Environment -

DOES THE PLANET, THE EARTH, AND ALL OF LIFE ON IT HAVE RIGHTS?

The Earthjustice motto: “Because the Earth needs a good lawyer” The Earth DOES and MUST have rights. Otherwise we humans will continue to destroy it. Can you imagine – a species destroying the very planet, and life on it, that created them? That is UNTHINKABLE. Humans pride ourselves on being unique, different than the primates […]

OUR OCEANS

(Reprinted from Ocean Conservancy’s website): “The ocean has protected us from the worst effects of climate change. From the beginning of industrialization until today, the ocean has absorbed more than 90 percent of the heat from human-caused global warming and about one-third of our carbon emissions. But we are now seeing the devastating effects of […]

MONARCH BUTTERFLIES, BEES, AND BIRDS

Friends of the Earth reports (and I have confirmed) that 99.9% of Monarch Butterflies have disappeared. There were once 4.5 million. Currently, as few as 2000 exist).* Bayer-Monsanto’s RoundUp, the world’s most widely used insecticide, kills milkweed (the only food that young monarchs eat). RoundUp employs the chemical glyphosate. * According to www.WesternMonarchCount.org, Monarch populations […]

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND HUMAN INCOMPETENCE

What’s not to like about Artificial Intelligence? Planes that fly themselves; GPS’s that take us anywhere we want to go; self-driving vehicles; computers and calculators that make writing and basic mathematics obsolete. These conveniences are useful. They are also addictive. As we become more and more and more dependent on electronics and computers and smartphones, […]

CLIMATE CHANGE

The Big Bang happened 13 billion years ago. Earth was created 4 billion years ago. Life began 3 billion years ago. Primates like monkeys and humans first emerged 6 million years ago, and our human ancestors became a branch of that tree 3 million years ago. So, for example, Lucy, Australopithecus, walking around on 2 […]

THE ENVIRONMENT: Melting of ice caps and glaciers

Ice is white. Ocean water is black. Black absorbs heat and sunlight, white reflects it. So when humans affect our climate by as little as a single Fahrenheit degree, we activate the multiplier effect of turning reflective white ice into heat-absorbing black ocean water. Does the Earth go through cycles of warming and cooling? Yes. […]

PEACE: Our Natural Human Design

Peace – one of those feel-good words. But do we even know what it means? Webster’s Dictionary doesn’t. It defines peace as the absence of conflict, but that’s like defining love as the absence of hate. Every living thing has conflict – that’s how we grow, learn, mature. Peace is more than the absence of […]

THE ENVIRONMENT: Global Warming

Is the Earth getting hotter? Or colder? Are humans affecting the climate, altering temperatures by even a degree or 2? Do we have the right? Does our birthright give us license to alter and destroy? Are we living in conflict with each other, with Earth, and the rest of life on it? If you are […]

THE ENVIRONMENT: Cleaning the Oceans

Earth is ¼ land and ¾ ocean, yet we have so polluted the ¾ that is ocean that we caution pregnant women against eating fish (toxins like Mercury collect in the fetus more than in the mother). Currently a garbage dump the size of France is floating in our Pacific Ocean, with the internation crisis […]

Overpopulation and Climate Change

The news reports that, for the first time in all of recorded history, a cruise ship can now navigate the Northwest Passage. This is the passage that has rarely ever been navigated by any boat at any time of the year, and it is the same passage that Amundsen struggled across on foot on his […]