Slaughter of Wolves Begins With Cubs

Nearly 1,000 endangered gray wolves could face slaughter under Bush Administration's new wolf-killing plan. This parting shot by the outgoing administration would leave wolves vulnerable to mass killing by the Northern Rockies states.

Click to send your Official Citizen Comment right now -- before the administration has a chance to pull the trigger on its scheme to strip wolves of their endangered species protection.

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Alaska Department of Fish and Game expand predator control methods - Defenders of Wildlife

Wildlife officials presented a new protocol to the Board of Game today that would allow Alaska Department of Fish and Game staff to kill young wolf pups in or near their dens as part of the state's predator control programs. This practice, known as “denning,” is currently illegal under Alaska state law.

Tags: wolves, endangered species, slaughter, take action

Is There Such a Thing as Green Pest Control?

This time of year is when all the little yard critters try to crawl into my house for water and warmth. I thought I had sealed up all access, but last night I found out different. When I removed my clothes from the dryer, they smelled bad. I made my son take the dryer vent off so I could check it. Sure enough, a little mouse had crawled up in the dryer vent and died. After I gagged awhile, I asked my husband to get another dryer vent and a strip of screen so that I could prevent this from happening again.

If you live in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Texas, Arizona or Colorado, you know that pest management is a year round proposition. Green pest control is mostly preventative. The first thing is to seal your home against intrusion by pests. Check any place there is a protrusion of pipe, vent or duct work through your foundation, walls or roof. If you have siding on your home, check anywhere the ground meets the siding for termites and carpenter ants. Seal these areas.

Ensure that your doors and windows shut securely and completely, using weather-stripping to add another layer of protection. Check the condensation pipe from the internal air conditioner/heat pump to where it empties outside your home and add a small piece of screen. Pest management includes keeping compost containers and garbage cans away from the home.

If prevention does not work, natural pest control products include boric acid, Diatomaceous earth, clove oil, mint, cedar, catnip, soapy water and even beer. Certain plants, like fleabane, marigolds and cucumbers, repel pest naturally. Check the library or local pest management service for information. Only use poison in your home or your yard as a last resort.

Majestic Spirit of the Prairie Face Extinction

Watch the Cruel Winter Roundup of Buffalo!
Do We Allow it to Happen Again?

Winter in 2007 brought deep snows to Yellowstone, forcing hundreds of hungry bison to venture outside of the park in search of food. By the end of last winter, almost half of the last free-roaming buffalo herd was dead. Over 1,400 wild buffalo died in the largest buffalo extermination since the 1800s.

Why are the buffalo slaughtered? Fear that these majestic buffalo might, possibly, spread a disease called brucellosis to domestic cows . . .
even though there has never been a documented case of buffalo-to-cattle transmission of brucellosis in the wild.

This year, there are only 3,000 buffalo left in Yellowstone. If the current administration and the State of Montana carry out their brutal policy again this winter, the buffalo population could reach a critical level from which it will not recover.

If the slaughter of an American icon matters to you, please make a donation of whatever amount to the NRDC Action Fund. If you cannot afford anything, please pass the word along to others.

Tags: buffalo slaughter, yellowstone park, NRDC, take action

Arctic Offshore Drilling Halted

Last week The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals slowed down the authorization of a major Arctic offshore oil-drilling program. The court found that the plan proposed by Shell Offshore Inc., failed to adequately consider the effect of drilling on bowhead whales and other Arctic wildlife, as well as native villagers. The Minerals Management Agency must now do a better environmental review of the project -- which will probably be reconsidered under the next administration.

via Center for Biological Diversity (email)

Tags: offshore drilling, arctic, bowhead whales, native people, shell oil

Invest in Real Estate or Green Business

For the past 3 years, I have watched in horror as my traditional individual retirement account has lost value. Now, with the stock market in free fall, the US automobile manufacturers in trouble and Federal entities, such as FEMA and FDIC in danger of collapse, I am unsure if I want to leave my retirement funds in a traditional IRA.

A self-directed IRA is one in which the account owner makes the investment decisions, within certain guidelines. A self-directed IRA may be invested in real estate, stocks, mortgages, franchises, partnerships, private equity, tax liens and many other investments.

A self-directed IRA may be used for socially responsible investing, which is a good way to give back to the community. I want to search out opportunities for investing that will provide jobs in my community. Starting a business ira to open a company involved in green technology and alternative energy would be one option. Real estate investing that includes providing low-cost housing alternatives would be another.

Other options I will research are investing in companies that are making biofuel from blue-green algae, wind farms, wave action power generation and geothermal energy.

Explore your options for a self-directed IRA. Is there something you could do with your money that would benefit your retirement and your community? Put your money to work for you and your community. Think about it.

Tags: self-directed ira

They Kill Horses, Do They?

BLM/Department of Interior ~ Just another program of the Federal government that is failing miserably at its assigned charge.

Interested in adopting a horse?
Visit National Wild Horse and Burro Program website.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a division of the U.S. Department of the Interior, has been charged with the care and maintenance of our wild horses. Since the 1980s, the agency has been thinning the herds by rounding up wild horses and adopting out as many as possible to the public.

In 2001, the BLM had 9,807 horses in captivity—this summer, that number climbed to over 30,000. With adoptions down and hay prices at all-time highs, the BLM has been feeling the pinch of paying to board and feed all these animals . . .

The BLM proposed solution is to euthanize thousands of healthy horses.

Please take action and help these horses! Look up your legislators’ addresses and contact information here, Write letters and emails or call your elected officials, demanding they hold BLM to its responsibility to protect, not end, the lives of these horses.

Tags: blm, department of interior, wild horses endangered, adopt wild horse

Happy Thanksgiving to All . . .

. . . Including the Turkeys!

Tags: do not eat turkey, dr suess, no-turkey day, thanksgiving

Toxic Toys for Tots

Canada Puts BPA on Official Toxics List

Bisphenol A (BPA), toxic at low doses, has been linked to obesity, prostate cancer, breast cancer and early puberty in girls. Wal-Mart Canada and other major Canadian retailers in recent months began removing baby bottles and sippy cups that contained BPA from store shelves, as have some U.S. retailers.

Canada has become the first country to classify bisphenol A (BPA) as toxic, placing it on its list of toxic substances. This will restrict the importation, sale and advertising of baby bottles made with BPA. Canadian lawmakers were especially concerned with BPA's health effects on newborns and infants.


Stay Safe With Your Christmas Giving This Year

To be safe, it is recommended that you discard soft plastic toys and grooming articles that do not fall into one of the exceptions listed below. When purchasing new items, look for phthalate-free toys and make sure retailers know phthalate-free merchandise is important to you.

Soft plastic toys that young children put in their mouths may contain phthalates unless they are marked "phthalate-free," "PVC-free" or "EU compliant," or they carry the CE mark (which indicates that the product is compliant with European Union regulations and therefore phthalate-free).

Both teethers and pacifiers sold in the United States are supposed to be phthalate-free already, though parents should purchase these items from reputable retailers.

Recycling codes (if toys have them) may help you determine if the items are made with PVC, which often contains phthalates.

PVC plastics are marked #3. Better choices are codes #1, #2 or #5. The Breast Cancer Fund recommends that people also avoid plastics marked #6 (styrene) and #7 (“other,” but often BPA-based).

Take Action

I just sent an email to the Consumer Product Safety Commission demanding that it enforce the new ban on toxic phthalates in toys. Please join me in letting the CPSC know that we will not accept toxic toys infiltrating the market and putting our kids at risk! To take action, go to visit the Breast Cancer Fund site.

Tags: bpa, pvc, toxic toys, safety

Moving Without Breaking the Budget

Do you hate to move? I was married to a salesman and we moved 4-5 times within 5 years. We used a full-service mover two times. While it may have been great to have full-service movers pack and move our STUFF, I really did not want to let strangers handle our belongings.

If you have a house and shed full of furniture, power tools, solar panels, lawn mowers, pool liners, generators, clothes, and you have to move, you do have options! There are services like ABF U-Pack Moving.

ABF will deliver a trailer or ReloCube to your house. Then, within three business days, you pack your STUFF, as you want it packed, and load it, as you want it loaded, into the ReloCube. ABF will pick up, transport and drop the ReloCube at your new location in one of their moving trucks. You unload the cube within three business days and ABF will pick up the cube.

ABF U-Pack is in good standing with the Better Business Bureau and has good rating with consumer opinion sites. Visit their website before your next move. Their prices are comparable to renting a UHaul and driving your load. This is so much easier.

GreenEcoMobility : PeaPod

GreenEcoMobility (GEM) is part of Chrysler. GEM introduced the next generation of clean, gas-free and emission-free, battery electric vehicles last September. The GEM is scheduled for production in 2009.

The vehicle has is pod-shaped on the outside and is surprisingly CUTE. On the interior, you will find a center console that offers iPod and IPhone integration.

Under current design, the PeaPod has a 30-mile range with maximum speed of 25 mph. This is not a highway car, but a car that is perfect for running around town, doing all those errands that cloud the sky with emissions and aggravate our allergies.

For more information, please visit: GreenEco Mobility.

Tags: greenecomobility, gem, peapod

Save the Great Bear Rain Forest

The Great Bear Rain Forest is the largest tract of intact coastal temperate rain forest left on Earth.

The Great Bear Rain Forest covers 77,000+ square kilometers. Great Bear is home to three kinds of bears, six million migratory birds and 3000 genetically distinct salmon stocks. As in all rain forests, there are many species of plants found only in this region.

The provincial government, logging companies, First Nations and environmentalists all agreed to protect The Great Bear Rain Forest under a new conservancy. This is a new approach to resource planning for BC, but all parties committed to its implementation by March 31, 2009.

To make sure this rain forest is protected, please send a message to the government of British Columbia, urging them to keep their promise: Save the Great Bear Rain Forest.

Tags: great bear rain forest, conservancy, bc, first nations, stop logging

Building with Bamboo is Reality

Bamboo, the world’s fastest-growing woody plant, is a sustainable material for building. Some bamboo have woody stalks dense as hardwood. Bamboo is also a great carbon sink. Until now, building with bamboo was chancy at best because of the irregular growth nature of the plant.

Yan Xiao, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California who was born and raised in China, set about developing a process to transform bamboo into structural beams. In 2006 he invented GluBam. Last winter, he returned to China and built a 33-foot GluBam bridge capable of supporting eight tons in the rural town of Leiyang.

The Bamboo Builder | Popular Science

First he tore strips of bamboo from the stalk and arranged them in such a way as to provide the most strength. He then coated the strips with glue and compressed them in a self-built hydraulic press into beams, 33 feet long and up to three feet wide, each capable of supporting eight tons. Xiao says that the beams cost just 20 percent as much as imported lumber.

In the future, GluBam houses and buildings will replace the shoddy concrete structures that cover much of rural China that led to the catastrophic school collapses during the earthquakes in Sichuan province in May.

Tags: glubam, bamboo builder, yan xiao, bamboo bridge

Mercury in Fish? No Thanks!

Years of research and experience show exposure to high levels of mercury in fish can interfere with a child's development, affecting their language skills, coordination and attention span. In order to make sure the FDA advice to avoid health effects reaches all consumers, we need signs posted in stores where people buy seafood.

Take action

Tags: fish, mercury, fda advice to pregnant women, oceana, take action

Almost 50% of Americans are Green

According to a recent Yahoo! Green study, 77 percent of consumers describe themselves as Green, actively living their lives conscious of their health and environment, and 57 percent have made a Green purchase in the past 6 months.

The study divided Greens into four groups below.

Deeply Committed:

• 23% of market... early-adopters of green who are looking to make a long-term impact
• Mostly adults (35+)
• Skew female
• More educated
• Higher percent live in metropolitan areas
• Respond most to the "positively impact the environment" message

Trendy:

• 24% of market... trend-setters who are motivated to be green to look cool
• Younger (18-34)
• More ethnically diverse
• Respond to messages about "everybody else is doing it," newest technology, cool/hip.

Practical:

• 13% of market... motivated to be green by immediate benefits such as saving money or improving health
• Skew a bit older (45+)
• More with children
• Over-index in rural areas

Passive:

• 17% of market, recognize green as important but place the responsibility more on others than themselves
• Younger adults (25-34)
• More women with kids
• Respond to messages about providing a better life for their family

Other:

The other 23% of the market says they don't care about the environment, or they say they care, but they don't take any action.

Read more on Research Brief blog.

Tags: green, yahoo, 4 types of greens

Eco Terrorist or Eco Hero?

Activist groups like the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society claim that Japan's whaling practices violate international law. Japan claims the direct-action tactics of Sea Shepherd are illegal, in essence a form of eco-terrorism.

Whale Wars highlights Captain Paul Watson's extraordinary love for marine life and the lengths he and his crew of conservationists will go to in order to protect these precious creatures. Whale Wars airs Fridays at 9 PM on Animal Planet.

If you wish to know more about Whale Wars, please visit the website:
http://animal.discovery.com/tv/whale-wars

Take The Turkey out of Thanksgiving

Right Now, Your Thanksgiving Turkey . . .

. . . exists in dark, dank shed stuffed wall to wall with other turkeys. Step inside and the urine and ammonia fumes from their waste would burn your eyes and lungs. If you move closer, you would see where, in the interest of convenience, parts of their upper beaks and their toes were sliced off without anesthesia.

Still Ahead for Your Thanksgiving Turkey . . .

. . . at the slaughterhouse, turkeys are hung upside down dragged through an electrified stun tank to immobilize them. They are fully conscious when their throats are slit. If the knife does not kill them quick, the birds are boiled alive in the tank of scalding water used for feather removal.

If this is not your idea of humane treatment and if the turkey raising hygiene leaves a bad taste in your mouth, please try to Take the Turkey out of Thanksgiving.

Thanks to Jackie at The Vegan Diet for bringing this to my attention. If you would like to Take the Turkey out of Thanksgiving and need some ideas, Jackie's blog is a wealth of information about healthy vegan eating.

For More Information . . .

Download a PDF from PETA (right click the link and save as).
Visit this site about an investigation of a turkey farm in Minnesota.
If you have a strong stomach, view the video that went with the investigation.

Tags: turkey abuse, thanksgiving turkey, peta, turkey factory

Stop the Killing of the Wolves

Nearly 1,000 endangered gray wolves could face slaughter under Bush Administration's new wolf-killing plan. This parting shot by the outgoing administration would leave wolves vulnerable to mass killing by the Northern Rockies states.

Click to send your Official Citizen Comment right now -- before the administration has a chance to pull the trigger on its scheme to strip wolves of their endangered species protection.

Tags: wolves, endangered species, slaughter

Save the Ancient Forests of Oregon

Outgoing Presidents usually spend the last of their elected term pardoning people, preserving or giving away public lands, or pushing their agenda through Congress.

The Bush Administration wants to clear cut the ancient forests of western Oregon. More than a thousand miles of damaging logging roads would be built within the forests and then they would be taken out.

These forests gain more importance each day as buffers against the impacts of global warming. Say NO to clear cutting ancient forests. Click here to learn more and to take action on this issue.

Tags: sold america, logging ancient forests, clear cut forests

Thank a Vet for Your Freedoms

Remember . . .

It was the Veteran, not the reporter,
who has given us the freedom of the press.

It was the Veteran, not the poet,
who has given us freedom of speech.

It was the Veteran, not the lawyer,
who has given us the right to fair trial.

It was the Veteran, not the campus organizer,
who has given us freedom to demonstrate.

It is the Veteran, who salutes the flag,
who served under the flag,
and whose coffin is draped by the flag,
who allows the protestor to burn the flag.

Written by Father Denis Edward O’Brien, USMC

All Gave Some - Some Gave All

Thank You! We Remember!

Tags: veterans day, our rights

Just a Few Thoughts on Alternative Energy

Pickens has a plan consisting of using wind turbines for electricity and natural gas for transportation. He would like to line the Central flyway migratory path with wind turbines and has made no provision for green house gases caused by burning natural gas, another petrochemical. There is no infrastructure for moving the electricity around the nation.

All Gore wants to go solar. We will have huge solar panel arrays in the southwestern USA that would supply energy for us all. Problem is, the infrastructure does not exist to disperse this energy.

While any movement toward sustainable energy should be encouraged, I just wonder why there has to be ONE SOLUTION for alternative energy? When we have the technology to convert tires to biodiesel, make biofuel from blue-green algae or E coli, run cars on water, why do we need to lay more pipelines, establish a new electric grid, or disrupt wildlife migratory patterns?

Whatever we do, it should be done with an eye to mitigating global warming and minimizing ecological impacts. We should also diversify our fuel sources as much as possible. Maybe I am just paranoid, but one EMP exploded above our wind turbines and solar panels would wipe out our new energy sources and destroy our energy grid. Energy should be produced locally in all areas of the country.

We should stop and think about what we are doing BEFORE we do it. What do you think?

Camelot Returns

Don't let it be forgot
That once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment
That was known as Camelot!

Despite racism, despite bad associations, despite everything the GOP could throw at him, Barack Obama is now the 44th President of the United States.

May God be with him as he works to undo all the damage from the past 8 years while building for a sustainable future.

You know what? I believe the man will do it.

Making Biofuel from E.Coli and Sugar Cane

A company in San Francisco, LS9, is making biofuel by mixing genetically modified E. Coli, sugarcane and water. The E. Coli metabolize sugars and excrete fatty acids that have the same hydrocarbon configuration as petroleum.

The biofuel floats to the top and may be skimmed off and put directly in your car. A barrel of E. Coli fuel would be approximately $50, instead of the $200 price tag for conventional fuel.

Biofuel does not need all the infrastructure needed by ethanol and natural gas, so it is a much cheaper solution.

The company plans on using other forms of biowaste to plant is reduce costs. The first large scale plant is scheduled to be up and running by 2011.

From the LS9.com website:

LS9 DesignerBiofuels™ products are a family of fuels produced by specially-engineered microbes created via industrial synthetic biology. Starting from raw, natural sources of sugar such as sugar cane and cellulosic biomass, these renewable fuels will fundamentally change the biofuels landscape and set the stage for widespread product adoption and petroleum displacement. LS9 hydrocarbon biofuels have higher energetic content than ethanol or butanol and have fuel properties that are essentially indistinguishable from those of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.

I love that term petroleum displacement in the above paragraph. We have the technology and the intelligence to make the USA energy independent. Here is hoping that we do.

Tags: ls9.com, designerbiofuels, e.coli, biofuel, sugar cane

Accelerated Online MBA

Recently I have been undergoing chemotherapy. I am only one-fourth of the way through my treatment and cannot do much. I am basically bedridden. I work on my blogs, but the creative spark in me has been blunted by drugs and illness. I am so sick, but I am so bored.

I have toyed with the idea of attending college online for my MBA. I feel that if I was learning something new, I could engage my brain again. I think if I had something to occupy my mind, like learning, I would be able to overlook the pain. There are many online MBA programs but I would be interested in completing an MBA in Non-Profit Management.

Marylhurst’s accelerated online MBA coursework includes eight core courses, three concentration courses, and one Capstone course. That is only 12 hours, I believe, and I think I could finish that before I am well again. Is that too Type-A? Feeling that laying around healing is wasting time?

The cost is a little high: $444 tuition per credit hour, with a student services fee of $11 per credit hour, and a $50 application fee. That is total of $5510 for 12 hours. I already have high speed Internet, so I would be ready to go. It would be great to have an MBA and to volunteer for an environmental or animal rights foundation when I am well again.

Dreams are sustaining me now. This is just the latest. Wish me luck.

Tags: mba, marylhursts, accceloerated online mba