Our Days After Earth Day 2010
The 40th annual Earth Day was a success, with an estimated one billion people in 190 countries participating in some way, according to Earth Day’s website. Many people are forming green teams, dedicated to finding cost-effective ways to promote sustainability. Doing simple things such as printing on two sides of paper, and using a reusable water bottle rather than buying a new container each time you drink coffee or water. A stainless steel travel mug is the best option for this, so you can avoid the toxic effects that plastic water bottles have been found to give.
Meanwhile, the three day World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of the Mother Earth wrapped up in Cochabamba Bolivia. This conference largely grew out of how so many NGO’s were barred from any official dialogue at Copenhagen. Over 30,000 people participated in Bolivia and the conference resulted in a wide recognition that a world referendum is needed on climate change, a climate justice tribunal, and the protection of the rights of Mother Earth. Several people blogged about the conference. Hopefully they will accomplish an agreement at the summit planned to be held in Mexico later this year. Their bottom line is that they want to establish a legal framework for protecting our increasingly threatened natural environment and raising the global consciousness about Mother Earth, on which we all depend for life.
Now that so many people are on board, what are some of the things we can do going forward? This being the Friday File, what’s fun?
Sustainability can be fun if we take the right attitude to it. My current stainless steel travel mug is decorated with zebra stripes with a pink border, and I love using it. Look at lists of things we can do, such as on Earth Day’s website, and make a fun version of it.
If you’d like some inspiration, check out National Geographic’s website that shows some fun ways that Earth Day has been celebrated over the years.
And sometimes activities can be fun just because we’re helping our home planet and making a difference.
Tags: Bolivia, Copenhagen, Earth Day, National Geographic, People's Conference, sustainability, travel mug
Animal Facts & Photos
It’s fun to learn about animals, and there are several websites I’ve stumbled upon this week that you might enjoy looking at.
Eastern Bolivia is one of the most biologically diverse areas on Earth, according to BoliviaBella.com which has an online gallery of wildlife. Are flamingo’s born pink? What animal gave the financial security industry the idea to use iridescent images on paper currency and credit cards to make them difficult to counterfeit? And how many bear species are in South America? Answers to these and other questions can be found on this website, together with some wildlife photos.
If you like facts, read this next paragraph. If facts don’t work for you, and you prefer photographs, skip to the following paragraph.
From Bolivia to India. IloveIndia.com has a list that will delight anyone who really likes information. They have 3 pages of lists of “Facts About –“ animals, ranging from Facts About Lobster to Facts About Red Wolf to Facts About Echidna. They also answer questions such as Why do Horses Sleep Standing Up? and discuss Different Types of Whales.
If you’re more visually based, you may enjoy Buzz Inn’s page of photographs of the Strangest And Rarest Animals In World. The animals include the venomous, nocturnal, burrowing, insectivorous mammals called solenodons. Sea pigs and Vampire Squids make a certain impression, while personally I think the Ocelot and the Red Panda are among the cutest animals on the website. The writers share some interesting animal facts, such as that the brain of the river dolphin is 40% larger than a human brain. An okapi has a tongue that is long enough for the animal to wash its eyelids and clean its ears. And the Pig-Nosed Frog is the dinosaur of the frog species – about 50 to 100 million years old, it survived past environmental changes by living deep underground.
Have fun checking out the websites. Happy Friday!
Tags: animals, Bolivia, facts about animals, flamingos, India, red panda, strangest animals, Wildlife
