Heal Earth Now

News reports over the years have brought to light the plight that many albinos in African have experienced at the hands of the superstitious and witch doctors. They have been killed and dismembered so that parts of their bodies can be used in rituals. One man in Mali said that he was almost kidnapped twice and that is why he escaped to Spain to get asylum. According to the article on the BBC News web site, the process of gaining asylum usually take 2 years , but his was done in 2 years. The man also says that he would like to one day bring his albino brothers to Spain so that they can be safe.

Some homes in Western Kansas will be soon be powered by the biofuel produced by cow manure. Many different areas in Europe, including the Netherlands, are already using cow manure to produce biofuel.

In a few months, the city of Ulysses will get a new machine called a gasifier. It will be used to turn cow manure into electricity. Each unit is small enough to fit on a semi-truck, but is capable of producing enough energy to power 1,500 homes.

“Each cow produces about 8 pounds of manure per day,” says Gene Pflughoft, Grant County Economic Development Director. “They can take that dry manure, gasify it, turn it into a gas, and then run that into a generator and generate electricity.”

Source:Kake.com

Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued the following statement tonight on the United Nations Climate Conference. Speaker Pelosi is currently leading a bipartisan Congressional delegation to Copenhagen.

“The agreement reached tonight in Copenhagen is a breakthrough in the global effort to combat the climate crisis and could not have been reached without President Obama’s active involvement and leadership. The President has secured a critical agreement that includes an achievable mitigation target, transparency measures and a financing mechanism – the three key fundamentals outlined in the President’s speech today and embodied in the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill.

“In our discussions in Copenhagen, we have been gratified by the enthusiasm of American business leaders and our colleagues in the European Parliament for the House passed clean energy bill. Our legislation will create millions of clean energy jobs for Americans, strengthen our national security and ensure the competitiveness of U.S. businesses in the emerging marketplace for energy efficiency and renewable fuels. Business leaders from around the world have it clear: addressing the climate crisis is not only sound science and a moral imperative, but good business.

“Our bipartisan delegation, which includes 21 Members of the House, has held two days of highly productive meetings and discussions during our visit to the Copenhagen climate meeting. This morning, our delegation discussed responses to the climate crisis with representatives of many of the leading American companies including such innovators as Google, Honeywell and Whirlpool. These business leaders informed us that their businesses are thriving in the fields of energy efficiency and green technologies. They stressed that the funding provided by the Congress through our Recovery Package has been crucial to their making the investments that are producing jobs for Americans and new products that promote energy efficiency, specifically smart grid technology.

“On Thursday, Members of the delegation participated in a roundtable with other women leaders by the Global Gender and Climate Alliance; held bilateral talks with Indian Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh; and met with leading Danish government officials, including the President of the Folketinget Thor Pedersen.

“The delegation also met with leading representatives of the European Council of Ministers, who explained that their various countries have not only complied with carbon reduction mandates, but have simultaneously achieved economic growth and job creation through new clean energy technologies.

“While there were differences between Members of the delegation, as Congressman Joe Barton said, we all believed this was an historic meeting.”

Source: Office of the Speaker of the House

According to an article from the Associated Press, we are in the warmest decade (2000-2009).

The last few decades are the warmest period in at least 400 years and probably 1,000 years, based on evidence from tree rings, retreating glaciers and other scientific methods to track climate before record-keeping, according to a 2006 report by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Although temperatures have fluctuated, the causes were natural. The difference now is that they are being driven up by human activity, that modern civilization has many more coastal cities and needs to feed far more people, and that scientists believe humans can head off such dangerous warming.

Many parts of the world are already feeling the effects of global warming. Melting polar ice caps are causing sea levels to rise in some places, as result people in many countries losing their homes and businesses close to the coastline. Since what one country does affects the whole world, developing countries are paying for the waste and huge carbon emissions that other countries have released into the air.

Although we are seeing the warmer decades, that does not mean that all is over. We can work to reduce our carbon emissions. Most people and cities are trying to go green and hopefully going green continues to be cool and be just what we need to slow down global warming.