Elisa's Green Scene

Cooling Man vs. Burning Man

In honor of my friends who are at Burning Man this week, I point you to Cooling Man, a site devoted to helping those participating in the big burn next weekend to offset their part in emitting that much pollution into the air. There's a calculator to help you calculate your own personal contribution to the emission of Greenhouse Gasses, including your transportation to and from the playa and even accounting for if you're into fire art.

Hat tip: The Greener Side

Carnival of the Green is up at Disillusioned kid

Although I'm mused a bit about the possible peaking of some of the older blog carnivals on my Worker Bees blog, it's obvious that the Carnival of the Green is in the growth stage. This week's edition, hosted by Disillusioned kid is humongous.

Besides kindly linking to my post here about the Charity Navigator, there are dozens of other posts of note.

What caught my eye?

Green is the new Red.com, talking about how environmentalists and animal rights activist are the new "Commies" in a new "green-baiting" scare.

Groovy Green, talking about "green fatigue." One of his commenters likens it to how we get tired of following a healthy diet and fitness plan...exactly because we do know that it's supposed to be for life (i.e. no end in sight.) I have experienced this fatigue with my political activism, with my blogging, with my diet...all of the above.

I try to imagine how much more fatigued I would be if I didn't take actions that matched my convictions. But I also try to give myself a break every now and then, and sometimes that means I don't blog about politics for a while, or I eat some junk food. Either way the world won't end. But I hope occasionally allowing myself to slack off on some things better enables me to stay devoted on most things.

Fooling myself? Or thinking big picture and long-term gain?

These are the searching questions a Carnival of the Green can bring up. So, check it out for yourself.

Going the extra mile

Don over at the Evangelical Ecologist forwarded me this post, wondering whether we here at the hip & zen pen had heard of this bridesmaid who is making the >10,000 mile trek from Wales to Australia for her friend's wedding via land and sea only to avoid being responsible for the 5.2 tons of carbon dioxide per passenger such an air trip would generate. (Apparently her land/sea trip will generate only 1.4 tons of carbon dioxide.)

Bridesmaid Barbara Hadrill has a blog where she is sharing some of the calculations that went into this decision and where she is explaining some of the philosophy behind her undertaking such an effort in the first place.

"To those of you who think I haven't researched this then you are wrong, I have spent a lot of my own time and a lot of generous time from my friends to help me do this. I am not relying on any money from anyone to help me, I have earnt it all myself the good old fashioned way and worked. I have worked at the Centre for Alternative Technology for the last year and a half and there they have been working for a long time with other partners to calculate the carbon emissions and environmental damage of all different types of transport. The calculations we have made based on this rigourous scientific study show that my one way trip will create 1.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide as compared to 5.2 tonnes on a flight. This is still a lot I know and yes the best thing would be to stay at home, but this is a really special occasion, one of my best friend's wedding, and I haven't taken this decision lightly. I will still do what I can to offset these emissions and on the return hope to get more sailing in, which is very clean. I am not trying to preach to you about how you should live your lives so don't preach to me, this is what I believe in and I am going to follow it, so if you can't help or wish me luck then find somewhere else to look."

So, it's the last thing I would do to tell someone they should not follow their ethical compass. I truly believe in her last sentence above: "I am not trying to preach to you about how you should live your lives so don't preach to me, this is what I believe in and I am going to follow it, so if you can't help or wish me luck then find somewhere else to look."

Right on.

But it does give me pause that the entire trip is going to take her weeks and cost her way more than an air ticket would have. It doesn't give me pause for her sake, since she obviously is finding a way to have the time and money to do this for what she believes in. But I certainly wish there was a way to make the same point that was even the tiniest bit realistic for regular people to emulate. It's very easy to read this story and say "well, I guess the only way to conduct travel in a more eco-friendly fashion is if you're willing to pend a lot and take a really long time." And I don't think long-term that will have any kind of positive effect on having people explore alternate transportation options.

Know what I mean?

Cooking with love

All to often in today's busy world, we tend to eat on the run and slap together meals in the shortest possible time.  When prepared with care and attention, food can provide emotional as well as physical sustenance to those who eat it.  Before you begin cooking, ritually wash and bless your hands, and clear your mind with three deep breaths.  As you prepare the meal, keep in mind the image of those you are feeding, and visualize love passing outward from your heart, along your arms and into the food.  Serve it with due ceremony.

Carnival of the Green is up at Frugal for Life

Check out Frugal for Life, where this week's Carnival of the Green happily resides.

Frugal blogger Dawn has spiced up her carnival hosting stint by including several amusing cartoons around the green theme. She has also kindly linked to my post here where I reflected on how we might make the BlogHer Conference more green in future.

My favorite post? This one about orcas from Veggie Revolution. I went orca watching outside of Victoria, BC a few years ago, and it was awesome. Nice memories.

So, do go check out this week's Carnival of the Green.

Love Wikipedia? Love Being Green?

Have I got a site for you: It's gWiki, a wiki resource site for the green movement. now gWiki is supposed to work like and bases its policies and style on the venerable Wikipedia, the most widely turned to wiki out there.

As far as I can tell what they really really need is people to start creating and submitting articles. There's not much there yet, certainly not when I was searching using such basic green concepts as bio-diesel, fair trade, hybrid. And as far as I can tell, unlike an actual encyclopedia, there's nowhere to go to just browse pages. They have links to the five "newest pages", but that's it.

You know if you're totally a geek on some aspect of the green movement, but don't want the day-to-day responsibility of a blog I think creating an article (and participating in its development) on gwiki would be an excellent way to share your knowledge!

My problem is that I'm not really that knowledgeable on any of this stuff...I just points you to things I likes.

So check out gWiki and tell me what I'm missing!

Charity begins with financial health?

Check out the Charity Navigator.

Their Mission:

Charity Navigator works to guide intelligent giving. We help charitable givers make intelligent giving decisions by providing information on over five thousand charities and by evaluating the financial health of each of these charities. We ensure our evaluations are widely used by making them easy to understand and available to the public free of charge. By guiding intelligent giving, we aim to advance a more efficient and responsive philanthropic marketplace, in which givers and the charities they support work in tandem to overcome our nation's most persistent challenges.

Charity Navigator is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization under the Internal Revenue Code and does not accept any contributions from any charities we evaluate.

It's an interesting concept for sure. I think, however, there are some issues with judging charities solely by the measure the Charity navigator does. For instance I went to their Animal Rights and Welfare section and sorted by highest rating first. Here are the results. What do you notice? I notice that the majority of organizations scoring highest are extremely targeted. many of them are very targeted geographically, a few targeted by breed. In any case, I think it's interesting that the organizations that focus very specifically are able to be more financially attractive, and I suppose it's not counter-intuitive in any way. But I don't know if it's all that helpful for those of us not in those targeted areas.

The primary reason I couldn't use this tool alone for some of my charitable giving is that it does not extend beyond financial health as a criteria. When it comes to health and medicine-related charities, however, I certainly do. I don't give to charities that support animal testing. I guess I'll have to continue to rely on the PCRM's list of charities that don't for that kind of information. but maybe now I'll cross-check them on the Charity Navigator.

Baby steps

With all this talk of small changes, I need to point to this post by the lovely and talented Karen from Emerald Market.

Key excerpt:

I don't think the fact that old habits die hard should stop us from trying to break them, even in the smallest ways. Certainly, because of the attention I give to this site, I am much more careful about the things I buy: I choose t-shirts made of sustainable bamboo when I shop for my family now, instead of running to the Gap. I'm more likely to linger over organic produce and look for organic foods when I grocery shop than I did before. And because I'm thinking about the environment more, I find myself more often turning off the lights in rooms when I leave, minimizing the soap I use in the dishwasher, that sort of thing.

You know, baby steps.

That is in line with my philosophy, as you many know if you've been reading this blog. But if you haven't, here is a post that epitomizes it for me. Key excerpt:

I am a long-time vegetarian who believes in the vegan philosophy, but have had a hell of a time adhering to it in my diet. I do my best, which isn’t good enough, but is better than doing nothing.

Baby steps.

Seven days to a greener life

Hat tip to CityHippy for pointing us to this interesting article from the Independent. Entitled "Seven days to green your life", it's meant to give all of us exiting "An Inconvenient Truth" with fear and determination gripping us some practical ways to start helping.

Examples include:

1. Be as conscious of recycling outside your home as you are in your home. Like in your workplace or while out and about.

2. Buy low-packaged, local, organic foods. (Still using OrganicExpress and still liking it a lot!)

3. Showers instead of baths (I'm good there, I've never understood the appeal of baths. Sure, you get to sit in a nice hot tub for a few minutes, but pretty soon you're sitting in your own luke-warm dingy water!)

4. Don't leave the lights, TV or heat on in rooms you're not in.

5. If you're not veggie, go veggie for a spell. If you are veggie, go vegan for a spell.

And there's much much more. So checkit out.

What do Charlize Theron and hip & zen have in common?

They both support the work of the Topsy Foundation.

Karen issued a very rare press release to introduce a new line of what she calls South African chic. A portion of the proceeds from every item in the collection will benefit the Topsy Foundation’s sanctuary near Johannesburg. Karen's talks about why in the release:

On choosing the Topsy Foundation, Clothier says, “I wanted to do something to help heal the tragedy that has befallen the women and children of South Africa. This organization appealed to me because of its multi-faceted approach. They provide home-based care where appropriate, in-house care at their facility as a last resort, skills development, community outreach and poverty alleviation. Their assistance is aimed at helping people to become self-sufficient and remain with their family unit when possible, which I feel is a very holistic and humane answer to the crisis."

The release also introduces the blog to the world, since we never formally did any PR about it in the past:

HIP & ZEN presents an unusual excursion to the crossroads of beautiful design and enlightened commentary (via the egalitarian HIP & ZEN blog.)

Egalitarian! Awesome :)