You can make a green calendar to begin charting your progress!

Yesterday, I wrote about our new upcoming series, Green Life Project, in which a weekly article will direct readers to adopt another green option in their lives, meaning small product or habit changes to make their lives more sustainable.

This week-by-week guide is supposed to be an easier tool to use in moving toward greener living than if you were to attempt to make all of the changes we outline in a matter of a few weeks. You’ll be able to ease yourself slowly into greener living, following a simple guide of steps to take each week.

But now, I would like to help you to not only keep track of the changes you are making, but to find inspiration in being able to look back at your progress.  For this purpose, a written or typed journal might work.  I personally blog about my own changes, and much of what I write about is my own journey toward more sustainable living.  But blogging is not for everyone and even a typical journal may not be the best method for

Green Life Project is a weekly series of posts highlighting one change for readers to make in their life in order to gradually green their lives.

||All posts from this series are listed below.||

I just spent a relaxing weekend in beautiful Holland, Michigan, and felt very inspired by both some of the gorgeous natural landscape I saw and the conversations I had with new friends.

Inspired to do what?  Well, live a greener life.

Yeah, but that’s so very vague, and who isn’t trying to live greener?

Okay, I get it, we’re all in this together, and a great many of us are trying to do our part.  But that’s why I am announcing a series of posts!

Here is yet another new series to look forward to here on Earthascope!  This is the, “Green Life Project,” series.

What’s the point of this series?

Green Life Project posts will be published weekly and will concentrate on

How will regulating carbon dioxide affect the cost of burning fossil fuels?

The New York Times reports that the Obama Administration’s EPA is expected to begin regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

The story begins:

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to act for the first time to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that scientists blame for the warming of the planet, according to top Obama administration officials.

The story also stated that the change could have far-reaching implications

I’m happy to announce a new series of posts coming up soon here on Earthascope!  It’s title is, “Toxic Brew”.

“Toxic Brew,” is a series of articles, each outlining a different chemical or substance that is adding to environmental degradation in one manner or another.

The title says it all, and the point here is that not only are we putting many drugs and chemicals into our water and soil, but we often have little way of knowing what the result of the mixture, the toxic brew, of these substances will be, as well as to what long-term exposure, even in trace amounts, might lead.

Most articles will feature something from everyday household products and others will discuss industrial chemicals or byproducts.  We will tell you what they are, where they come from, how they are harmful, which products to avoid, and alternatives to these products.

This is a series of posts I have wanted to begin for a while, so that as I learn about different toxic substances, some of them well-known, others, not so much, I can help readers to be better informed consumers.

Here’s an issue that has not gotten nearly enough press: toxic sludge left over from coal polluting our water and soil.  I read about this in an article in The Nation from last week.

We heard throughout the last presidential campaign the term, “clean coal,” and its, “clean coal technology” comrade, but we didn’t hear about the, “toxic sludge,” or the large pools of water and coal remnants that are held in pools the industry self-regulates (read: fails to regulate).  We didn’t hear about how they leak and are not built to protect neighboring residents from the flood described in the article.  Nor how when the sludge dries up, the toxins can then become airborne, as if they were spewed from the spokestack.

I had heard about large amounts of coal sludge flooding into a town and its water supply, but only bits of the story, and the magnitude of the disaster didn’t strike me at the time.  The failed wall of the inadequately designed lagoon wall was one of many of the timebombs we have, as a society, allowed to back up on us.  Failing infrastructure is bad enough.  Flooding is worse.  Flooding a town with a toxic sludge of coal ash (containing arsenic and mercury, among other known toxic substances) and water is just horrible.  And it happened in Kingston, Tennessee, a few days before Christmas of 2008.

Let’s be clear, that we’re not talking about a bit of seepage.  According to The Nation article I read, that happens all the time; the holding lagoons are generally unlined and are prone to leaks.  Even though the EPA regulates such toxins as mercury and arsenic, it does not regulate coal ash, or its storage.

To be sure, this was not a minor leak:

On December 22 an earthen dike collapsed, releasing 1.1 billion gallons of the muddy waste, which knocked houses off foundations and poured into the Tennessee River basin, which feeds municipal drinking-water systems.

“I’m going green!”

We hear about it everyday, in some manner or another: going green!  And many of us would like to truly, “go green,” to, “live a greener lifestyle,” and, “help the environment,” but what does all of that jargon mean?  Are we just buying relatively “greener” products just to feel better about ourselves, yet still falling short of, “green”?  Is it just a slogan?

A Spectrum, a Gradient, a Continuum, if you will…

Greener living belongs on a spectrum: it’s all but impossible to not produce some waste, some pollution, and some environmental damage; call it “original environmental sin” or what have you, but at the end of the day, we all are polluters.  But how do we react? 

We’re Back!

It has been a very long hiatus for EnviroHumanImpact.com, and we have undergone many changes in the intermediary.  We regret not having adequate time these last few months to continue with news, tips, and advice our readers can put to good use as they attempt to improve their individual envirohuman impact and to put upward pressure on our political leaders to make changes for the better.

One important change is our new blog theme, which mimics that of TechCrunch, hopefully offering a more clean cut look to the blog and we hope makes more of our recent posts readily available for browsing and reading.  I should note that we don’t want the blog to be identical to their site, but simply find the aesthetics and usability of their site to be favorable for ours, and there really is no comparing the two sites beyond the similar layout.

A New Name: EnviroHumanImpact to Earthascope

Our readers may also notice our new name, Earthascope.com.  The editors of EnviroHumanImpact.com made a conscious decision in this matter to make the name easier to say, remember, and share with others.

We still believe strongly in the concept of an, “envirohuman impact,”