How Do You Want To Help The Environment?

There are all sorts of ways to do something to improve our environment. Some are easy, some are a lot of fun, others may be difficult or possibly not even feasible depending on our circumstances. But there's always something that each one of us can do. Every little bit helps, more than might at first seem so.

There are the commonly routine things that can be done, such as recycling, taking reusable bags for our shopping instead of using plastic throw-aways, changing to low-energy light bulbs.

We can remove appliances from the mains which, when plugged in, remain on and pull energy even when we're not using them: such as remote control televisions, hifis. This can be done easily by plugging these appliances into an extension cord with a mains switch on it, allowing the appliance to be easily cut off from drawing current without having to bother with pulling the plug out each time. This way the convenience of the remote control can be enjoyed when the appliance is being used, but does not remain on all the time.

When there are alternatives, we can avoid buying electrical devices that use higher amounts of energy to run than another brand or technology that performs the same function. A BBC News article on July 4th entitled: "Gadgets 'threaten energy savings'" reported that much of the electronics being bought is less energy efficient than older technology, with flat-screen TVs and digital radios being the worst offenders. When we have these devices it's clear that it's even more important to turn them off when we're not using them.

On July 25 another BBC News article reported that The Energy Saving Trust has urged retailers to stop selling outdoor patio heaters as a report shows that their use will almost double over the next year. These are being used privately outdoors at home and also people are choosing to preferentially go to cafes and pubs that use them outdoors.

These are consumer choices. If we're consumers, we can help the environment with our decisions on what and where we buy.

We can use non-toxic cleaning agents when we're cleaning. For more information see previous DweezelJazz blog posts: "Cleaning With Non-Toxic Substances" and "Chemical Sensitivity and the New EU Chemical Law". Powerful cleaning agents contaminate our air and water systems. If we minimize our use of them, there will be far less polluting of our environment.

There are lots of fun things that can be done. If you like to garden, you can set up a garden that will benefit the wildlife around you. Recently there have been a number of articles about the decline of bees; a good starting point for reading about this is a post at Patagonia's The Cleanest Line blog "Precarious Predicament for Pollinators?" Some plants are beneficial to bees, others to butterflies. And in many places both bees and butterflies are endangered. There are many varieties of gardens that can be set up. You can see a very nice example of a drought tolerant garden at Mooky's Hood in a post called "A Small View of my Garden".

If you like to go on outings, another thing that's fun to do is to volunteer to help with an environmental project. On 2nd Star To The Right there's a really great article called "SOS", which stands for Save Our Seahorses describing, with fabulous photos of the seahorses, a volunteer project to help save seahorses in Malaysia. Today another article has been posted reporting that this same area is in danger of development in petrochemical and maritime industries. If you can spare a few minutes to read the article and sign a petition for the seahorses requesting that this area be conserved, that would be another great way to do something to help the environment!

Is there something you like to do that could be combined with some effort to help our environment?

Following Nature's Example To Reduce Pollution And Energy Waste

If human beings learn to behave more like swarms of insects, schools of fish, flocks of birds, or herds of animals we could make better progress with reducing pollution and taking care of our planet.

There are an increasing number of reports in the news related to climate change and pollution. It's becoming more and more clear that we need to take large scale action in order to optimize what the future holds for us and our world. There have been a few articles recently which illustrate clearly that we're jeopardizing the welfare of many people throughout the world already.

Back in May, a BBC article, "Oxygen supplies for India police" announced that police stations across Calcutta in India were equipped with oxygen devices to enable police to offset the effects of pollution. The article says that a recent report showed that 70% of the people in the city suffer from respiratory disorders, such as lung cancer, breathing difficulties and asthma, and that the police were among the worst hit by poor air quality. Doctors have cautioned that the oxygen may not help the policemen because "many of the pollutants are too deeply lodged in their lungs".

Another BBC article, published earlier this month, says that a report was quoted in a Financial Times article to say that "High levels of air pollution in China's cities leads to 350,000-400,000 premature deaths...Another 300,000 die because of poor-quality air indoors." There seems to be some dispute over the figures, but it is apparent from reports that increasing numbers of people are dying due to pollution.

Health problems all over the world are increasing as a result of pollution. Climate change is also becoming more noticeable as a result of our actions. A Greenpeace article "Expedition documents melting Himalayan glaciers" says that climate change is threatening the glacier source that provides water for one-sixth of humanity. The article says that scientists predict that 80% of the Himalayan glaciers will disappear within 30 years at the current warming rates.

Pollution and climate issues are clearly becoming more pronounced with every passing year. The key to reversing, or at the very least, slowing the progression of these problems is to raise general awareness to the severity of the problems. It seems there's still quite a ways to go to convince the majority of the population, as can be seen in the BBC article: "'Scepticism' over climate claims".

Seth Godin makes a great point in his blog post "Times a million". He says: "The way to sell the distant is to make it immediate." Be persuasive by presenting an argument that's personally meaningful by making sure it's something relevant to the person's experience. If the majority of individuals become convinced that these issues are important this could lead to a huge change.

The Live Earth concerts held this last weekend were a great way to combine pleasure and fun along with drawing people to a venue that raises awareness of what individuals can do in their own daily lives.

A couple of days ago I came across an article, "Swarms", at the Patagonia blog, which drew my attention to an article in National Geographic entitled "Swarm Theory". This article discusses the behavior of large groups in nature, such as bees, ants, schools of herring, herds of caribou. It looks to answer how the collective group can act as one unit in the best interests of all of them as a whole. Vijay Kumar, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania is quoted as saying: "In biology, if you look at groups with large numbers, there are very few examples where you have a central agent."

For animals traveling in large numbers, coordinating their movements with one another is vital to their staying alive. No one animal is in charge. The overall behavior relies on communication between individuals, while each individual follows a set of simple rules, each one acting on local information. The individual doesn't know what's happening throughout the entire community. The sum of these relatively simple actions by each individual adds up to a complex behavior of collective intelligence.

Software programs have been modeled on this simple behavior and are being used to successfully create management strategies for complex business processes, such as routing trucks and scheduling airlines. Using this type of behavior model is making the businesses much more efficient than they were when a centralized intelligence dictated what was to be done.

This emphasizes that one of the most effective ways for human beings to make a difference in any endeavor is for each individual to act according to a basic set of guidelines, according to what is possible or needed in their local vicinity. Swarm theory shows us how vitally important and effective it really is for each of us to make each small effort towards reducing pollution and energy waste, even if we don't understand or know what everyone else is doing.

What Can We Do As Individuals For The Environment?

In his article My web vs. The web Seth Godin points out that the world wide web has billions of pages and that the percentage each one of us will actually see of these in our lifetimes is so small as to be nearly unmeasurable. It's like thinking of grains of sand on a beach: there are so many out there that it's hard to really understand what that many means.
These pages represent an incredible amount of human activity, and yet they only represent a small fraction of what is actually taking place on Earth.

Even in the relatively small number of pages that we do encounter on the web, they bring us closer to people all over the world than has ever happened in history before. We can be aware of events affecting the lives of others, far away from us, almost in real time as they are happening. We can read about, hear and see those events, either as news reports, or as first-hand personal accounts and views.

There are so many of us now, that in relatively short time periods, actions taken in one hemisphere can directly affect the lives of those in the other. For example, pollution created in one country can have serious repercussions in others.

In addition, communication and mobilization of goods and people have created a global environment that can affect our lives just as much as our local environment. For example, the job market and the placement of industry are no longer defined simply by local demand, but also by global economics.

In a BBC article about the current plight of Europe's seas it says that they are in a serious state of decline due to coastal development, overfishing and pollution. The article goes on to point out that the study also showed that in some places, such as the North Sea, the ecosystem was improving. The reason given for this is that some of the heavy industries have been moved to China or India, probably having a severely negative effect there.

We are so many people going about our daily lives as best we can, sometimes unwittingly contributing to the unfolding of events. It is very easy to feel daunted by the enormity of the situation and the roller coaster ride we are taking ourselves on, along with all the species on our planet.


It's easy to forget the importance of the individual amongst all the numbers of people. Some individuals do a great deal to influence the world around them; others do things in small ways.




But society can only move forward when many individuals push toward improvement.

Each of us can make a vitally significant contribution by learning what we can do, and implementing it to minimise our personal negative impact on the Earth.