Ask Wednesday: How can we mark this Earth Day?

Some practical suggestions

By Paul Clark, aka motomynd

[Editor's Note: Originally published on April 15, 2013 as "Mark the day," in the motomynd's monthly column, "Third Monday Random."]

Today is the 45th Earth Day. Do you remember the first one—how old does that make you feel? More importantly, do you remember the idealism of that first Earth Day, and all the things you resolved to do to help save the planet? So how have you done—does your resume make you an eco warrior, or just another backslider?

Tuesday Voice: Guilt-free shopping guides

By Paul Clark 
(aka motomynd)

People of a save-the-earth mindset may or may not win their battle, but there are now a multitude of places where people can support their idealism while buying life's essentials.

First Saturday Green 101: Trees, quail, mosquitoes, and neighbors talking loudly of porn

They’re all connected

By motomynd

When I bought the old farmhouse I grew up in 50 years previous, three dramatic changes jumped out at me when spring arrived and I aspired to spend most of my time outdoors. The neighbors who lived in the surrounding houses were much louder than those who were there when I was a child. There was a missing link in the bird population. Mosquitoes patrolled in Luftwaffe-worthy squadrons.
    The Washington, DC escapee within me lamented the changes but welcomed the space and relative quiet. The writer within me wondered if I should have instead returned to the cabin in the woods where I had lived before being briefly lured back to DC. The college-educated biologist still lurking somewhere deep within me wondered if the three were somehow connected.

First Saturday Green 101: Goatsucker memories

The author during a pensive moment
behind bars on the Congo/Rwanda border

By motomynd

When I have time on a spring evening to take the old Honda Shadow for a spirited cruise on local country roads, there are two stops I always make on the way back home. One is for the way it looks, the other for the way it sounds.
    The first place has the most vivid sunsets I have been able to find in this part of central North Carolina. Having photographed sunsets in all 50 states and on four continents, I should have seen enough of them, but I’m still a sucker for even the lackluster ones we have in these parts.

Third Monday Random

Mark the day

By motomynd

Next Monday, April 22, is the 43rd Earth Day. Do you remember the first one—how old does that make you feel? More importantly, do you remember the idealism of that first Earth Day, and all the things you resolved to do to help save the planet? So how have you done—does your resume make you an eco warrior, or just another backslider?

First Saturday Green 101: Trail of the Timberdoodle—Act 3 (final)

timberdoodle.org

By motomynd

[Sequel to "Act 2"]

A call to my satellite phone, as I sat in camp hard by the Kenya/Somalia border, brought the crushing news of my uncle’s suddenly failing health. The next two years were a blur of post-9/11 work overseas, and as many rush trips to Upstate as the schedule could possibly allow. Since age 12, I had marveled at Carl’s hunting and fishing tales, and his trophies from Canada and Alaska. On our last few visits I finally had my own trophies to share—photos taken while walking amongst elephants, rhinos, lions, and other animals in Africa.

First Saturday Green 101: New Year’s green resolutions

Go green to save money and live longer

By motomynd

Now that you have made your New Year’s resolutions to improve your health, fitness, finances, and attitude, here’s an easy one you may actually be able to stick with: resolve to go more green in 2013. No, you don’t have to go completely green, just more green—and you will find that much easier to do than losing ten pounds.

First Saturday Green 101: What is winging your way on the winter wind?

Eurasian golden plover,
photographed by the author
in Thingvellir, Iceland

By motomynd

In North Carolina the lawns are put away for the season, the leaves are mostly dealt with, and the next big seasonal news is the coming of winter. For far too many people this a time to abandon outdoors activities, hunker down inside, and wait for spring. If that is your strategy, not only will you grow soft and lethargic over the next few months, you will also miss the opportunity to spot unusual and rare birds you will see in no other season.

First Saturday Green 101: Going green with brown leaves

By motomynd

This is the time of year when the heat of summer yields to the coolness of fall, and the autumn leaves put on a spectacular show.
    Then they fall to the ground.

First Saturday Green 101: Preparing your lawn for winter

By motomynd

As impossible as it seems, there is a series of commercials these days that may be even more irritating than the barrage of election ads. And they may be even more over-hyped and deceptive than the false claims that Barack Obama cut Medicare funding or that Mitt Romney plans to starve to death the 47% of Americans who he says will never vote for him.

A moral imperative

I watched Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth," last night. I knew what was in it, but I hadn't expected to be moved the way I was by actually watching it. I was moved by Gore's conclusion that it's a moral imperative to do something to try to avert the environmental cataclysm threatening Planet Earth. This means, among other things, that it's a matter of conscience that I go back to commuting to work by way of the local transit system. I'd commuted by bus for some months before my vacation in California in October, but I haven't ridden the bus since.

I'm going to start again on Tuesday. (I'm off for MLK's birthday.)

And, if I intend to continue to blog politically occasionally, it is more important to talk about this issue than about Iraq. Alas, Bush will still be part of the discussion, since the Busheviks have been largely successful at misleading people through their comprehensive campaign to hide the truth—such as a White House official's distorting government climate reports:

In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.

The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as the insertion of the phrase "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties," tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust.

Mr. Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues.

Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the "climate team leader" and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor's degree in economics, he has no scientific training. [The New York Times, June 8, 2005]