Beach with more plastic waste than sand – in Hawaii
According to this BBC report, an endless supply of rubbish from the Pacific is filling up what should be a pristine Hawaiian beach. The Pacific Ocean is arguably the world's biggest garbage dump.
Serious about the environment? If so, build an earthship
If you're really serious about preserving the earth's resources, you can build and live in an "earthship." Each type of earthship is defined by the following set of principles: * Thermal/Solar Heating & Cooling * Solar & Wind Electricity * Contained Sewage Treatment * Building with Natural & Recycled Materials * Water Harvesting * Food Production For instance, with regard to electricity,
Earthships produce their own electricity with a prepackaged photovoltaic / wind power system. This energy is stored in batteries and supplied to your electrical outlets. Earthships can have multiple sources of power, all automated, including grid-intertie.
Lots of photos and details regarding earthships can be viewed at this website. There are many varieties, including retrofitted pre-existing housing, described here, this section serving as another review of the basic principles. Here is a video introduction:Comprehensive moral instruction
We've all seen many Internet lists offering suggestions for improving one's life or state of happiness. This list, by a young man named Henrick Edberg at The Positivity Blog, caught my attention today, perhaps because it includes some of my own favorite bits of productivity reminders and folk wisdom, including the "80/20 rule" and the advice to not beat yourself up for making mistakes. His list also includes a nice twist to the golden rule: Give value to get value, not the other way around. Another item on his list reminds us to express gratitude to others in order to enrich our own lives, reminding us that expressing gratitude is socially contagious. What also intrigued me was Edberg's pre-list commentary: He laments that the nuggets of advice in his list aren't taught as part of the high school curriculum.
But I still think that taking a few hours from all those German language classes and use them for some personal development classes would have been a good idea. Perhaps for just an hour a week in high school. It would probably be useful for many students and on a larger scale quite helpful for society in general.
I think I know why there are no such classes in public schools. Teaching advice on how to navigate through the complexities of life in a positive state of mind would too often trigger discussions regarding "morality," which too often trigger discussions of specific religious teachings which, in turn, tend to anger at least some parents and students, which would then shut down the course (in public schools, anyway). I suspect that this causal chain is a big reason that so many schools tread lightly on teaching students how to navigate through life, even though there is an immense amount of information that needs to be discussed. Instead of vigorously teaching what the students need to know to be functional and virtuous, most schools ostensibly defer to families and churches (though they actually defer at least as much to pop culture, including magazines, "news" programs, television shows and movies) to fill that "moral" vacuum of students. In America, however, even "serious" teachers of morality often insist that the way to best live one's life is by obeying a standardized set of "moral" rules. Is the advice to follow any set of rules really the best approach for instructing us how to get along with each other down here on planet Earth? Is it even possible for any form of obedience to serve as the foundation for a high-functioning society? I think not. I'm going to digress at this point . . . [more . . . ]The power of a nickel
Look what happens to the use of plastic bags used by grocers and restaurants when you require the merchants charge five cents per bag. This is a big win for the environment:
In its first assessment of how the new law is working, the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue estimates that city food and grocery establishments issued about 3.3 million bags in January, which suggests a remarkable decrease. Prior to the bag tax taking effect Jan 1, the Office of the Chief Financial Officer had estimated that about 22.5 million bags were being issued per month in 2009.
Are you ready for prices (of everything) to rise?
If you were looking for a quick, 4-paragraph introduction on the subject of Peak Oil, Bloomberg News has you covered:
Exxon Mobil Corp., BP Plc and Total SA are investing in assets that previously weren’t worth their time or money after oil-rich nations reduced access to reserves and exploration drilling faltered. Efforts to find new sources of crude and natural gas are failing more often, with San Ramon, California-based Chevron Corp.’s exploration failure rate jumping to 35 percent last year from 10 percent in 2008. Countries such as Venezuela are making it more expensive for companies to develop their resources, if they’re allowed in at all. And previously developed fields are drying up, reducing oil companies’ future supplies, or reserves. “Their No. 1 problem is reserves replacement,” said Nansen Saleri, chief executive officer at Quantum Reservoir Impact in Houston and former reservoir-management chief at Saudi Arabia’s state oil company. “That’s the elephant in the room, so that’s what they have to address.” To compensate, major producers are investing in projects they once eschewed, including geologically complex oil and gas fields, called “unconventional” by the industry to distinguish them from the easy-to-get oil and gas of earlier years.And that is Peak Oil in a nutshell. It is real, it is here. All the cheap, easily accessible oil has been used up; the low-hanging fruit is gone. The remainder of the planet's oil, of which we still have plenty, is going to cost a great deal more to extract and refine, leading to higher prices at the pump, at the grocery store, or anywhere else that requires oil to function.