Environmental blogs tied in with Nerdiness

Okay, so I did a lot of searching for an environmental blog that I would find interesting. The blog I found that actually caught my attention due to the pictures in the blog and the information and links it has is EcoGeek because of the variety of info it has in its blogs. The writers actually vary. There are blogs written by people such as Benjamin Jones, and Megan Treacy. Although the blog was not extremely eye-catching in my opinion what actually caught my attention was the picture and info on the first blog. There was a car called the Mini-E that is actually looking for drivers to participate in a study of how well the car runs. Now they are looking for drivers in California, NEW YORK and New Jersey!!! I would so love to do that, unfortunately there are a lot of requirements that I don't have like a license. Darn! It also cost $850 a month. Odd, but there are plenty of cars out there that are cheaper as far as monthly payments go, but if I had the money I would still love to test this electric car. This site has many articles concerning a variety of things. They have info on Dell's new "green" computers and some of them are not too badly priced, to info on Walmart and a variety of others.

I'm not sure if I would consider this site a blog or not because it's multiple writers writing a more collective blog. So maybe it could be considered a website with a lot of information. The site also provides links to where they found the information. I actually feel that having a variety of writers for this blog is helpful because everyone is different so this enables for a larger variety of information that would perhaps not be present without this. The articles which I loved the most were "Dell Continues to Wrack Up Green Points" and "Walmart to Use Wind Power in Texas Stores" and the "Mini-E Makes World Premier at Auto Show". The reason I put the names of these particular articles was because the main link, when you click on it, show different articles so it will be easier for you to find these articles if you have the name.


I'm not sure of the total amount of hits this site has received, but a few of those articles had hits of around 300 or more! The links take you to other sites that have information they have used and, some sites, advice and tips on how to stay eco-friendly. The Mini-E article was the first to catch my attention. Man!! I want to drive it! It looks so cute!! I actually found an article on this site that discusses what I wrote in one of my blogs about incentives for green businesses and it also had links!! Check out the site and the Mini-E!!

Follow the Faith

There's a variety of different religions, beliefs, etc. However, the religions or faiths that I consider to be more connected with everything is Wicca; however, Daoism is very good as well. Religions such as Catholicism, Christianity and many of the other faiths hold humans in such a high regard and consider the animals and the environment around us to be our playground that we can use and mistreat any way we see fit. Religions or faiths such as Daoism, Wicca, and Native American faiths focus more on the interconnectedness and balance both within oneself and without.

Daoism focuses on balance. In order to know one feeling or experience the opposite must exist. Pairs. In order to understand, experience and be good, we need to have evil. In order to understand life, we must have death. There can be no darkness without light and so on. Native American faiths also follow these beliefs. For both them and Wicca if an individual is sick it means that there is an imbalance not just at the physical level, but something is off in both the spiritual/emotional/mental level as well. Doctors today in the West have some understanding of this. Stress can harm us just as easily as a fall down the stairs.

The reason I think Wicca is one of the better faiths is because first off, it does not recruit people the way some religions do. It also focuses on responsibility for one's actions. I've run across too many individuals who follow other faiths and when something good happens, God is the reason. And when something bad happens it's either the devil or they are being punished or tested. People no longer hold themselves accountable for their own actions or choices. This is part of the reason that we battle the Global Warming issue. People feel it's just trees, it's just animals and it's not there fault. Without accountability, there is no need for change. If something is occurring outside of your control then you are not to blame, neither are you able to change it. This is the underlying problem with many of the so-called developed countries and will soon be a problem in the developing ones as well.

In order for us to effectively change things in this world we need to accept responsibility and then decide to take action to change the way things are. I love this movie and decided to find the beginning on youtube. We control a lot more than we realize. The name of the movie is What the Bleep Do We Know. Enjoy!

Museum of Natural History visit

I walked around the Museum of Natural History and found the overall visit terrific. My two favorite areas were the Hall of Planet Earth and the Hall of Biodiversity.

The Hall of Planet Earth had so many different rocks and stones. I took pictures with my camera, but unfortunately I can't hook it up to my computer to upload here. There were several things which caught my attention. Like when I read that the Ganges River has enough sediment to fill the Hall of Planet Earth in 6 minutes!! But what I loved about this Hall in particular was the variety of rocks, meteorites, etc. They were amazing and there is no comparison for seeing one up close rather than just on television. They had an iron meteorite, and I also saw a bonded Iron formation that was a combination of red jasper and iron magnetite and it was billions of years old!
There was also something called Godzilla! Reason being that it was the largest sulfide chimney ever found. It was 17 meters high, but collapsed in 1996; however, a second one replaced it by next year and quickly grew to 20 meters high! The Museum really lets you see so many amazing things that most of us, caught in the daily drone of life would never get the chance to view.

In the Hall of Biodiversity, I saw some of the different species of life, plants, and it showed the connection between the individuals, groups and plants and animals. Some of the numbers of species were amazing as well. For crustaceans there is around 40,000 species known, but there are an estimated 150,000. We don't give plants and animals enough credit with helping us to stay alive. If you get right down to it, if humans no longer existed, life on this planet would go on. However, if more and more animals and plants go extinct, we cannot survive without them and yet many people have the nerve to rate themselves as being superior to plants and animals. Sea otters singlehandedly maintain many a few of the pacific coast kelp habitats by eating the sea urchins there. I don't think any human could boast anything near that. They also had a list. . . a very long list of species that we know have gone extinct. But what caught my attention was when I read there were species that have become extinct without us ever knowing they existed. There so much in this world we don't know, that we haven't seen and yet we're killing it. The simple fact of the matter is people destroy or look down on anything that they feel is not their equal, and each one of them decide this according to their own standards.

The way humans look down on animals is also the same as the way they view each other. There are many people so wrapped up in consumerism and the industrial working age that they look down on people if there annual income isn't within a certain bracket. They don't seem to realize there are better standards than how much one makes. I saw pictures and read about the Siberia Khanty and Mansi cultures that herd reindeer and how the oil extraction there has made 75% of the land useless for fishing, hunting and herding. Now, if you consider the interconnectedness of everything, then think of the world as your body and imagine that 75% of your body was no longer able to be used. You would be somewhere around a quadriplegic and that is basically what we are slowly doing to ourselves by damaging this planet. We are crippling ourselves.

Because of the visit to the museum I have been thinking about many different things and I actually saw this really funny but important commercial on Animal Planet about conserving water and thought I would post it for those who don't usually watch that channel.




I also saw another show on Animal Planet called Whale Wars which has to do with the Sea Shepherds on the Steve Irwin ship (they have the blessing of Steve Irwin's wife who christened the boat) fighting the Japanese because the are killing whales in the Antarctic. The Sea Shepherds throw things at the Japanese ship and so on. The Japanese claim they have the law on their side as they are allowed to kill a certain amount of whales for research purposes; however, how many do you need to kill and how does killing them help with research. They are killing over 900 whales. The sea shepherds claim that they are killing them for commercial purposes and are thereby breaking the law, so they are trying to enforce the law that the government is not bothering to enforce themselves. Paul Watson is the captain of the Steve Irwin ship and is the co-founder of Greenpeace, but was asked to leave. As I was watching the show they talked about how Greenpeace takes pictures of whales being killed and so on and something Paul Watson said made sense. He said that Greenpeace takes pictures of whales being killed but how does that really help. He also said that if you were to see a woman being raped you wouldn't stand there and take pictures, if you saw a puppy being kicked you wouldn't stand there and take pictures. You need to be more active in affecting change and I feel he is right.

He reminds me of Peter Singer, who was arguing that by not help children in poorer countries to get food, drinkable water and proper healthcare we are committing murder. As sure as if we are holding a gun to those children's head, by letting them die, we are killing them. Words are not enough to get change to happen. Action is needed. It's upsetting that there are many people out there who are so wrapped up in shopping and being rich layabouts, who have the funds and time to do something to save this planet, but would rather live an empty, shallow life. People need to start getting more active with saving this planet and ALL life on it!

Well, I was actually a little worried about what I was going to find concerning environmentalism and racism, but I found some information and one caught my attention immediately due to a phrase I read. In USA Today, there was an article concerning Greenpeace wishing to stop the electronic waste that is being dumped in places like Ghana, "where discarded TVs and computers that contain toxic materials are being dismantled by children as young as 5." That particular phrase made me decide to focus on the electronic waste being dumped in Ghana and the dangerous toxins that the children and people there are being exposed to. The shipments that are being dumped are coming from the European Union. An article in E-waste states that about 75% of the European Union's e-waste is likely ending up in Ghana. I was surprised by this as I honestly thought that the United States was the only country doing such things (they are also dumping in Ghana), but apparently I was wrong.

These articles are all quite recent, dating July and October of this year and give not only statistical numbers like the one provided above, but they also show that places like Greenpeace are fighting this as best they can; however, I don't think enough people are aware of this. Even most articles in major papers do not focus on these hazards. They make a small article about it and that seems to be it. This kind of information is not mainstream. This information should be published and available to many people, particularly those in school as I feel that education and awareness, when properly executed go hand in hand and maybe if more students read about this kind of information and saw visual images of what is occurring there, they would be more moved to write and contact government officials to effect change. After all, we accept products from these countries committing these acts here. If we were to change our habits of disposing e-waste and not only offer more incentives to companies that properly dispose of waste, but also let it be understood that these countries are not the only ones affected, as we are all connected and these acts will come back to haunt us so we will not accept products from countries that continue to dispose of their e-waste in such a fashion, then perhaps, we can affect change.


This photo was taken by Greenpeace member, Kate Davison and is in this article written on the Treehugger site also about Accra, Ghana and the e-waste dangers. This is extremely dangerous in a number of ways. Constantly throwing out old televisions and computers that still work for the latest models also creates a problem. They are also concerned about the analog/digital conversion in the US as a lot of old televisions will be dumped and will most likely end up in Ghana, being burned with a child running by inhaling the toxic fumes.

I'm going to search for more articles concerning the specific name brand of the products being disposed of and what, if anything, is truly being done to stop this. The unfortunate thing is I think people are too hung up on labeling. For example, an in-depth paper on something such as this would likely end up in an environmental newspaper or magazine; unfortunately, only hardcore environmentalists may read this paper and this is information they would most likely find on their own. The question is how to reach the people who pick up the regular papers, or don't pick up the regular papers at all. There has to be several different methods to disperse this paper. Perhaps in a free newspaper, but perhaps also getting people in school to hand these papers out, or even have more writing assignments such as this not only in an LIB200 course, but many other course like English and Philosophy where writing and critical thought merge.