My Friend Is...

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Earth Day: Give Earth a Hand

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Um,

with all the earthquakes going on, the volcanoes erupting doesn't it seem like Earth is trying to kick us off?

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The Cove, an examination of our oceans and our hearts

THE COVE, directed by Louie Psihoyos, tells the amazing true story of how Psihoyos, O’Barry and an elite team of activists, filmmakers and freedivers embarked on a covert mission to penetrate a hidden cove in Japan, shining light on a dark and deadly secret. The mysteries they uncovered were only the tip of the iceberg.

Winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, The Cove follows a high-tech dive team on a mission to discover the truth about the international dolphin capture trade as practiced in Taiji, Japan. Utilizing state-of-the-art techniques, including hidden microphones and cameras in fake rocks, the team uncovers how this small seaside village serves as a horrifying microcosm of massive ecological crimes happening worldwide.
The Cove exposes not only the tragedy of dolphin slaughtering in Japan, but also the dangerously high levels of mercury in dolphin meat and seafood, the cruelty in capturing dolphins for entertainment, and the depletion of our ocean’s fisheries by worldwide seafood consumption. We also see how the mandate of the International Whaling Commission has been manipulated by the Japanese Fisheries Agency for its benefit and its subsequent effect on the rest of the world.

Find out more: http://www.thecovemovie.com/

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Today is World Water Day

Reusing water in the bathroom, originally uploaded by flubberwinkle.

Here's an idea for homes in developed countries: Place a plastic basin/bowl in your bathroom sinks to gather the water used to wash hands and brush teeth as toilet flushing water.
It may be a drop in the ocean, but every drop helps.

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"What started out as a Sydney event, turned into a global movement"

info in Greek, English

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World Water Day & Saharan sand

Today, the sky above Attica was sepia and everything looked yellowy. Mother Nature's photoshop effect is not unusual this time of year. Every spring the Saharan sands travel in thick clouds over Greece, falling in large droplets of unclear rain. And. yet. every. single. spring. I see people rush out to wash their precious cars as if the yellow rain will chip the-oh-so-cool-metal color off their vehicles.

Meanwhile, World Water Day was yesterday, and the public awareness commercials asking us to conserve water are playing on television and radio. People should realize that the first thing they should sacrifice is the cleanliness of their cars. Water is too precious. Too precious. If we keep wasting water we'll be using camels soon and they don't come in metallic colors, Greek dudes.

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How would you react if you were snorkeling and saw this right below you?

British sculptor/diver James deCaires Taylor (www.underwatersculpture.com) has created a series of beautiful, yet eerie, underwater sculptures located in Grenada, West Indies. These subaqueous works of art are designed to create artificial reefs allowing natural reefs a greater chance to repair and to regenerate.



I particularly liked the "Lost Correspondent" (man sitting at typewriter). Credits for me finding out Taylor's astonishing underwater sculptures go to Bernard's Glyptothiki.


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Bah! Humbug.

My weary eyes can't take much more seasonal kitsch. If I see one more dangling "Santa on a ladder" balcony decoration with a whole bunch of POWER WASTING Christmas lights carelessly strewn across veranda rails, bushes and trees I.Will.Have.A.Fit. and get blacklisted on Santa's nasty-girl list.

So, fellow citizens, if you plan on wasting valuable resources AT LEAST create something tasteful, tape it and post it on "youtube" to share with the world (then shut down the lights go for a confessional at your local Greenpeace office).

This house ROCKS:


This house is aglow with Christmas cheer:

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Blog Action Day 2007

Confessing

I feel that the environment-friendly things I do in my small, humble, life are tiny compared to the environmental chaos around me. Sometimes I doubt whether I really can make a difference because every evening the news programs bear witness that the planet isn't changing... it HAS changed. A variety of "weird" natural disasters taking place in all corners of the world flash across the TV screen and I wonder if my full recycle bin will take a load off Earth and if my energy efficient light bulbs will help stop draining our planet's resources. I feel guilty that I brought my children into a world where I can't guarantee them clean air and sufficient water. I shudder at the thought that their children will look at picture books with forests, while attending school in oxygen tents, asking their teachers what all that green looks like.

At work

As a network admin at my workplace, I keep nagging users to shut down their computers, screens and printers instead of leaving them on stand-by, not to print stuff aimlessly without thinking about wasting paper, toner and electricity. I ask them to place used paper in the printers' trays to get maximum use by printing on the clean, unprinted side of the sheet. Sometimes I feel that I am making more enemies than a point because well... we, Greeks, take a long time to condition ourselves to a new way of doing things. Recycling and conserving Mother Earth's resources has not -yet- become second nature to us and it seems most people are interested in the present, not the future (Proposal: Greek Orthodox doctrine should add reincarnation as a possible afterlife... then most Greeks would be concerned about what kind of world they'd land back in again).

Doing our small part

At home, we have a solar-powered water heater, most of the appliances are class A energy efficient, we have switched to energy-saving light bulbs, we recycle everything from the jam jar to the cereal box, we only shower with water-saving handheld shower heads that you can turn off and on while showering. We are particularly proud of how much toilet water we save because I have placed plastic bowls in the bathroom sinks (directly under the faucets) that collect all the "dirty" water instead of letting it go down the drain. The water from these plastic bowls is used to flush the toilets instead of using clear water. We are also more alert -consumer wise- buying less therefore making less garbage and ensuring what we buy is recyclable. I use a large, re-usable IKEA shopping bag for my groceries instead of placing them in small plastic bags each time.

Proposal

On this Blog Action Day I would like to send out the idea of re-fillable, re-usable containers for a variety of products. Take for example your fabric softener. Every time you run out you buy another bottle of softener (some of us recycle the old, some don't). Wouldn't it be eco-friendlier for the consumer to go to the store with their empty container, go to the aisle with the barrel of softener, place the container under the tap and just re-fill the container with softener? Huh? Wouldn't this be a neat idea? This could apply to a variety of products (liquid detergents, powder detergents, juices, maybe even milk). If you are an important fabric softener CEO reading my humble blog, please feel free to exploit this idea... Just help relieve the Earth from more plastic bottles and boolsheet.

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The day the forest died, the sky wept

Yesterday afternoon a great big mushroom of smoke billowing over our town foretold of the tragedy that was to unfold. The smoke was coming from Parnitha, the National Forest we live near. The smoke was so thick it looked like a cloud had sprung up from inside the mountain.

I was surprised that I couldn't see or hear any fire extinguishing aircraft. These water-carrying planes won't fly with high winds and night, but the winds were calm and it was still very much daylight as you can see from my photo.

I knew that the Greek firefighting corps was dealing with more than a hundred fires strewn all over Greece. I hoped that there were enough firemen and trained volunteers to help avoid the calamity of losing Athens' last remaining "lung". Parnitha breathed fresh air to stifling, grey cemented capital of Greece. It was woodlands of great importance to the ecosystem and for millions of Athenians the closest they could get to nature in a very short time.

I crossed my fingers hoping the Greek emergency control center would be able to contain the fire with as little damage as possible. I was wrong. The fire raged on and on all night.

In the morning the air was still thick with smoke and the ashes of a once-life giving mountain range scattered over our homes, balconies, gardens, cars were floating like snow in the air.

This afternoon a sudden rainstorm came out nowhere to help extinguish the all-consuming blaze. It seemed that the sky had had enough, shedding its tears for the loss of such a wondrous piece of Greece that is no more. The pouring rain flooded the streets in minutes, as a foreboding message of what's ahead when there are no trees or greenery or roots to contain the rainwater.

As the ashes of Parnitha washed away with the muddy currents, so did hope.

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2007: Year of the Dolphin (and no, it's not a Chinese year)

Sadly and shamefully, the end of 2006 saw the end of the baiji. The baiji is was a freshwater dolphin that lived in China's Yangtze River for some 20 million years, commonly known as the Chinese river dolphin.

And things are not looking too good for other species as well. 2007 has been declared by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN Convention on Migratory Species - together with its specialized agreements on dolphin conservation ACCOBAMS and ASCOBANS and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) - as the Year of the Dolphin.

If conservation efforts are intensified and more people -particularly governments and companies- become aware that we are wiping out species that existed long before us, we may have a chance in hell to keep hope and dwindling species alive.

Sites:

Year of the Dolphin site

baiji.org | Foundation - networking Expertise for Conservation of Freshwater Biodiversity

The Big Question: How quickly are animals and plants disappearing, and does it matter?

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Dyslexic and waiting for Satan

Christmas time in Athens. The shops are calling out to us with their bright lights and fancy window displays, luring us into the 'giving' spirit, whilst a slow thumping of "buy, buy, buy" merrily beats in our ears. Once upon a time, you could seek refuge from the unremitting holiday spirit by heading back home, to quiet, low/middle class suburbia, my neighborhood. But... what's this? What's with ALL the exterior decorations and multi-colored twinkling lights everywhere?

For the past several years, the Greek market has been flooded with -formerly unaccustomed- outdoor Christmas decorations, creating a merchandising illusion that it's expected of us to expand the festive cheer outside our home's threshold.

Sadly, Greek customers have taken the bait and what was once customary for Greek homes to have a frugal main entrance decoration -a sparing wreath or new-year talisman- has now turned into a show of flaunting Christmas lights and gaudy holiday figurines. Look up at the stacked apartment buildings and witness denizens' efforts to bring on the Christmas cheer with bulb-streamers draping the balconies and Santa Clauses hanging for dear life on the verandas.

Personally, I see no need for energy-wasting exterior lights and tawdry ornaments. Why squander natural resources (and money, for that matter) for something that is well,... useless?

I'm old-fashioned (and globally warmed). We've hung the fabric wreath Daughter#1 made in kindergarten for us on the main entrance. I'll let Mother Nature take care of the rest of the outdoor decorations if she decides to snow in our part of the world.

Since it's the holiday season in many parts of the world and a time to reflect about Peace ON Earth, and Peace WITH the Earth, read Greenpeace's 12 steps to a greener holiday season.

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Putting old CDs to good use this holiday season

Putting old CDs to good use this holiday season [1],
originally uploaded by flubberwinkle.

My colleagues loved the idea of using recycled CDs as a Christmas tree on my office door.
I added some red & green hard candy as "Christmas ornaments" and a plain white paper cutout of a dove for wishes.

Flubberwinkle's Flickr photo fiddling... [try saying that 10 times fast].

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We're driving planet Earth insane

According to this piece of news, thanks to us (humans) and our global warming activites, bears are refusing to fall asleep for the winter. Their biological clocks are telling them it's too warm. Moreover, trees are blossoming when they shouldn't be and in general, nature doesn't know whether it's coming or going.

It's bad enough we're killing off all kinds of species, upsetting the forces of nature, but must we drive them mad doing it?

Hopefully, the animals are planning to gang up on us. I think we deserve a good beating, don't you?

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The Earth's temperature is really rising

credits: Came via e-mail from a friend who loves to forward things.

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Dolphins have their own names

"Dolphins communicate like humans by calling each other by name, scientists in Fife have found".

I love dolphins with their good-humored nature, sleek swimming style, show-offy flips and of course their IQ. This new info discovered by scientists actually doesn't surprise me. What would surprise me even more would be if scientists could find out if dolphins call sharks names down there in water land.

Dolphins look like they're grinning all the time and I can't shake a fanciful picture devised by my own twisted imagination of dolphins teasing their long-standing enemies: "You're a smelly selachian and your momma's got a big selachian butt! [sing-song] Niah, Niah, Niah, Niah, Niah [/sing song]. Ooh, look it's smelly sharkie-warkie! Didn't your parents ever hear of an orthodontist? Your nose is ug-LY."

Flip. Splash. Look cute and precious for the humans. "Now, let's go whip some shark derriere!"


Ah, gotta love those peaceful, lovable ocean creatures! "No Flipper, stop chivvying the shark, you're making him cry..."

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Earth Day, more than just a day. Make it a lifestyle.

April 22 is Earth Day and an opportunity to add a new feature on the blog. Rustle the Leaf, weekly enviromental comics. Creativity at its best; both educating and entertaining.

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World Water Day

Water on Earth: 97.5% Oceans, 2.5% Fresh water*

If wars are waged for oil, I shudder to think how much worse things will get if the foretellings of water scarceness come true.

*Source(s): World Water Forum 2006
& Water Year 2003

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If it weren't for the greenhouse effect I'd order sleazy men to take cold showers

Every Thursday is open-air market day in my neighbourhood. I send my retired father-in-law (a farmer of 50 years) to do my fruit and vegetable shopping since I'm at work. Thursday afternoons involve washing the produce before storing them in refrigerator. The used H20 is then applied to watering my veranda plants. Every single time I do this unimportant, household chore a piece of information blazes in my mind: 20% of the world population is without clean drinking water.

Then I sat down to watch the news with husband. Reports and videos of bad weather in most of Europe. Heavy Snow, freezing temperatures and... it's March. Husband turns to me and says: "Second Ice Age is coming faster than we thought".

After the news, the greek public television had a thematic viewing on human trafficking. We watched in horror the stories of women and children being sold for sex. Someone in the discussion panel summarized: "Human trafficking is based on a simple law of economics. If there is no demand there's no need to supply. If there are no horny men, human trafficking for sex will cease to exist".

Makes you wonder how civilised and advanced our society really is when the self-evident right TO clean drinking water and the self-evident right NOT to be sold as a human slave are added on our TO-DO list...

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