while manufacturing reams of disposable consumer junk.

The comments seemed to drive further nails into the coffin of the notion that the Indian state might join the emerging bloc of nations committed (in theory) to sustainable industrial practices. Ramesh's faux-skepticism comes on the heels of India's refusal to agree to binding carbon caps and long-term reduction goals at the G8 summit and later at a press conference during American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's first visit to India in her capacity as chief diplomat for the Obama administration. Between today's statement and the habitual aloofness of India with regard to environmental concerns, the future of the Indian subcontinent looks hazy, stinky and possibly underwater.

(Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/43702396-77ea-11de-9713-00144feabdc0.html)

Offset or Reduction: What’s the Difference with Carbon Footprints?

As I scan the internet reading the latest environmental findings, as well as the latest ways to go green, two phrases continue to pop up: reducing your carbon footprint and offsetting your carbon footprint. It seems a little explanation of the difference between reducing and offsetting can make green savvy web surfing all the more productive.

When we reduce our carbon footprint we find ways to lessen our personal impact on planet earth. Everything we consume, every product we purchase and every lifestyle choice we make add to the impression, the footprint we leave behind us. Choosing green products, sustainable goods, locally grown products and recycling and reusing when we can helps reduce that impact.

Offsetting our carbon footprint is a matter of determining how much of a carbon footprint we have and then finding ways to balance or off set that impact. For everything we take away from the planet, we give back to the planet. We can do this as individuals or we can support organizations and companies that can offset the footprint for us.

It begins with a carbon footprint calculator. The one used by this site is the same one endorsed by the Environmental Protection Agency and provides a pretty accurate look at individual impact. After determining the number of tones of carbon you produce annually you can redeem yourself by donating to green programs that allow you to buy carbon credits that add rather than take away from the planet.

Donating money towards trees, protecting wildlife habitats, opting to buy green power (wind, solar or water) for your home as well as assisting organizations at the grassroots level who are trying to reduce carbon and add oxygen. The number of ways we can commit to the planet is pretty limitless when you start top think about it. The more I analysis my way of life and how my family consumes goods and power the more I see where there are opportunities for change.

We can’t all stick a windmill in our backyards, especially when we don’t have a backyard. We can’t stick solar panels on a roof we don’t own or green windows into panes we rent, but we can make smarter choices. Driving less and walking more, switching off and unplugging appliances and supporting those individuals and organizations trying to do the right thing has to be the right way to go, at least for me.

It seems a combination of reducing and offsetting may be the best way to contribute to real change in America.

You are What You Eat: Organic Foods and Carbon Footprints

As I continue to discover how my way of life can have either a positive or negative on the environment, I realize what a learning process reducing my carbon footprint can be. I decided to utilize the carbon footprint calculator to see how my journey was going. Surprisingly, I scored a good 30 below the national average. But a household footprint of 49 carbon tons is nothing to be happy about. The big plus in our favor was our daily consumption of organic foods. So it seemed appropriate to figure out why what we eat can make such a different to the planet.

So after a little research, the connection between carbon footprints and food consumption became obvious. When we purchase the overly packaged, chemically laden, not really sure what we are actually eating food from the mega mart, we support an industry that utilizes chemicals, plastics and transports goods over long distances using innumerable gallons of petrochemicals and releasing toxic fumes into the air which contributes to global warming.

Ah ha. Connection made.

So, why is organic different? Well for one thing, organic farming means naturally grown produce that eliminates pesticides from crops and toxins from soil. Many organic farmers use traditional sustainable farming methods that lower their carbon footprint which in turn lowers their consumer’s carbon footprint. The main similarity between organic farming and commercial farming is the transportation issue. Whether the goods are produced in an environmentally friendly way or not, they still get shipped long distances to get to consumers.

Carbon footprint lowering solution? Shop locally. We hear it all the time but its one small way to make a big difference. Sure, sometimes you may pay a couple of cents more for choosing to shop on your own doorstep but the cost to the planet is enormous, especially if everyone does it. Besides supporting your local community, shopping locally for organically grown produce is good for your health and can force change on the food consumption market as a whole.

The only reason mega marts and commercial food producers transport goods over long distances and put them in wasteful packages and fill them full of toxic chemicals is because they are filling a consumer need. They are only responding to the market. If people stopped buying it, they would stop making it. Its pretty logical when you think about it. We live in a consumer driven economy. We are the consumers. What we eat makes all the difference.

Our choices make changes.

And organic food produced in your own region is one way to get your voice heard while reducing carbon emissions.

Pembina Institute & The David Suzuki Foundation Publish Carbon Offset Buyers Guide

The burgeoning trade in voluntary carbon offsets is still a strange idea for the majority of regular consumers. Even the most hardcore environmental warriors might be intimidated by the abstraction of a carbon offset market versus the more direct and immediately measurable effects of limiting one's own environmental impact, and granted, they're absolutely right to say the more important goal is to limit one's carbon production before it ever hits the ozone.

But once consumers get passed the "icky" stage and dive headfirst into the carbon offsets market, they run up against a more familiar and much more difficult to solve problem: which carbon offsets vendor to choose! There are dozens of them, and as The David Suzuki Foundation & Pembina have shown in their carbon offset buyer's guide, not all of them are created equal.

Pembina & The David Suzuki Foundation are both Canadian non-profit think-tanks whose stated goals are to arm the public with the knowledge and tools to live ecologically sustainable lifestyles. With this in mind, they've produced a guide to carbon offsets trading that is useful for every tier of the market, from the large businesses and corporations looking to add some green cred on top to the regular folks like you and I riding the bus and bicycling to work at the bottom. They polled 20 carbon offset vendors on six factors: additionality (new growth in renewable energy versus work on previously existing infrastructure), auditing, unique ownership (presumably to prevent any sort of sinister conflict-of-interest scenarios like the double-selling of an unretired offset), permanance, vendor transparency and public education.

The survey produced some interesting results. The top rated carbon offset vendors were all companies involved with renewable energy and energy efficiency, while the lowest ranked worked on reforestation, which appears to confirm the notion that reforestation lies at the low-end of the spectrum of true carbon offsetting. But the really startling data came in the form of stark zeroes in the auditing column for two of the vendors polled, indicating that their offsetting claims could just as well be illegitimate. Food for thought in an unregulated market ripe for scams.

Ultimately, the most important data in the survey isn't the side-by-side comparisons of offset brokers or the lists of questions to ask a vendor before cutting a check. The most useful advice it can give is near the front page:

Before purchasing carbon offsets, first reduce your own carbon footprint as much as possible. We all need to make changes at work and at home to achieve the global emission reductions needed to solve the problem of climate change.

Reduce Paper Consumption to Reduce Impact and Save Money

The problem with many “green” solutions to helping the planet and reducing one’s carbon footprint is the fact they are unattainable, expensive, impractical and in some cases, elitist.

Well.

Now I have got that off my chest, maybe its time to focus on what we as individuals can do rather than what we can’t do.

We can reduce paper use. It doesn’t take an expensive initial output or proximity to a renewable energy source. It doesn’t actually cost anything except a little forethought.

Despite all our technological advances, we are still addicted to using tree parts for hundreds of different everyday items. Trees provide us with the life sustaining oxygen we need, help counteract the effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and of course, are one of the most beautiful things in the natural landscape. Reducing paper consumption save trees, saves energy, reduces the burden on landfills and perhaps most personally satisfying, saves money.

Use both sides of the paper. If you already have the paper, it is best to use it wisely whether at home or in the office. Many of us have gotten into the habit, because of digital printing perhaps or old school etiquette, of only using one side of the paper. But two sided copies is a simple button push on the copy machine. And if the computer printer only prints on one side? Put it back in to print on the other side or put a line through old news on one side and print new information on the other side. If you do this every time, by the end of the year you will have reduced the amount of paper you use for printing by 50 percent.

Greeting cards are a nice thought but they don’t have to be a one time expense. Take old card and cut out the pictures on the front for next year’s gift tags. Use the plain backs for desk notes. Even better, send e cards online. Charities often send out packs of greeting cards to past donors along with useful address labels. These cards should not be dismissed because they were “free,” in fact, going out and buying a card when you have one at home is a double whammy for the planet and your carbon footprint.

A big paper waster is the monthly bills sent out by utility companies, credit card companies and banks. Not to mention the numerous fliers, mailers, catalogs and magazines we receive on a weekly basis. How many of us actually read or utilize these mailers? Do we really need to have our bill printed out for us? Save a stamp by paying bills online where available and reduce your paper consumption at the same time. Put an end to wasteful; commercial mailers by contacting companies (by e-mail of course) and asking to be removed from mailing lists.

Registering your name with the Direct Marketing Association puts an end to a lot of the junk mail by filling out your name and address. I just filled out the form it took 30 seconds. I know that in six months, I’ll have to put in my address again. But really, 30 seconds every six months to put a stop to pointless destruction of trees to send me mail I don’t read about products I will never buy? Seems worth it to me.

Reducing my impact without spending money. That’s the kind of eco warrior I can afford to be.

India Balks At Carbon-Caps While Bengali Tigers Dwindle

A meeting today in India between American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Indian Minister of Environment and Forests began innocently enough. It was meant to be just another dull photo op, one more chance for the venerable state figures to shake hands, mug gleaming, straight aristocratic grins for the cameras and have their pictures snapped by hordes of press photographers, this time in the ITC Green Centre, corporate headquarters of the ITC hotel chain and a "platinum certified green building", to punctuate the message that India is committed to limiting it's carbon footprint.

But then, everything went wrong.

“There is simply no case for the pressure” the U.S. is exerting, considering India produces among the lowest per capita emissions in the world, Minister Jairam Ramesh told Clinton during an unexpected discussion of climate negotiations during an event intended to showcase U.S.-Indian cooperation on clean energy at a “green” office building outside New Delhi.

“As if this pressure was not enough, we also face the threat of carbon tariffs on our exports to countries such as yours,” Ramesh said, referring to a climate-change bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on June 26 that imposes tariffs on exports from countries that refuse to adopt greenhouse gas controls by 2020.

[ . . . ]

“We look upon you suspiciously because you have not fulfilled” the commitments made by developed countries in earlier climate treaties, Ramesh told Clinton and Stern, adding there’s a “credibility crisis” that industrialised nations will have to overcome in their demands of poor nations.

This is, of course, problematic for the Obama administration, which has been pushing for emissions caps on the developing world since the G8 summit earlier this summer, likely to ramp up worldwide support for a binding cap-and-trade initiative come December at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Thus far the response from those developing nations has been tepid at best and at worst hostile -- witness China's visible absence from the G8 summit this year, along with their stated intention to increase emissions in response to demand.

The signs of ecological decay aren't far from the ITC Green Centre. You need only travel to one of India's largest swaths of protected wilderness, Panna Tiger Preserve, to see for yourself the end result of our impact on the environment.

The park, in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, was part of the country's efforts to save the famous Royal Bengal Tiger from extinction.

State Minister of Forests Rajendra Shukla said that the reserve, which three years ago had 24 tigers, no longer had any.

A special census was conducted in the park by a premier wildlife institute, after the forest authorities reported no sightings of the animals for a long time.

[ . . . ]

While this controversy rages, there have been reports that another national park in Madhya Pradesh, Sanjay National Park, which was included in the tiger project three years ago, also has no tigers left.

One is lead to wonder if the iconic Bengali Tiger, symbolic of the exotic and mysterious character of India, will become another statistic, another miscalculated sacrifice for the creeping lurch toward unipolar regional dominance.

(Sources:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=aLjVkAtjjyr0
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8150382.stm)

Searching for Sustainability and Offsetting Carbon Footprints in Wonderful Wyoming

My name is Trish Popovitch and I am lucky enough to get to blog about all things green on this site. I am also privileged to live in Wyoming, home to the nation’s freshest air and cleanest streams. And I, like my fellow Wyomingites, want to keep it that way. Around here, people like to say Wyoming was green before green became fashionable. From homemade irrigation and community spaces to self sufficient living and the beautiful wide open landscape, Wyoming is the place for talking about sustaining the environment.

People that don’t live here often presume a lot of things about our state. Yes, the oil industry is abundant here. Yes, the mining is ubiquitous. But so are the wild horses, acres of state land, waterfalls, mountain ranges and people who believe in keeping Wyoming as unspoiled as possible. With the lowest state population, Wyoming is a semi private sanctuary that provides me a rich always present relationship with the natural world.

In my blog I want to explore the effect we as human beings have on our natural environment, the necessary and the avoidable. Lowering individual carbon footprint is a matter of research, self education and a well formed concept of reasonableness. My goal is to assist in providing awareness on matters such as global warming and green products and leave the decisions up to you. I will share the information I find during my cyber ramblings, provide my perspective and hope you join the conversation to agree, deny, challenge and provoke.

Living in an apartment in one of the country’s most plentiful natural environments affords me the opportunity to explore economic solutions to greening up the home. It doesn’t take much research on sustainability and natural resources to realize, that no matter where we live or how much money we make, we have the ability to help improve our world. I hope you join me as I lower my carbon footprint and improve my awareness.

I could use the company.

Enough Potential In Wind Energy To Power The World Might Not Be Enough Anyway

Chris Meyer is a new writer at OffsetCarbonFootprint.org. He enjoys noise music, bicycling and vegan mayo. He lives in Seattle, WA.

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A study published April 29th, 2009, conducted by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, concluded that building extensive new networks of 2.5MW wind power turbines in un-forested, ice-free, non-urban areas could provide 16 times the current energy needs of the entire country. It went on to suggest that their conclusions scaled globally, and that a worldwide network of turbines operating at just 20% capacity could provide 40 times the total electricity needs of the planet.

The study was conducted by analyzing data gathered by a network of 8,199 meteorological stations concentrated in the United States, Europe, and Southeast Asia. This seeming geographic bias lead some to speculate that the extrapolated global data might not be as reliable as the data covering those regions, however the concern is largely an academic one and the assertion that wind alone holds enough potential to power the planet many times over is self-evident.

Not so for hedge fund manager and cartoonishly evil energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens, who reneged on his grandstanding 2007 announcement that he would build the world's largest wind turbine farm in Texas. The cancelled project would have generated 5 times the electricity generated by the second largest turbine farm in the world had it been completed, but it seems even endorsement by the absurdly rich can't make solar power an attractive investment for energy interests, as Pickens points to logistical and budgetary problems that sent the ambitious initiative to the scrapper. T. Boone Pickens of course has oodles of experience backtracking from ridiculous initiatives, as he publicly boasted in 2007 that he would pay $1 million to anyone who could disprove the assertions of Swift Boat Veterans For Truth made during the 2004 election. Laughable premise notwithstanding, when confronted first by John Kerry and later by a group of Vietnam-era veterans who had served with Kerry, Pickens predictably dithered and stammered that their proof certainly wasn't proof enough, leading one to wonder if he was ever really interested in the truth to begin with.

Still, the study offers a glimpse of a different world. One of the observations gleaned from the conclusions of the paper is that China, which is rapidly producing coal power plants to meet the demand of a nascent, modernizing populace, could increase it's energy output by 18 times by constructing vast arrays of wind turbine power plants. The rub then lies in dissuading governments of the world from being lulled into the illusion of instant gratification by carbon-based energy production and instead invest in clean, renewable energy such as wind power. The task is daunting, but the alternative is gravely negligent.

Global Stewardship

I'm thrilled to be using the library at http://www.offsetcarbonfootprint.org/ to further educate myself about global warming. Overwhelmingly I appreciate all efforts toward sustainability and stewardship of this planet and our universe. The article about carbon friendly dining especially appeals to me regarding our food choices. Not just the choices we make at the restaurants we choose but what we bring home to cook as well.