Green Options

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Few places on Earth are as untouched as the "Crown of the Continent" — a 10-million-acre expanse of mountains, valleys and prairies in Montana and Canada. The area has sustained all the same species — including grizzlies, lynx, moose and bull trout — for at least 200 years.

Now — in one of the most significant conservation sales in history — The Nature Conservancy and The Trust for Public Land have preserved 320,000 acres of forestlands in western Montana

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Local politics and pure malice can be enough to kill a noble project, but to have quite a respectable environmental action network like the Boulder, Colorado-based Global Response get enjoined in endless intrigues, extortion and tomfoolery that are threatening a $35 million organic farming project in Kenya is quite a story.

Expert findings, personal research and a discreet fact-finding visit to the Dominion Farms project in Siaya, a rural agricultural district, also homeland of Democratic presidential contender, Barack Obama’s father, is all it took to conclude that the letter-writing group partly funded by the New Earth Foundation may have made the goof of the decade.

Welcome to Earth Day, crafters! Today, in honor of our one and only home, I’m taking a break from the Fabulous Fabrics series to address a serious dilemma.

If you’re like me, you have a decent sized fabric stash sitting around. In my case, it’s quilting cotton. Yards and yards and yards of it. If you’re like me, you also spend a lot of time thinking about how you can help avert ecological crisis. When the two collide, it can produce guilt about consumption of that much cotton - which uses a ton of water to produce - as well as dyes to make it pretty.

Don’t fret! While cotton is a thirsty crop, your stash can start to make up for its ecological footprint while it awaits that perfect project. Scientists here at Crafting A Green World Laboratories have been working diligently to evaluate all the possibilities and develop this list of the Top 5 ways your fabric stash can help save the earth. (We believe these tips are also applicable to other stash materials, such as yarn and possibly ribbon, but our research is still ongoing into these supplies.)

Arguably, April 22, 2008 will pass as a non-event in Africa, because celebrating Earth Day on this day will be a celebration of the ecological disasters and sustainability failures of a continent believed to be the cradle of mankind.

As a dual citizen of both the Earth and Mother Africa, I am inclined to think that 2008 AD should have heralded a better world for every single human being. But, sadly, that is not so. Earth Day 2008 will be a celebration of the ugly in Africa.

For we cannot justify the fact that majority of the world’s poor are Africans, surviving on less that US$ 1 a day, living in gigantic slum neighborhoods awash with tons and tons of filth, without adequate clean water, and without access to basic health care. A great irony for a continent so richly endowed with natural resources.

For every Muslim, Halal or ‘permissible’ in Arabic means that it passes the test, as far as food is concerned. This will certainly include correct handling procedures and many more practices.

But the question that has dogged Muslims for centuries has always been how to catch fish, using permissible methods that do not damage the environment.

“Lawful to you is the pursuit of water-game (fishing) and its use for food, for the benefit of yourselves and those who travel” (Surah Al-Maida, v. 96)

Dynamite fishing, cyanide fishing, and bottom trawling are all fishing techniques that may cause habitat destruction. A 2006 article in Science magazine said bottom trawling, the practice of pulling a fishing net along the sea bottom behind trawlers, removes around 5 to 25% of an area’s seabed life on a single run.

In Africa, the sun is abundant, yet traditional energy sources mostly derived from the local ecosystem like firewood and charcoal are getting depleted daily by a large measure.

The devastating aftermath of this depletion and its toll on the environment should call for another cheaper, plentiful and vastly accessible source of energy on the continent.

Solar cooking is now taking root in Africa more than ever before. Solar cooking projects are springing up on the continent mostly spearheaded by local cooperatives and non-profits working with rural women to assemble cheap solar cookers. Which works for environment.

Last week I wrote about preparations for Earth Hour, and this week I’m focusing on another way people in the Chicago region are re-examining the use of energy at night. The village of Homer Glen, in the Chicago suburbs, has made news recently for an attempt to curb an insidious manmade contaminant that is emitted by every population center in the world, but which few of us ever take notice of: light pollution.

The largely rural village of Homer Glen, located about 11 miles southwest of Chicago, adopted a groundbreaking ordinance in December that limits how much light a business can generate based on lumens, a measurement of emitted light. In doing so, the village became one of the first municipalities in the country to pass a law that specifically recognizes the night sky as a natural resource and that lays out specific measures to preserve it.

The top 10 headlines in international environmental news for the week of March 24 - 30.

1. World — Earth Hour 2008

As the clock struck eight in the evening, people across each time zone turned off their lights on March 29. It’s activism en mass and it’s called Earth Hour. The purpose: to inspire people to take action on climate change and to demonstrate that massive and immediate action is possible.

Earth Hour began as a city-wide voluntary blackout in Sydney, Australia, in 2007. This year, they’ve moved the date ahead two days and invited the world to join in. Even Google’s joined in. People from roughly 35 countries participated in this global event, which has become a yearly call to action. Read more: EcoWorldy, CNN.

2. Asia — Japanese Man Crosses Pacific with Wave-Powered Boat

A Japanese man named Kenichi Horie is attempting to be environmentally friendly by boating across the Pacific without sails and without fossil fuels.

How does he do it? With a wave-powered boat. Wave power has been discussed quite a bit recently, with a lot of applications including traditional grid energy generation. However, Kenichi is taking things to the next level by powering his ocean going vehicle with the very thing it bobs atop. Read more: Gas 2.0.

As it rages on five years later, perhaps one should spare a moment to reflect on the environmental effects of the war in Iraq.

How much has the war contributed to global warming? We can now debate the war on the scales of environmental justice and evidence is emerging that the damage on the environment and the global warming effects that this war has caused calls for all of us to pause and think.

The one thing that struck me about the story of Joseph Carey Merrick a.k.a. The Elephant Man was that he could never smile. However, he could weep a lot, so documented Sir Frederick Treves, the English surgeon who rescued him after years of performing in carnival freak shows. His great deformity, now postulated as the rare Proteus syndrome (named for the shape-shifting god Proteus) which affects tissue other than nerves, was allegedly caused by the trampling feet of a rogue elephant, many decades before some wildlife conservationists ever thought of culling.

In his brief autobiographical note just before he died, he wrote: “The deformity which I am now exhibiting was caused by my mother being frightened by an Elephant; my mother was going along the street when a procession of Animals were passing by, there was a terrible crush of people to see them, and unfortunately she was pushed under the Elephant’s feet, which frightened her very much; this occurring during a time of pregnancy was the cause of my deformity”. But that was all allegory.

The Culling Debate is back! Fast track to the 21st Century and focus on the wildlife fields of southern Africa. Do you support South Africa’s decision to cull its elephant population? Do you believe the elephant’s trampling is that bad for the local ecology? This is where animal conservationists (or ain’t they?) differ.

If I were to lay my hands on $48.6 million, I would probably go bonkers trying to figure out what to do with it. But I am no Sir Paul McCartney, neither can I guess what Heather Mills does for a living. However, now that I know this figure separates the two on their divorce, I also know what $48.6 million can do for drought in Africa.

It is ironic if not a coincidence that on the same pay day in a London courtroom, the European Union was also announcing a grant of a similar sum to fight drought in Africa. The European Union package of Euro 30 million (US$47 million) will help African countries in the northeast of the continent fight the effects of drought.

Drought fighting initiatives in countries like Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya and even Sudan, always face funding shortfalls, affecting emergency relief for millions facing acute food shortages in the drought-hit Horn of Africa, in turn threatening to exacerbate already dire conditions. The effects of drought on people’s lives are devastating and not always visible to the rest of the world.