General

This is an era where many are thinking about switching out that big SUV for a car that’s better for the environment. But what about switching out your family pet for a nice indoor plant?

A new book called Time to Eat the Dog? by a husband and wife team in New Zealand argue that every aspect of life should be put under the microscope of sustainable living, along with pet ownership.

Dogs that require a meat diet, according to the authors, have a surprisingly large ecological paw print. It takes more than two acres of land to keep a medium size dog fed. In contrast, a Land Cruiser needs about half that.

I agree that feeding dogs a dried meat diet is not a good idea – and could even be called irresponsible from the earth’s perspective. But couldn’t you say the same thing about a man or a woman with a high percentage of meat in their diet, especially if it travels long distances to reach a dinner plate?

On the weekend we celebrate with pride the legacy of Martin Luther King Junior, it’s worth a look back at some of his famous remarks, this time from an environmental perspective.

It’s obvious that King was a man who respected the earth, just like he respected it’s people. He preached a philosophy of responsibility, unity and nonviolence: Three valuable lessons for anyone trying to make an impact in and on the environmental world.

Responsibility

King: Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

I wish I had a count of the number of times friends and family members have asked me to stop talking about factory farming or environmental degradation because they just didn’t want to think about it. If we would only let our mind get the facts straight, our consciences would do the rest.

Unity

China has been in the headlines lately for their push for green energy and green technology. However, they haven’t applied that green gusto at home when it comes to taking out the trash.

Guangzhou in the Panyu district is facing the same problems of other large Chinese cities: a growing population, exhausted landfill sites, no waste reduction programs. The city was selected by the government to be the home of a new trash incinerator that would serve 2.5 million residents by burning 2,000 tons of trash daily.

Churches worldwide are not just showing off their commitment to a religious life but also decreasing their carbon footprint. One such community believes that “It's part of Christian spirituality to respect the environment."

Clothing is often a victim of a closet cleaning, moves, or style updates. Perfectly good pieces are pitched in the trash without a second thought. Levi’s and Goodwill have launched a tag-team mission to make sure your jeans have more than one life.

Levi Strauss’ new “Care Tag For Our Planet” program has a twofold mission to reduce the carbon footprint of their jeans. Each pair will have a tag that recommends that the owner reduce energy consumption by washing the jeans in cold water, air dry them when possible, and wash them less to reduce water consumption. The last label line suggests donating the pair to Goodwill to extend their lifecycle.

Halloween is just around the corner and like any other celebration that usually means two things: spending cash, and decorating with props. Props like costumes, scary skeletons, tombstones and eerie lights that cast an orange-ish glow all are part of the fun and they help create fond memories for kids and adults alike.

It’s all part of bringing in the Halloween spirit so how can you preserve the fun and still do something to reduce impact on the environment? We’ve pulled together some easy tips and they’re centered around three words – reduce, reuse and recycle.

In his latest piece, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says there are three bombs that could devastate society as we know it: the nuclear bomb, the climate bomb and the debt bomb.

And he’s right. All three of these could irrevocably push the system – either the natural or economic system – to the breaking point.

But still, just as it was during the Cold War climax, the nuclear bomb is the one constant, it-could-happen-tomorrow threat. Especially with technology spreading to hostile, short-fused nations like Iran, Pakistan, India and North Korea, among others.

If looked at holistically, the nuclear and climate threats are interrelated. Even a regional nuclear back-and-forth between foes would leave lasting effects on the world ecosystem and climate.

A study released in late 2006 found detonating between 50 and 100 bombs, a tiny percent of those now ready and aimed, would throw the world into a tailspin.

Both the 2012 London Games and the newly announced 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics are looking to offset the thousands of athletes, coaches and sports fans converging on their cities.

But Rio’s “Carbon Zero 2016” campaign is planning to offset the entire games through tree planting. Three million saplings, when all said and done, actually.

Tree planting is a great start. The trees will throw tons and tons of oxygen into the air, helping to combat carbon emissions from things like plane rides and construction projects.

But I’ve yet to read about Rio officials looking at ways to decrease the amount of carbon they plan to use. Any green program should have both offsets and reductions, especially programs as high-profile as the Olympic games.

Supporters of the highway now being built to connect Pacific and Atlantic ocean commerce in South America compare it to the settling of the American West. The massive road project will represent speed and innovation, connecting Brazilian and Peruvian businesses with a main artery for the first time.

But expansion comes at a price. The intercontinental highway will cut through the Amazon, leaving fears of even faster destruction for the world’s most diverse ecosystem. Studies show three-quarters of the deforestation occurs within 30 miles of paved roads, according to a Boston Globe report.

Tropical rainforest conservation group Monga Bay reports Texas-based company Hunt Oil is already moving in to set up shop in Peru, just weeks after indigenous protesters were killed.

The ongoing debate between factions of the scientific community is heating up once again after a large team of international experts released a study saying the arctic is warming despite a 2,000-year cooling trend.

The study is the first to look this far back, and does so by decade. The results show that four of the five warmest decades in the last 2,000 years were between 1950 and 2000.

The science goes something like this: The earth’s natural wobble has brought us 620,000 miles farther away from the sun in the last 2,000 years. This should have caused a cooling trend. Instead, the arctic is 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer. The findings are based on lake sediment, tree rings and glacial ice.