Our World and Everything in It

The party begins tomorrow and runs through Sunday. There are still tickets out there but with an astronomical price. Best bet is to bet on your luck. All day today 93.9 FM, The River, has been handing out Rothbury tickets to the tenth caller at 313 298 7094 when it’s announced on the radio to do so. Tune in if you’re feeling lucky. It’s going to be a great concert and happening just outside of Muskegon.

I’m getting e-mails for coming concert events in Michigan this summer, and even though my husband and I are, ur um, “old” we usually catch a few concerts in the summer. But, I doubt we’re still up to the youthful exuberance of a three-day affair on behalf of the environment that will happen in Rothbury, Michigan this summer. 

The Rothbury Festival will be July 3-6, 2008, and headlines Dave Matthews Band, Widespread Panic, John Mayer, and many, many more. I live in Michigan and couldn’t tell you where Rothbury is, so I looked it up. It’s smack in the middle of the shoreline of the west side of Michigan. Muskegon is 12 miles south. I went camping long ago in Muskegon and it’s a nice area for camping, lots of woods. I remember inner tubing down a river along the campgrounds. Nice place for a Fourth of July weekend camping/concert extravaganza with a ton of music and it’s fully sustainable, which means it shouldn’t have a negative environmental impact.

I went to Neil Young’s concert at the Fox in Detroit last night. Excellent! First part was unplugged and second part jammin. The first song of the encore was “Cinnamon Girl.” I’ve seen him before and he is always the same, consistent, sounds as tight as the album but better. What’s this got to do with the environment? Neil Young’s latest efforts are geared toward the environment and the war of course all relative to the Bush administration.

The unplugged first part of the show where the man picks up just about any instrument and does one of his many songs did the famous “After the Gold Rush.” Well the verse that says: “See Mother Nature on the run in the 1970’s” was changed to end with “in the 21st century.” That little bit had the crowd cheering from the start. People are aware a change is coming as Young would say it and this crowd appreciated Young’s environmental mode. I made note to pass the moment on. It was a good evening and a very good show. That little cheer from the crowd right off the bat upped my optimism a degree.

When we exited the show and headed up the side street two huge buses were lined up there. One looked like a stainless steel house. Ah, Neil Young’s road digs. The man is setting an example. The buses run on bio-diesel from soybean and/or vegetable oil with 75% less emissions. Other musicians are following suit. Bonnie Raitt tours likewise. Of course Willie Nelson has been touring in buses fueled with vegetable oil for quite awhile. “Jane’s Addiction” even  fuels its generators with the stuff.

We must be getting old because we didn’t hang around to get a glimpse of him coming out to get into his rolling house, but enjoyed the night anyway.  After stopping near our house to catch a local band at a local bar, who were remarkably good after seeing someone like Young, I am deaf today. I had to wonder how deaf these aging artists have become?

I started watching the “Live Earth” concert at 9:00 am this morning and already know I won’t get anything done around here today. It couldn’t happen on a better weekend. I just finished my 6th to the last course for college and will reward myself by watching the entire concert. Already I like what I’ve seen of other bands from other countries. The first up this morning was Australia. Lincoln Park is on now from Tokyo. The information between bands is short, sweet, and all about saving the earth and the little things we can do that will have a huge impact.  But it’s mostly music. Gotta go, I want to enjoy my day and can’t think of a better way to do it. Later.

Watch Live Earth all day tomorrow, July 7th, on MSN. Over a 100 bands on 7 continents will perform to raise awareness about global warming and the state of our world.

MSN will stream the entire concert all day.

NBC Detroit will broadcast some of the concerts from 8:00 - 11:00 pm.

Bravo, CNBC, MSNBC, Sundance, and Uni HD will broadcast the concerts.

WCSX 94.7 FM will play the entire concert all day on the radio as well as WQKL FM on cable.

This is a great way to bring people together for an important cause and have a good time too. Happy viewing and listening.

A train fueled by used vegetable oil left London for Wales today. It is the culmination of efforts by Richard Branson the billionaire who has pledged to help fight global warming. When the train arrives in Wales it may possibly be refueled at the first community based bio-fuel plant in the U.K. that utilizes used vegetable oil versus ethanol made from corn.
 
An article in BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/3741184.stm, reports, “Sundance Renewables, a co-operative in Ammanford, will produce over 300,000 liters of the “green” fuel a year.” The article went on to say that it is hoped the plant will encourage other small communities throughout Wales to produce their own bio fuels.  The co-op is registered as a waste carrier. It will be able to collect used vegetable oil from fast food places, restaurants, pubs, schools, wherever vegetable oil is used to fry food. This is a two-fold gain for the environment. Not only is it a cost effective, renewable source of fuel for the train and other vehicles, it eliminates oil that may find its way into sewer systems, and eventually lakes and streams.

Since Sundance Renewables is a low cost, community co-op they are presently looking for volunteer drivers to collect the used oil. As demand and production increases, the company may no longer have to rely on volunteers, but will be able to offer paid employment in the community. It is so new that prospective customers still have the opportunity to register as “preferred,” which guarantees they will always get the bio-fuel they need.

The article said, “The company also runs training courses for people who want to set up their own bio-diesel plant.” Hear that entrepreneurs of America? My question is what is wrong with America? A little country like Wales is taking the bull by the horns and forging ahead with small community efforts to make a difference for the environment and their citizen’s pocketbooks. It’s not even a new idea here in America. Willie Nelson has been recycling used vegetable oil for fuel in all of his vehicles to include his huge touring buses for years. I read about a class of students here who were trained to collect, modify, and use vegetable oil from fast food places to fuel their school buses. So why isn’t it catching on everywhere? Why are we stuck on ethanol? Obviously, it will be easier to raise the price of corn and tax the ethanol. To me this is just more evidence of the wealth and power of our oil companies, like Exxon Mobil, being used to squelch any type of innovation that might interrupt their mega profits of $75,000 per minute last year. And those were net profits folks. 

Of course, as with anything brand new, the bio fuel from used vegetable oil, has spawned further innovation by motorists in Wales that is causing a problem for tax collectors there. It seems with or without a plant to buy the used vegetable oil; many motorists are simply putting ordinary frying pan oil in their diesel fuel tanks to cut costs knowing full well they are committing an offense. All cars on public roads in Wales must pay fuel tax. The taxation system is not up to par with this newest innovation. Cooking oil is not taxed yet as motorist fuel. The use of frying pan oil is so widespread that there is a police crackdown for rogue motorists and they could face up to 7 years in jail for repeated offenses.

Willie Nelson should count his blessings he’s not a Welsh citizen or else the taxman cometh again.
 

I just got through watching Jack Hanna’s Animal Kingdom like I pretty much do every Saturday morning, 7:00 am, channel 7.  Yes I’m a baby boomer but learning about and watching animals is a passion that has no age limit. I found out about Hanna’s program from my 84-year-old mother who wakes up to it every Saturday also.

His program is a great humane education learning tool for children, and endorsed by the National Education Association. Every age group could use a dose of this type of reality.  Unlike other programs, this one connects the dots for people. He flat out tells the audience that mankind is the cause and that we can turn it around. I’ve watched other morning news programs showcase endangered species without specifically pinpointing why they are disappearing. If I have the time, I quickly email them for missing the opportunity to really hit home. Everyone ooo’s and ahhh’s over the critters, but there is rarely any statement made to the audience that mankind either directly or indirectly is the reason for their demise.  Have you ever read why many of these beautiful animals are endangered? Poaching, cutting down their habitat, and changes in weather patterns are the leading causes. Species like the gorilla are being poached out of existence for their hands. That’s right, the whole animal is killed to cut off their hands. Just like the whole elephant is killed to cut off its tusks. And yes our neighbor to the North, Canada, has just begun its annual baby seal-clubbing event.

If you want to help, e-mail or call your MI congressional representatives to support Carl Levin’s Senate Resolution 33 condemning Canada’s seal hunt.

After this past election, if you still think your voice doesn’t make a difference, then I have to ask where have you been? Hopefully with a new congress, we can get back on track as a nation to being a model for conservation and cleaning up our act. Unfortunately many people still think what I’m saying can’t be so. That although the U.S. represents .05 % of the world’s population, we produce 25% of its pollution. And although we probably have the biggest proliferation of animal rights and conservation organizations, (of which I probably belong to half, my latest being the NRDC), our pleas have fallen on deaf ears with the administration of the past 6 years. More on that scorecard tomorrow, because I think it’s important to know where we were, how we’ve back-tracked, and how much we need to catch up before we truly understand the precarious position into which we’ve plunged ourselves and all living things so quickly. You have been wondering that haven’t you? How the environment seemingly got so bad so fast?

Meanwhile, are there any other young bloggers out there that watch Jack Hanna on Saturdays? If you have something you’ve viewed about anything in particular that is endangered let us know what you watched. I try to take in everything I can, but even my mother comes up with documentaries I’ve missed. Trouble is, at 84 she can’t ever seem to remember what station, or what time, or what program she saw it on. And my recall is slowly catching up to hers that’s why this is posted right after watching Hanna’s Animal Adventures.

     There are all types of casualties we endure on a daily basis especially during times of war. Losing someone or something precious can happen moment to moment. And although our lives are upset to the point we don’t think we’ll recover, we do. I just wonder how many people realize the biggest casualty of all is happening in small increments every day that none of us will recover from if we don’t turn it around.

Our environment is taking hit after hit, and many of us still do not know that when it’s stated we have 10 years to do something, it does not mean we have ten years before we start doing something. It means if we do not start today toward reversing global warming by controlling our pollution it will be irreversible within 10 years. It’s a good idea to control pollution to begin with. By all the water bottles I see these days, I realize that everyone does get the idea that maybe our water isn’t all that clean, and probably our air.  What I also see by those same water bottles is that we really aren’t getting it at all. Where do you think those plastic bottles go? If your community recycles that’s great. If you recycle on your own, then bless you, but unfortunately only 70% of all our garbage is recycled. Those bottles end up in landfills of which there are approximately 6000 in the U.S.  Plastic takes around 500 years to decompose. Do we love our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren? Then what are we doing?

The intent of this news blog is to be in your face about our world because we’re all in this together, and if you or my other neighbors don’t jump in and help, the experience of living won’t be what we once knew. Right now it is what it is “An Inconvenient Truth” as Al Gore aptly named it. Many of our little conveniences in life may have to be abandoned to save our earth, save ourselves. It’s a rude awakening, but the sooner we snap out of it, the sooner we turn it around. No more burying our heads in the sand or waiting for “they or them” to do something. They or them is us, all of us.

Anyone who has any questions about anything environmental feel free to blog. If you know something you don’t think the rest of us are aware of blog it. If you don’t quite believe in global warming yet let us know why. Anyone who has already adapted his or her lifestyle differently to save on anything let us know how, so we might adapt. One idea becomes a ripple that becomes a wave and the whole community benefits.

None of us are perfect angels about the environment. I still drive a gas hog, although I’m looking at all hybrids and beseeching Ford to revive the cobra body style with an electric/ethanol motor. I’m a baby boomer that wants a hybrid sports car. Any baby boomers out there want to weigh in on that? Doesn’t an environmentally friendly sports car sound good? My tip to any other gas hog drivers out there, consolidate your running around. I’m down to 2 days per week. Group up and ride to work together. Quit running your kids around and enjoy family nights. Quitting our rat race can help the environment.