Thought You Oughta Know

Support H.R. 1207 and S. 604! Contact your representatives today!! Wake up, America.

WW - Let's March!

Government of the people, by the people, for the people.

That is what our Constitution guarantees us. No longer do our elected representatives care about that "goddamned piece of paper" (George W Bush).

Please watch the video above and then ask yourself what it means to be an American. If your answer is to be Free, you need to be a part of this march. Our freedoms are being erroded daily by the very same people who are sworn to uphold and defend that piece of paper.

Are you going to stand by and just allow this to happen? I, for one, say "Hell, NO!"

Will you join me?

p.s. you'd have a free place to stay near DC!

Wake Up Wednesday - The Fed

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. Thomas Jefferson

Please take ten minutes to watch this video. Everything, everything, rests on your understanding and future action resulting from the wake up call contained within. If there is anything that you don't understand as you watch it, hang in till the end and then if you need to do some research, go ahead and use that Google box over there on the sidebar. It is up to us, folks, to save ourselves. There is no "we", only "I", and the only "they" out there is not on your side.

I think I hear Thomas Jefferson turning in his grave...

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I am going to take a break from the Wake Up Wednesdays for a few weeks, to get through the holidays with travel and then getting our house on the market. Don't really go back to sleep though! I am still going to do the Sunday thing, so you can keep checking in for more tips every week. I figure this time of year is for celebration and renewal and we can use a break from the bad news for a while. Plus, I already hit the big problems and don't have any new inspiration right now. Not much time to find any either! Enjoy the break and come back ready in the new year to face the Truth once again!

WUW - Where's the water?

I don't have much time to do this post this week, with the holidays and our move/selling the house coming up, so I am going to direct you to a couple of articles about drought. It's frightening stuff. This first one touches on drought around the world, but has some info on the Southeastern US:
http://www.alternet.org/environment/68498/?page=entire

According to the National Climate Data Center, federal officials have declared 43 percent of the contiguous US to be in "moderate to extreme drought." Already, Sonny Perdue of Georgia is embroiled in an ever more bitter conflict -- a "water war," as the headlines say -- with the governors of Florida and Alabama, as well as the Army Corps of Engineers, over the flow of water into and out of the
Atlanta area.
He's hardly alone. After all, the Southwest is in the grips of what, according to Davis, some climatologists are terming a "'mega-drought,' even the 'worst in 500 years.' " More shockingly, he writes, such conditions may actually represent the region's new "normal weather."

And this one focuses on the Western part of the US:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/magazine/21water-t.html?_r=1&ei=5087&em=&en=adc25155e153a757&ex=1193284800&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

Scientists sometimes refer to the effect a hotter world will have on this country’s fresh water as the other water problem, because global warming more commonly evokes the specter of rising oceans submerging our great coastal cities. By comparison, the steady decrease in mountain snowpack — the loss of the deep accumulation of high-altitude winter snow that melts each spring to provide the American West with most of its water — seems to be a more modest worry. But not all researchers agree with this ranking of dangers. Last May, for instance, Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the United States government’s pre-eminent research facilities, remarked that diminished supplies of fresh water might prove a far more serious problem than slowly rising seas. When I met with Chu last summer in Berkeley, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, which provides most of the water for Northern California, was at its lowest level in 20 years. Chu noted that even the most optimistic climate models for the second half of this century suggest that 30 to 70 percent of the snowpack will disappear. “There’s a two-thirds chance there will be a disaster,” Chu said, “and that’s in the best scenario.”

Speaking of selling our house, I am glad we are getting out of here before the water runs out! Not that I am happy to think that my friends who have more roots here are going to face possible relocations in the future. It's sad, but there is not going to be an easy solution to the question, where should we go?

WUW - Fear is the First Step

I have noticed that the changes we have made in our home are being followed by my family, as well as myself, so that I really can say "we". I have also noticed that the rest of them don't quite have the drive to do everything I think we should do, or are easier on themselves when they slip up and forget to follow one of our new procedures, like when one of them uses the bathroom without the toilet cloth setup in it, or throws away a recyclable plastic item, or wants to turn the heat up instead of putting on a sweater.

I think I have figured out the difference. Now, I first want to say that I am not perfect in this area and I know I have a lot of work to do. I also want to say that I am very grateful that my family has jumped on board with the changes we have started to make. With that said, I think the difference comes from the fact that I am the one reading all the dire predictions about what is possibly to come and I am the one having her pants scared off her on a weekly basis. My husband is only seeing what is in the mainstream media and we all know how woefully behind the power curve they are nowadays. Not to mention inciting mass hysteria is not the politically correct thing to do. And the girls are only getting what I deem appropriate for them to be exposed to at their ages. I want to scare them only a tiny bit while I appeal to their higher natures to get them behind the changes. I don't want to freak them out totally and give them nightmares. We are unschoolers, after all, and letting our children have a childhood is HUGE on our priority list.

But, since I am the one that is scared, I am the one who feels the need to keep doing what we are doing, and to add more and more as fast as possible. I am seriously motivated. My family, not so much. Enough, for now, but I worry their motivation won't carry them where I see us needing to go. Now, I do understand a bit about human nature and I know that change is a tough thing to make. So, I figure that the slow pace we are setting is best in the long run, as the changes will be habits soon and more easily added to, more likely to stick.

Why am I telling you all this, you ask? Well, I found a little bit of information, packaged in a easy to digest way that might help get you all motivated to make some (more) changes. Scare you a bit, you might say. It is from the BBC News and it shows a good overview of all the possible effects of global climate change, worldwide. Now, it would be easy to read through this and not come away scared, because the language is very non-threatening. "Some regions are likely to experience water shortages." "Cities with a history of heat waves are likely to experience many more, with potential health impacts, especially for the elderly." No where does it say people are going to die from hunger, cold, heat or thirst, in those words. But that is what it means.

So, please go read the report from the link below and really think about the meaning behind the predictions. Read between the lines. Do a little more research. I hope it scares you a bit. I'm sorry, but it's what we all need to do, to get us off our butts and making changes. Changes that last and changes that make a difference.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/629/629/6528979.stm

First we need the fear, to get us moving. Then the hope that what we are doing is helping, will sustain us for the long road ahead. We need to be holding a vision of a new future, but until we are sufficiently motivated, we won't see the need to even think about changing.

WUW - Plastic, Plastic Everywhere and Not a Drop to Decompose, EVER!

Out there in the Pacific Ocean, right now, is an accumulation of plastic garbage the size of Texas, 30 meters deep. It will not, ever, break down into inert organic compounds. Ever. The plastic will photo degrade into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic, to be eaten by sea life and eventually end up on your dinner plate. Yum!

Of the 15 billion pounds of plastic the US produces each year just 1 billion is recycled. The rest has a good chance of ending up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. You might want to think twice before buying anything made of plastic ever again.

Don't take my word for it, check out these links:

http://www.theiff.org/reef/reef4.html#
http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Pacific-Garbage-Patch27oct02.htm

WUW - The Downward Slope

I'd like to assume that you all have heard about the concept of Peak Oil, but I know better. Since it is a bit complicated and many great minds before me have done a better job than I have at explaining it, I'll direct you to a few. Now, go read these two PO primers and report back here.

http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php/

http://gailtheactuary.wordpress.com/2007/07/16/what-is-peak-oil/

(insert Jeopardy theme or other appropriate waiting muzak here)

You back? Good, just a little more to read...

Now you know the basic gist of the problem is that the supply of oil on this planet is relatively (within short geological time frames) finite and that our ability to get at that oil is limited by how easy it is to reach and by how many new sources we find each year, and that our demand for that oil grows more and more every year. So, basically you have an increasing demand and a decreasing supply. What happens when supply goes down and demand goes up? Prices rise, higher and higher as the gap widens, right? Eventually, it is no longer economically feasible to even be in the oil business as you have to price it out of the reach of the consumer.

Peak Oil is the beginning of the end of the Age of Oil. The question is not whether it will happen that we no longer rely on oil, but when and how that will play out. The issue is so complex, I don't think anyone can say for sure how this is going to go. But it has the potential to be tricky, to say the least. Personally, I welcome the end of oil dependency. But I don't relish the potential tough times ahead as we make the switchover. I am fortunate enough to be an upper-middle class citizen of a wealthy nation, and I expect that my family will weather the storms ahead pretty well. But I have friends and family who are barely keeping their heads above water financially, and I worry about them when the price of oil drives the cost of food and medicine and winter heat/summer AC beyond their reach. Let's not even get into the poor nations of this world (not today anyway).

I don't think most people realize how much of our world is made out of or using the energy from oil. This does not mean there aren't non oil based alternatives. Just that they are scarce and therefore dear, fiscally speaking. This is changing, thank God. The question now is whether it is changing fast enough.

See you Sunday for a rundown on the steps ahead!

Wake Up Wednesday

It's time to wake up!

I am starting a new venture here with what I call Wake Up Wednesdays. Every Wednesday there will be a blog post about vitally important issues that the people of this world need to wake up about. This week we are starting with climate change. I don't mean what you get regaled with on the nightly news or the Weather channel. I mean the hard core science and analysis provided by those not afraid to speak the scary and important Truth.

The quote below can be found here: http://www.energybulletin.net/36739.html

In a paper titled "Climate Change and Trace Gases" published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society earlier this year, six of America's leading climate scientists, led by James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, warned that the Earth is rapidly approaching a "tipping point" beyond which climate change will become unstoppable (www.planetwork.net/climate/Hansen2007.pdf). The authors discussed feedback mechanisms not included in the assessments of the IPCC and argued that unless effective measures are put in place to control CO2 emissions over the next ten years, the rise in the Earth's temperature could set loose self-reinforcing processes that would be beyond human control.

Some critics said Hansen was overstating his case. Richard Peltier, a University of Toronto physicist and the director of the Centre for Global Change Science, criticized the tone of the paper and the use of words such as "cataclysm," saying that Hansen had moved "dangerously away from scientific discourse to advocacy" (http://postcarboncities.net/node/1018).

But this was before the summer Arctic ice melt of 2007.

Please go read the rest of the article. It is time to get yourself informed about the state of the world and start doing what is needed. Speaking of taking action, on Sundays I will be posting about what we as a family have started to do to bring us closer to a sustainable way of life. I realized that most people who find out what I am doing are interested in knowing more about it. So, I will be going into detail about our efforts to show you how you can begin to make changes as well.

I welcome any and all feedback, and look forward to the discussion.