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Former Vice-President Al Gore has launched a $300 million campaign this month to inform, teach, and unite the public to actively join the wave of programs dedicated to climate protection, writes Juliet Eilperin in the Washington Post.

The “Alliance for Climate Protection,” also called the “We Campaign,” aims to mobilize Americans of all political and religious persuasions through all of the modern media tools, especially television and the Internet. Advertisements have appeared on American Idol, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Larry King Live and numerous online websites.

Organizers use attention-getting commercials such as a dialogue between Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson in which they josh each other about religious beliefs and then discover that they agree completely on what needs to be done about the climate crisis. Another “partnership” forged by the alliance is between the Girl Scouts and the United Steel workers of America.

One of the first ads, narrated by actor William H. Macy, reminds listeners of how America responded to other major challenges. “We didn’t wait for someone else to storm the beaches of Normandy,” Macy intones. “We didn’t wait for someone else to guarantee civil rights.” The ads are geared to convey the idea that the current environmental crisis is a problem that can be solved by Americans joining together.

Private contributions for one-half the amount have already been received, Eilperin reports. Gore has contributed all proceeds from his Oscar-winning documentary, ”An Inconvenient Truth,” his 2007 Nobel Peace prize honorarium as well other monetary prizes he’s been awarded.

Gore’s “We Campaign” takes advantage of the presidential election year in which all three leading candidates endorse federal limits on greenhouse gases, which means that new leadership in Washington will break with the environmental policies of the last eight years, writes Eilperin.
Source: NHNE Wavemaker News List 2008-04-17
Scientists announced the collapse last week of a huge Antarctic ice chunk the size of Manhattan, writes Set Borenstein for the Associated Press. Satellite images had shown the disintegration of a 160-mile chunk of ice starting around February 28, with the collapse now putting an even greater area at risk.

“This is the result of global warming,” said scientist David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey team. An actual runaway situation like this is “an event we don’t get to see very often,” said Ted Scmbos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. While icebergs naturally break away from the mainland over the years, “collapses like this are unusual but are happening more frequently in recent decades,” Vaughan said.

This particular area in western Antarctica, known as the Wilkins ice shelf, is about the size of Connecticut, writes Borenstein. Scientists had predicted a collapse about 15 years from now. The 4 percent of the shelf that gave way recently could trigger further collapse, although there is a chance it will survive until next year as this is the end of the Antarctic summer, noted Vaughan.

These occurrences are “more indicative of a tipping point or trigger in the climate system,” said Sarah Das of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Yet, while these parts of the ice shelf will not re-form, Das said, (“once they’re gone, they’re gone”), the climate in Antarctica is complicated and somewhat isolated from the rest of the world.

Therefore, while this is one of many wake-up calls, it is not a doomsday marker but instead should keep our focus on the many helpful proposals put forward to protect the planet.
Source: NHNE Wavemaker News List 2008-04-03
A classic NASA study has shown that common houseplants “clean the air” among other multiple environmental benefits, writes Barbara L. Minton, in her Natural News article. The NASA study supported numerous other research results showing that houseplants remove pollutants, specifically 87 percent of airborne toxins, within 24 hours.

Indoor environments can be up to ten times more polluted than outdoors, writes Minton, considering the presence of chemical emissions from building materials, glues and dyes, and household and personal care products. The Plants for Clean Air Council recommends one potted plant for each 100 square feet of living space, she reports. Specific plants which remove toxic emissions include ficus, philodendron, green spider plant, dracaena marginata, Chinese evergreen, the snake plant and the peace lilly.

According to a study at the University of Agriculture in Norway, plants also can increase humidity, thus altering dry air which contributes to coughs and sore throats. “Interior plants actually stabilize the humidity in your house by releasing moisture according to the existing levels of humidity in the air,” Minton says. Plants also suffer if the air is too dry, displaying brown leaves which is a sign that you may need a humidifier, she says.

Most people don’t realize that plants even alter the acoustic environment in an acoustically “live” room. At the South Bank University in London, “the sound absorption coeffiecients of a number of plant species were measured and compared with other building materials,” Minton reports. The study showed that plants in general were more efficient at absorbing high frequencies than low frequencies – significant because high frequencies are more irritating to humans than low frequencies.

Most people depend on plants to simply make a home or workplace more attractive. Minton reports that many studies have shown that plants contribute to a decrease in stress level, increase in creativity, and even increase shopping rates in malls and occupancy in hotels. She attributes these positive effects to cleaner air and “living energy flow.”

Barbara Minton is a school psychologist, author, breast cancer survivor using alternative treatments and a student of nature.
Source: NaturalNews.com 2008-03-20
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