10/15 Creation Corner Col.: Divestment, Eco-shopping, Slogans, New Words, Walking Routes, Carbon Footprint Calculators

Online Campaign

Divestment from fossil fuels in the 200 publicly traded companies that hold the majority of coal, oil and gas reserves.  Meant for universities, religious institutions, local governments, etc. 700 divestment campaigns worldwide.  http://www.Gofossilfree.org 

Shopping For a Better World

1000 companies that give back 1% of their sales to nonprofits dedicated to protecting our environment: http//:www.onepercentfortheplanet.org 

 

Slogans

Divestment is the tactic, climate justice is the goal.  To reduce fossil fuel use "Keep the coal in the hole, the gas beneath the grass, and the oil below the soil."

New Words/Definitions

Anthropocene:  suggests that the Earth has now left its natural geological epoch, the present interglacial state called the Holocene.  Human activities have become so pervasive and profound that they rival the great forces of Nature and are pushing the Earth into planetary terra incognita.  The Earth is rapidly moving into a less biologically diverse, less forested, much warmer, and probably wetter and stormier state

Hockey stick-shaped trajectories, popularized by Prof. Michael Mann at Penn State Univ., as seen on graphs, (see example below) depict accelerations, such as for earth system trends of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, stratospheric ozone, surface temperature, ocean acidification, marine fish capture, shrimp aquaculture, coastal nitrogen, tropical forest loss, domesticated land, terrestrial biosphere degradation. For socio-economic trends, the hockey stick shape occurs for world population, real GDP, foreign direct investment, urban population, primary energy use, fertilizer consumption, large dams, water use, paper production, transportation, telecommunications, international tourism.

                                                                                                    

                                                                                         

Green Exercise versus Mall Walking

While walking in nature has been shown to be especially restorative, helping reduce stress and lowering heart rate and blood pressure, more so than city walking, many people choose to seek out malls for a walking regimen, as they also provide many advantages. See http://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/downloads/mallwalking-guide.pdf

Carbon Footprint Calculators

Carbon footprints express the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as carbon dioxide equivalents.  Such gases contribute to climate change, with global agriculture and food production accounting for 25 to 30 percent of the emissions.  Other variables, besides your food consumption, include how you heat your home, how much electricity and gasoline you use, how often you fly, and how you handle your garbage.

To check out your carbon footprint, see such calculators at

http://www.nature.org/greenliving/carboncalculator 

http://www.carbonindependent.org

http://www3.epa.gov/carbon-footprint-calculator 

http://www.coolclimate.berkeley.edu

  

Note:  This monthly column began in October 1997, in the newsletter of the ecumenical United Churches of Lycoming County, PA (www.uclc.org) and is thus starting its 19th year.  It was "adopted" as a blog by the web site http:www.LutheransRestoringCreation.org in March of 2011.

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