“This is a one-of-a-kind promotion that lets everyone who gets the magazine take part in an environmental program ... Target shoppers will recycle their shopping bags and, in return, get a practical bag that can be used all the time.”

- Newsweek President Greg Osberg

While much of the mainstream press in the United States and around the world does at least a competent job reporting on environmental issues, especially global warming, Newsweek magazine set the bar very high in its special April 14, 2008 issue, Environment & Leadership: Who’s the Greenest of Them All? How? Newsweek magazine collaborated with Target Corporation and TerraCycle Inc. to help promote Target Corporation’s Retote recycled plastic shopping bag in a unique way.

T.E.D., which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, began in 1984 as an annual conference. Now owned by The Sapling Foundation, TED is the preeminent gathering for thought leaders from around the world and amplified by the power of the Internet. Host to weekly talks, the TED.com website is a wonderful hub of information.

Back in February, a TED video was posted which gives us the latest news on Al Gore and an important update on the facts and predictions offered in Mr. Gore’s Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth. It is a 30-minute update which everyone who breathes needs to see. It is truly superb and the Lake Lanier drought pics alone will open your eyes.

DATELINE: JUNEAU, Alaska, April 18, 2008 – Montpelier, Vermont is known as one of the most picturesque capital cities in America. Having lived near there for almost 3 years in the 1980’s, I can attest that Montpelier’s reputation for natural splendor is very well earned. However, the tiny capital with the golden dome pales by comparison with Juneau, Alaska, located on the historic Marine highway.

Another key difference between these cities is that millennia ago, Montpelier sat atop a glacier. Juneau sits near one today, the Mendenhall Glacier, just a 20-minute drive from the center of town.

For decades, glacier and icecap science activities have been relatively convenient for researchers and tourists alike. Now, they are downright treacherous because of the record melting underway there. In recent years, Alaska has seen summertime high temperatures at or above 95° Fahrenheit and now Juneau has begun to pay the price.

In February of this year, my wife Catrin and I had the great pleasure and privilege of traveling to Adelaide, Australia for the third International Solar Cities Congress. Living in Florida as we do, we assumed that we could tolerate the arid summer weather which the state of South Australia had in store for us. We were wrong.

As it turned out, the damage to our planet’s ozone layer, which received so much attention during the 1980’s and was supposed to be ameliorated by the global ban on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), has left a lingering effect Down under, oppressive solar radiation. As a result, although we managed to arrange our schedule so that we saw many wonderful sites and sounds, we also spent much more time indoors than we originally had planned.

Let’s face it. Reducing your carbon footprint, buying recycled products, riding the bus to work and all the other ways to fight global warming can be a pain. The good news is that just about every method available of doing your part to fight global warming has an ancillary benefit, usually humanitarian. You enjoy helping your neighbor, RIGHT?

Well, allow me to guide you. Here are 7 categories which can help you live greener and help humanity at the same time. In subsequent posts, I will give you an appropriate remedy which fits your selfish lifestyle.

1) Get a cause

2) Get a clue

If you’ve spent any amount of time reading my thoughts here on Keyboard Culture, then you know that I fit the textbook definition of tree hugger. However, you don’t have to be like me, or believe in global warming for that matter, to become part of the solution. Why? Because, as you will read in this top 7 list, the steps we need to take to reverse the climate crisis have ancillary benefits.

So, way 1 of 7 is to take up a cause. How do you live day to day? When you open your eyes in the morning, do you ponder the fact that tens of thousands of people and several endangered species of wildlife will die before you next sleep? Does the connection between people and our environment even cross your mind?

Well, I don’t want to preach so let me just tell you this: modern technology only protects us to a certain extent. We need each other and a healthy environment in order for civilization to survive the growing climate crisis. Period.

Fortunately, you don’t have to be Al Gore in order to do your part. The best way to begin is to choose a cause. For example: automotive tailpipe emissions cause global warming but they also cause emphysema and lung cancer, two maladies not directly related to global warming. It’s reasonable to hope that you’d like to see fewer people die from lung disease, right?

In the middle of the 19th Century, an Irish scientist by the name of John Tyndall established the correlation between carbon particles in the atmosphere of our planet and increases in global average temperatures. So, if you dispute the phenomenon global warming or hear others doing so, the argument goes against more than a century of hard science, science which was not controversial until multinational conglomerates decided to invest some of their billions of dollars in quarterly profits into disinformation in favor of maintaining the status quo. This fact does not escape the watchful eyes of OSAC, NASA, NOAA and agencies of governments large and small the world over.

Here’s a brief quote from Tyndall:

I was born in 1969, around the same time as the first human set foot on the moon, and I can remember the days when the job of retail sales clerk required specialized training. As a boy, I can remember visiting an appliance shop with my parents and the need for an assistant manager to be called in order to answer questions of any substance.

During the last 20 years, the industrialized world has trended away from such core competencies in favor of cutthroat retail skirmishes. This change has helped keep prices low but customer service even lower. The good news in this age of global warming is that renewable energy technologies, especially solar, are unforgiving types of merchandise. They demand a competent, well trained sales crew. So, we are left with a question: as more people buy photovoltaic products, for their home, car, bicycle, etc., is the retail community ready?

My assertion is that it is not. In fact, despite great strides in design and manufacturing techniques, solar technology can be complex to install and utilize. At the same time, everyone who cares about energy independence, the environment, job creation and sustainability hopes that people buy photovoltaic products with growing rapidity.

I smell opportunity!

I often am asked about the fastest and easiest steps which people can take to reduce their carbon footprint and help reverse global warming. Among my favorite responses is to drive more sensibly. In fact, I harp on the subject, perhaps because I commuted by bus for nearly a decade from my home in Orlando.

What I didn’t realize until recently, though, was that everything I advocate about driving was part of a smart driving movement, known as hypermiling. It turns out that people from coast to coast and around the world are so distressed by retail fuel prices (and rightly so) that they have taken to adopting new behavior. You can read what to do at a handy website

http://www.HyperMiling.com

I am so impressed with the movement that I call for all drivers to display a hypermiling bumper sticker on their car. If we all drive smarter, we can reduce fuel prices, we can reduce our addiction to fossil fuels and we can reduce our contribution to global warming.

You may ask, though: what does this have to do with getting down? Good question! The simple answer is that being a global warming loser at its core means that you live wastefully. While it is good to park your car and travel by pedal power or shoe leather as often as you can, I don’t expect you to stop driving altogether. However, I do expect you to do more with less, especially less pollution.

Prior to the industrial revolution, most people lived with a relatively benign carbon footprint. Slowly, over the span of more than a century, we in the western world have participated in a fundamental change, one in which the consumption of natural resources is a secondary or tertiary consideration at best against happiness and personal wealth.

That has to change!

I love the great outdoors. Spending my formative years in northern New England contributed to that liking, I’m sure. Nevertheless, in the digital age, it is very easy to retreat into our binary cove of constant entertainment and the ideal book, movie or music for every mood and forget that the world is much larger than our tiny sliver of it. When we do, we expose ourselves to natural deficit disorder.

Not coincidentally, people who spend time outdoors tend to be healthier, with reduced risk of heart disease and other life-shortening maladies. The point here is to embrace nature. That doesn’t mean that you have to plant a neighborhood garden or volunteer at the local wildlife refuge. It does mean that you need to combine regular exercise with the need to get out of the house. My top recommendation is to take up cycling.

Why exertion of the two-wheeled variety? Well, if you’ve been following this top 7 list from the beginning, you know that I encourage everyone to drive less. There are many benefits to reducing time in your automobile, with reductions in pollution topping the list, but even if I succeed in guiding you toward this change, you still need locomotion, movement from place to place. Cycling can be the answer.

In the spring of 2007, a 2-mile-wide tornado sliced through the town of Greensburg, Kansas, leaving an unspeakable trail of destruction in its wake. If the survivors of that awful night had decided to pick of the pieces of what remained and move elsewhere, no one would have blamed them. Instead, they stayed put. In effect, they said that no tragedy, even the now-famous Kansas tornado, was enough to make them leave.

This tale of courage doesn’t end there, though. No, the survivors of the Kansas tornado of 2007 decided to do their part to reduce the frequency and strength of future killer storms. They drew a line in the fertile prairie soil and declared that Greensburg would be rebuilt green. The results have been impressive. Entirely new structures have been designed and erected to green building standards and the local John Deere dealership has embraced wind power.

The survivors of the Greensburg, Kansas tornado of 2007 know that global warming causes cyclones to form more frequently and achieve higher wind speeds. They also know that burning fossil fuels is a significant contributor to global warming. So, they made municipal recovery and atmospheric recovery part of the same plan.

I began this top 7 list series with an exhortation to choose a cause and apply it in your life. Since there are so very many humanitarian causes which are aided by the fight against global warming and its impacts, you really can’t go wrong in your selection, whether you believe in the science of global warming or not.

So, if my previous posts have driven you to choose a cause, great! Now, get on with it! Get going! If you haven’t chosen a cause, I will take an even stronger swing at you, citing a very specific example of an initiative which makes tree huggers like me smile and has very real humanitarian benefits.

When I’m done, you’ll see how wonderful it is and feel a bit intimidated, I hope, because with schools working to go green by aiding reforestation projects in conflict zones and with you sitting on the sidelines, the need for swift action should propel you off the couch.

The laudable partnership between Delta Air Lines and Habitat For Humanity is headed toward its second anniversary. Both of these fine organizations continue to drive public awareness of environmental issues. As part of its Force for Global Good initiative, Delta Air Lines has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for various worthy causes. Second only to its carbon offset program, in my estimation, though, is Delta’s close interaction with Habitat for Humanity.