Earth Day is here!  We haven’t talked about Earth Day this year on Earthascope and originally, I was hesitant to do so.  At first, I thought that everyday should be considered in some manner to be its own, “Earth Day,” and there isn’t much of a reason to make a big deal about this one day any more than we should discuss or focus on the environment the rest of the time.  I actually considered ignoring this day’s distinction.

But at second thought, I decided that I should use this day to help raise these issues into others’ consciousness.  After all, not everyone is at that point in their life where they feel committed everyday to living greener.  Flooding the internet with new, “green articles,” focusing on the environment, coupled with people reading and discussing all while focusing one day on the subject of sustainability might actually make a difference in some people’s lives.

Recycled paper toilet paper no longer looks like the rough-as-a-cob stuff pictured here. You can find TP made from recycled paper that is actually soft!

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.  If you’re just joining us, feel free to jump right in here on week five — you can catch up later!

||Week Five||

This week’s Green Life Project action item is to begin purchasing 100% recycled content toilet paper.

A popular recent New York Times article states that, “In the United States, which is the largest market worldwide for toilet paper, tissue from 100 percent recycled fibers makes up less than 2 percent of sales for at-home use among conventional and premium brands.”

What should you do?  Wipe your butt — with a green toilet paper!

Purchase a 100% recycled content toilet paper.  Try to find one with at least 50% post-consumer product and one which was not manufactured using chlorine-based bleach.

But it’s toilet paper.  Why does it matter what I flush down the toilet?

As we work toward personal sustainability, we have to look beyond our own backsides.

Check it out these four must-read bullet points regarding the, “toilet tissue issue,” (mostly from the same New York Times article) and see how your use of a such a seemingly mundane product could be so very damaging to our environment!

We've indexed ten great ways to be greener without spending much of your hard-earned green!

You may be watching as the economy threatens to turn its, “recession,” moniker into, “depression,” all while reports about the dire circumstances our environment is in continue to mount.

Need a couple of examples?  Try here and here.  Below, you can find ten great ways to green your life on the cheap and save money while you do it!

While the economy plummets, you may be asking yourself, “can I really afford to be, ‘green,’ during these economic times?”

I’m here to tell you, “Absolutely you can!”

Here I have compiled a list of ten articles from Earthascope that outline different ways to improve your envirohuman impact while saving money.  You don’t have to stop your efforts to pollute less just because of bad economic times!

Think of it as turning the recession into your own, “green session”!

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

Chalk one up for the environment!

From the New York Times’ Jim Robbins:

HELENA, Mont. — A federal judge ruled Monday that the Bush administration’s plan to allow more than 500 snowmobiles a day into Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks was not in keeping with the National Park Service’s responsibility to protect the parks.

The judge, Emmet G. Sullivan of Federal District Court in Washington, said park planners had failed to reconcile their mission to protect the parks’ environment with the increase in air pollution, the disturbance to wildlife and the impact on visitors that the snowmobiles would bring.

“The plan clearly elevates use over conservation of park resources and values,” Judge Sullivan wrote in his 63-page ruling.

Read more!

Commentary:

Here, the commonsense approach a judge took comparing the stated mission of the national parks to the purpose officials in the Bush Administration were wanting to do

This is a classic case of an envirohuman impact: humans use fossil fuels, such as petroleum, which upsets the delicate balances in nature that allow the weather patterns we are used to having and the earth then, “upset” by the changes, has more drastic weather patterns, and a general trend toward a warmer climate, worldwide.

Beside more frequent major storms, like Hurricane Ike, we can expect, the scientific communty’s consensus says, rising sea levels (leading to floods of densely populated areas worldwide), droughts and drinking water shortages in other areas, and mass extinctions of thousands of species.

So the pathway is:

We often write, “EHI Quick Tips,” which outline simple, easy steps you can take to green your daily life.  The writers of EnviroHumanImpact believe that this is a great approach to those just begining to look at a more environmentally-friendly lifestyle.  Once you have introduced a few greener buying options or changes to daily life, it can become difficult to stop yourself from adopting even more practices that will improve your envirohuman impact!

Here, we have compiled a short list of some of the easy, yet effective changes you can begin using in your daily life, right away!

1. EHI Quick Tip: Unclog that Shower Drain
2. EHI Quick Tip: Get a Watering Can
3. EHI Quick Tip: Ditch those Paper Statements
4. EHI Quick Tip: Buy a Tea Kettle
5. EHI Quick Tip: Ride the Elevators Less at Work

You might notice a common pattern here: most of our quick tips are easy and focus on reducing our energy, water, or other resource usage.  What ideas do you have for improving one’s envirohuman impact?

Yes, I questioned whether or not that was the best way to get your attention.  I could have said, “Power to Our Poop” and you still would have clicked much the way you did to read this juicy log (pun intended) of news.

Sure, we see new small ways that whether in labs or on larger scales, people are taking large environmental matters into their own hands.  So, power from poop?  

Well, yes.  And on a commercial, large-scale.  You may have heard that methane gas is a major contributor to global warming, and this is one argument made against eating meat (or so much meat) because the animals (I’m thinking cow pies) release methane gas along with their excrement.  Well, we humans’ business has a similar effect, if on a, er, smaller scale. 

And the city of San Antonio is taking advantage — to the tune of capturing that methane and selling it for a profit!  The methane gas, once processed can be used at power plants as, “natural gas.”  Natural — I’ll say so!  

Read the entire story.

It’s about two months until the presidential election, and there is a lot of wasted breath from pundits and politicians alike regarding offenses from the other side, really bad campaign ads that outright lie (I won’t go into specifically which ones, but let’s just say they’re perverted ads saying that the other candidate, whose legislation tried to help protect youngsters from pedofiles is being accused , if not insinuated of being perverted).

Enough is enough!  If they are not discussing pork barrel spending, then they’re discussing how if you put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig — an old adage.  But John McCain’s own campaign manager has said, this campaign is not about the issues.  But we all know it should be.  

This, “lipstick on a pig,” phrase offers rhetorical message, just to say that people will try to dress up to distort who they really are, but that the identity still shows through and the true identity persists.  John McCain said it months ago about Hillary Clinton.  This week, Barack Obama said it about McCain and has since been pounced on by McCain and others that he was saying it about McCain’s running mate, Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin.  Oh the irony of McCain calling Obama sexist; but they know it’s not true, it’s feigned outrage just to distract from the issues.

Sorry, my slant is coming out and you did not come here to see me grind a political axe (though I must say, these apologies that Obama could offer McCain are pretty funny!).   But I have a tie-in to all of the pork being talked about.  Though they’ve had no trouble being in favor of pork in the past (Palin was for  the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” before she was against it), McCain-Palin now say they’re against porkbarrel spending.  McCain will refer to the his plan of cutting approximately $50 billion in pork barrel spending as a way to balance the budget.  Yeah, because the other hundreds of billions will materialize when he further cuts taxes for the rich?  Whatever you feel about the Iraq War, Bush and the Iraqi government (and the people of Iraq) have all said it’s time to set and follow a timetable for withdrawal (read: an end to the war).  That’s $10 billion per month right there — or $120 billion per year — saved.  So how about ending that before we cut the pork?

That’s right, I’m in favor of pork barrel spending.  We ought to be spending five to ten times as much as we are now on pork barrel spending.  And we’ll generate the tax revenue by having a truly progressive tax system, where those who make the most money pay the highest percentage of their income compared to other taxpayers.  After all, they’re the group that benefits the most from the systems, the security, government provides (their right to make so much money is protected because of such government functions as the military and transportation, which are subsidized by the government).  They should therefore pay for it.

We’re in both an energy crisis and climate crisis.  Our energy crisis is exacerbated by our main sources of energy being controlled in large part by rogue states, forcing our military to cowtow (let’s bring another farm animal reference into the mix!) to regimes that treat their citizens horribly (think how our government treats Guantanamo Bay prisoners — on a larger scale).  We need pork barrel projects not only to keep levees and bridges functioning well (as well as all of our other essential infrastructure) but also for green projects.

Green Eggs and Ham

Need a catchy title?  Since, “green pork barrel spending” lacks pizazz, let’s go with, “green eggs and ham” for all of the increased spending in a smart grid that will allow transmission of green energy, followed by actually implenting green energy projects (the government does not have to wait for private companies here — green energy is about as important as the highways we subsidize) as well as recycling and composting programs nationwide (but let’s check with the owners of Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham for permission).  Start in urban areas to achieve scale and then move outward to cover every town in America.  

Failing to care for the environment is a moral issue. Failing to tend to the climate and energy crises is irresponsible.  I admit it, the “green eggs and ham” moniker needs some work; it’s obviously cheesy, but the point is that we need a heaping pile of green eggs and ham spending to get this jump-started before it’s too late.  Obama’s $150 billion over ten years in federal dollars is a good start, but The United States needs to lead on these issues and the world will take our cue.  We need a President who understands that and is willing to put the U.S. tax dollars money where his mouth is.  

I picked up this article from The Daily Green that outlines the situation regarding tax credits for renewable energy.  Now, I should say, I agree with much of what is said in the article, including the four main reasons to pass the credits: High oil prices, high U.S. unemployment, the melting Arctic, and Russia’s overwhelming of Georgia.  I have a bone to pick with The Daily Green regarding this article.

I disagree with that last point on a technicality because it zeros in on a territorial dispute in the headline and ties it into the crisis too much (IMHO — yes, I know, it’s humble for a reason), when the larger point, the one that is somewhat made in the paragraph in the article, is that petrodictatorships flourish in the current environment.  That should have been the main point with perhaps Russia’s influence and ability to ignore the international community as one example of many such countries awash in oil money.  They basically did that, but their bolding of that statement (and ignoring the other facts surrounding that debacle) is reason enough for me to point this out.

But that is not my main beef with this article; rather, the way in which this information is framed is problematic.  On this first point, I’m rather quibbling over what is a main point and what is a detail, mentioning it only because it is significant to me.  Let me explain my main problem with this article.

The main paragraph that troubles me reads thus:

Congress reconvenes today to discuss, among other things, energy policy. All they’ll really be doing is posturing for their respective candidates, however, and that means that the renewable energy tax credits — which both parties and their candidates support (emphasis mine) — may well be held hostage to this battle: Republicans entrenched in support of offshore drilling, and Democrats entrenched in support of taxing oil company profits to fund more renewable energy projects.

Sounds fair, but if you know what I know, meaning, if you have followed this issue, you know that John McCain, the Republican candidate for President, and his Republican colleagues, have passed by the opportunity to extend these valuable tax credits that help to make the renewable energy industry compete on a more equal playing field.  After all, we allow huge tax breaks on the oil industry (not to mention dirty nuclear energy — yes, dirty!).

From a Thomas Friedman column,

Senator McCain did not show up for the crucial vote on July 30, and the renewable energy bill was defeated for the eighth time. In fact, John McCain has a perfect record on this renewable energy legislation. He has missed all eight votes over the last year — which effectively counts as a no vote each time. Once, he was even in the Senate and wouldn’t leave his office to vote.

Yet, in this article, the author says that both parties and their candidates suppor the tax incentives for renewable energy.  Friedman notes that Democratic Presidential Nominee, Barack Obama, also missed some votes on this issue, but they were times when he was out campaigning, and he knows that they don’t have the votes on this issue — because of Republicans and John McCain stonewalling.  

We cannot act as if both parties are in favor of this when their actions have not shown that to be the case.  If McCain were truly in favor, he would have left his Senate office to go vote.  And if he were out campaigning, he would fly his wife’s private jet, of which he has rather unfettered use, back to Washington to cast an important vote in favor of these tax credits.  I am angered that such gross misrepresentations persist.  The Republicans are behind the oil industry all the way and that includes John McCain — Mr. Drill Here, Drill Now.

Maybe McCain should follow his own advice, “Tell them to come back and get to work!”  Senator, your “Drill here!  Drill now!” mantra is old hat.  Get back to work and go vote on this measure.  It’s time to get past all of that partisanship you say you are past and work toward a green energy future.  And Mr. Obama should get back to Washington every time and cast a symbolic vote every time, even if they know they don’t have enough votes to pass the measure.  No excuses — our country needs real leadership.

Offshore drilling cannot and will not address America’s energy or climate crises now, in three years, five years, or ten.  We have about 3% of the world’s reserves of oil and use about 25%.  Go ahead and argue with that reality.  Feel the wind and sun on your face and realize the solution is smacking you in the face every time you go outside.  Wind and solar are the energy of now.  Today.  Blow here!  Shine now!  

The Daily Green, thanks for highlighting this important issue.  But we have to call out those who are dragging their feet forward — or, in the Republicans’ case on this issue, pulling the country down into an almost dry oil well — and tell it like it is.  Don’t be afraid to call Regressives by name.  John McCain is a Regressive.  The Republicans are not even close to being on equal footing with Democrats on what is best for the country regarding this issue.  We gain nothing by throwing them a bone — and that’s the bone I’ve picked with you!