Green Options

U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu visits Jon Stewart at the daily show, and much to the host’s surprise (and unlike other members of the cabinet who’ve visited the show), Chu is alive.

We already know that Fox News’ telepundit Bill O’Reilly believes anthropogenic global warming is real and shouldn’t be ignored. Now we know he’s not a huge fan of a cap-and-trade policy because it would fatten the wallets of Goldman Sachs and Al Gore.

Coleman made headlines last year with a series of op-eds saying that 30,000 scientists (only 9,000 of whom actually have PhDs) wanted to sue Al Gore over the fraud.

My questions is this: how is that lawsuit coming Mr. Coleman?

This post is a collaboration between Max Gladwell and Mashable’s Summer of Social Good charitable fundraiser. It is the second in our series of #10Ways posts being published simultaneously across as many as 300 blogs.

Social media is about connecting people and providing the tools necessary to have a conversation. That global conversation is an extremely powerful platform for spreading information and awareness about social causes and issues. That’s one of the reasons charities can benefit so greatly from being active on social media channels. But you can also do a lot to help your favorite charity or causes you are passionate about through social media.

Below is a list of 10 ways you can use social media to show your support for issues that are important to you. If you can think of any other ways to help charities via social web tools, please add them in the comments. If you’d like to retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.

1. Write a Blog Post

Blogging is one of the easiest ways you can help a charity or cause you feel passionate about. Almost everyone has an outlet for blogging these days — whether that means a site running WordPress, an account at LiveJournal, or a blog on MySpace or Facebook. By writing about issues you’re passionate about, you’re helping to spread awareness among your social circle. Because your friends or readers already trust you, what you say is influential.

Recently, a group of green bloggers banded together to raise individual $1 donations from their readers. The beneficiaries included Sustainable Harvest, Kiva, Healthy Child, Healthy World, Environmental Working Group, and Water for People. The blog-driven campaign included voting to determine how the funds would be distributed between the charities. You can read about the results here.

You should also consider taking part in Blog Action Day, a once a year event in which thousands of blogs pledge to write at least one post about a specific social cause (last year it was fighting poverty). Blog Action Day will be on October 15 this year.

2. Share Stories with Friends

Another way to spread awareness among your social graph is to share links to blog posts and news articles via sites like Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Digg, and even through email. Your network of friends is likely interested in what you have to say, so you have influence wherever you’ve gathered a social network.

You’ll be doing charities you support a great service when you share links to their campaigns, or to articles about causes you care about.

Greenpeace activists in the United States and Italy stage protests calling on G8 nations to take action on climate change.

Stephen Colbert delves into the passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act and the choice words House Minority Leader John Boehner had for it last week.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) calls Waxman-Markey climate bill “ridiculous”, and a “piece of sh*t”.

Invoking the now-familiar messages heard throughout both his campaign and much of his presidency, President Obama implored the U.S. Senate to move forward with a climate bill.

The League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club launched a new television ad “amplifying President Obama’s call” for Congress to pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act.

With all signs pointing to a Friday House vote on the Waxman-Markey climate bill, the political action committee behind the “Drill here, drill now, pay less” campaign yesterday launched a last-ditch effort to scare the crap out of you.

The first-ever report exclusively focused on the global human impact of climate change calculates more than 300 million people are seriously affected by climate change at a total economic cost of $125 billion per year.