Being Green – Update

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Hi Folks:

Friday once again!  It’s also the end of the month, and that means our “Eating Our Way Through Victoria” post and my “Photo of the Month” post as well as our usual Sunday “He Says, She Says…” and Monday’s “Marcia’s Meanderings” posts are coming due as well!  Going to have to limber up those typing fingers.

I was going to write a post this week about “Intentional Communities“, but I’m going to postpone that for a week.  Please bear with me.  In exchange, I’ll offer a couple of reminders of upcoming events this weekend.  If you live in the US or know someone who does, the premiere of Jamie Oliver’s program “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” begins this evening on ABC.  If you’re asking yourself, “What’s green about that?” consider the enormous amounts of water and energy that go into not only the production of ‘fast food’ and prepackaged foods, but also the environmental costs of the packaging, transport, etc.  There’s a link on ‘hidden water use’ in the list below.  Also in the news this week are plans to ‘downsize’ parts of Detroit. Suggestions include the creation of a series of ‘urban farms’, more parks, and interconnected ‘villages’.  Not a simple idea by any means, but it’s an idea Jame will agree with, I’m sure. Greensburg, KS might serve as a role model of sorts, since almost the entire town was wiped out by a tornado a few short years ago and rebuilt as a model green town.

Tomorrow night (Saturday, March 27) is ‘Earth Hour’, from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. local time, wherever you are.   For one hour people are encouraged to turn off all of their lights, and extending this to your computer, cell phone, television, radio, etc. would also be encouraged.  If you’re on Twitter you can go here for a link to a site that will send a Tweet about Earth Hour, and it will also turn off the ‘lights’ on your Twitter profile page starting at 8:30 Saturday night.  They’ll remain off until you turn them back on again.  Of course, if you’ve turned off your computer for that hour, you won’t be able to see this!  If you’re not on Twitter, you can go to the World Wildlife Fund page for more information.  As to what you can do for an hour without electricity, I’ll leave that to your imagination.

From one perspective it’s a very small, almost trivial step in terms of reducing global energy use, but it has the potential for increasing long-term awareness of our individual and collective energy use.  Especially for those of us in industrialized nations, water comes out of the tap, food comes from the grocery store, bread comes in plastic bags and meat comes on styrofoam trays.  Electricity is there when we plug something into the outlet and light is available at the flick of a switch.  Several decades ago when I enrolled in Scouts Canada I learned the Scout Law:

The Scout Law

A Scout is:
Helpful and trustworthy,
Kind and cheerful,
Considerate and clean,
Wise in the use of all resources.

A good reminder for all of us.

Okay, the links for this week are:

Okay, that’s it for this week!
Mike.

P.S. On February 20, 2010 Mark Rolston (Chief Creative Officer of Frog Design) did a talk on combining reality and technology at TEDxAustin.  The possibilities are astounding, in many areas of our lives.

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