photo by Shayan USA

Do we need to get angry to defend nature? Imagine you are an individual who has the utmost respect for nature-you recycle, take nature hikes, donate to Greenpeace, and work in your garden as a daily ritual. Your neighbor on the other hand has litter strewn about their front lawn, weeds are creeping from their side of the fence and mixing with your cherished rose vines. Pots with neglected water-starved plants adorn their entry way-reminiscent of a time that some attempt was made to beautify the entryway.

You feel a twinge of remorse for these misguided folks, but then the next moment you see someone stepping out the front door and dumping a dirty oily stew of some kind on one the hedges.
What is wrong with these people? You want to ignore their utter disrespect of God’s gifts, but your attention is always turned in the direction of all the injustices. If a child was even thought to have been mistreated you could call Child Welfare services. If a puppy were being beaten on the doorstop you could call animal control – but who is going to protect Mother Nature?

Environmentalists handle the crusades which touch the masses – the vanishing endangered species, global warming, the destruction of the rainforests, etc. – but what about the day to day disregard we witness in our neighborhoods. Ever see someone throw a cigarette or a soda out a car window? Remember that hopeless twinge you felt in your chest. Did it tick you off? Did you want to follow them? Did you ever want to leave a suggestive note on your neighbor’s front gate or in their mailbox?

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photo by, mitwalter

There has been a lot of not-so-pleasant talk about how the country (and the world) is headed for a recession. Personally, I do not like to get caught up in depressing theories (the world coming you an end in 2012?) or negative thinking in general.

That is why I was pleased to come across a recent article on a UK website, 10 Ways Recession Can Help the Environment, by Fion MacCloud. Now I’m still not convinced we are in a recession, but if we were, it is good to know there is always a silver lining to any situation.

I have taken his headings and recapped what Mr. MacCloud came up with:

1.” Reduction in Landfills”

When folks have less money, they buy less stuff, so less crap gets disposed of. The United States (according to MacCloud) produces 25% of this waste even though we make up 5% of the world’s population. Capitalism can produce greedy ways.

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photo by, Simon T

Linus Pauling was an extraordinary man – his dualistic expression was admired by those who knew him. He was enthusiastic yet humble, simple and complex, and a gentle rebel.

Pauling was also known as a force of nature. A physicist/chemist/biologist, this brilliant scientist was not content with his research into the nature of the chemical bond (for which he won his first Nobel Prize in 1954).

Pauling then became fascinated in the movement of molecules. He was able to concoct enough experiments to reach the achievement of developing a substitute to blood plasma and then of understanding the living cell. Pretty heavy stuff…

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photo by, greenz4u

Unless you have been living in a bubble for the past few years, most of you are aware of the threats of Global Warming. Here’s a quick review for those of you that were sleeping:

The temperature of the earth continues to rise due to certain gases trapped in the earth’s atmosphere. The main culprit of the various notorious gases is CO2.

CO2 concentration comes from the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

According to Lester R. Brown, Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth, “Each year, more than 6 billion tons of carbon are released into the atmosphere as fossil fuels are burned. Estimates of the net release of carbon from deforestation vary widely, but they center on 1.5 billion tons per year.”

This is a huge and important issue (unless you are George W. Bush or opposed to science). The subject of global warming is complicated to say the least, but I felt compelled to dig into just sliver of this freshly baked dish.

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