Green Options

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Hey, we should all laugh at ourselves once in a while, right? Thanks, as always, to Brad and Peter…

It has been one of the most polarizing movies of cinematic history, and it didn’t even feature Brad Pitt. Rather, Al Gore, for the majority of An Inconvenient Truth, stood in front of a crowd of people – or journaled from the road – and told people that global warming was bad, and that we had done it.

From that moment on, the global warming debate waged hotter and longer than ever before.

Some have said that science plays no part in what Gore decided to impart to us. Others contended that while he may have put an emotional spin on it, there was still plenty of validated science in there. Regardless of what you believe, you can’t deny that global warming is now on everyone’s lips thanks to what Gore did.

So it’s nice to see scientists come out, not in heated attack of the movie, but rather, in calm scientific debate; the way it should be.

Very funny video clip from Saturday Night Live showing Al Gore giving a Presidential address. One of the best lines is when he says that there is no need to worry about hurricanes and tornadoes because of the “anti-hurricane and tornado machine I was instrumental in helping to develop.”

I re-watch Al Gore’s acceptance speech again and again – and I always choke back tears. I suppose I choke them back because I’m an Englishman – with that supposed stiff upper lip.

Massive change is his message. Though of course individual action is beneficial, action on a larger scale is what’s needed.

Political will.

Praise then goes to the Irish government who have decided on a complete ban of incandescent light bulbs as of 2009.

This ties in so strongly with Mr Gore’s speech where he demanded – and eloquently too – that change needs to happen.

Now.

Not beleagueredly in a few years.

But now.

So is my government concurrent with regards to light bulbs?

No.

Environmental News: Al Gore last night urged a climate conference to be ambitious in its attempts to check global warming and to ignore US objections because President Bush would soon be out of office.

The stage was set with a single podium, and beside it were two flags. The first flag was colored red white and blue, no stars and stripes, but three bands of red white and blue. The second flag was blue, and in its center was a circle of yellow stars. The keynote speaker stepped up to the mike. He was there to present a revolution. "A revolution in our way of thinking and in

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In a fight where political gain is seen as the prime motivator, and any actual fact seems to be spun out to support such a theory, Al Gore has been the voice for real climate change. It is a tough fight, and he’s been at it for a while, too. Attacked from the right for political bias, attacked from the critics for supporting a supposedly unproved theory, Al Gore now has reason to smile.

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Oslo, October 12, 2007, could see the Nobel Peace Prize – sometimes noted as the highest accolade on Earth – awarded to campaigners against climate change. In line for this according to Nobel experts are Al Gore and Sheila Watt-Cloutier.

The winner for the Nobel Peace Prize carries away $1.5 million, but more than that, if a climate change advocate succeeds in winning, it could further shift the momentum towards actual climate

[...]

When giving your kids, "the talk", it always helps to have a book as back-up. It justifies your broaching a sensitive, potentially uncomfortable topic like…global warming. And although conservation and environmentalism is a topic for all ages, those children in pre-adolescence are just about ready to hear about the big guns of climate change. Three recent children’s books broach the topic of climate change to your middle-grades children (ages 9-12); two

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Big news Planetsavekateers, I’m outta here.

I’m leaving Green Options and Planetsave, though not to join Tom and John in their fight against the thetans.

I would like to say it’s to spend more time with my family, but that just makes me sound like a scandal ridden Bush official.

While I probably will get to spend more time with my family now, I’m leaving the company to work on my green home project and a few other side projects. My tenure at Green Options and Planetsave has been one of the most interesting, exciting, and invigorating times I’ve had. It ranks as one of my favorite startups (out of my current total of four) and I’m walking away with a greatly expanded network of friends and contacts, a ton of great experience in green publishing, and an awesome project to jump to.

What would have been called “The GO Home Project” is coming with me. I am buying the entire project from Green Options and taking it independent. I’m still working on a name for it (send it on if you have a good one) and will be building a site for it once that’s nailed down, but we’ll be starting up right away on sheagunther.org.

The short of it is is that me and my family are moving into two tipis to live for a year before building the coolest greenest house on the planet. We have 52 acres in North Yarmouth, Maine; the leading green architect in the state; a partnership with Smart HomeOwner Magazine, and a whole lot of great energy pushing it forward. Both me and my wife Heather will be blogging about living in the tipis and I will be set up in a smaller third tipi as my office. I’m sure I’ll have many a five minute snowshoe commutes to work this winter. We’re going to do our best to create a guide and recorded history of our life and work so as to inspire others to do choose the same green building path.

It’s been a great past year building Green Options and past few months working on the new Planetsave, but I’m super excited about all the fun stuff I’ll be able to take on now that my time is freed up from GO/PS work.

Here’s a few places you’ll be able to follow along on my adventures…

- SheaGunther.org - This is my home site, where I started blogging before I knew what blogging was (back in 2001) and current home of Musings of an Eco-Entrepreneur, the most kickass in-stasis eco-entrepreneur blog on the web. It’s been dormant since we launched Green Options but I’ll be doing a relaunch with a new theme in the next week or two. We’ll be blogging about living in the tipis and I’ll have a separate page for my links/musings drops . If you grew to like my blogs here on Planetsave, you’ll want to head over there.

- Treehugger- Graham Hill was kind enough to set up me up with a writing spot at Treehugger. I have to work out the exact details with their uber editor Michael but I couldn’t be more excited. I’ve been a huge fan of Treehugger since back in the day (back in the day in the green blogosphere means two+ years ago) and have always wanted to write there. They have such a great group of editors, writers, and an amazing reach- about 25X more daily readers than what Green Options is pulling these days.

- Yet to be named website for the Green Home Project. We’ will be documenting the crap out of our experience building the coolest greenest house on the planet on our yet to be named website. Sheagunther.org is a good place to go to keep up while I figure out what this new thing will be called.

- Stumblegods.com- It’s not really officially launched yet, but my buddy Michael (editor and founder of Groovy Green, founder and publisher of Ecorazzi, chief editor guy at Ecotality Life) and I will be sharing our insights about the power of StumbleUpon at our new site Stumble Gods. Our thumbs move masses baby.

- Ecotality Life- I’ve been working as a consultant with the awesome and talented Brooke Lowry over at Ecotality on the relaunch of their blog. We’ll be getting Ecotality Life up in the next week, in the meantime check out the current site. Ecotality Life will be relaunched with a focus on green gadgets and green business and investing and should be a good read.

- Email: sheagunther@gmail.com, Skype: shea_gunther

It’s been rad, I’ll miss a lot of the people at Green Options and Planetsave. I’ve gotta give it up to my main man Jan, the founder of Planetsave (he sold it to Green Options this Spring and works on both GO and PS stuff) and pimp dad advertising sales guru man. HIC! He’ll be assisted by the talented Noelle d’Estries (Michael’s sister) who will bring her savvy news sense (have you seen the Green Report, that’s all her) and keen wit to the table trying to fill the void that my voluminous ego will leave behind.

Keep up the good fight. Keep on saving the world.

Here’s some quick links for you this fine Thursday morning…

• Farmer wrecks three cop cars and evades capture for five hours after attacking with a muck spreader. He was mad they were trying to confiscate his tractor.

• Nice job humanity- the Yangtze river dolphin is extinct.

• Al Gore points out Exxon’s work on climate change disinformation campaigns. Pure evil.

• Is this a surprise to anyone? Kids in Saudi Arabia aren’t getting much information about Global Warming in school.

• 20% of Australian kids are fat on their first day of school.

• Toyota is delaying the launch of new high-mileage hybrids for a year or two due to safety concerns.

• Green Myth-Busting: Occam’s Razor, or the idea that our current climate change is part of a natural cycle.