David Tryse has come up with a series of Google Earth Overlays that highlight various global environmental issues, including deforestation, oil spills, endangered species, biological hotspots, etc. The KML files are downloadable from his web site, and you will need Google Earth to launch them. Take a look! David also hosts a few Google Earth tools on his web site.
More overlays covering a wide variety of issues can be found at the Google Earth Outreach site.
Brief notes on how to go Green with your clothing choices, and some things you didn't know...
What most of us don't know:
Cotton
Some eco-friendly clothing fabrics as alternatives to conventional cotton:
Hemp
Bamboo
Linen
Some eco friendly online clothing retailers:
Pt.2 - Cosmetics and Personal Care Products
“Do we really need to slather our bodies with 10 or 15 products every day? Or have the manufacturers of these commodities simply convinced us that we do?”
consider the notion that we have possibly been brainwashed to believe we need to douse ourselves in chemicals to make us "beautiful" - whatever!
Some Sad Facts:
UNEP has just released a visually stunning and deeply disturbing atlas of Africa's changing environment. Using an array of satellite images, ground photographs and maps, the nearly 400-page publication depicts a sobering portrait of environmental destruction on a massive scale. While Africa's population has certainly increased in the 20th century, much of this damage is occuring due to continued unsustainable resource extraction or straight out plunder as in the case of many of the continent's bloody but underreported brush wars. The resulting widescale dislocation of populations as well as rapid urbanization have also taken their toll (Independent).
However, the transformation of African Agriculture has perhaps carried the biggest environmental and human impact. As noted economist Walden Bello has noted, a combination of ill-advised agricultural and economic policies have successively destroyed "the local productive base of smallholder agriculture" in favour of Western-style agriculture. These developmental disasters have been further compounded by unfair global trade that has broken the back of African farmers, even has the conversion of ever more land to cash crop production has claimed forests while only producing massive food insecurity.
Indeed, at the time of independence, Africa was a net food exporter, a situation that has been turned on its head under World Bank tutelage and IMF structural adjustment. Now famine perpetually stalks the land, while the African people's age-old coping mechanisms for drought have long overwhelmed by their economic weakness. As Bello argues, biofuels have only provided the coup de grace to a global food system that has been heading towards the current disaster for decades.
Everyone should read The Big Green Purse by Diane Maceachern, whether or not they carry a purse! I have made it my personal mission to take note of several things I have learned from reading this book, in order for us all to use our spending power to shift to a greener market. Even one person can make a difference when you think about how much money you actually spend in a year, and the more this attitude accumulates, the more power we have to push for change. Not only that, but you can learn just how bad all the products we buy really are. I was appalled and saddened by some of the truths I learned, but trust me, these are things you will want to know.
Here is pt. 1 of a brief summary of my notes. For the full downloadable version of ALL my Big Green Purse notes, Click Here
Of course, you could pick up a copy of the book yourself 🙂
The Big Green Purse Notes Pt. 1 - Coffee, Tea, Chocolate
Buy Shade Grown!
Decaf is BAD for you!
Blood and Children are making your chocolate
Some Fair Trade Teas and Coffees:
The key to change: If you want to change a company’s behaviour, spend your money on a competitor’s more desirable offerings.
Huffington Post, the popular internet newspaper and blog community launched by Greco-American columnist Arianna Huffington, has just gone green with an entire subsection dedicated to environmental issues. In partnership with TreeHugger and the Discovery Channel's Planet Green, HuffPo (as it is affectionately called by its legion of readers and contributors) will be bringing together a steady stream of Green content as part of its mission to make environmental issues more accessible and mainstream. In Arianna's own words:
Ever since we launched HuffPost, environmental issues have been a significant part of our focus -- indeed, part of our DNA. In fact, long before HuffPost was even a twinkle in our eye, I was championing, via the Detroit Project, the need to push the nation's energy policy in a more sustainable direction -- better both for our environment and our national security.
And our HuffPost community has made it clear that you are interested in learning about -- and talking about -- living in a more environmentally-friendly way.
So as we continue the Huffington Post's expansion, creating a go-to destination for the latest and most useful Green content was a logical next step...
Our philosophy is pretty simple: it's not about some people doing everything, but everyone doing something to make the world a more sustainable and better place to live.
While HuffPo covers an inordinate amount of celebrity news and gossip (and Arianna's celebrity friends blog here as well), it does bring together a stable of interesting bloggers and provides an outlet for enlightened/asinine/insane user commentary and feedback. I must admit having spent way too much time following the US Democratic primaries through this site!
Even when buying jewellery, it is prudent to make the most eco-friendly choices. Most metal mining has a devastating impact on the environment, when there is plenty already mined (old jewelry) to satisfy industry demand:
- Shop at antique stores, estate sales, yard sales, and specialty shops for used jewelry that can be polished to look new
- Ask for diamonds mined in Canada where human rights of miners are protected and diamonds mines under stricter environmental laws
- Choose gems that meet Kimberley Process Certification www.kimberlyprocess.com
- Consider alternatives to diamonds, i.e. moissanite
- Buy jewelry at crafts fairs from artisans who work with locally available materials
(some info thanks to D. MacEachern, author of the Big Green Purse)
You can save barrels of oil, lower manufacturing costs, and help the environment by shifting your spending to products that use minimal packaging:
Tons more info coming up when I discuss sustainable shopping and The Big Green Purse!
Fourty years ago, Reverend Martin Luther King echoing his mentor, Mahatma Gandhi, took to task materialism in the same breadth as the racial oppression he had been fighting his whole life. King knew that materialism, or more accurately, consumerism, was a slow acting poison that once entrenched, would forever control the destiny of his people. Furthermore, he foresaw how it had already taken root in American society along with the militarism that was then subjecting Vietnam to hell on earth:
"if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered." (April 4, 1967)
José Ramón Machado Ventura, First Vice-President of Cuba’s Council of State, reiterated this same prophetic theme in his address to the 5th European Union / Latin America and Caribbean Summit meeting in Lima, Peru, on May 16-17. In a session on “Sustainable Development: the Environment, Climate Change and Energy,” Ventura remarked:
"Sustainable development requires a revolution in our values and in the way we confront the inequalities of today and the challenges of tomorrow. We must launch a global energy revolution, sustained by savings, rationality and efficiency."
Cuba has stood for this alternative world free of King's giant triplets of racism, militarism, and materialism. In doing so, its people have made enormous sacrifices, going without for the greater good of all citizens and countries around the world who have benefited from the small island nation's famous generosity and humanitarian aid. Sadly, Fidel Castro recently had to remind Barack Obama of Cuba's record of international service, as American politicians of all stripes have become used to heaping calumny on a country that has dared to resist and retain its dignity.
Personally, I too have long believed that only a revolution of values can begin to address the challenges of sustainability. For as long as our lives are measured by material success and possessions, there will always exist powerful pressures to consume upwards. This is stoked by our consumer society that consumes us by engaging in the limitless production of wants and desires (a Buddhist nightmare for sure), all in the name of driving a capitalist economy based on borrow and spend. Moreover, the peer pressure is exerted from generation to generation. How many of us have been judged by the size of our house or car? (And if you rent and use public transit, forget about it!)
The consumption in turn serves to displace higher pursuits and to fill the yawning spiritual void in our lives as noted in the whimsical yet deadly serious road documentary "What Would Jesus Buy?" Channeling the theatrics of evangelical holy roller preachers, Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping takes on the "Shopocalypse", which has turned the holiday season into debt-engorged consumer armageddon. The message of this "church" however resonates with both believers and non-believers alike, as the plague affects us all. In this regard, King and the Cuban Vice-President are also one in calling us out of our Koyaanisqatsi.
Taking the local movement one step closer to home...or rather your living room. Artist Mathieu Lehanneur has conceptualized and developed the Local River...a spin on the old fish-tube where people can enjoy watching fish from the comforts of their home while picking out tomorrow nights dinner, fish!
http://www.mathieulehanneur.com
