EARTH DAY 2008 - GLOBAL HEALING IS IN YOUR HANDS

We haven't written much about global warming recently, but I recently received an email that included a speech by Al Gore from TED Talks (it's not named after me, although I wish I could take credit since so much that comes from it is interesting and informative).  TED is is a forward thinking group that is working to spread knowledge in a unique way. You can go directly to Al Gore: New Thinking on the Climate Crisis by clicking here.

Gore's talk was very informative and interesting primarily because of how he ended it. Instead of being negative and pointing his finger at the present Administration for its inaction on the topic, he pointed out that although we're in a global warming crisis, we should go about making the changes necessary by being optimistic and joyful instead of glum and dower. I think that is a particularly strong point that should be remembered by all of us.

If we are to make the necessary changes to save our planet, let's do it with a song in our heart and joy in our talk. Something that was mentioned in the comments under the speech was that if most of the world turned vegetarian we would automatically eliminate a great deal of methane gas and many of the pollutants that foul our environment and cause much of the global warming. I especially found that an interesting thought since we are already working to implement it in our home.

However, don't for one moment think that this is not already a crisis. The level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is increasing daily directly due to human activities. If we were truly concerned about that single fact, we would have already started to take all coal fired electrical plants off-line and started to substitute solar arrays and wind or wave power years ago. However, Gore pointed out that although 69% of the people in our country believe that human activity is at least partly the cause of global warming, it ranked second from the bottom of actual immediate concerns of the general public. In other words, people are just not aware that the problem is as much of an actual present day crisis as it is.

Now is the time to work to save our planet! If we don't do it, nobody else will. As Abbey Hoffman once said, "think globally, act locally" and it still makes a world of sense today. If we individually change how we act and what we buy or what we burn, things will actually start to change in our world. If everyone would recycle their glass bottles (as my old friend Harry Kutner, Jr. does every day we go to lunch and he takes his iced tea bottles home with him to recycle), it would make a huge difference (actually, I've read when we recycle one glass bottle, its saves enough energy to energize a 100 watt bulb for 24 hours). If we all would change our incandescent bulbs to florescent light bulbs, it will make a huge difference. If we install solar arrays on our homes, it will make a huge difference in overall energy consumption. If we simply insulate our homes better and use energy efficient appliances and turn off our electronics by using a switchable extension cord, we could all make a big difference. These are just simple things we can each do to help our environment directly.

Let us know what ideas each of you have to help save our planet and we'll post them in the next few weeks so everyone can share the concepts and ideas. Give us a call and let us know or drop us an email and we'll list them for everyone to read. Or you can go to www.google.com/earthday08/ and leave a message on their map of America about what you intend to do for Earth Day 2008.

Ted and Maria