As my wife and I write about in ECOpreneuring, if good health is important – and it should be for everyone – then a regular exercise routine along with eating right becomes a feature in our sustainable lifestyle, whether you walk around the block, do yoga or work out three times a week at a local YMCA like we do. Or go for a hike in the woods instead of watching more TV.
Remember the last time you had the flu or a lingering cold? Get much done? When we’re healthy, we take our good health for granted. Despite what our politicians and healthcare providers might suggest, good healthcare does not necessarily provide good health. Our lifestyle and daily habits contribute to feeling great just about every day of the year.
Some companies provide a good healthcare plan when it comes to physician access and medical coverage. But what does that matter when the stress-filled, unhealthy environment in a cubicle – with no access to the outdoors and fresh air – ends up giving us poor health? The American healthcare system is great – perhaps the best in the world – if we crashed in our car. It’s designed for treatment, not prevention. It’s a healthcare system based on the poor health of relatively well-off people who can pay (by credit or otherwise) for the services it provides.
Given all the debate on a national healthcare plan offered by the United States, below are a few promising trends many people are discovering.
As the earth warms, the melting of the earth’s two massive ice sheets—Antarctica and Greenland—could raise sea level enormously. If the Greenland ice sheet were to melt, it would raise sea level 7 meters (23 feet). Melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would raise sea level 5 meters (16 feet). But even just partial melting of these ice sheets will have a dramatic effect on sea level rise. Senior scientists are noting that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections of sea level rise during this century of 18 to 59 centimeters are already obsolete and that a rise of 2 meters during this time is within range.
As I note in Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, assessing the prospects for the Greenland ice sheet begins with looking at the warming of the Arctic region. A 2005 study, conducted by the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) team, an international group of 300 scientists, concluded that the Arctic is warming almost twice as fast as the rest of the planet. It found that in the regions surrounding the Arctic, including Alaska, western Canada, and eastern Russia, winter temperatures have already climbed by 3-4 degrees Celsius (4–7 degrees Fahrenheit) over the last half-century.
In testimony before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, an Inuit speaking on behalf of the 155,000 Inuits who live in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and the Russian Federation, described their struggle to survive in the fast-changing Arctic climate as “a snapshot of what is happening to the planet.” She called the warming of the Arctic “a defining event in the history of this planet.” Read the rest of this entry »
So, what exactly are green jobs? The answer to that question largely depends on an individual’s skills, training and experience: construction workers, computer programmers, and public relations professionals could all find themselves labeled as green collar in the right circumstances. For Dave Foster, a former official with the United Steelworkers, the phrase has a specific definition: ”A green job is nothing more than a blue-collar job with a green purpose.”
Today’s Post-Dispatch provides us with yet another example of how organized labor and mainstream environmental groups are joining forces to promote a green economy. Writer Steve Giegerich took note of steelworkers and Sierra Club members marching together recently to protest the loss of jobs at Granite City, Illinois’ U.S. Steel plant. As you can see in both the video above, and the article, blue collar workers around the country increasingly “get it”: green industry provides one of the most promising means of rebuilding a manufacturing economy in the United States.
In 1543, Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus published “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres,” in which he challenged the view that the sun revolved around the earth, arguing instead that the earth revolved around the sun. With his new model of the solar system, he began a wide-ranging debate among scientists, theologians, and others. His alternative to the earlier Ptolemaic model, which had the earth at the center of the universe, led to a revolution in thinking, to a new worldview.
Today we need a similar shift in our worldview, in how we think about the relationship between the earth and the economy. The issue now is not which celestial sphere revolves around the other but whether the environment is part of the economy or the economy is part of the environment. Economists see the environment as a subset of the economy. Ecologists, on the other hand, see the economy as a subset of the environment.
Like Ptolemy’s view of the solar system, the economists’ view is confusing efforts to understand our modern world. It has created an economy that is out of sync with the ecosystem on which it depends.
It is time for President Obama to mobilize us all to help build the new energy economy.
He has begun shaping the public policies we need. Now he needs to launch an Apollo project, interstate highway project, war effort and Marshall Plan all rolled into one.
For starters, he should call on us all to pick up our caulking guns and enlist in the war against energy waste – a national clean energy surge.
The potential for savings through efficiency improvements and conservation is enormous.
As Obama noted during the campaign, the United States is only the 22nd most energy-efficient major economy in the world right now. With very few exceptions, every vehicle, home, power plant, factory, community and state is hemorrhaging energy, energy dollars and greenhouse gas emissions.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced today that she has determined that greenhouse gas emissions pose a danger to the public health and welfare. The next step is a 60-day comment period, but once that endangerment finding becomes official, it will mark a fundamental shift in how the United States addresses human sources of climate change.
So how did we get here?
The endangerment finding directly stems from the Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA, but it has roots that go back more than a decade to a most unexpected source: The mouth of former Republican representative Tom Delay of Texas.
Two years ago when we bought our Prius, my then second grader had an idea. He thought that everyone should have to give up their old cars and buy a hybrid. That, he believed, would solve the global warming problem that he was so worried about. Someone in Washington has stolen my son’s idea.
The New York Times reported last week that President Obama embraces “cash for clunkers” a government sponsored incentive program that would offer Americans cash for trading in their old, inefficient vehicles for new fuel efficient cars. The program would help both the environment and the ailing auto industry.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that one of the reasons that we bought our Prius was because my husband’s company was offering a $5000 bonus to anyone who bought a vehicle that got 35 miles a gallon or better at the time. There was also a tax rebate - I believe it was $1800, don’t quote me on that figure, but we didn’t know about that when we made the decision.
Senior US Representatives Henry Waxman (D-Calif) and Ed Markey (D-Mass) today released draft cap-and-trade legislation that would reshape US energy and climate policy through drastic cuts in emissions in the next 20 years and significant increases in renewables by 2025.
The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES), intended to “create jobs, help end our dangerous dependence on foreign oil, and combat global warming” according to the official announcement of the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, centers around four titles:
A clean energy title that promotes renewable sources of energy, carbon capture and sequestration technologies, low-carbon fuels, clean electric vehicles, and the smart grid and electricity transmission;
An energy efficiency title that increases energy efficiency across all sectors of the economy, including buildings, appliances, transportation, and industry;
A global warming title that places limits on emissions of heat-trapping pollutants; and
A transitioning title that protects U.S. consumers and industry and promotes green jobs during the transition to a clean energy economy.
China appears to be backing out of global efforts to address climate change, intensifying pre-Copenhagen debate.
A top China central government think tank yesterday released a framework for quantifying countries’ historical emissions. Under this proposed framework, the State Council Development Research Center (DRC) would create a “historic account” of past emissions, used to benchmark developing countries with lower accumulated emissions - like China - against countries with higher accumulated emissions and assign emissions “deficits” to countries who have emitted less. Using this quantitative assessment, countries with emissions “deficits” would get the green light to emit, or trade emissions credits with countries that have already exceeded their allowance.
The release of this plan supports external analysis that China believes it should have the right to develop free from carbon reductions until their accumulated emissions are on par with industrialized countries. A recent Brookings Institute report: “Overcoming Obstacles to US-China Cooperation on Climate Change” articulated Beijing’s stance, which included the conviction that:
Countries should be held responsible not only for their current emissions but also for their cumulative historical emissions, given that greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere over many decades.
This plan is Beijing’s most comprehensive effort to date to both highlight and quantify development inequalities as a justification for releasing China and other developing countries from emissions reduction expectations.
Next Wednesday night, March 25th, tune into HBO2’s premiere of the documentary They Killed Sister Dorothy at 8 pm if you want to begin to understand the violence and injustice that surrounds the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. If you aren’t going to be home, then set your Tivo.
I was fortunate enough to see Daniel Junge’s film last month at the City of the Angels Film Festival in Los Angeles. The documentary follows the aftermath of the murder of 73 year-old Sister Dorothy Stang, known as the Angel of the Amazon, a Catholic nun and rainforest activist shot in the back while trying to empower local communities to set up sustainable farms while fighting illegal logging and land grabs.
Since July 2003, sustainablog has been providing information on environmental and economic sustainability, green and sustainable business, and environmental politics. The blog regularly features environmental leaders, experts in alternative energy and green technology, and real people trying to lighten their environmental footprints.
As my wife and I write about in ECOpreneuring, if good health is important – and it should be for everyone – then a regular exercise routine along with eating right becomes a feature in our sustainable lifestyle, whether you walk around the block, do yoga or work out three times a week at a local YMCA like we do. Or go for a hike in the woods instead of watching more TV.
By Lester R. Brown, 
