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Entries Tagged as 'climate change'

No Impact Man

May 4th, 2009 No Comments

No Impact Man is a gold mine of information on how to make realistic adjustments toward sustainability in your lifestyle. Colin Beavan began his blog in February of 2007 to chronicle his family’s efforts to adjust their lifestyle so they would have no net impact on the environment. Since then, in addition to the blog, which continues with frequent practical articles that will help you to live more sustainably, Beavan has created a a soon-to-be-released book, a film, and an action-packed online community website.

Here’s how  Beavan described No Impact Man when he began the project:

No Impact Man is my experiment with researching, developing and adopting a way of life for me and my little family—one wife, one toddler, one dog—to live in the heart of New York City while causing no net environmental impact. To do this, we will decrease the things we do that hurt the earth—make trash, cause carbon dioxide emissions, for example—and increase the things we do that help the earth—clean up the banks of the Hudson River, give money to charity, rescue sea birds, say.

In mathematical terms, in case you are an engineer or just a geek who likes math, we are trying to achieve an equilibrium that looks something like this:

Negative Impact + Positive Impact = Zero.

No net impact. Get it?

Beavan and his family completed their one year experiment and decided to continue their no-impact lifestyle. His blog shares the whole process with a lively community of readers and includes articles like “42 Ways Not To Make Trash”, “The No Impact Sustainable Eating Plan” and “Doing Stuff Instead of Watching Stuff”. If you’re unsure about where or how to take further steps toward sustainability in your own lifestyle, No Impact Man will give you plenty of ideas to consider and lots of encouragement along the way.

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Have Printer. Will Fight Climate Change.

April 13th, 2009 No Comments

Ready to put your printer to work to save the world? The U.S. Congress is currently considering two major pieces of climate legislation and 1Sky wants you to help your representatives make the best possible decisions for us and for the planet. It’s as easy as printing a 10-page lobbying package and dropping it off at your Senators’ and/or Representatives district office. Congress will be on its two-week recess until April 19, so you might get to shake your reps hand and thank them ahead of time for doing the right thing. Sign up and collect your materials and instructions right here. And if you’re all fired up to fight for the planet after that, 1Sky has lots of other actions you can take.

You can read more about the proposed legislation here and here.

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Tonight, the Earth Goes Dark…

March 28th, 2009 3 Comments

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Tonight the lights on the Great Pyramids of Giza, the Acropolis in Athens, the Empire State Building in New York and in millions of houses around the world will go dark. Why? Because all around the world at 8:30 p.m. local time, it’s Earth Hour, a World Wildlife Fund organized event urging communities and citizens across the globe to vote for the Earth and against climate change by turning off their lights for one hour. So far nearly four thousand cities spanning the globe as well as millions of individual participants are planning to participate. The results will be presented to world leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen later this year.

Earth hour began in Sydney, Australia in 2007, and grew to an event with over 50 million participants in 2008. This year’s goal is for 1 billion global citizens to participate. If you’d like to join in, visit the Earth Hour website. Make sure you sign-up so you can be counted. You’ll find tools for spreading the word, including a blogger tool kit, as well as ideas for what to do once you turn the lights out (!) on the Take Action page. And here’s the very inspirational Earth Hour 2009 video to help get you motivated.

Updates:

Here’s a nice piece from the Huffington Post highlighting Earth Hour events as they roll around the world, beginning in Australia and New Zealand and including Beijing’s plans to darken the famous Bird’s Nest stadium and Las Vegas’s plans to darken it’s famous strip.

3/29/09 Here’s the AP wrap of the event with some nice before and after photos as the lights were dimmed at some of the world’s most famous landmarks.

3/31/09 Update.

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