Dress Down Friday June 22 | The Green Edition
Here’s another edition of dress-down Friday. This week I wanted to focus on green issues, and let me forewarn you: this is somewhat intense. I’ve decided to focus more of my attention on these issues, and try and help do what I can to educate and make aware the seriousness of caring for the creation.
This week I had a lot of help from my friend Holly (who is currently experiencing Blog Block). She sent me a bunch of great links that are great resources for what we can do on a practical level about these issues. By the way, if ever you find links you’d like to be posted in dress-down friday (they can be funny or serious), drop a note in my contact box. If you are interested in more tips and some concrete ideas visit the post I did a couple months back on becoming green. Also, using Holly’s tips I point out at what level of society these sites appeal to.
Here are various ways to become active now.
The Inconvenient Truth website has tons of helpful information: send a petition to your US representative, consider voting solar, investigate all the US cities that are becoming cool-cities (these cities have decided to make a difference regardless of what the country as a whole does, I Just learned of some of the cities around me who have not yet adopted energy efficiencies policies), and join the attempt to Stop Global Warming, with an online petition you can sign and plenty of helpful videos. (Most of these sites focuse on the personal and governmental levels)
Sierra Club also has some great resources, ten easy things you can do right now, a video on making your home cool. (They Deal on the Local, Global & Environmental level)
Visit the Greenbelt Movement’s site,
GBM provides income and sustenance to millions of people in Kenya through the planting of trees. It also conducts educational campaigns to raise awareness about women’s rights, civic empowerment, and the environment throughout Kenya and Africa.
GBM’s founder Wangari Maathi recently won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with this organization. (They work on the Global & Governmental scale)
The Clinton foundation is working on a climate initiative. (This organization works on a global scale)
It is important to mention just how essential diet is in all of this, our diets have a huge impact on the climate, from shipping food, to unhealthy demands for the production of meat, not to mention the land that sustains those eating habits. Check out Treehugger’s page on food and healthy, The Vegan Society, and Friends of the Earth (also see here)for more information. Also on the Friends of the Earth site, a news article on on of my favorite all time musician’s, Thom Yorke, involvement in these issues.
Other links for getting involved with environmental issues:
- Terra Pass, one way to balance out your CO2 useage (I think this is only good if we are first committed to cutting down on our use of things that create Carbon)
- Ways to fight global warming.
- Check out the “More Hip Than Hippie Podcast.”
- Check out the Tree Hugger Blog, it’s fantastic, and look what Canada’s doing.
- I also enjoy reading the blog “Our Tomorrow: Another World is Possible.”
- And Geez Magazine has a campaign called “De-Motorize Your Soul,” both sites are definitely worth checking out (and I am pretty sure I’ve linked to them before).
- Speaking of Magazines, check out Plenty Mag, it has tons of articles, podcasts, “green gear,” and more.
- Save the plastic trees, start using a clothe bag for shopping.
- I am told this is a good book. For more books from a Christian perspective on environmental issues see here.
- Visit my Green Delicious Tag for Continual updates.
- Calculate your carbon useage
Wow, that’s a complete overload of sites, and things to check out. So where to start? I’ve added a few of these to my RSS reader and become subscribers to their news. I’ve also signed a few petitions where I could. I have also bookmarked these sites so I can return to them later, there is too much to take in all at once. Start taking steps to become educated on the issues that surround this. And of course, the most important is to change the way we live, little by little, step by step, start finding ways to cut back on the way we use things, eat things, what we buy, and how we travel.
tags technorati : evironmental-issues environment resources green lifestyle creation inconvient truth global-warming