How much Carbon-Di-Oxide does your internet browsing create

Here's a cool 2 minute video from the Australian Broadcasting corpoaration

How Green Is Your Internet? from Patrick Clair on Vimeo.

The stats:
Every second of internet puts 0.2gms of CO2 into the atmosphere.
That's 12 gms per minute
Thats 720 gms per hour
Thats 8.6 Kgs over 12 hours that most folks like me spend online.

Youtube users get through 2 billion videos at a conservative average of 10 secs per video for a total of 4000 Tonnes of CO2 per day.
Thats 1.4 million Tonnes of CO2 pe year.

Facebook and Apple use coal fired electricity. That makes them the dirtiest consumers
Yahoo and Google use the cleanest energy sources and Google has invested heavily in developing Wind, Solar and Kite power!

Enjoy the video.

Will Obama Meet His Solar Deadline?

Source: 350.org

Will President Obama meet his self-imposed deadline to get solar panels back on the roof of the White House by the end of this spring? On October 5, 2010, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced that the Obama Administration would be returning solar panels to the White House roof. (President Carter installed solar panels on the roof in 1979 only to have them removed by President Reagan a few years later.) This after a lot of cajoling by the good folks at 350.org who found the exiled Carter Solar Panels in Maine and personally drove them down on a biofuel vehicle from Maine to the White House. They were rebuffed repeatedly by the White House until Secretary Chu made the surprise announcement.



The team at 350.org launched a campaign in 2010, “Put Solar On It,” challenging world leaders to install solar at their presidential residences and then follow up with real legislation. Some elected officials seized the opportunity. President Pratibha Devisingh Patil announced a new 50kw array for India’s presidential palace. In October, President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives took the challenge a step further, actually getting up his roof to help install the solar panels himself. President Obama made a promise but with Spring 2011 ending on June 21, a week from today, Will Obama Meet His Solar Deadline?

The  answer maybe NO given that the administration is delaying putting out rules for coal plant emissions, calling for expanding oil drilling through nothing less than the President's weekly web address, and increasing fracking.

Yet, we cannot be silent bystanders. We've got to keep putting pressure on the administration, and we know that that is something that the administration likes and believes is the best way to get results.

So take action here and here.

Hold President Obama's feet to the fire.

E. Coli - Yeah that too should make you think of Big Agro, Big Pharma and the Meat Industry

UPDATE: Forensic evidence emerges that European e.coli superbug was bioengineered to produce human fatalities

Source: Taco Bell and E.Coli

Everytime you hear about a new fancy disease, what do you make of it?
Chances are that you hear the 5 min sound bites on TV, panic and immediately decide you are not going to eat the spinach or the tomatoes or the eggs or whatever the latest source of the disease might be. You quarantine yourself if there is say swine flu. Its like the Dept of Homeland Security flipped the switch from Orange to Red!

If you consider yourself wise, I want you to know that often the first word should not be your first impression. I will just relate to you a few possibilities and then leave you with a few links that make the case.

Here are the possibilities:
- The media is telling you something because they need a story to tell.
- The govt is telling you a story because they need a law to be passed.
- The Big Agro Companies like Monsanto, Conagra and Cargill are making up stories to discredit small farmers so they can run them out of business.
- The Big Pharma have just let lose a new strain of a virus because they need to sell a new drug.

Here are a couple of powerful articles that dig deeper into the most recently alarm around E.Coli. If there is anything you take away from it, I hope it will be that we cannot trust big businesses. Our best hope is to return to living with nature the way nature intended things to be:

- consume less of the planets resources even if you can afford to buy another cell phone, another car or a city and a half.
- take care of your health by eating only organic foods
- Supporting locally grown fruits and vegetables
- Cut down on meat because it carries the most disease and it consumes the most virtual water.
- Tip the minimum wage workers

Now for the readings (homework):

E. Coli: Blame the Meat, Not the Sprouts

Germany: Tests show no proof that sprouts from organic farm are cause of E. coli outbreak

Just How Contaminated Is the Fish and Meat That We Eat?

 

Forget About Climate Change, Think About Living Hell

Its late Spring 2011. People are talking about the next iPhone, the next American Idol, Anthony Weiner's Tweets, Sarah Palin's knowledge of History, Donald Trump's Hair, X-Men and Hangover, Rapture and Doomsday, Casey Anthony's presumed guilty before the trial begins, Obama's Birth Certificate, Bin Laden's death, ... and yes there is the uncomfortable reality that we are beginning to notice - the record breaking temperatures on the US East Coast, The Tornadoes in Joplin and the Midwest, the unprecedented draught and wildfires in Texas, the massive unimaginable flooding of the Mississippi.

And then someone comes along and frames the mood of the times through a simple but powerful video that warns you not to believe that the Living Hell you want to avoid has anything to do with Climate change.

That someone is Bill McKibben founder of the global climate campaign 350.org.

Not convinced? Here are some facts:




Infographic: Tornadoes of 2011 (Source: MNN)

  

Green Shipping

This is a cry for help. I have scoured the internet looking for a solution to the following problem and I havent found a good one yet:

Is there a company out there that ships small packages in an environment friendly way?

Basically I am looking for an alternative to Fedex, UPS, USPS. Put another way, I am looking for a company which uses methods other than "flying your mail" to the the destination and relying on the typical hub and spoke model. These "BIG" carriers are beginning to tout "green" programs. However I see that those programs are nothing other than simple carbon offset fees (asking consumers to pay money to offset their carbon consumption instead of actually changing or adding new business models).

If there is anyone out there that can ship a parcel for me across continents at a low cost and for a low carbon footprint even if it takes them a month to get my parcel to the destination, I would like for them to leave me a note so I can do business with them.

For those curious as to why I am asking for a "ship by ship" shipping option check out this graphic:

Whats the dirtiest shipping method