Small Actions to Change the World #6 (Blog Carnival)

Hi there, I'm really glad you stopped by to check out SustainaBee's "Small Actions to Change the World" Blog Carnival. This is the 6th edition and it keeps growing and growing! Of course the Blog Action Day on the Environment a couple of weeks ago helped a bit :-).
I am sorry for posting a week late, it was my birthday a week ago, and since then I have had really full days. Especially that I'm starting a new student organisation on technology and sustainability (e.g. asking questions like "what are the social implications of technology?" or "what is the role of engineering in development assistance?") I've been running from one place to another.

I'm thinking about having the carnival posted on a different blog every second time (i.e. SustainaBee once, two weeks later a different sustainability/environmental/social blog and so on). If you are interested in hosting a "Small Actions to Change the World" carnival, let me know by writing me an email!

Without further waiting, I present you the "Small Actions to Change the World" :-).

Summer presents Save Money By Saving Water posted at Your Frugal Family.

FitBuff presents Negativity is Contagious, Are You Immune? posted at FitBuff.com's Total Mind and Body Fitness Blog, saying, "This study shows how the smallest actions and ideas can not only change the world, but our own minds!"

Kevin Bedell presents A Simple Step You Can Take: Install a Low Flow Shower Head posted at 21st Century Citizen.

Tupelo Kenyon presents Choose the Companionship of Positive People Who Inspire You posted at Tupelo Kenyon, saying, "If the people you spend the most time with are inspiring, supportive, encouraging, and they demonstrate qualities you want to emulate – great, you are on the right track. If not, it's up to you to do something about it. Life is too short to put up with other people's pity parties, bitch-and-moan marathons, and oh-woe-is-me clubs. (Enjoy soothing instrumental music as you read plus songs with lyrics related to each article – all free.)"

Phil B. presents 3 Reasons to Stop Using Dryers « Phil for Humanity posted at Phil for Humanity, saying, "Dryers, also known as drying machines or clothes dryers, may be fast and convenient to quickly dry our clothes and linens, however we seldom consider how much they really cost."

WhatWorksForUs presents What Works For Us: Save $$ - Go (Lime) Green posted at What works For Us.

Karen (aka Karooch) presents Shower with a Friend for Blog Action Day 2007 posted at Scraps of Mind.

Edith presents How You are Impacting the World (Blog Action Day) posted at Edith Yeung.Com: Dream. Think. Act..

Phil B. was quite active , presenting another post: Recycle Christmas Trees « Phil for Humanity posted at Phil for Humanity, saying, "It is almost that time of year again when we buy a new Christmas tree. Are you going to just throw it away when done with it?"

Matthew Spears presents Joy at All Times posted at Loving Awareness, saying, "We tend to think of joy as somehow mutually exclusive to other experiences. If we're feeling sad, then of course it's impossible to have joy. Likewise if we're having a fight or our business is having a downturn. This article points out how they're not exclusive, and helps the invitation of joy into your life."

SpiKe presents 20 Tips For Laying The Foundations Of Your Environmentally Friendly Habit posted at Organize IT.

Silicon Valley Blogger presents 10 Simple Ways To Save Money And The Environment posted at The Digerati Life.

That's it again for an edition of "Small Actions to Change the World". If you want to submit a post to this carnival use our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on blog carnival archive.

And as always I will end with something inspiring. This time it's a speech of one of of the Nobel Peace Prize winners this year Al Gore. It's a talk he did on TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), an exclusive gathering of many inspirational people. In the second part of this video he talks about how the individual can help by doing his or her part in averting climate change. Have fun!

A call for a 'Stern Review' on Biodiversity (Blog Action Day)

Background You've probably heard of the Stern Review, now a much-quoted 600-page study. It is a report written be the ex-Chief Economist of the World Bank stating that inaction towards climate change (i.e. doing business as usual) will cost the world economy 5% to 20% or more of the global domestic product (GDP). It has done a lot to push forward the idea that environmental management and climate protection also makes financial sense and to show that it is in fact not contradictory to economic growth. Through environmental protection new markets will even open up, especially in the energy sector. New technologies will emerge.

Focus and 'concentration': CO2, CO2, CO2 Now the problem is that much of the focus is concentrated on CO2 and ppm (parts per million) and how we can reduce the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. But the global problem goes much more than there - once CO2 emissions are stabilised it's not the end of the job. We might have stopped climate change but we should not forget the other things in life. Most importantly - biodiversity. To explain shortly, biodiversity means the varieties of life and living beings. It is essential to life. You could even go as far as saying it IS life. But the diversity of living creatures is decreasing day by day. If you've seen Planet Earth (BBC environmental series), it is really sad to think that younger children today can only see some of the creatures featured in the series on video because these animals will have gone extinct by the time the children grow up. Some of the creatures were even captured on film for the first time. It is sad to think that it might be the last time as well.

A call So I want to make a call for a Stern Review on biodiversity. Sometimes the only language people will understand is money. The Stern Review showed that inaction will cost up to 20 times as much or more than stern actions (excuse the pun :-) ) on climate change. This finally made some politicians and business people listen to the problems of climate change.

There is the IPCC Report from the UN that focuses on the scientific basis of climate change (which just recently won the Nobel Prize along with Al Gore, by the way), and the "financial" counterpart to this is the Stern Review.
There is also a huge UN Biodiversity Report called the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, it is similar in scale as the IPCC report. But what is missing now is the "financial" counterpart for this one.

Quantifying biodiversity in monetary terms will be a huge challenge, especially because of the interrelations and connections between the different organisms. Who is to say what an ant, whale, horse, bee costs as an animal group? It is already hard to put a money value on an animal species in a small part of a small region of the world. Doing this on a global scale will be a challenging and daunting task, and whoever takes it up will get hard criticism and praise at the same time. But it will shed light on the biodiversity problems we are heading at. If a report of this kind doesn't work, maybe we need an Al Gore for biodiversity.

(This post is part of the Blog Action Day on the Environment)

Small Actions to Change the World #5 (Blog Carnival)

Hi everyone and welcome to the 5th edition of "Small Actions to Change the World" carnival. This is the first one that is published after 2 weeks. If this turns out to be good, I will keep on posting these editions every 2 weeks. That's why this post will be a bit shorter than you are used to. And I'm sorry this post is a day late; next to organising my university courses, my part time work, my volunteer work and the weekend class reunion I had little time in between, so I hope you forgive me :-).

FitBuff presents Lifeline Screening: 15 Types of Blood Tests and Checkups You Need posted at FitBuff.com's Total Mind and Body Fitness Blog, saying, "So, how do you make sure you are aware of your true overall health condition without becoming a paranoid hypochondriac? Below is a list of tests and screenings that should be included in your regular checkups..."

sasha presents Making a Personal Difference to the Environment posted at Tempyra, saying, "An article on me taking stock of the little changes I've made to my life with the aim of reducing my personal impact on the environment and a list of further improvements I want to make. I'm looking for comments and ideas about reducing your environmental impact."

SustainaBee says: That's a great idea; it can be very encouraging to see what things you've done and to set goals that you want to achieve!

Ravi Vora presents 5 Creative Ways to Have a Great Week | Ravi Vora posted at Ravi Vora. Thank you for a nice and short post :-).

Summer presents Save money by saving water posted at Your Frugal Family.

SustainaBee says: Another example of how saving the environment also makes financial sense!

Sarah Filipiak from German Sheperd Central presents Don’t Buy That Puppy In The Window saying: "The simple move of bypassing pet stores in your search for your next dog will save lives." Wow, what an insightful post. I didn't know these things about puppies.

That's it for this edition of "Small Actions to Change the World". I hope you had a nice read :-)! If you want to submit a post, use the carnival submission form.

Past editions of the carnival can be found here.

And as always, I will conclude this carnival edition with an inspiring story. This one is a lecture (a edited WSJ.com-version YouTube video is included in this post) that has inspired me in the last few weeks. Here is a part of the WSJ article (and at the bottom you can find the YouTube video and the link to the complete lecture on Google Video):

"Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon University computer-science professor, was about to give a lecture Tuesday afternoon, but before he said a word, he received a standing ovation from 400 students and colleagues.

He motioned to them to sit down. "Make me earn it," he said.
What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? For Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch, the question isn't rhetorical -- he's dying of cancer. Jeff Zaslow narrates a video on Prof. Pausch's final lecture.

They had come to see him give what was billed as his "last lecture." This is a common title for talks on college campuses today. Schools such as Stanford and the University of Alabama have mounted "Last Lecture Series," in which top professors are asked to think deeply about what matters to them and to give hypothetical final talks. For the audience, the question to be mulled is this: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance?

It can be an intriguing hour, watching healthy professors consider their demise and ruminate over subjects dear to them. At the University of Northern Iowa, instructor Penny O'Connor recently titled her lecture "Get Over Yourself." At Cornell, Ellis Hanson, who teaches a course titled "Desire," spoke about sex and technology.

At Carnegie Mellon, however, Dr. Pausch's speech was more than just an academic exercise. The 46-year-old father of three has pancreatic cancer and expects to live for just a few months. His lecture, using images on a giant screen, turned out to be a rollicking and riveting journey through the lessons of his life."



The full lecture can be seen on Google Video

How CO2 is stealing the show

This is a post from another blog that I started but have unfortunately discontinued. But only so I have more time to focus on SustainaBee :-). So this post might sound a bit more serious, because it was for a more serious blog. Here it is:

===

News about climate change is increasing. And more and more the focus is set on the big bad Greenhouse Gas called Carbon Dioxide, also known as CO2. The focus of many studies is how we can reduce CO2 emissions, be it through more efficient technology, by consuming less, by driving less and so on. Study after study are confirming: Yes, CO2 actually IS bad.

Maybe because CO2 is so specific and is (relatively) easy to explain we read about it in the newspapers. Some companies are betting on nuclear energy because it is almost CO2-free. CSS is an up-and-coming technology that stores the CO2 emitted by coal power plants. Some are putting their money on nuclear fusion, e.g. the international ITER project costs 5 billion Euro for construction and another 5 billion Euro to keep up and running. All noteworthy, but what happens when we have found a source of CO2-free energy? Are all our problems solved? Not quite.

One of the main reasons we start to care about CO2 is - selfishly - because our winters are getting warmer and oil is getting more expensive. It sort of initiated this green wave, which I hope lasts quite a bit. What happens when oil prices drop dramatically and we have a cold winter (which is possible for a short term), is global warming put into the book shelve next to Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", picking up dust?


The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
What about biodiversity? What about the poor people especially in the third world most affected by nature's changes? What about overfishing? It is quite a shame that while the UN-backed IPCC (Climate Change Report published in 2007) report got as much notice as a Take That Reunion Tour the findings of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment from 2005 is comparable to the Spice Girls (something's happening, but no one really cares).

Similar to the IPCC report the Ecosystem Assessment is UN-backed, more than 1,000 scientists worked on it for a period of about 4-5 years. Even the structure is based on the IPCC report (and might I add, the design and layout of the Ecosystem report is quite much better). The board of members included renowned scientists, leaders and several nobel prize winners. And some of the scenarios were just as horrifying but not that many people took notice.

(The first image is a statistic on cod fishing in Newfoundland)