1. Cycle:
a.motor b.bi c.water

2. Take:
a.more b.a seat c.action

3. Vehicle:
a.SUV b.C-A-R c.B-U-S

4. Media:
a.TV b.radio c.book/mags

5. Bikes:
a.for kids b.for exercise c.for most trips

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I don’t know how much you know about the Law of Attraction or if you’ve ever heard of it. But surely you’ve heard of the phrase, ‘What you resist, persists.’ The more we don’t want something, the more it finds us. For example - the more we resist forming relationships with a certain type of person in our lives, the more we attract that same kind of relationship over and over again.  The more we resisted President Bush, the more he stayed in office.  I truly believe that the reason he won two terms as President is because everyone from all sides was so intently focused on him– Democrats with negative energy and Republicans with positive energy.

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Hospitals and outpatient practices use a lot of energy and waste a lot of materials.  Doctors tend to be focused on patient care rather than caring for the environment.  Hopefully, that is starting to change.

Dr. Gupta, a physician practicing hospital medicine in Virginia, had been so bothered by the lack of an environmental policy at the his job that he did something: he developed and a plan to make the hospital system where he works greener and he helped implement it.

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One in six people on the planet do not have access to safe, clean drinking water.

Your tap water is fine.

Worried it isn’t? Get it tested.
If it turns out that it isn’t get a tap water filter, and join a “stream team” (google it to find one in your state).
Need to take it with you? Get a re-usable bottle that will last long and not leach harmful chemicals into the water you are drinking.

There. Your water problems are solved, and I never once suggested purchasing bottled water.

Water is free (kind of) it falls from the sky. If it were Coke that came out of your taps and fell from the sky—I can’t imagine ANYONE purchasing it in a bottle for an incredible mark up. Afterall, it’s free (sort of)! So why buy water of a similar quality to that which flows from your tap, in bottles made from some of the most environmentally damaging chemicals on the planet? And why pay one, two, or three dollars?

…Why not pay twenty?

Seriously.

The only good bottle of water available for purchase is being sold by Scott Harrison and it costs $20!

“Why would ANYONE pay $20 for a normal-sized bottle of water?”, you ask.

Because this special bottle of water has the unique ability to drill wells!

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Throughout the course of our life and our efforts, we have to step back and look at how effective we are at achieving our goals, how far our good intentions are actually taking us, how “green” our lifestyles are. We have to look at how much our green actions are doing to really protect and conserve the environment. At the same time, if we are trying to be a part of this green movement (which is growing in name, in respect, and, to some degree, in overall influence), we have to step back and evaluate the trajectory of the green movement, how effective the overall movement is in making our dreams of a safe, secure, sustainable, lively, and vibrant environment a true reality.

To be honest, I have been involved in the green movement since childhood and am fairly “extreme,” sincere, or devoted in my efforts to be green and to do my part. Nonetheless, I just moved to Poland from the U.S. and I have found that I have habits and ways of thinking that are greatly less sustainable, less environmentally sensitive, than the normal, average Pole who does not have any special care or concern for the environment and may just have the vaguest sense of what the “green movement” or “green living” is.

Why the great disparity in our actions and ways of life, despite the fact that I am the “green”?

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Water is on the tip of everybody’s tongue these days. America is facing major crises with floods in some regions, hundreds of wild fires in others, and droughts throughout. As horrible as all of that may sound, the majority of us can all still go to our faucet and access safe and clean drinking water without a whole lot of effort. Not the case for many people worldwide.

Fact: 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water.

Fact: Countless women and children walk on average 4 miles just to fetch a jug of water that is not guaranteed to be safe to drink.

Fact: $30 provides one person with a lifetime of safe drinking water.

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Some days I fall victim to the green noise syndrome; I’m so overloaded by the green options all around me I don’t know where to go. Bath and cleaning products are one place I always thought I had it right. If I buy the organic, I’m good to go. Or am I?

I just learned last week that in March, Seventh Generation, Method, and other companies that produced green cleaning products were under scrutiny by the Organic Consumers Association. When testing around a hundred “cosmetic, personal care and household cleaning formulas, [the Association] found that nearly 50% of them contained detectable levels of 1,4-dioxane, which is known to cause cancer in lab animals.” Method, Planet Ultra and Seventh Generation’s “natural” dish cleaning products were among those products that tested positive. All manufacturer’s who tested for 1,4 were asked to remove their “organic” and “natural” labels or they’d face a lawsuit. Just when I thought I was cleaning consciously, I have to go through another round of making change in my lifestyle.

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Alaska seems to be a bit under the pump these days, what with ANWR being sold off piece by piece, thus disrupting the economy of the state. Another problem Alaskans are facing is the prospect of the Bristol Bay Watershed being turned in to a North American’s largest open pit gold mine and a 896-square mile mining district. In addition, the Bureau of Land Management is attempting to open 3.6 million acres of Bristol Bay Watershed to hardrock mining.

To give you a small perspective on just what is being encroached upon here, we’ll turn to the Bristol Bay Alliance. Their website describes the Bristol Bay Watershed as producing “the world’s greatest commercial salmon fishery and internationally renowned salmon and trout runs that attract anglers from all over the world. The waters in this region have long been an integral part of the State’s economy and have provided sustainable jobs, subsistence foods and other benefits to Alaskans for generations”

This seems like all bad news, and in total contradiction to my opening statement, but this is where it gets better.

Together, jewelers Tiffany & Co., Ben Bridge Jeweler, Helzberg Diamonds, Fortunoff and Leber Jewelers, have collectively sworn off knowingly selling any jewelry made from gold that might be extracted from the above proposed gold mine.

“We are committed to sourcing our gold and other materials in ways that ensure the protection of natural resources such as the Bristol Bay watershed,” the pledge says. “We would not want the jewelry we sell to our customers to jeopardize this important natural resource.”

Now, you can imagine with Tiffany heading up the list, this is no small thing. And together, the five companies in 2006 sold $2.2 billion worth of jewelry.

A spokesman for Northern Dynasty Mines Inc., an American subsidiary of Canadian company Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., said that he was surprised that none of the companies had spoken to them prior to signing this pledge. He added that Northern Dynasty would be contacting the retailers in the following weeks to describe the Pebble Mine project.

“We have made a commitment to employ the very highest standards at Pebble,” said the spokesman.

So all together now, let’s give three rousing cheers for the five jewelry companies; hip hip?

Photo Courtesy of tricia ward photography via Flickr

However if you haven’t turned on a TV or computer over the past little while, I’ll run it down for you. Photos released by the Australian Customs Agency late last week have depicted a pair of whales – theorized to be a mother and her baby calf – being hauled on board the Yuishin Maru.

Scientists have pegged the age of the calf at less than one year old, and while the Japanese are saying that the pair weren’t mother and calf, it seems to be a bit of a moot point. The reality though is that they probably were, considering they were hauled in together (it is unlikely that a mother would allow her calf away from her at such a tender age).

It comes amidst a wash of videos released by the Australian Customs Agency. The videos depict multiple whales being harpooned, blood flowing, splashing about trying to dislodge the harpoon. The footage was captured by crewmembers on speed boats from the Customs ship Oceanic Viking, which has been trailing the Japanese whaling fleet.

The sheer absurdity of this all is that the Japanese will continue to exploit the loophole existent within Article 8 of the Whaling Convention. It specifically says that whales are fair game if part of scientific research; that in itself is reprehensible.

Without pointing to countless experts, scientists and evidence that renders the killing of whales for science as irresponsible and disgusting, common sense would seem to prevail.

But sadly, it seems that there are no such people with the trait of common sense that many of us hold so dear, inside the Japanese government, or international ruling bodies. And it doesn’t help when you have mindless voices across the internet proclaiming that we should leave Japan alone for adhering to a tradition.

As I wrote in a post at my blog awhile ago addressing the anti-environmentalism on the internet, tradition is not an excuse, otherwise we’d still be witnessing scalping in North America.

Australia’s environmental minister Peter Garret believes that these “distressing” pictures will continue to build a legal case against the Japanese “research.” “It is explicitly clear from these images that this is the indiscriminate killing of whales, where you have a whale and its calf killed in this way,” Garrett told reporters in Sydney.

Garret also hinted that it can take up to 15 minutes for these animals to die, from when the harpoon is launched and they are dragged aboard the ship.

It is no surprise that the Japanese have spoken out against these images, but in a way that simply makes them look like incompetent fools. “The Government of Australia photographs and the media reports have created a dangerous emotional propaganda that could cause serious damage to the relationship between our two countries,” said the Institute of Cetacean Research, the Japanese government-affiliated organization that oversees the hunt, in a press release.

Well of course it’s bloody-well going to affect our relations, especially when people on both sides of the water get to see just what your “scientists” are doing to creatures of the ocean!

Another Japanese official, Hideki Moronuki, chief of the Japanese Fishing Agency’s whaling section, spoke out, denying that the photo depicted that of a mother and a calf, saying it was not a calf at all.

“The fleet is engaged in random sampling, which means they are taking both large and small whales. This is not a parent and calf,” Moronuki said.

Unluckily for Moronuki there is a weight of scientific opinion against him, that simply adds to the absurdity of Japan’s actions.

Rant endeth here, but let us all ensure that if there is a petition or survey that can be signed, a councilman or woman that can be persuaded, that we do so. Japan must, simply must admit that they are doing nothing more than killing whales for pleasure, as the warehouses full of unused whale meat would suggest they sure aren’t doing it for food.

“We must restore confidence to the economy, to consumers and to the markets,” declared The House Democratic Leadership on Friday.

Their solution? Tax rebates and relief, echoing George Bush and probably every other economic analyst. The Federal Reserve has been cutting interest rates for the past six months to achieve the same goal; to entice people to Buy! Buy! Buy!

Not only will this take money away from important public services, but increasing consumption has dire negative impacts. The process of extracting resources, manufacturing products, consuming them, and disposing of them is the very culprit of environmental degradation. And guess what? This consumption will ultimately take us down as well.

In an article entitled 10 Ways Recession Can Help the Environment the author writes:

Although air travel gets more press, shipping produces twice as much CO2 than airlines. In addition, ships use the lowest grade of oil available and are known to flush their tanks out at sea causing regular oil slicks. A reduction in shipping due to a decreased consumer demand will lead to less CO2 emissions and lower pollution of the seas.

Sure, buying those diamond earrings or that brand new sweater is going to “help the economy” and create jobs, but to what end? We need to stop buying things we don’t need, especially when many people don’t even have enough to eat.

We cannot continue to depend upon increasing public consumption to ensure a healthy economy. We need to make a sharp turn from past economic policies. One way to do this is to price products based on their true costs.

For instance, producing a can of soda currently does not take into account the costs of cleaning the waterways that have been polluted, or the costs of caring for those who are adversely affected by the air pollution it creates. If these externalities were taken into account, the price of the can would be much higher. So, companies would have some incentive to reduce their ecological footprint, or, polluting goods would cost more and be bought less. As a result, those who damage the environment would pay, and taxes would not have to be used to fix the problems, thereby reducing money paid to the government.

Also, making economic decisions with the well being of the environment in mind does not have to cost more. In fact, there are many businesses that are utilizing new technologies to improve their energy efficiency, decreasing their costs and helping the environment. Something called the E2 solution path expounds upon this idea that the environment and economy can work hand in hand.

Until we realize that some restructuring of our economy needs to take place, there are some things you can do to minimize your own footprint. Buy used goods, and those goods you need to buy new, be sure they have the least amount of packaging. Buy organic and reduce the amount of meat you consume. Be aware that each dollar you spend, you are voting for or against a positive future.

Carbon sequestration will be used in this new coal-fired power plant to reduce the carbon footprint of electricity.

The town of Mattoon, Illinois rejoiced when the developers of a $1.8 billion low-pollution power plant announced the selected location. This rust-belt town will no longer be primarily known as the bagel capital of the world. The 275-megawatt prototype plant will generate both electricity and hydrogen. Carbon dioxide emissions will be captured and pumped deep into the ground.

The Department of Energy quickly issued a warning about the experimental plant, stating that it might cost too much and urging a reassessment of the design. The public-private partnership between FutureGen and the DOE entails the DOE providing 74% of the required funds. This plant will provide information on the feasibility of carbon sequestration.

Matthew Wald of the New York Times explained the technology that will be implemented by the plant on All Things Considered: “They take the coal, and instead of grinding it up and burning it, the way you do in a conventional plant, they cook it, and it gives off two gasses: hydrogen, which is benign — when you burn it you get nothing but water — and carbon monoxide, which we think of as a pollutant, but here as a fuel gas. You mix the carbon monoxide with water; it grabs hydrogen out of the water, so you then end up with carbon dioxide, nicely separated, and more hydrogen. You burn the hydrogen to make power, and then you have this nice clean flow of CO2 that you can dispose of.”

In 2006, coal power plants generated about 50% of the nation’s electricity, while emitting roughly 40% of the total carbon dioxide. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change considers capturing carbon and pumping it underground to be a likely solution for slowing climate change. Although carbon sequestration has the potential to significantly decrease emissions, the word clean perhaps can never accurately be used to describe coal.

Putting the carbon emission aside, coal mining is responsible for extensive environmental damage. Forests and streams are destroyed, impacting water quality and wildlife habitat.

Despite the environmental impacts of coal mining, the low-emissions plant in Mattoon, IL is certainly an improvement from business as usual. This prototype plant will help answer some of the questions that surround carbon sequestration and its feasibility for mitigating climate change.

A new report from The Climate Institute in Australia examines the latest research on climate change and concludes the IPCC’s most recent assessment is already outdated.

“(T)he IPCC report only uses material published up to mid-2006, and many new important observations have been published since,” states the report, written by Dr Graeme Pearman in collaboration with the Climate Adaptation Science and Policy Initiative at the University of Melbourne. “These suggest that the IPCC assessment is underestimating the risks of adverse impacts due to increased warming during this century and that impacts previously considered to be at the upper end of likelihood are now more probable.”

“Evidence of Accelerated Climate Change” cites data showing that carbon dioxide emissions are rising nearly three times as fast this decade as in the last — 3-plus percent per year for 2000 to 2004, versus 1.1 percent per year for 1990 to 1999. The current growth rate, the report says, exceeds that used in the IPCC’s most emissions-intensive climate scenario.

The report adds we’ve already reached greenhouse gas atmospheric levels equivalent to 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide, the point at which the IPCC says we risk slipping into “dangerous climate change.” While the IPCC assessment acknowledges carbon dioxide-equivalent levels are around 455 parts per million, it assumes the actual climate impact is still below the danger point thanks to the cooling effects of atmospheric aerosols and pollutants. The Climate Institute report notes those aerosol levels are dropping — thanks to pollution-control efforts — while greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.

The IPCC’s climate scenarios also fall short of what is actually being seen in the Arctic, the report adds.

“Models show declining Arctic ice cover, but very few model simulations show trends as large as are observed,” states the report. “The current summer minima are approximately 30 years ahead of a range of simulation model forecasts.” That means we might seen an ice-free Arctic Ocean well earlier than the IPCC’s predicted dates of somewhere between 2050 and 2100.

But wait, there’s more. The Australian report’s most disconcerting finding is that the IPCC, in trying to craft an assessment that represents “the full range of uncertainties” in climate science, might not be giving enough attention to low-probability events with high-impact results. Those would include things like multiple feedback loops that cause a rapid collapse of the world’s ice sheets or a catastrophic release of stored carbon — thousands of gigatons’ worth — from undersea hydrate reservoirs.

“To the extent that the impacts of climate change may be in the more severe range of those outlined in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, the case for a policy of risk management and more urgent intervention is strengthened,” the report concludes.

For Web designer Patrick Moberg, 21, from Brooklyn, it was love at first sight when he locked eyes with a rosy-cheeked woman while riding in Manhattan on Sunday night. She was writing in her journal.

The train was so full that he lost her in the crowd when they both got off, so he set up a Web site dedicated to finding the mystery woman — www.nygirlofmydreams.com.

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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.

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Is it me, or does Amanda seem to linger, just a bit, when my name is on the screen. She’s obviously researched who I am and wants to know more.

Amanda, I’m sorry to say that I’m married, and while you are quite fetching, you didn’t make it on my “List“, so any kind of Entourage like hookup is out of the question. Please stop calling.

for

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JEFFREY LEE is not interested in the soaring price of uranium, which could make him one of the world’s richest men.

“This is my country. Look, it’s beautiful and I fear somebody will disturb it,” he says, waving his arm across a view of rocky land surrounded by Kakadu National Park, where the French energy giant Areva wants to extract 14,000 tonnes of uranium worth more than $5 billion.

Mr Lee, the shy 36-year-old sole member of the Djok clan and the senior custodian of the Koongarra uranium deposit, has decided never to allow the ecologically sensitive land to be mined.

“There are sacred sites, there are burial sites and there are other special places out there which are my responsibility to look after,” Mr Lee told the Herald.

“I’m not interested in white people offering me this or that … it doesn’t mean a thing.

“I’m not interested in money. I’ve got a job; I can buy tucker; I can go fishing and hunting. That’s all that matters to me.”

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“Green” bandit killed after 32 years on the run
LUCKNOW (Reuters) - A notorious bandit known by many Indians as a local Robin Hood who defended forests against illegal loggers and poachers was shot dead Sunday in northern India after 32 years on the run, police said.

Shiv Kumar Patel, 56, also known as “Dadua,” was killed along with 10 other members of his gang in Uttar Pradesh state.

The bandit faced more than 200 criminal cases against him, including murder, extortion and kidnapping.

Many local villagers hailed him as a kind of Robin Hood. He would often rob the rich to feed the poor, particularly those belonging to his own low “kurmi” caste.

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1- No soda in cans (which means we’re probably less likely to get cancer from aspartame).
2- No water in plastic bottles (which means we get to keep our endocrines undisrupted).
3- No coffee in disposable cups (which means we don’t suffer from the morning sluggishness that comes from overnight caffeine withdrawal).
4- No throwaway plastic razors and blade cartridges (I’m staging the straightedge razor comeback).
5- Using non-disposable feminine-hygiene products that aren’t bad for women and are good for the planet.
6- No Indian food in throwaway takeout tubs.
7- No Italian food in plastic throwaway tubs.
8- No Chinese food in plastic throwaway tubs.
9- Taking our own reusable containers to takeout joints (except that now we’re eating local so this tip is out for us).
10- Admitting that we sometimes miss Indian, Italian and Chinese takeout.

If you are not familar with No Impact Man, here’s the basic breakdown of his experiment in green living…

we’ve broken down our lives into six areas and tried to figure out how to live with as low an impact as possible in each area. The six areas are: trash (as in we try to make none), carbon-producing transportation (as in we don’t use it), inconspicuous consumption (as in we buy nothing new), sustainable eating (as in our food all comes from within 250 miles or less), reduced power use (as in we use almost none), and environmentally-friendly water use (as in we’re still figuring that bit out).