Harry Whittington, 78, was “alert and doing fine” after Mr. Cheney sprayed Mr. Whittington with shotgun pel­lets on Saturday at the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas, said prop­erty owner Katharine Armstrong.

source: The Globe and Mail

Should this guy be allowed to be run­ning the country?

An article in the Malaysian Times claims that humans are worse than any of the nat­ural dis­as­ters that occured in 2005, in terms of the amount of destruc­tion, extinc­tion, death and decay that we bring upon the world.

“In gen­eral, the impact of the tsunami is a lot less than the human impact, said Clive Wilkinson, of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, who is preparing a report on the tsunami-hit reefs.

One quarter of all man­groves in Asia have been destroyed by human activity, while dyna­mite fishing has dec­i­mated many coral reefs. Now the fear is that illegal log­ging and over­fishing, long the bane of the region’s envi­ron­ment, will inten­sify. Timber and coral for recon­struc­tion, while the UN says fish stocks could face col­lapse because donors are promising many more boats than existed before the dis­aster and are offering to indus­tri­alise what was mostly a sub­si­dence business.

While the Guardian reports that well-meaning cit­i­zens who are trying to prac­tice “carbon off­set­ting” may actu­ally be inad­ver­tently cre­ating other prob­lems:

Tree-planting has always been a con­tro­ver­sial method of soaking up CO2 because it is little more than a short term fix. Once the trees die they rot, releasing the carbon back into the atmos­phere. “We are buying a few decades to trans­form our economies,” says Dr Jackson.

Chris Field, an ecol­o­gist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Stanford, California, agrees. “It is not a slam dunk in terms of pro­viding the kind of carbon ben­efit we would like to have,” he says, “In the long run, solving the carbon problem is going to be more about reducing emis­sions rather than storage.”

So where does this leave the eco-minded cit­izen who wants to tread a lighter carbon foot­print? “Start by doing what you can your­self,” says Tom Delay, chief exec­u­tive of the Carbon Trust, a gov­ern­ment funded com­pany that is charged with helping UK busi­nesses reduce their carbon emis­sions. “Most of the actions you can take will save you money as well as have a cli­mate ben­efit.” So installing energy saving light bulbs, insu­lating the loft or using the car less is a good start.

So that’s where it’s at. The bottom line is that what we are doing to the envi­ron­ment is not some­thing that will “just go away”. The earth is a medley of del­i­cate eco-systems which have been the brunt of abuse for a long time, espe­cially since the indus­trial “rev­o­lu­tion” and the begin­nings of mass usage of fossil fuels, including for use in cars.

On the brighter side, there are move­ments that you can be part of that are devel­oping ideas and prod­ucts that work to reduce the harmful effects of human civilization.

David Suzuki has set up an excel­lent ven­ture called the Nature Challenge:

1. Reduce home energy use by 10%
2. Choose an energy-efficient home & appli­ances
3. Don’t use pes­ti­cides
4. Eat meat-free meals one day a week
5. Buy locally grown and pro­duced food
6. Choose a fuel-efficient vehicle
7. Walk, bike, car­pool or take transit
8. Choose a home close to work or school
9. Support alter­na­tive trans­porta­tion
10. Learn more and share with others

The Challenge is to pick at least three steps and sign up.

CarFree.com is an excel­lent site with all kinds of dis­cus­sions and infor­ma­tion about com­mu­ni­ties built around people, not cars, like what most of urban and all of sub­urban areas are built.

Transition Culture is a very infor­ma­tive blog with var­ious inter­esting items about the present and future of energy decline.

These and many other resources are avail­able to us…. the hard part is learning to quit our addic­tive ways of using and over using energy, whether it be through using less petrol, buying a fuel-efficient car instead of a Hummer or SUV, turning off the lights when we don’t need them, using prod­ucts not made by tor­turing ani­mals, or helping the people around us under­stand the scope of the problem and empow­ering them with knowl­edge and resources.

May the sun bring you new energy by day may the moon softly restore you by night, may the rain wash away your wor­ries, may the breeze blow new strength into your being, may you walk gently through the world and know its beauty all the days of your life.
~ Apache Blessing