Wheezing Earth, update

The little tree Mark lovingly nurtured through its first 5 years died this summer. Too much heat, too little water. We should listen to the big message that little tree is sending all of us...


I found this neat applet that gives a quick and powerful visual of the carbon emissions different countries generate. It also displays the birth/death rates in those countries.

I'm not doing enough to make a difference, and I do more than most people I know. But, one of my new heroes, Annie Leonard, made this wonderful observation about the sorry state of things.

"The good thing about such all-pervasive problems is there's so many points of intervention."

See why she's a hero? She's not just an environmental wacko without credentials, either. A Columbia University graduate who went on to study city and regional planning at Cornell University, Annie traveled to over 30 countries, including Haiti, Bangladesh, India, the Philippines, Pakistan and South Africa, in her work investigating and promoting anti-pollution issues internationally.

Annie also produced The Story of Stuff a 20-minute video that opens your mind and your eyes to the insanity of our unsustainable lifestyles. Watching it is like swallowing the red pill in The Matrix, except it's just a cute little video with stick-figure animation and Annie talking...



We have to change, or change will be done to us and it will be more painful than $4 bucks to feed the gas guzzler. But then, pain's what motivates me. As my dear friend Nolan says, "I move, not because I see the light, but when I feel the heat."

And oh, it is getting hot out there...
If you were wondering, in the time it took me to create this post, 969,000 tons of CO2 were admitted into the atmosphere, and 5575 people were born, while 2420 died.