Save Some Energy!!!

Move your thermostat down 2° in winter (or leave it at 65 and put on a sweater) and up 2° in summer (or leave it at 76 and put the quilt away for the season). Turn the thermostats WAY down or off when you leave the house, and LEAVE THE HOUSE often. If it’s too hot or too cold to do things outside, go to public places that are being heated or cooled anyway. Remember that heating and air conditioning is a luxury, not a necessity in most places throughout most of the year. Almost half of the energy we use in our homes goes to heating and cooling. You could save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year with this simple adjustment. The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy has more tips for saving energy on heating and cooling.Clean or replace filters on your furnace and air conditioner. Cleaning a dirty air filter can save 350 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. Really, how much does a filter cost? It only takes a minute to change.

Packaged Goods!

Be sure you’re recycling at home, and make sure that your county is ACTUALLY recycling those materials. Some don‘t. You can save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide a year by recycling half of the waste your household generates. Earth 911 can help you find recycling resources in your area. Buy recycled paper products. It takes 70% to 90% less energy to make recycled paper and it prevents the loss of forests worldwide. Proofread papers on the computer and only print out a hard copy (on recycled paper) when you absolutely need one. If you’re in school, ask your professors or teachers if you can submit papers electronically. If they say no, ask why and demand that this option be made available. Avoid heavily packaged products, including (and especially for your health) those at Fast Food places. Cake mixes, pre-packaged snacks, and frozen foods are convenient, but they're not great for the environment. You can save 1,200 pounds of carbon dioxide if you cut down your garbage by 10%. Terrified by the question: Paper or Plastic? Neither is great, but if you live on or near the coast, don’t use plastic. It blows away from landfills and hurts the wild life. Canvas is always the better option.

You Are What You Eat

Frozen food uses 10 times more energy to produce, and let’s not forget how much energy it costs to store. Fresh foods taste better and are better for you. Frozen and overcooked foods lose a lot of their vitamins and almost all of their taste. Buy locally grown and produced foods from area farmers markets or Whole Foods. The average meal in the United States travels 1,200 miles from the farm to your plate. Not only does buying locally help reduce the amount of energy required to grow and transport the food to you by 1/5, it keeps money in your local community, which is ALWAYS a good thing. More farms means fewer housing developments, which means more green space and less carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere. Try to make sure the farm you buy from is organic. Organic soils capture and store carbon dioxide at much higher levels than soils from conventional farms. If all of our corn and soybeans were grown organically, we’d remove 580 billion pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere! Eat less meat. Methane is the second most significant greenhouse gas and cows are one of the greatest methane emitters. Their grassy diet and multiple stomachs cause them to produce methane, which they exhale with every breath. Besides all that, less meat is better for your health.

Save the Planet!!!

Lawns may be nice, but they don't absorb a lot of carbon dioxide. Plant a tree. A single tree will absorb one ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. Shade provided by trees can also reduce your air conditioning bill by 10 to 15%. If you have children, plant one tree for every year they are alive and measure their growth each year. Plant them in a pubic park so that everyone can enjoy them. Tired of sitting in the sun to watch your children's sporting events? Ask if you can plant trees on the sidelines of municipal fields. Donate a tree to your local civic association, school, or church. Plant roses in your front yard. Plant a garden in your back yard and save money on vegetables. If you live in a housing development, petition the Association to allow you to plant trees in public areas. Even better, build benches under them to promote community living. The Arbor Day Foundation will send you 10 trees for a $10 donation.

A Bright Idea

Whether you believe in Global Warming or not, you can still reduce your impact on the environment by following this tip from An Inconvenient Truth. Replacing just one regular incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb makes a difference in your electric bill as well as the amount of carbon dioxide your home emits. This simple switch will save about 300 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. It might be a little more expensive in the short run, CFLs cost about $3.25 each, but you'll quickly make up the cost on your electric bill. They use 60% less energy than a regular bulb and need to be replaced less often. You can purchase CFLs online from the Energy Federation, and they are available at some local and chain hardware stores. If every family in the U.S. changed JUST ONE bulb, we’d reduce carbon dioxide by more than 90 billion pounds! Imagine what we could do if we switched the bulbs in ALL of our lamps.

If you work in a place where you are comfortable doing so, talk to your boss about replacing the bulbs there, as well. Many people are interested in doing little things to help the environment but they feel overwhelmed or insignificant. Others just can't be bothered to find out what they can do to reduce their carbon footprint. Take the initiative and let them know. Your grandchildren will thank you for it.

3,220 US Soldiers killed in Iraq
24,042 US Soldiers wounded in Iraq

Global Warming is REAL

Al Gore is being nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize due to his work educating world leaders and the American public about the dangers of Global Warming through his book and movie, both entitled An Inconvenient Truth. This came not long after the State of the Union Address in which the President briefly mentioned that he's like Americans to reduce their fuel consumption by 20% in the next 10 years - a statement that local and national news networks all but ignored. No one, including the President mentioned the various ways to encourage conservation and discourage fuel consumption. Here are a few of my suggestions:

1. Provide tax breaks for people working within 10 miles of their home or those using public transportation. Of course, this would require updating the public transportation system, extending bus routes, and planning future communities in a way that allows the people living in them to travel no more than 10 miles to work, school, or shopping locations. Of course, it would be even better if everything we needed were within walking distance, but that would be too much to ask.

2. Require better gas mileage for all cars.

3. Tax SUV's, Hummers, and trucks for personal use that require huge amounts of fuel. Offer tax breaks to those driving hybrids or cars using alternative fuels.

EDITED: Religious people all over the world have rejected the theory of Global Warming, including our President, who should be impeached for doing so. Since the planet was made by God, and we in God's image, many believe that we could not possibly do anything to destroy either. Religious leaders of all kinds have been rejecting scientific principles since the beginning of time. As conscious citizens, it is our duty to convince them that the care of our planet and ourselves is not only in all of OUR best interests, but it is most likely what God would want us to do (if she exists). And, wouldn't it stand to reason that if we ARE creatures of God and the Earth is her masterpiece, that we should take the best possible care of both?

So that Americans can continue consuming obscene amounts of fuel:
3,088 US Soldiers have been killed in Iraq (this figure DOES NOT include soldiers who were wounded in Iraq but died of their wounds outside of its borders)
23,114 US Soldiers have been wounded in Iraq

Use Less Oil

Why is it that no one can seem to use this phrase? Whenever anyone is interviewed about the current crisis in the Middle East or the reduced number of barrels from Alaska, their response is that Americans will have to import more oil from overseas, causing a rise in gas prices. They never say, "Americans will have to use less oil". Obviously no one but Al Gore wants to put a kink in our consumer chain (but who listens to him anyway?), and NO ONE wants to see the oil companies make less money, but how hard is it to say, "Take a walk. Take the bus or train. Build green. Cut down on your use of plastics. Recycle. Put on a sweater. Use cloth diapers. STOP DRIVING SUV's!!!"

They won't say these things because Americans don't want to hear that in order for us to do better individually, we need to make sacrifices as a nation. Americans aren't really good at that word: sacrifice. They're much better at dealing with or repressing the guilt that comes with not sacrificing, if it comes at all. Isn't it our patriotic duty to use less oil, especially when we're at war with one of the major producers of it, and every country that harbors terrorists gets most of their money from oil? This is not a game, people, and it is certainly not a dress rehearsal. THE WORLD IS NOT ENDING. We can reverse the damage we've done and do better in the future.