But the biggest travesty is that the people on this island off the SE coast of Africa are already suffering a severe food crisis. Naturally they are protesting because they may soon be losing THEIR land. This in turn is causing a governmental crisis. The world needs to let the people of Madagascar and those CEO’s of Daewoo know we are watching and will not in any way stand around and let this happen. We know about the wonderful biodiversity there and the plight of the people. What business does Korea have intruding on an island off of Africa anyway? We’re worried about N. Korea, and S. Korea proposes to do this? This is just not getting enough media attention considering the biodiversity issue at stake. Some of the world’s most rare creatures are found in Madagascar ONLY.

Anyone with children has seen the animated features “Madagascar and Madagascar II.” Like “Charlotte’s Web” these animated animal icons in Madagascar films are far removed from the horror the creatures they imitate suffer in real life. Little pigs like the one in “Charlotte’s Web” more than not will be found rotating in their whole bodily form on some rotisserie barbeque somewhere this summer. And the animals in “Madagascar” are no different. The lemur is already endangered. We’ve watched the Discovery, Science, Nat Geo, and Sundance Channels, Jeff Irwin and Jack Hanna enough to catch presentations about Madagascar and hopefully comprehend that Madagascar is a biological wonder http://www.wildmadagascar.org/overview/FAQs/.
That notwithstanding, the hostile takeover of any people’s agricultural property by another country, especially a people already suffering a food crisis, should be a call for intervention by the U.N. if their own country doesn’t soon support them.

We’re hardly hearing about this advance on Madagascar in the news. Please sign petitions to let both Korea and Madagascar know the world is watching and protesting. The people of Madagascar have managed to keep the biodiversity of their island country in tact forever. Just last year they agreed to “sell more than nine million tons of carbon offsets to fund rainforest conservation in a newly established protected area. Conservationists say the deal protects endangered wildlife, promotes sustainable development to improve the economic well-being of people living in and around the park area, and helps fight global warming” according to the website “wildmadagascar.org.” And this is how they are repaid by the world community? Much of that biodiversity could be lost with one bad decision, the decision to look the other way instead of protesting along with the people of that country. The U.S. should have much to say to S. Korea about this proposed plan.

To sign petitions: http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/1172161.

http://www.regenwald.org/international/englisch/.

 

Josh Dorfman’s program the “Lazy Environmentalist,” on the Sundance Channel takes on environmental skeptics, “experts in fields as diverse as food, architecture and business — to prove that there are innovative, cost-effective, ecologically sound alternatives that also meet high professional standards.” If you don’t get the Sundance Channel, or haven’t caught episodes of “The Lazy Environmentalist,” then check out Dorfman’s website: http://www.sundancechannel.com/lazy/ you can catch up. where

 

Josh promotes using the least amount of effort for the greatest gain in going green. Tune in and find out some fairly easy ways to help the environment. Josh seems to ferret out skeptics from every walk of life and shows them how they, as well as, the rest of us adversely impact the environment and how easy it is to change a few things. Most people are shocked at how much trash they produce. Eliminating one carbon footprint at a time may be the way to get people moving. It doesn’t take a whole lotta effort.

 

I don’t know about anyone but I realized a long time ago that continuous small, even baby steps forward are better than nothing at all. In time, those small steps amount to big results. And most of the time along the way, innovation takes place where any one of us is capable of inventing the next big green product. No one else can take the steps for us. We have to start somewhere and just like an exercise program the least amount of effort for the greatest gain is the best way to start.

 

According to the article by ENS on sundancechannel.com, “Greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere as high as 6 miles up, but it cools the upper stratosphere from 18 to 31 miles up. This cooling slows the chemical reactions that deplete ozone in the upper stratosphere and allows natural ozone production there to outpace destruction by refrigerants and other ozone depleters.” But scientists found “accumulation of greenhouse gases also changes the circulation of stratospheric air masses from the tropics to the poles.” Again, global warming isn’t just about one process. Over and over again, global warming affects multiple events in the atmosphere depending on location.

Scientists fear the middle latitudes will over-recover ozone to even greater concentrations than before when it posed a real problem, while in the tropics, stratospheric circulation changes could prevent the ozone layer from recovering at all.

Read more:

http://www.sundancechannel.com/sunfiltered/2009/04/climate-change-complicates-ozone-recovery/

 

The auto magazine “Green Car Journal” picked the Chevy Volt as its yet-to-exist car of the future, very near future. According to an article on the Sundance website, “Over 200 engineers and 50 designers are working on the Volt and another 400 are working on related subsystems and electric components” to get this car mass produced next year.

 

The Volt had a lot of competition but the editor of “Green Car Journal” liked the Volt’s “bold and far-reaching approach,” along with exceptional fuel efficiency and at a reasonable cost. According to the magazine the Volt gives consumers what they want, a car that runs on a battery for pennies while running errands or up to 40 miles. And for longer trips, it has an engine that drives a generator. The engine is capable of getting 100 mpg plus.

 

Carol Browner, special asst. to President Obama for energy and climate change got up close and personal with the Volt and found it to be very comfortable and was excited by the fact that a person can tool around for 40 miles on a single charge. She knows the average worker commutes 40 miles or less to work every day, and that would amount to 80% less emissions from those commuters.

 

She’s posted this on the White House website and also blogged, “This kind of innovation and shift in design is key to the renewed success of the American auto industry.” She also commented about the Ford Fusion and funding for battery investments in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. She called it forward thinking and used the words that are music to my ears, ENCOURAGING, SUPPORTING, and NURTURING, new innovation.

 

Finally, our government will reward alternative energy innovation and help green energy technology move forward instead of throwing out roadblocks to alternatives on behalf of big oil, of which the biggest roadblock has been denial about global warming.

 

 http://www.sundancechannel.com/blogs/ecommunity_news/390443055

 

 

 

Try to catch “The Green” on the Sundance Channel. It’s a good showplace for all that’s happening in the environmental world. The other night I caught a segment showcasing Richard Wool, Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Delaware. Delaware, as the professor states, is number one in soybeans and chickens so why not find a way to use all those feathers and soybean oil? So he and his students ground up a bunch of chicken feathers, compressed them with soybean oil to create a board, a circuit board.

Normally circuit boards are made from petroleum by products and copper. According to Dave Jones, an associate director in the Waste Management Division of the U.S. EPA on Pub Med Central website: “[T]here are both manufacturing and end-of-life issues to be considered: ‘You have the issue of the consumption of copper and petroleum products to begin with, and anytime you’re dealing with the extraction and use of virgin resources, you have the potential for incredible environmental impact,’ he says. ‘Then you have to consider what’s added to the petrochemical product to make the board—typically something like chlorine.’”

So anything Wool comes up with that will utilize the some 3 billion tons of waste feathers produced every year across the country, not just Delaware, is a good thing. Since chicken feathers are light, airy, they have a low dialectic constant, which means feathers are stable for a wide range of frequencies. My electricity teacher at Community College would be proud of me now since I still remember some stuff, especially all the algebra involved, but I digress. To put it simply, electric current likes airy conductor material like the hollow feathers. It can travel faster.

Wool created a prototype board out of the feathers and soybean oil that worked on the first try. He is now collaborating with none other than Tyson, which I reported not long ago was involved in collaboration with Conoco Phillips Oil to manufacture bio fuels from chicken grease. If Tyson keeps up the pace, it won’t be long before they utilize all parts of the bird so nothing is wasted.

Environmentally, it looks like we’re progressing from “Chicken Littles” to chicken lots. As Wool put it, there is literally no material out there that should be taken off the table as having potential to replace petroleum and it’s by products. 

Check out the Sundance video by Prof. Wool: sundance-channel-video-big-ideas-for-a-small-planet-gadgets-clip-11

 

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1247399

http://www.sundancechannel.com/videos/230321401

 

 

Recycle your clothes, your sports equipment, fitness equipment, appliances, yard gear, aluminum foil, and glass, just about everything. Have yard sales and meet your neighbors. My neighborhood has them all the time. Here are some interesting statistics that were on the show relative to recycling and conservation:

We use 10 billion paper bags per year that takes 14 million trees to produce.
We use 380 billion plastic bags. Try bringing your own, and then recycle.
Junk mail uses 100 million trees and 20 billion gals. of water a year.
We ask for 8 billion ATM receipts a year. It is equal to a roll of paper 2 billion ft. long that would wrap around the equator 15 times.
Using 1 less 2-ply napkin a day will save one billion tons of paper waste per year.
It takes 5 liters of water to make the plastic bottle for just one liter of water. Use re-useable bottles and for Pete’s sake get a water tap filter! New Wave Enviro products have personal reusable plastic bottles with built in filters.
Oh and our little obsession with bottled water costs big money, enough to provide the entire world with clean drinking water.

Some brand names that provide really good green products are 7th Generation, Meyers, Method reusable micro-fiber clothes. And Shaklee has been producing all natural cleaning products for years. People rave about a product called H2. Two drops of the natural cleaner in a container of water will clean everything in your house, and it works.

Americanforest.org is a website where you can buy a tree for $1 each and they will plant it. It’s the least we can do considering. And for absolutely stunning cinematography, do not miss “Planet Earth” on the Discovery Channel. I’ve seen some of it. We were given the care of such a beautiful, majestic planet, and pretty much pigged it up. The DVD and book are also available in stores. This DVD could be thought of as an heirloom for future generations to witness. For those of you out there who have pooh, poohed the poor polar bear this is heart-wrenching stuff. A woman said it changed her life when she watched a polar bear swim, and swim, and swim in what is now open water to the point of exhaustion. He finally found land where he dug the hole that would be his grave. He curled up and died.

For more statistics and tips look for The Green Book a Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas M. Kostigen.

A lot of the info came from Sundance at http://www.sundancechannel.com/thegreen.

Volunteers for the environment are tireless in their efforts. I’ve been to meetings where the person holding that meeting drove an hour at night, leaving family at home, to offer a presentation of information about what is happening and what can be done, only to have 8 people show up.  They have to pack it all up and drive an hour to go home to a household already asleep. Yet they are never daunted in their determination to inform possibly one new person. That’s dedication, discipline, and selflessness.

While we sit in our comfortable living rooms there are countless organizations of people like Greenpeace on board ships in the freezing cold to stop whale hunts, or fisherman using nets that trap dolphins, others like Earthjustice, Environmental Defense, and NRDC holding oil drills at bay in some pristine part of our country, or The Sierra Club lobbying in state’s senates against industry pollution, or Waterkeeper Alliance that has joined Sierra Club’s fight against CAFO’s. Their volunteers took 3000 plus photos of CAFO’s and produced DVD’s to expose that industry’s pollution.  There are the many, many meteorologists that have ventured to the N. Pole, Greenland, and Iceland in small boats to get photographs and gain first hand knowledge of crashing ice falls from glaciers not 50 ft. in front of them in order to inform the masses about what they’ve seen, and the brave and undeterred efforts of the scientists who testified before congress that they are fed up with being censored by the Bush administration relative to reports of global warming. They’re brave, bold, and forthright while much of the population flounders in a sea of apathy.

Take for instance what is called “junk mail.” It’s tossed without a thought. But in those envelopes are the voices of those that I’ve just described that are trying to get the truth out, trying to stop the insanity of pollution, trying to stop further fossil fuel endeavors, or simply trying to save the lives of animals that have no one to speak for them. It’s valuable information that took research, time, effort and skill to produce with the hope one more person will open and read the contents in lieu of being tossed without conscience or concern. Ditto for the many TV networks like The Discovery Channel, Science Channel, and Sundance that dedicate themselves to saving the environment by showcasing the marvelous inventors, scientists, and engineers from around the globe that have solutions for our ailing earth already.

To all the wonderful, passionate, faithful people that see the Almighty in their surroundings and fight to save and nurture what we were given as a blessing, I want to say thank you heart and soul. The road you travel is new and like any other time in history, your fellow humans are not quick to follow a new revolution. Go with peace and passion in every step because most assuredly you have one Traveler that will remain by your side always. Nature is Earth’s Metaphor for God and you “get it.” Bless you. Keep the faith, keep up the fight.