writeaboutwarming

November 23, 2009 – Pesticide use has increased in the United States. Yes, that’s right, I said increased. We’re spraying more poison on our food. Small amounts of that poison enter our bodies when we eat those foods. Small amounts of that poison enter our children’s bodies when they eat those foods. The best news of all? The poisons are getting stronger. Before going further, allow me to relate what I suspect was a case of coming to grips with this very Frankenstein in my own front yard. This year’s crop of dandelions was nearly unprecedented. (One might say they grew like weeds ….) Since we try to treat our yard for them as infrequently as possible, we had a bumper crop. Our yard was a sea of yellow. Then a neighbor came calling, claiming to be speaking on behalf of other neighbors. The short and the long of it was the dandelions had to go. Our front yard isn’t small – nearly half an acre. There could be no question of digging the dandelions up anywhere near as fast as the neighb...

My apologies for taking so long to write this article. I hope you'll find it worth the wait! November 19, 2009 – I’m learning more about Transition Towns (see my Oct. 20 blog). Read on to learn more about the concept and its current status. First, though, let’s get started with some transition vocabulary. Two ideas that are central to understanding this grassroots movement are relocalizing and permaculture. Relocalization is, in fact, the United States’ own version of transitioning. While transition takes its name from the need for communities to make the transition from being carbon-based to post-carbon, relocalization focuses on the need for communities to make basic goods and services available locally. This, in turn, necessitates re-skilling. More vocabulary! Let’s go back over this paragraph and make some sense of it. What is meant by saying that a community is carbon-based? Simply this: communities throughout the world derive their energy from fuels containing lots of carbon:...

November 3, 2009 – You know, it has only lately occurred to me that Americans aren’t the greedy ne’er-do-well’s we are sometimes portrayed. It is not American citizens who are using 25% of the earth’s natural resources. It can’t be – not when we’re told that by making various changes in our personal lives, only a very small, single-digit percentage change will have been made in the resources we consume. Finally it dawns upon me: it is the corporate citizens of the United States who use and use and use, with utter abandon. I have read reams of information on the subjects of birds, conservation, and climate change, but it has only just sunk in. Corporations are not people, no matter what the law says. Why in heaven’s name has no one sued to have their personhood revoked? ( It’s my understanding that the granting of this status was a clerical error, anyway.) Because they provide us with livelihood’s, that’s why. Except, of course, that lately, they don’t. Corporate loyalties seem not to r...