Heal Earth Now

Pictures and stories about how the gulf oil spill has destroyed life, the land, and the economy of the Gulf have people infuriated. Public citizens want to help clean up this environmental mess, and make those responsible pay. One call to action has citizens organizing boycotts of the BP stations around the country.

Although I do feel that someone should be held accountable for the spill, the boycott seems to hurt the local BP station owners more than it hurts the corporate giant. Enough people are suffering financially in the Gulf communities and the country as a whole. These local BP station owners have families, mortgages, and other bills. Putting them out of business will not hurt BP in the long run, but it will hurt these individuals for a long time.

Our main focus now should be preventing anymore offshore drilling. This oil spill in the Gulf has taught us that accidents at the offshore drills cause far more damage than one generation can remedy. As the repair and clean-up of the BP gulf oil spill has shown, there is a lot of uncertainty when dealing with equipment so deep in the water.

BP is not the only company that engages in offshore drilling, and we don’t know how close other companies are to having a disaster as catastrophic as the current one we are experiencing right now. Boycotting the individual gas stations is not the answer. As Thoreau wrote, “For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root.” We should work at correcting the bigger problem by letting our legislatures know how upset we are with the Gulf Oil Spill. We need to let them know that we need stronger laws and regulations so that this never happens again.

The recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico leaves many wanting to help.  One organization, Matter of Trust, is collecting donated human hair and animal fur to help in oil spills.  The human hair is natural material that absorbs oil very well.  Matter of Trust creates hair booms made of hair stuffed in nylons.  These booms are used to absorb oil from spills.   Along with the hair and animal fur, Matter of Trust is also collecting clean nylons.  Their web site has detailed instructions on how to send the hair, fur, and nylon donations.

An explosion on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010, has left behind a growing ecological mess. The explosion caused the rig to catch fire and eventually sink after burning for two days. 11 workers have been missing since the blast and authorities are assuming they were killed in the blast. When the oil rig sank, the oil lines became compromised and began to leak oil into the Gulf at a steady pace.

Resulting Oil Leaks

Initial reports said that the pipes were leaking oil at around 1,000 bbl per day. The oil is currently pooling off of the Gulf of Louisiana, but wind and water currents may push it into the coast within the next few days. The potential biological hazard increases exponentially as the oil slick moves into waters closer to the coast where wildlife tends to live and breed. A large section of the oil slick has drifted within 16 miles of the Mississippi River Delta, where it could also do a great deal of damage.

A new leak was discovered within the last 24 hours that is spilling almost five times as much oil as the first leaks. It is now estimated that the rig, which is resting on the floor of the Gulf, is spilling an average of 5 bbl of oil every day. At this rate, the recent disaster could become one of the worst oil spills in the history of offshore drilling.

Oil Spill Containment Efforts Intensify

Cleanup crews have begun performing in-situ burning to try to eliminate the oil that is on top of the water. The burns are carefully controlled, and is expected to dissipate a fraction of the spill. The majority of the spill is still floating in the Gulf of Mexico unimpeded. Officials on the coast of Louisiana have begun firing cannons to frighten away birds and other wildlife that may be in the path of the oil slick. Fishermen are running booms across large areas of the coast to stop the slick from coming too close in to the shore.

President Barack Obama has stated that the National Guard will be available to help in cleanup efforts if needed. The White House is monitoring the situation very closely, and intends to do whatever necessary to protect as much of the coastline as possible. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has declared a state of emergency as the slick continues to move toward the coastline.

Composting has not been on the top of my list.  I have considered it and it seems simple, but I just want to get it right.  Before I would start and then just abandon the whole thing.    We usually put fallen leaves around the trees in our yard, but we don’t use the scraps of vegetable matter-those end up going in the garbage.  Last night the Super Bowl commercial with Audi and the green police made me think about composting again.   One guy was getting a ticket for throwing a banana peels into the garbage and I thought that is the same thing that I do with my peelings.  

Here are some YouTube videos on composting that I am using as a resource for composting.     It really answered a lot of my questions.  One thing I was doing was putting food scraps on top of the compost and that was attracting a lot of pest.  A video gave the common sense solution of covering the food scraps with dry material.  As I try to compost once more, I hope to get everything right this time around.

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

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.

We know that carbon emissions are affecting climate change. A change in our environment is bound to affect the plants, animals and humans. Researchers are putting a number of live saved if we can reduce the amount of carbon emissions.

The calculations of lives saved were based on computer models that looked at pollution-caused illnesses in certain cities. The figures are also based on the world making dramatic changes in daily life that may at first seem too hard and costly to do, researchers conceded.

Some possible benefits seemed highly speculative, the researchers conceded, based on people driving less and walking and cycling more. Other proposals studied were more concrete and achievable, such as eliminating cook stoves that burn dung, charcoal and other polluting fuels in the developing world.

And cutting carbon dioxide emissions also makes the air cleaner, reducing lung damage for millions of people, doctors said.

“Here are ways you can attack major health problems at the same time as dealing with climate change,” said lead author Dr. Paul Wilkinson, an environmental epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The calculations are based on proposals that would cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050. To accomplish that, industrialized countries have to cut emissions by 83 percent. Obama’s proposal, also unveiled Wednesday with his Copenhagen announcement, is in sync with that.

Source: Associated Press

The Dalai Lama on Wednesday appealed to China to take action to stop Tibet’s glaciers melting, saying the environmental crisis was more urgent than a political solution over Tibet’s future.

Attending a U.N. summit on global hunger in Rome, the exiled Buddhist leader warned rivers from Tibet’s glaciers and snow-covered mountains may dry up in 15 to 20 years and asked China to study the problem together with Tibetan experts.

There have been several talk be between the Dalai Lama and Chinese officials about the melting glaciers. No word on what steps, if any, will be taken to remedy the problem.

Source: Rueters

The Kyoto Protocol is an international environmental treaty with the goal of combating global warming due to greenhouse gases. The protocol gets its name from Kyoto, Japan where the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) convened on December 11, 1997. The plan is to stabilize greenhouse gas levels by reducing emissions, particularly by developed countries, and to create new techniques to manage the current damage on the environment.

The Kyoto Protocol’s goal is to reduce collective greenhouse emissions to 5% below the levels from 1990. The time frame is five years, from 2008 to 2012. Each country that ratifies the accord is primarily responsible for adjusting its emissions nationally by their own measures. These greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and sulfur dioxide as well as hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons. In order to accomplish the national goal, a country has additional options through flexible mechanisms. These include a credit system which allows countries to buy emission reduction credits from other countries, who have lower greenhouse emissions, or through emission reducing projects.

Many nations have signed and ratified the Kyoto protocol; for example, Russia ratified it in February of 2005. Each country has committed to its own specific emission reduction goal and must nominate a national authority. This official will oversee the regulation of greenhouse emissions, monitor the emissions with precise records, as well as keep track of trades and credits, and provide an annual report. The United States has not signed the Kyoto Accord, but individual cities in the USA have signed climate change agreements.

Using a rain barrel is not only good for the environment, it is even better for your pocketbook. A rain barrel is exactly what it says, a barrel that collects rain, or holds rain water. These were how farmers watered their crops a long time ago. We are slowly getting back to understanding how convenient and earth friendly it is to use rain barrels for watering our lawns and gardens.

Rain barrels are fairly easy to build and very inexpensive. You can buy a rain barrel that is ready to go, or purchase a plastic food grade barrel for around ten dollars. It is better to have a darker color. A clear barrel will allow in sunlight, which will promote algae growth. There are lots of fancy designs that are more attractive and can match your house if you would like.

The rain barrel collects rain water that falls off the roof of your home. You can use a screen to try and keep out the leaves and other large debris that may fall in. A screen is also useful if you have pets or small children that could potentially fall in the barrel. You can also help prevent any foundation damage that may happen from too much water soaking in. You can attach a pump to the barrel to pump out the water, or simply allow gravity to do its job.

At the bottom of the barrel, you will need to have some kind of fitting that a regular hose can attach to. This hose can be a soaker hose or a regular garden hose. If you would like to regulate the flow of the water, you can buy a restrictor to attach to your hose. A soaker hose is great for keeping flowers and trees watered. If you want to run a sprinkler you will need to purchase a pump to get the pressure needed to run the sprinkler.

Rain water is great for watering gardens. It is clean and free of any chemicals or toxins that may otherwise be in ground water or city water. Recycling the rainwater will help preserve our natural resources.