I wrote an earlier post on 2008 being ‘The Year of the Frog“. Well, it still is! How can you help our little ribbity friends? It’s pretty easy for you and your children to make a difference that matters. So, for a nice list of easy ways for you to help, I include the following link from the Amphibian Ark. After all, it ain’t easy being green if you’re a frog, but, it’s a lot easier if you are a human with a heart of green.

• Save the Frogs!

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Below is a link to little article on geothermal energy. It is yet another Alternative energy or wedge energy, including wind, solar, biomass and wave, among others, that might help us to deal with our energy supply/demand and global climate change issues.  Water use is always a concern, and water likely would be involved with this technology, and that would have to be dealt with responsibly.  Again, the American west makes out like a bandit, as it does with solar.  What will the east do?

• Geothermal Energy

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Hey, you remember the mnemonic for the great lakes, right? It’s HOMES, for lakes Huron, Ontario, Michigan, and Erie. Well, maybe it should be HOMESS, with the extra S standing for Sewage, because each year something on the order of 10 billion gallons of sewage gets dumped into just lake Erie and its basin each year alone. Yah, you read that correctly. It’s a big problem all across the US, wherever lakes, streams and coastlines exist. And, as the US population increases, so will the amount of merde flowing through our sewer pipes. Our infrastructure in this country is old, old, old and it isn’t up to the strains of our increasing population. We need to get our act together, before the shit really hits the fan. Let’s put some of our tax dollars into improving our sewage-handling facilities. Meanwhile, I’d think twice about taking the family to a natural swimming spot.

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Here is a great story about what can be done with a little interest, effort and optimism. A young man, 16-year old Daniel Burd from Waterloo, Canada, has invented a process to break down plastic bags. The method he refined might be used industrially to prevent the bags from going to landfills and ending up in our waterways and oceans. Here’s to you, Daniel Burd. His is an example where even an individual can make valuable contributions to humanity and motivate people to do the right thing.

• Teenager Environmentalist-Scientist

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Tomorrow will be a big, big day for NASA and the Mars Phoenix Lander, which will end its 7 month journey to the red planet on Sunday. This lander will touch down near the North Pole of Mars, on water-ice, and its mission is to search for active processes resulting from living organisms residing in the water ice.

• Mars and 7 Minutes of Terror

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Ok, a positive blog post for once. Yay! It seems that, after hunting humpback whales to the brink of extinction, their numbers are making a comeback. See, it just goes to show that when humans make an honest effort, they can save species from being eradicated by our wasteful ways. Of course, slavering commercial types will immediately want to start harvesting them and delisting them from protected status, but we must remember that ocean habitats and ecosystems are on the brink of collapse. That means that we we may need many whales around in case true ecosystem collapse happens, taking away or greatly reducing the food that whales need to eat to survive. If that happens, many may die. So, an abundance may be a valid insurance policy for whale survival.

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The title is taken from the included link, written by Jennifer Lance for Red, Green and Blue, a website dedicated to environmental politics. Does the title sound inflammatory to you? Well, you should take into account that the writer’s family is supported by commercial fishing, including dungeness crab and king salmon. The short article is about the collapse of the salmon fisheries on the west coast. It is serious, and it effects many people across the population, from those who profit by it commercially, either through direct fishing, or through the tourism industry, or those who simply like to eat salmon. This is a concern that is serious for everyone, but, will we as humans ever be able to get it together to stop our wholesale abuse of the environment, and return to sustainable fishing and agriculture, land and water use? We are supposed to have the most sophisticated brains on the planet, too bad we don’t use them for good, but run things to ruin for profit. Also, though I have been tracking the Bush administration’s neglect and abuse of the environment, this problem has been going on for a long while, and transcends political parties. It is a human problem.

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I have found an excellent piece of environmental journalism in The Guardian by Alex Renton. Thank-you Guardian, for supporting this kind of important reporting on the environment. I don’t want to add much here, for that would divert important reading time away from this very well-written and researched article. I end by saying that this is something that every citizen in every wealthy nation needs to know about and understand. It is only with knowledge that we can hope to save our natural world for our children, and we are on the brink.

• Ocean Fishery Depletion

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The following link is to a news article about the very underfunded nature of America’s wildlife refuges. This sorry state has been going on for a while, and has been the case during both Democratic and Republican administrations. I simply can’t wrap my brain around why we, the American citizen, and why Congress shows so little respect for our national parks and refuges. They are treasures that are used by hundreds of millions of people every year, by both visitors from abroad, and Americans on vacation or during holidays, and they are beautiful, and valuable, and important for our economy. Our outdoor places are very much part of what defines America, and contributes to our sense of pride. Why have we been neglecting them? We have the money to take care of them, we need to reform our ways and do so. Another thing I’d like to see on the list is a better cared-for Washington D.C.. It’s our capital, our city for the world, and yet, it is a crime-soaked place, especially after dark. Change the law, give D.C. a representative and give it money to rehabilitate itself and help those citizens of D.C. that need it.

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Have you wondered about the environmental credentials of our current batch of presidential nominees and hopefuls? Well, look no further, as Mother Jones covers this subject, courtesy of The League of Conservation Voters. Apparently Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have pretty high ratings, while John McCain’s is appallingly low. When he isn’t voting against environmentally friendly measures, he isn’t even bothering to vote at all.

• McCain No Environmentalist

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