Fracking and Climate Change

Hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as ‘fracking’, is a drilling technique used to obtain oil and natural gas from deep in the ground. Patented in 1949 by Halliburton, the practice has expanded and advanced through today, with many companies taking part in this technique. The companies drill deep holes into the earth and cases it with steel and cement, then they pump a mixture of sand, water and chemicals into the well at high pressures, fracturing the rock, allowing natural gasses to flow out of the rock, through the tunnel to the surface where it is treated and removed. Generally, the wells ‘dry up’ within a few years, then they are plugged and the companies move on to other areas. Since 9/11 and conflicts with many countries with high rates of oil production and export, fracking has seen a boom in the U.S., in the last five years alone the U.S. has a daily increase of 3.7 million barrels of oil, dropping the import of oil by 44%. In 2012, the U.S. became the #1 producer of natural gas, removing Russia from the top spot. Obviously, this has been good for the economy of the U.S. but has it been good for our environment?

Environmental Impact:

With fracking, the use of natural gases have become much more abundant than the use of oil and coal. Natural gases output carbon dioxide at less than half the rate of oil and coal, which should be a good thing for the atmosphere. But, what studies are finding is that because the natural gases are more abundant suddenly (because of the prevalence of fracking), and cheaper than coal and oil imported from the Middle East, the rates of consumption have gone up, thus increasing the lowered rates of carbon output. Another problem with fracking is the release of natural gases into the atmosphere while drilling. Methane is the gas that could have the most alarming consequences, being 72 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, trapping heat in the atmosphere. Besides affecting the atmosphere, fracking has had negative effects on our nation’s human water supply, variously from leaks into communities’ ground water supplies and drinking wells to the high volume of water needed to use for the process itself. There have also been a number of earthquakes directly related to fracking practices. Another extremely unfortunate side effect of fracking is that it has taken the focus and funding away from actual clean energy resources that would not be harmful to the environment, such as solar and wind energy. With the funding going mostly towards fracking, solar and wind power research and technology funding has suffered greatly, unable to make strides towards clean energy. How can we shift funding back towards clean energy that is safer for personal health and safer for environmental health to slow down climate change?

Watch this Documentary:

Check out these links: 

http://www.livescience.com/39406-fracking-wasterwater-injection-caused-ohio-earthquakes.html?li_source=LI&li_medium=most-popular&li_campaign=related-test

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2014/10/american-power-fracking-boom-2014101121933879758.html

http://news.discovery.com/earth/global-warming/fracking-makes-climate-change-worse-not-better-141015.htm

http://grist.org/climate-energy/edf-defends-its-controversial-study-of-methane-leaks-from-fracking-wells/

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/05062015/fracking-has-contaminated-drinking-water-epa-now-concludes

Composting Corner

       Based on our survey results from last week, we discovered that while recycling seems to be a fairly common practice, more than one fifth of our readers never compost.  For those unfamiliar with the term, composting is the process of recycling organic materials such as leaves and certain food waste into a rich, soil additive.  While composting may sound like a daunting endeavor, it's one of the easiest and most beneficial ways to make a positive impact on our environment.  And any positive impact towards slowing down climate change is a good thing!

President Obama's Clean Power Plant Plan

 

President Obama has recently made some headlines in the news by introducing a controversial environmental and energy plan.  The plan is basically an executive order to force coal fired power plants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.  This is the biggest stance the president has taken to fight climate change.  These said power plants account for about 40 percent of the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions.  They are also one of the largest suppliers of powering electricity in the United States.  The plan estimates that will, prevent 3,600 premature deaths, prevent 1,700 non-fatal heart attacks, prevent 90,000 asthma attack on children and prevent 300,000 missed workdays and schooldays.  In addition it will also save the average american family nearly 85 dollars a year on their energy bills, save enough energy to power 30 million homes and save consumers 155 billion dollars from the years 2020-2030.  It will also boost the American economy by creating tens of thousands of jobs, continuing to lower the costs of renewable energy and leads to 30 percent more renewable energy generation.  These are all estimates of what life will be like in the year 2030.  

Now, there are negatives with this plan, such as immediately it will be very costly to put in place.  The proposal would also force the energy industry to deal wit the cost of decommissioning or retrofitting existing, functional power delivery systems and replacing them.  This is a very costly affair.  In addition, the Chamber of Commerce states that the plan places unrealistic demands on states, which results in more burden on individuals and businesses.  The chamber believes that the level of CO2 emissions reductions is unachievable for the power plants.  

However, even though this plan is far from perfect, it is a step in the right direction in terms of fighting climate change.  The leaders of our country need to realize that climate change is a serious problem that needs to be address sooner rather than later.  There is extreme weather happening due to the high levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.  The united Sates alone lost 65 billion dollars on super storm Sandy and 2.3 billion dollars on Hurricane Isaac.  President Obama realizes that climate change is a serious issue and is stepping in the right direction to combat it with this plan.  

For more information here are some links:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/climate-change

http://www2.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/06/02/Pros-and-Cons-Obama-s-New-Carbon-Rule

                                                                       

Not So Crazy Ideas On How to Combat Climate Change

Often times when talking about climate change, the same ideas are floated around.  And while most of these ideas are great, it is effective to think outside the box and think of ways that might seem a little crazy at first, but could do wonders to combat climate change.  

Here are 8 crazy sounding but not so crazy ideas to fight climate change:

1. Put reflective blankets on Greenland.  

Climate change has made Greenland’s ice sheets and glaciers melt at an alarming rate.  This means, among other things, that Earth is losing one of its most powerful reflective surfaces.  This is a very dangerous thing.  The melting rate has led glaciologist Jason Box to suggest that covering the country of Greenland in white blankets would help slow down climate change by keeping Greenland one of Earth’s most powerful reflective surfaces.  

2. Force-feed plankton blooms.

Plankton are some of the best organisms when it comes to absorbing carbon dioxide, and producing oxygen for the World.  Because of this, some scientists suggest that by placing big wave-powered pumps in the Pacific Ocean that would force the nutrient rich water in the colder regions to mix with the warmer regions and basically act like a feedlot for the large plankton blooms there.  

3. Drop Tree Bombs

This idea has some credibility because it successfully regenerated mangrove forests after Hurricanes Katrine and Rita.  Some geo-engineers think that we can generate almost instant forests by dropping these bombs that produce seedlings as soon as they hit the ground.  

4. ‘Plant” fake trees that absorb carbon. 

This proportions was proposed by Global Research Technologies.  These are artificial trees that act like real trees in which they remove carbon dioxide from the air.  The proportions stated that they would be planted on heavily congested highways.  Interesting enough, the proportion states that the trapped carbon dioxide is sold sold to soda makers for their uses of carbonation.  

5. Create man made volcanoes

This very controversial idea was first proposed by the book SuperFreakonomics.  It proposes that we mimic the ash spewing atmospheric cooling effects that a massive volcanic eruptions have.  We could do this by attaching several miles of garden hose to a helium balloon and pumping sulfer dioxide into the upper atmosphere.  This would block some sunlight and therefore cool off the planet.  

6. Giant orbital sun shield

Some scientists have thought of shooting huge mirrors into space to reflect the sun’s rays.  The mirrors could potentially be as large as the country of Greenland and would basically act as a shield blocking about 2 percent of the sun’s light.  However, there has yet to be proposed idea on how to get these giant mirrors into space.  

7. Cloud making ships.

Research has shown that puffy white low hanging clouds reflect quite a bit of sunlight.  This finding caused scientist to want to make more of these clouds.  The best way to do that would be to spray seawater high into the sky using special ships.  John Latham, one of the leading people of this concept states that it will take about 1,500 ships to do the job correctly.  

8. Raise garlic eating cattle

Cows and other livestock produce millions of tons of methane into the atmosphere each year.  Because methane is such a deadly greenhouse gas, some scientist have proposed to feed these livestock a bunch of garlic.  This is because garlic is able to kill the methane producing stomach bacteria which makes cow flatulence so deadly.  

These ideas are all very much works in progress and some of them are more crazy than others.  However, if people keep ignoring climate change and the problems with the environment, we might not have much of a choice but the put some of these ideas into action.  

For the full article click here:

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/photos/9-not-so-crazy-ideas-to-combat-climate-change/junk-science-or-s

By:Garrett Sanders

Animals Effected By Climate Change More Than Humans

There are still people out there that deny that the weather is getting warmer and warmer.  Most of the West Coast is experiencing problems with droughts from California to Washington.  These droughts are abnormally dry to exceptional drought, which is the worst.  A good portion of the California is in a stage of exceptional drought.  The East Coast isn’t without areas of abnormally dry and moderate drought too.  The country has experienced droughts before but none this bad.  The constant heating of the world has led to harmful conditions for many animals, in fact most animals are more affected by climate change than we are.

With the hotter climate the natural habitat for many animals is changing much faster than it ever has.  Many species have experienced an extreme change in the weather before but it has always been a much slower process.  The food sources for many animals in the wilderness are also at risk as plants are being affected by the change in the weather too.The salmon is experiencing major effects of climate change recently.  In Washington State and elsewhere the water levels are lower than they usually are and the temperature of the air is warmer.  This results in warmer water temperatures that the salmon simply isn’t used to.  Salmon rely on the cold water of their streams to go up river to mate and then swim make down river.  The problem is that the temperatures are above their normal and the fish are being cooked in the rivers, their normal habitat at this time of the year.  Hundreds of thousands of salmon have already died this year due to being cooked in the rivers.

The polar bear is the poster child for global warming because they are large and cute and almost everyone knows about them.  Normally polar bears use the ice caps to hunt and fish but every year the ice caps are starting off smaller and melting earlier.  With this their natural habitat and hunting territory is gone.  It has been theorized by many people that the polar bear will be able to adapt to live more like the traditional bear but there has yet to be any evidence of that. Reindeer’s are another type of species having trouble surviving the warmer temperatures.  This includes the caribou as they are classified as the same species with one being domesticated and the other being wild.  Reindeer have adapted to their climate by growing more fur and not having sweat glands.  The problem with this is that there is no way for them to vent their heat during the summer, making it extremely hard to survive the summer.

There have already been a small number of species that have become extinct recently.  Take a look at the golden toad from Central America, it and the Monteverde harlequin frog have recently become extinct and it is thought to be that they were killed off due to the climate.  These could just be the first of many species if they can’t learn to adapt to a different climate. Many animals in the wild kingdom are being threatened by climate change.  These animals vary from fish, to reptiles, to mammals.  In most cases the most we can do is hope that the animals learn to adapt to a new climate as we fight to slow down and stop climate change.  There is the chance that there will be animals that our kids will never see that we used to think were common place.

Climate Change: Some of the Challenges and Solution Approaches

A few weeks back I had the opportunity to attend a presentation delivered by Dr. William Jaeger who is the author of several books along with articles about natural resource and environmental issues. Jaeger's research encompasses energy, land and water use, taxation, sustainable development.  Many people tend to believe that environmental issues are simple problems that can be easily identified, evaluated, and solved with a simple policy or approach.  It is important for us to understand that evaluating the risks and costs of environmental degradation is a very complex task.   Because of the inherent complexity, scientists continue to develop innovative ways to help alleviate the crisis of climate change and over the years they have devised different methods that can be applied to different circumstances.

According to Dr. Jaeger, it becomes difficult to ascertain with accuracy the extent of the possible adverse consequences of pollution and the associated costs.  He stressed that finding solutions to environmental problems is a complex task because it involves dreary collective bargaining, the issue of efficiency, the question of equity, the challenge of measuring costs, the issue of intangibility.

Dr. Jaeger discussed a few of the tools available to alleviate environmental problems which includes regulation standards, public works, and market based approaches.  He also noted that the tools available are debatable approaches as each produces variable results.  One of the tools used by environmental scientists to evaluate costs and benefits is computer simulation programs.  However, Jaeger recognizes that evaluating costs using computer simulation software has its own drawbacks because the program can produce environmental degradation probabilities with a too wide margin of error.  Another tool, according to Dr. Jagger, is the public works approach but it can create situations in which individuals charged with the management of public natural resources tend to seek benefits for themselves, certainly neglecting their ethical and public responsibility.  He also noted that the regulation standards approach produces mixed results.

Despite the impediments that exist to reach accord about environmental goals, Dr. Jaeger enumerated some of the methods we can employ to overcome the obstacles of organization.  He argues in favor of using international trade penalties on environmental negligent countries, and the need to use litigation against firms or individuals causing damage to the environment.  He argues that the revenue obtained from trade penalties can be used to subsidy poor countries to take actions that protect the environment.  In the view of Dr. Jaeger, market based approaches are the least costly and more efficient than other policy methods because the market has the capacity to adjust to government regulations.  Moreover, he argues that the market has the capacity to innovate and produce environmentally friendly goods such as fuel efficient cars, hybrids cars, and other products.  We can all do our part to protect the environment by taking basic approaches such as using energy efficient products and purchasing Eco-friendly merchandises.

If you would like to learn more about challenges of assessing climate challenge and the approaches used to alleviate the crisis, click the links below:

http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/weitzman/files/damagesfunctionglobalwarming.pdf

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/223489619_Is_sustainability_optimal_Examining_the_differences_between_economists_and_environmentalists

Simple, Easy Actions To Help Combat Climate Change

In world today climate change is often an overwhelming topic of conversation.  There is just so much to be done and so many problems and issues that you may not even feel like even thinking about solutions to fighting climate change.  Luckily there are some easy, simple, everyday activities that everyone can do to fight this important fight.  Even though this steps may not feel like much just remember that if everyone does a little, that can add up to a lot.
10 ideas on actions to take:
1) Get a free energy audit.  The company Cape Light Compact offers this free service to tell you whether your house is losing heat in certain areas of your home and how to fix these issues.
2) Be careful with your car A/C.  Did you know that your gas consumption increases by 20 percent while your A/C is running? Save gas, money AND the environment by purely rolling down your car windows and enjoying the breeze.
3) Avoid speeding in your vehicle.  The EPA estimates that you can improve your gas mileage by 15 percent by staying at 55 mph on the freeway, rather than the normal 65.
4) Get out and walk more.  Instead of driving down to the corner market that is only a block away, take a nice walk! Not only is it good for you and you'll feel better, mother nature will feel a whole lot better too.
5) Turn off the water when you are brushing your teeth.  This may be a tiny water savings, but if millions of us all do it, it adds up to a great deal of water.
6) When you take a vacation during the summer, just turn the A/C off! The same principle goes for winter time with the heater.  Rather, just close blinds and keep doors closed to regulate temperature properly.
7) Double check to make sure no pipes are leaking.  Not only will you save money and the environment but the water pressure will work much better too!
8)  Wash your clothes in cold water.  Consumers Union and Coop America did a study which shows that clothes get the same amount of clean whether washed in cold, warm or hot water.  You can reduce your carbon emissions 600 pounds a year by switching to cold water for every load.
9) Shorten your showers.  This one may seem hard but just think about all the extra time you'll have in morning if you take shorter showers!
10) Set your refrigerator for 37-40 degrees and your freezer to 5 degrees.

Note that these are just a handful of simple actions to take to combat climate change.  There are many, many more ideas out there.
For more ideas click on the links below

Simple Steps to Combating Climate Change:
https://www.retailpackaging.com/blog/2013/02/27-ways-to-prevent-climate-change-a-guide-for-independent-retailers/

http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/10-easy-ways-you-can-help-to-stop-climate-change-starting-today--ekE2mOTIBx

http://globalwarming-facts.info/50-tips/?singlepage=1

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/wycd/

By: Garrett Sanders

Results from Climate Change Survey

Now that we have a second Climate Change survey for everyone to take (http://goo.gl/zymMpi), it is as good of a time as any to go over the results of the first one.

Climate Change Survey

Observations:
- While most people readily recycle, composting is a different story with people being pretty split about their composting frequency
- The majority of the people surveyed have at least some interest in environmental topics
- Charts and graphs are easily the most preferred method of viewing data
- People don't seem to have a preference on the geography of environmental topics
- The vast majority of people surveyed are "absolutely" concerned with climate change
- Most people seem to agree that there is human interaction is one of the factors leading to climate change, but a good chunk of people are not completely discounting any natural cycles that are also in play
- Over 2/3 of the people surveyed would be interested in learning about ways they could help slow down climate change, while just under 2/3 of them are definitely interested in a website where they could learn such things (hint, hint)


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It is time to take action

Carbon dioxide and other global warming pollutants are collecting in the atmosphere like a thickening blanket, trapping the sun's heat and causing the planet to warm up.

As we know, global warming is a sign of climate change and our environment got damage. However, the United States Global Change Research Program concludes that climate change also poses unique challenges to human health such as:

• Significant increases in the risk of illness and death related to extreme heat and heat waves are very likely. 
• Some diseases transmitted by food, water, and insects are likely to increase.
• Certain groups, including children, the elderly, and the poor, are most vulnerable to range of climate related health effects.

These effects will result in significant costs to our families and the economy. 

Take Action:

We can each play an important role in stopping climate change click here to help make a difference right now: http://www.nrdc.org/action/ and find more action ideas here: http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/gsteps.asp

By : Hanxiang Yu

Climate Change Survey #2

Drive less, drive differently

You may think that your efforts in reducing climate changes are useless. But what you don’t know is any little green changes in your life will definitely have impacts on people around you and on earth as well. One of these changes would be driving your car less or even driving it differently.  The truth is that your car produces a high amount of carbon dioxide (CO2).  If you still want to drive you can pay more attention to fuel efficiency in your car which may be the single biggest thing you can do to prevent climate change.  Replacing your gas-guzzling car with a fuel-efficient one is by far the best thing you can do, out of all your choices. Or simply, you can slow down, don't race your car's engine, and watch your usage. All of these save on gas – and of course saving you money- and have a big impact on burning gasoline.

On the other hand, what you can do is to drive less. Walk or ride a bicycle for short trips, or take public transportation for longer ones. Several studies have shown that people who use public transportation are healthier than those who don’t. Moreover, families that use public transportation can save adequate money annually to cover their food costs for the year. Those were simple options to help reducing climate change that will not harm you but would defiantly make your life healthier and save the earth from another perspective. 

Read more:

http://www.clf.org/blog/clean-energy-climate-change/why-driving-less-and-biking-more-celebrates-earth-day-every-day/

What kind of car is the most green?

Most major automobile manufacturers are now selling more environmentally-friendly models. With all the different options and types it's easy to get confused about what's what and what is actually good for the environment and not just hype.

Here's a chart comparing and contrasting the various options people have (excluding the more expensive options like the Tesla Model S) when it comes to cost to drive and emissions:

How green vehicles match up.

The day where everyone drives an electric car is not coming up any time soon, but as you can see in the chart, even just switching to a more efficient gasoline vehicle can lead to significant emissions reductions and lower petroleum use.

Note: this only includes options sold by major auto companies, not the various post-conversion options available (like vegetable oil, etc.).

Battery electric
Pros: Tax subsidies, less carbon emissions
Cons: Range less than 100 miles, take hours to charge, generally more expensive than a similar gasoline vehicle

Diesel
Pros: range of more than 500 miles (ideal for long highway commutes)
Cons: Limited vehicle options, not quite as efficient as hybrids

Compressed natural gas
Pros: None
Cons: Dead technology

Hybrid
Pros: Great for stop and go traffic, only generates 55% of the carbon dioxide of a conventional gasoline car
Cons: More expensive than regular cars,

Plug-in hybrid
Pros: Low carbon emissions
Cons: Not all are made equal, some have very low all-electric range, not ideal for longer trips

Gasoline
Pros: Less expensive
Cons: Produce a third more pollution per mile than hybrid

In addition to these options, manufacturers are also rolling out cars that run on hydrogen fuel cells (which are greener than gasoline, but less clean than battery-electric). Hyundai has begun leasing its Tucson model in certain areas in California (with Toyota and Honda having models due out soon), but it is still early on and there are very few areas that the car would be feasible everyday option in.

Hopefully that breakdown will help you make a smart decision about how you can lower your carbon emissions, and thus helping slow down climate change, while still finding a vehicle that still fits your everyday needs.

http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/a-fi-hy-green-car-emissions-20150713-story.html#page=1

Don't forget to take our climate change survey: http://goo.gl/fw6oby

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Everyone Taking Small Steps Can Lead to Big Changes

Climate change is a big problem, perhaps one of the most severe the world has yet faced. It effects us all, and progress can be frustrating when political leaders do not lead in this area. Fortunately, we do not have to wait to make small changes in our lives that make a big impact on the planet, and author Elizabeth Rogers has compiled that list in The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time.

This book contains hundreds of small steps any individual can take right now to reduce their impact on the environment and slow degradation. Some examples are:

----->"Don’t ask for ATM receipts. If everyone in the United States refused their receipts, it would save a roll of paper more than two billion feet long, or enough to circle the equator fifteen times!
-----> Turn off the tap while you brush your teeth. You’ll conserve up to five gallons of water per day. Throughout the entire United States, the daily savings could add up to more water than is consumed every day in all of New York City.
-----> Get a voice-mail service for your home phone. If all answering machines in U.S. homes were replaced by voice-mail services, the annual energy savings would total nearly two billion kilowatt hours. The resulting reduction in air pollution would be equivalent to removing 250,000 cars from the road for a year!"

These are all very simple steps that do not require more work. In fact, many of these ideas save ourselves time and money, and reduce resource consumption. It's a win-win! 

Please check The Green Book out at the library or buy it from Amazon for $0.01. The everyday tips, if done in aggregate, can lead to changes of a global proportion.

The greenest way to charge your mobile devices

The Siva Cycle Atom easily mounts to your bike to generate power

There are many little ways you can cut down your daily energy usage. One way is the Siva Cycle Atom, a device that can charge your mobile devices while you pedal. It uses the same concept as other bike-based generating systems that use pedal power for lights, but Siva Cycle went one better with the Atom, with the ability to charge anything you can plug into a USB port. The weather-resistent device mounts easily to the rear wheel of any bike. You just need to go at lease 5 mph in order to start producing power. Any leftover juice generated is stored in the 1,650-mAh battery pack for whenever you stop or ride slowly.

The Siva Cycle Atom was originally conceived as a way to bring power to unreliable electrical infrastructures in developing countries around the world.

The device does add 10% to your pedaling effort, but that shouldn't be noticeable to most riders. In order to fully charge the Atom battery you will need to pedal at an average speed of 13 mph for 100 minutes.

With this product (for $129) you can turn an eco-friendly form of transportation into an eco-friendly way to power your mobile devices.

http://sivacycle.com/products/the-atom

Don't forget to take our term survey: https://t.co/pVfu2NoNxu

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Slowing the pace of climate change: An overview of our priorities to help ensure inter-generational equity.

Climate change is worldwide crisis triggered by population growth and economic activity. If we don’t take an effective approach to alleviate the crisis, the social well-being of future generations will deteriorate at a faster rate than ours. No matter where environmental degradation and pollution takes place, the negative effects of climate change affect people everywhere whether they live in rich countries or poor countries. Because people living in poor countries are only concerned in meeting their basic subsistence needs, they are a lot more likely than advanced societies to cause environmental degradation such as deforestation, depletion of vital natural resources, damage to ecosystems, and other types of environmental problems. I will point to some of the priorities that we face as a society which have been advanced by social scientists to promote sustainability across generations.

According to the World Development report, 95% of world population growth will occur in underdeveloped countries. In the same report, social scientists argue that fertility trends and demographic changes of the world population are two of the most important concerns for the analysis of sustainability as those two factors have a strong link to population growth as well as a strong link to poverty levels. Population increases of higher magnitudes places an enormous stress on the assimilative capacity of the environment, generates more wastes, and threatens the health conditions of people worldwide. In many regions of the world that experience extreme poverty, environmental degradation is inevitable, and under such circumstances technological change is not able to keep up with the demands of a growing population.  Poor countries lack the economic resources needed to invest in environmental protection. For this reason, the most effective approach to improve our current environmental situation is to help increase the income of poor countries. To improve the standard of living in developing countries, it becomes imperative to invest more in education with emphasis in expanding the economic opportunities of women, to increase investment in family planning, and to reduce infant mortality. Policy makers believe that without incentives and without appropriate policies, scarce resources will be utilized inefficiently, damage to the environment will be excessive, and the negative effects of development will dominate. Social scientists have come to realize that environmental sustainability can only be achieved after alleviating poverty and reducing inequality.  Once the very poor have more access to education, more access to sufficient credit, and appropriately defined property rights, they can start to invest in capital and other methods that can reduce environmental degradation.

If you would like to learn more about environmental protection approaches, facts about climate change, income inequality, and organizations devoted to the protection of the environment click the links below.

http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/poorest-list/10-countries-with-the-worst-income-inequality/

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/12/19/global-inequality-how-the-u-s-compares/

http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/world/poorest-countries-in-the-world/

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange

http://www.ucsusa.org

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Some simple ways to help slow down climate change

The Washington Department of Ecology has a helpful list of simple, little things everyone can do to reduce personal use of fossil fuels and to help slow climate change. Most of it is  common sense and practical (turning off unused appliances, changing lights,  driving less), but some of it may be a bit too idealized (low-flow shower heads are nice in theory, but a little iffy in execution).

There are downsides to low-flow shower heads...

What YOU Can Do - Washington Department of Ecology

Stay tuned for information regarding the launch of this term's website.

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Follow @ecopol_project

Save the Planet by Copying These Celebrities

Celebrities have always been trend-setters. While not everyone agrees on environmental issues, we can all agree that we should all copy celebrities as much as we can in our daily lives. For ages, people have taken cues from celebrities when it comes to all kinds of things like fashion, pets, vacation destinations, etc. Now with the rise of environmental awareness in recent years, we now have the benefit of hearing about how we can be more environmentally friendly by following the cues and tips of Hollywood's elite...

Last year's "It-Girl" Shailene Woodley makes her own cheese, toothpaste, body lotions, face oils, medicine, and gets all of her water from fresh mountain springs every month. No word on how much energy is spent on each of those mountain excursions.

You can cut down on your water consumption by showering with a "friend" like Grammy Award-winning rapper and Fast & Furious supporting player, Ludacris.

Former Victoria Secret model and current professional narcissist Tyra Banks contributed to a book full of everyday environmental tips, The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet, along with a slew of other self-important celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres, Jennifer Aniston, and Tiki Barber (which certainly dates the book since it's been a while since he was relevant), among others.

Cate Blanchett controversially appeared in a commercial in her native Australia (free of charge) actually promoting a carbon tax to help cut down the use of polluting fossil fuels.

Aside from being one of the greatest human beings ever (for punching Justin Bieber), Orlando Bloom also founded the Global Cool Foundation (globalcoolfoundation.org), a non-profit whose goal is to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, utilizing educational initiatives to reduce overall energy use.

If you have the finances to do so, you could be like Leonardo DiCaprio and drive super expensive electric cars. In between bedding the entire Victoria's Secret catalog and getting snubbed repeatedly at the Academy Awards, he also found time to produce and narrate the 2007 documentary The 11th Hour, which proposes potential solutions to many of the environmental issues facing the planet (like climate change, deforestation, mass species extinction, etc.).

Those are just a few of the celebrities you can try to emulate and model your life on. Or you could always just do your own thing...

What you can do?

What you can do?

CO2 is a major contributor to climate change, or "global warming. We burn fossil fuels such as gasoline, oil, coal, and natural gas to run our vehicle engines and to heat and light our homes. Burning fossil fuels increases the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. How can we slow down climate change? There are several ways. Drive less, weatherproof you home, changes your lights, cut hot water use, adjust your thermostat, turn off power, purchase green power, plant trees and vegetation, recycle and reuse, shop smart. These actions are not hard for each person it is easy to do but it is the key to slow down the climate change. Let us protect our environment by doing little things.

By: Hanxiang Yu