Over at wecansolveit.org there are clips from Gore’s recent speech on climate change and the energy use that is causing it.

Al Gore’s Challenge

I must say that the speech really gets me misty-eyed. I can only hope that the powerful communities of the internet that have developed over the years (with Al Gore’s help!) including WE will be able to push for this challenge to be met. Do what you can, don’t just talk about it, act.

Spread this proposal, the science behind it, and help our country take some big steps towards setting a good example.

Our facebook group received a wonderful comment from the member Stephen D.

My son and daughter have inspired me to take a new approach to venturing into the wild. I go canoing frequently on various bodies of water in WV and am rather disgusted by the quantity of trash that lines the shores of our lakes. As a result of my son’s and daughter’s equal disgust, I have begun to take one trash bag with me every time I go canoing with them. We take a few minutes on each trip to grab some of the trash we see along the shoreline of whatever lake we are floating on, and put it in the bag. When we come to the boat landing, we put the bag in one of the public trash receptacles there. Anyone else interested in joining me in this endeavor to clean up the detritus left behind by careless and callous individuals recreating on America’s lakes and waterways?

Thanks for the words of wisdom Stephen!

Since I am about to leave for a week I am a bit busy, but I couldn’t help but share this article referred to in Slashdot today.
“MIT opens new ‘window’ on solar energy“; a new paint on material will be implemented within 3 years and allow for 40x as much solar energy in existing collector systems to be absorbed. Read on for more, very cool stuff.

I found a new show on the Sundance Film Channel that is solely based on going green day-to-day. It is called The Green, and you can check it out here.

A new link has been added to the Friends section for the EPA’s page on climate change.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) has been around since 1998 but only now is receiving adequate attention. Rachel saw a program on HGTV that was all about one of the first homes in the U.S. to meet the LEED standards. The show summary and a few poor pictures can be seen on HGTV.com. The page also provides a few links to the local businesses that worked on this project.

One business in particular that caught my eye was the Rain Harvest Company. I’ve always hated that gutters just dump all that useful water into the ground in a usually un-usful spot! This company eliminates that problem and creates a new system that intelligently stores water for water irrigation use. No energy is used to store the water or catch it, and if setup properly, none would be necessary to transport it throughout the landscape either! Pretty awesome, if you ask me.

In a similar vein of eco-alteration, Rachel found a great site that sells “tools” for the extremely useful, though not well known, method of pest control known as “natural predators.” This (obviously superior and eco-friendly) method of pest control may be tricky to use at first but can provide a long term, non-invasive, toxic, or chemical means of eliminating natural pests, using their natural predators. Be careful though, this site may actually sell invasive species, and although they can often be better predators, they are definitely a no, no.

* Side note; as you can see the page has been converted to a more “community” based design. All links now work and I hope y’all enjoy the ease of navigation provided by the WordPress scripts that now run our backbone and handle the php *

Who loves bumper stickers?! I do? Actually I don’t have any on my new Yaris yet, but you can sure bet on me putting this one on there!

The money made from these stickers will go to running the webserver with the remainder going towards a green organization that will be announced (soon).

Unfortunately not every post can be lighthearted, this one certainly is not. NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) had an article on June 19th that discussed the results of the joint efforts of U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research on the topic of climate change and it’s effects on severe weather patterns. This thorough assessment of North America has notedly produce data on the increase of severe drought, flooding, heatwaves, and hurricanes over the past 50 years.

The full reports are available here, and you can read the NOAA article here.

Whenever I recieve or think of enough ideas/tips/ect I will write a new volume for our collection of Green Thoughts. Overtime I hope to accumlate a tome of these volumes and share them with everyone! These snippets of knowledge will all be archived and held on the Ideas page in a special section, marked accordingly. I hope you can use some of these ideas today!

• Plant Something: Plant anything! Plants absorb CO2 and sequester it in their vegetative bodies so they are a great way to make an impact on atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Of course, the more the merrier, just make sure you consult local biologists (like these folks) to make sure you don’t introduce any invasive species!
• Carpool: Pretty obvious one here, less cars = less CO2 emissions/person. Better yet, carpool with people who drive fuel efficient cars! (Just because an ad for an SUV says the car “is fuel efficient,” doesn’t mean it is getting better gas mileage than a sensible sedan or Yaris. Do you go off-roading? That’s what I thought. Don’t buy an SUV or let your friends drive them.)

• Reusable Grocery Bags: Simple fix to the ridiculous notion of a throw away, non-biodegradable, quick storage accessory. These extremely inexpensive bags will last forever and considering the alternative of producing millions upon millions of these bags (which require; energy and oil all the while producing CO2 as a byproduct) they are a much better choice for everyone. Just don’t forget to bring them to the store with you!

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Everyone knows that Pixar is ‘movie’ for Perfect, but not everyone knows that their new movie sends a blunt and harsh message about the general public’s consensus about the environment.

First of all, WALL·E is spectacular. Cute, heart warming, hilarious, romantic, exciting, and just plain awesome. That being said, I’d like to applaud Pixar not on their cinematic achievement (I think their box office sales will do that well enough) but on their topical plot about the careless waste created by the majority of the human populace. Without spoiling the movie; the story revolves around a lone trash compacting robot who is programmed to clean up the unimaginable mess created by the ever expanding ultra-consumer habits. The human race has abandoned the planet due to the toxicity and destruction they caused. As the movie progresses you find that the last ship of humans is populated by deathly obese people that ride around on hover chairs and completely rely on video screens and robots to do everything for them. Human to human interaction has ceased and all food is consumed in the form of liquid. Even the children are raised to eat constantly and ignore other human life. The message of urgency rings clearest when the captain of the ship realize the 700 year blunder and exclaims that “we have always done nothing” and decides that the earth needs our stewardship.

I am in love with this movie, its characters and its message. I think bringing a friend who isn’t very environmentally aware to this film could be one of the better things you could do for them and in turn, our planet. Great job Pixar, I am impressed with your frank and didactic presentation of our possible future.