George W. Bush’s EPA didn’t want to do it.  They didn’t want to hurt businesses with higher costs.

Even Senator John McCain, former candidate for the Presidency, said today, “Let me be clear: I am a supporter of a strong cap-and-trade system, but I will not and cannot align myself with a giant government slush fund that will further burden our businesses and consumers.”

What the Senator Doesn’t Understand

Global warming is a pretty big deal.  Imagine our coastal areas (including New York, Washington, D.C., and other major cities) where so many businesses are located being permanently flooded.  Imagine other areas with droughts and stronger, more frequent tornadoes and hurricanes.  Life on our planet would be fundamentally different if global warming plays out as it most likely would (according to scientists) if we take no action.

Then how will our businesses fare?  The point is, changes in policy come slowly, but we don’t have much time to react to this crisis.  Bold action is needed and regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant is just a start.

Green Point Positive and Green Point Negative is a back-and-forth, temporary mode of publishing here on Earthascope to highlight the reality of big challenges combined with people beginning to make changes to improve the environment.

Why would our government ignore the consensus of the scientific community that global warming is indeed occurring as a result of human activities?

I could offer up several answers including Republicans’ ideological stance against taxing even negative activities (in this case, polluting), ignorance of the mass of evidence showing that we are responsible for the heating of the global temperatures, ignorance that the temperature is actually rising, and of course, people who want to make money off of carbon-intensive industries, namely the coal and oil industries.  We also have our fair share of fools.

Marc Morano

But let’s focus on a story from the New York Times last week, which focused on Marc Morano, who is a former spokesman for Senator James Imhoffe of Oklahoma and is a major climate change skeptic — believe me, I wanted to say that he’s a major ________ (choose your own fun word!) but we’ll keep this pretty clean (scroll down, I only call Mr. Morano by his name).

Green Point Positive and Green Point Negative is a back-and-forth, temporary mode of publishing here on Earthascope to highlight the reality of big challenges combined with people beginning to make changes to improve the environment.

If all the stories we keep hearing about gardening are true, Americans are rediscovering the concept of an at-home, “Victory Garden,” a la World War II.

Except, this time, we’re talking about victory against economic hardship, and even more important, our unsustainable fuel-consuming agricultural system, which contributes largely to global warming and environmental degradation.

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.

Some of the latest news and happenings in the green world our readers should know about:

1. Oil Giants Loath to Follow Obama’s Green Lead: Here’s a story about oil companies spending so very little on green energy development it looks as if they will be left behind as the economy switches to renewable, carbon-free sources of energy.  They don’t seem to be changing course, despite having a President with a green agenda.

They seem to be missing the boat.  Check it out:

The oil companies have frequently run advertisements expressing their interest in new forms of energy, but their actual investments have belied the marketing claims. The great bulk of their investments goes to traditional petroleum resources, including carbon-intensive energy sources like tar sands and natural gas from shale, while alternative investments account for a tiny fraction of their spending.

And:

In the last 15 years, the top five oil companies have spent around $5 billion to develop sources of renewable energy, according to Michael Eckhart, president of the American Council on Renewable Energy, an industry trade group. This represents only 10 percent of the roughly $50 billion funneled into the clean-energy sector by venture capital funds and corporate investors during that period, he said.

Compact fluorescent light bulbs can save you energy and money -- and help preserve the environment!

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

||Week Seven||

This week’s green life project action item is to replace five of your incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs.

Of course, some of you may have already done this.  If so, yes, by all means, take off this week and review our other Green Life Project posts to make sure your project is up-to-date.

But if you have not yet begun using CFL bulbs, you should!  Consider:

• CFL bulbs use a quarter to a third of the energy that incandescent bulbs do.  This means lower power bills!
• CFL bulbs do not give off as much heat, which proves to be good in the summer when you’re trying to keep cool!  This is surprisingly also welcome during the winter as well simply because light bulbs make for an inefficient way to heat a home!  Again,

I wanted to bring to readers’ attention a new vehicle that might revolutionize travel in cities. The PUMA! You’ve probably already heard about this by now. The concept seems on the surface to be a rather brilliant attempt at tackling the smog and congestion problems posed by motor vehicles.

General Motors (GM), known for making such gas guzzlers as the Humvee (Hummer and H2), has teamed up with two-wheeled personal transporters, Segway, to produce the PUMA, a vehicle focused on, “Personal Urban Mobility and Accessiblity.

It’s great to see GM move away from over-sized vehicles.  Also, SegWay, whose product has, to me, seemed to have held such promise for a long time but not the results to match, to have maybe found a way forward into massive implementation of their technology.

Check out this video:

The toilet may be a source of waste you rarely think about. You can significantly reduce that waste starting today!

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 six — you can catch up later!

||Week Six||

This week’s Green Life Project action item is to displace water in your toilet’s tank.

We had so much fun greening our TP use last week that we figured another week spent greening our bathrooms made a lot of sense!  If you already have a high efficiency toilet, you can take this week off.  Otherwise, there is a simple and effective way to reduce water waste right now!

If you’re like most Americans,  you probably have an old clunker of a toilet flushing with several gallons of water every flush!  You might be using several times the amount of needed freshwater, and we can help you to trim a little of that waste.

Putting a Bandage on this Problem

With water potentially becoming the new oil, we all need to do all of those, “little things,” to reduce our own water use.   According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “inefficient toilets are responsible for most of the water wasted in American homes.”

So we’re starting with this issue to try to put a, “bandage,” on the problem, since this is not a permanent fix. Ideally, we would all have high-efficiency toilets, but not all of us are going to be updating our toilets anytime soon, especially not if you rent or are feeling the effects of the economic downturn.  But, you can use less water with every flush starting today with materials you already have!

Adjust your environ|mentality to banish your eco-doubt!

Am I green enough?  Do my greener purchases really make a difference?  Are we collectively saving the earth or just making ourselves feel better about our consumption?

Okay, so you may be going through some eco-doubt.  Everyone does and I’ll help you get over it.  I’ll show you the environ|mentality to see your more sustainable living choices really make a difference and that you can get over your eco-doubt.

Sources of Eco-Doubt

Sure, you see it everyday on the news: the latest oil spill, mountaintop mining, chemical dump leaching into drinking water, or a coal’s toxic sludge flooding a town.  We see pollution in so many forms everyday.

And you likely have thought to yourself something along the lines of, “I’m using a somewhat greener laundry detergent (and paying a little more money for it) and the world around me is being polluted millions of times more than I ever have.  What’s the difference?”

Making A Difference

I was discussing just this issue today during a phone call with my older brother.  He’s relatively eco-conscious, using a reusable water bottle, recycled paper toilet paper, and generally trying to do some of the little greener, more sustainable things you or I may be employing in our daily lives.  So, he’s not your typical eco-doubter.

Small plastic garbage? Each month, more than 45 tons of CDs become obsolete—outdated, useless, or unwanted. What to do with them and their cases?

I just received an email with the following questions regarding recycling CDs and their cases:

How would I recycle plastic CD cases?  Can I just chuck the whole CD into the recycling bin?

Admittedly, I didn’t know the answer and needed to do some research.  After wading through some how-to crafts, I found the answer I was looking for.  Read on!

How would I recycle CD plastic covers?

Beyond, “I don’t know,” my first reaction to this question was that, sure, as the second question implies, you can put them into your general recycling bin and send them off with whatever cans, bottles, and paper you put by the curb or deliver to a recycling center.

However, I was skeptical of this actually working, because I could not find a recycling symbol and plastic type labeled on my jewel CD cases.

So, while some might have such a symbol, some do not.  I’m concerned that