In the 60’s activists of the day changed the World. Today more than ever we have at our fingertips the tools to get the job done! We now have Twitter where we can network and get our messages for change out to thousands; and activism websites such as Care2.com where we can start petitions and network with like minded people from across the World. People who have said “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!” People just like you that have started as a single voice in the wildness and shouted so that others can hear and join you in the call for change.

I too have become an activist and feel the need to inspire others to join us. Your story can reach and inspire others.

On December 22^nd 2008 the following story appeared in OpEdNews ‘Interview with an Activist – Are you one?’ Read the feature and then allow me to hear your story of your journey to Activism. It will then feature on the Greenhouse Neutral Foundations website to inspire others.

Send me an email to BobWilliamson@greenhouseneutralfoundation.org and I’ll be in touch to hear your story of changing the World to a better place.

Follow me on Twitter @ZEROGreenhouse

Press On

Nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance.

Talent will not.

Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.

Genius will not.

Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.

Education will not.

The world is full of educated derelicts.

Perseverance and determination alone are omnipotent.

I look at that quotation almost every week at some point, when I take up a pen to put a note onto my desk pad to remind me to do something. So it’s a constant reminder to me why I keep pushing on the issues of climate change and a safe future, despite getting nowhere.

To be totally honest I didn’t think world leaders would agree on global emissions reduction targets for the world at Copenhagen in 2009 or Cancun in 2010. I didn’t think they would because the vast majority of the world’s population don’t want them to. To reduce emissions means that you and I, and everyone else in the developed and fast developing world, will need to agree to reduce our own consumption. Even if I agree to do that, will you?

Now you are reading this most likely, because you are a person with an interest in the environment and where we are inevitably headed. But if your politicians tell you must stop buying, you must stop driving, you must stop using energy, you must reduce the amount of water you use, you must pay more so that we can fast track renewable energy, you must stop flying, you must not take that overseas holiday and you must stop asking that the world gives you more, will you support them? ……..Well?

So you voted them in and you can just as easily vote them out; if they hurt YOUR hip pocket. So will they go to these climate change conferences? Yes; and as they have done at all the conferences so far and all those that will follow on, they will agree on one thing only….. to disagree.

However with all things that took a global movement, or even a national movement to make change, perseverance and determination alone were omnipotent.

I fear though that time is fast running out for the decisions to remain in our hands on decarbonising our lives and that unless we agree to agree very soon, the shit will hit the fan.

What of the environmental movement; are we wrong to keep striving, keep fighting, keep persevering to make change, when it seems, all is against us? This is a question I don’t know the answer to. The reason I’m not sure is, that even though there is a growing awareness of the urgency we face, there is a bigger barrier we are up against. Complacency of the majority, overrides the perseverance and determination of the few. The environment movement itself has many amongst it that talk the talk, but refuse to walk the walk. Maybe you are amongst them. I wrote in the introduction to the book ZERO Greenhouse Emissions, which more than likely you haven’t bought and read, so I’ll put the excerpt here;

This book is a cautionary tale for an urgent call to arms, but also a message of hope—that with collective action, we can change our future. There is however one essential lead actor who will determine the success or failure of this book and our planet’s future: you—and without you, there will be no success or happy ending.

I was once told that although the powers that be (policy and decision makers) saw the value and importance of the message we were presenting to them, they failed to see it as significant. I was told that unless this situation were to change and the message were to move from important to significant, not much more could be expected to happen. As public and political agendas shift from one focus to another, from powerful nations to the poor and impoverished, from issues of fossil fuel/oil security to issues of terrorism, from pollution, ecosystem damage, and species extinction to climate change and global warming, from disaster and displacement to water scarcity, from rising sea levels to extreme storms to drought, we are diverted from the main serious, important and significant issue—us. The leaders of nations and industry pass on their myopic view to us. We have been preconditioned to have a preoccupation with self, and we prefer to see the issues involving others as important rather than significant.

We need not reinvent the wheel; we need to reinvent ourselves. I firmly believe man has the brilliance to solve each and every one of the many pressing, immediate, and significant challenges that are ahead. Unless we see these as self-imperatives and collectively take responsibility for our actions, they will be left up to a small band of others to solve. I doubt the solution will come from them alone. Feel no guilt for being part of the problem, but feel responsible and inspired to be part of a solution. A few great men and women may start out being the power of one, but no single great man, no single great woman, from the start of history or into the future, will make a change without collective will.

We need collective will, collective effort, and collective vision, for our collective future. You and yours. Me and mine. Them and theirs.

But it’s only your choice.

END Excerpt.

In closing this social commentary, here are some questions you may wish to answer.

Did equality for women start and finish with Emily Pankhurst?

Did segregation in South Africa finish when Mandela was imprisoned?

Did civil rights become achieved with the bill of rights?

Was slavery truly abolished with the vision of MLK?

Did the war on discrimination end with the JFK speech?

Will the fight for climate change end with Obama’s speeches?

Will the whaling stop in Antarctica when the Sea Sheppard sails?

Will the dolphin slaughter in the Cove end because we say it should?

Will the climate change because we stop protesting?

Will there be any change if we do?

Will there be any change if we don’t?

So …….Perseverance is why I am an activist

A year or so earlier I was talking on Skype to a dear friend Gregory Hilbert of the US based Green Education Network. He like myself, has been working for some years to alert those unconscious to the human effects on the future, of our complacent consumption of finite resources and the pollution of our shared atmosphere with climate changing greenhouse emissions. In that conversation I said to Greg “If one of my daughters came home and told me she was pregnant, I would weep.” The context of the comment was that we as environmental activists are doing all we can to change the mindset of the complacent global majority, but not getting very far with the enormity of the task, and the future for those to come looked very bleak at best. Sure; some are waking up to many of the indisputable facts, but no action is, or will be taken to avert the inevitable by those in power to take such action.

When Lisa told me 9 months ago that she and her partner had decided to have a baby, I indeed had very mixed emotions. I wanted to be happy for them (and was) while knowing that the future of their child, would not be the future I had seen and dreamed of for my own children. Morgan Bevan Slattery will be one of the last generation, to grow up on a planet that supports life as we know and live it today.

I read a book by Fred Pearce called the Last Generation which was released shortly after my book ‘ZERO Greenhouse Emissions – The Day the Lights Went Out – Our Future World’ came out in the US. In his book he asserts that humanity will go on; just not in the way we live today. My book agrees with his while laying out the reality if we do not act now and with global conviction.

I have been told many times that the fight cannot be won. Well I’m not about to relinquish the battle to those who would have me do so. Morgan Bevan Slattery will not say his Grandfather gave up on him….. Good luck young Morgan. I’m sorry that I was a contributing part of the problems you will face in the years to come. I’ll keep trying to be inspired to be a part of the solution…………………

We need to accept this moral responsibility. The following article which appeared in the Guardian I believe comes straight from James’s heart. Do you care enough to take an activist stance while we have the time?

Thank you – Bob Williamson Founder & Chair Greenhouse Neutral Foundation.

“How did you become an activist?” I was surprised by the question. I never considered myself an activist. I am a slow-paced taciturn scientist from the Midwest US. Most of my relatives are pretty conservative. I can imagine attitudes at home toward “activists”.

I was about to protest the characterisation – but I had been arrested, more than once. And I had testified in defence of others who had broken the law. Sure, we only meant to draw attention to problems of continued fossil fuel addiction. But weren’t there other ways to do that in a democracy? How had I been sucked into being an “activist?”

My grandchildren had a lot to do with it. It happened step by step. First, in 2004, I broke a 15-year self-imposed effort to stay out of the media. I gave a public lecture, backed by scientific papers, showing the need to slow greenhouse gas emissions – and I criticised the Bush administration for its lack of appropriate policies. My grandchildren came into the talk only as props – holding 1-watt Christmas tree bulbs to help explain climate forcings.

Fourteen months later I gave another public talk – connecting the dots from global warming to policy implications to criticisms of the fossil fuel industry for promoting misinformation. This time my grandchildren provided rationalisation for a talk likely to draw ire from the administration. I explained that I did not want my children to look back and say: “Opa understood what was happening, but he never made it clear.”

What had become clear was that our planet is close to climate tipping points. Ice is melting in the Arctic, Greenland and Antarctica, and on mountain glaciers worldwide. Many species are stressed by environmental destruction and climate change. Continuing fossil fuel emissions, if unabated, will cause sea levels to rise and species to become extinct beyond our control. Increasing atmospheric water vapour is already magnifying climate extremes, increasing overall precipitation, causing greater floods and stronger storms.

Stabilising climate requires restoring our planet’s energy balance. The physics is straightforward. The effect of increasing carbon dioxide on Earth’s energy imbalance is confirmed by precise measurements of ocean heat gain. The principal implication is defined by the geophysics, by the size of fossil fuel reservoirs. Simply put, there is a limit on how much carbon dioxide we can pour into the atmosphere. We cannot burn all fossil fuels. Specifically, we must (1) phase out coal use rapidly, (2) leave tar sands in the ground, and (3) not go after the last drops of oil.

Actions needed for the world to move on to clean energies of the future are feasible. The actions could restore clean air and water globally. But the actions are not happening.

At first I thought it was poor communication. Scientists must not have made the story clear enough to world leaders.

So I wrote letters to national leaders and visited more than half a dozen nations, as described in my book, Storms of My Grandchildren. What I found in each case was greenwash – a pretence of concern about climate but policies dictated by fossil fuel special interests.

The situation is epitomised by my recent trip to Norway. I hoped that Norway, because of its history of environmentalism, might be able to take real action to address climate change, drawing attention to the hypocrisy in the words and pseudo-actions of other nations.

So I wrote a letter to the prime minister suggesting that Norway, as majority owner of Statoil, should intervene in its plans to develop the tar sands of Canada. I received a polite response, by letter, from the deputy minister of petroleum and energy. The government position is that the tar sands investment is “a commercial decision”, that the government should not interfere, and that a “vast majority in the Norwegian parliament” agree that this constitutes “good corporate governance”. The deputy minister concluded his letter: “I can however assure you that we will continue our offensive stance on climate change issues both at home and abroad.”

A Norwegian grandfather, upon reading the deputy minister’s letter, quoted Saint Augustine: “Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.”

The Norwegian position is a staggering reaffirmation of the global situation: even the greenest governments find it too inconvenient to address the implication of scientific facts.

It becomes clear that concerted action will happen only if the public, somehow, becomes forcefully involved. One way citizens can help is by blocking coal plants, tar sands, and the mining of the last drops of fossil fuels.

However, fossil fuel addiction can be solved only when we recognise an economic law as certain as the law of gravity: as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy they will be used. Solution therefore requires a rising fee on oil, gas and coal – a carbon fee collected from fossil fuel companies at the domestic mine or port of entry. All funds collected should be distributed to the public on a per capita basis to allow lifestyle adjustments and spur clean energy innovations. As the fee rises, fossil fuels will be phased out, replaced by carbon-free energy and efficiency.

A carbon fee is the only realistic path to global action. China and India will not accept caps, but they need a carbon fee to spur clean energy and avoid fossil fuel addiction.

Governments today, instead, talk of “cap-and-trade with offsets”, a system rigged by big banks and fossil fuel interests. Cap-and-trade invites corruption. Worse, it is ineffectual, assuring continued fossil fuel addiction to the last drop and environmental catastrophe.

Because the executive and legislative branches of our governments turn a deaf ear to the science, the judicial branch may provide the best opportunity to redress the situation. Our governments have a fiduciary responsibility to protect the rights of young people and future generations.

I look forward to standing with young people and their supporters, helping them develop their case, as they demand their proper due and fight for nature and their future. I guess that makes me an activist.

• The full version of this essay, entitled “Activist”, will appear in the book The Day After Tomorrow; Images of Our Earth in Crisis by J Henry Fair, to be published in November by PowerHouse Books. Dr James Hansen’s latest book is called Storms of my Grandchildren.

Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy — the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century.

But what a burden would be lifted! We would no longer have to worry that our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands. We could instead celebrate the naysayers who had doggedly persisted in proving that every major National Academy of Sciences report on climate change had simply made a huge mistake.

I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer.

It is true that the climate panel published a flawed overestimate of the melting rate of debris-covered glaciers in the Himalayas, and used information about the Netherlands provided to it by the government, which was later found to be partly inaccurate. In addition, e-mail messages stolen from the University of East Anglia in Britain showed that scientists besieged by an onslaught of hostile, make-work demands from climate skepticsmay not have adequately followed the requirements of the British freedom of information law.

But the scientific enterprise will never be completely free of mistakes. What is important is that the overwhelming consensus on global warming remains unchanged. It is also worth noting that the panel’s scientists — acting in good faith on the best information then available to them — probably underestimated the range of sea-level rise in this century, the speed with which the Arctic ice cap is disappearing and the speed with which some of the large glacial flows in Antarctica and Greenland are melting and racing to the sea.

Because these and other effects of global warming are distributed globally, they are difficult to identify and interpret in any particular location. For example, January was seen as unusually cold in much of the United States. Yet from a global perspective, it was the second-hottest January since surface temperatures were first measured 130 years ago.

Similarly, even though climate deniers have speciously argued for several years that there has been no warming in the last decade, scientists confirmed last month that the last 10 years were the hottest decade since modern records have been kept.

The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth, yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, putting significantly more moisture into the atmosphere — thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow in particular regions, including the Northeastern United States. Just as it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees, neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorm.

Here is what scientists have found is happening to our climate: man-made global-warming pollution traps heat from the sun and increases atmospheric temperatures. These pollutants — especially carbon dioxide — have been increasing rapidly with the growth in the burning of coal, oil, natural gas and forests, and temperatures have increased over the same period. Almost all of the ice-covered regions of the Earth are melting — and seas are rising. Hurricanes are predicted to grow stronger and more destructive, though their number is expected to decrease. Droughts are getting longer and deeper in many mid-continent regions, even as the severity of flooding increases. The seasonal predictability of rainfall and temperatures is being disrupted, posing serious threats to agriculture. The rate of species extinction is accelerating to dangerous levels.

Though there have been impressive efforts by many business leaders, hundreds of millions of individuals and families throughout the world and many national, regional and local governments, our civilization is still failing miserably to slow the rate at which these emissions are increasing — much less reduce them.

And in spite of President Obama’s efforts at the Copenhagen climate summit meeting in December, global leaders failed to muster anything more than a decision to “take note” of an intention to act.

Read more of this article by Al Gore

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Most of us take it for granted that when we flip the switch, the lights will go on. Sure, we write the electric company a monthly check, but otherwise lend no thought to the source of the power — like urban kids clueless that chicken originates someplace other than the freezer aisle of chain groceries.

But this month, an energetic author from the rugged, coal-laden hills of southern Illinois hopes to relay the message — utterly apropos in a country where coal generates nearly half the electricity — that a consequence of that national dependence is the outright decimation of the communities surrounding the mines.

Jeff Biggers, a civil rights activist and cultural historian, watched helplessly a dozen years ago as the hollers of Eagle Creek, Illinois — a corner of the Shawnee National Forest and his family’s home for roughly 200 years — were blasted away, the forested hills bulldozed under by companies intent on harvesting the lucrative coal seams beneath — a scene from Avatar playing out in real time.

“They’ve strip-mined your heritage,” Biggers’ uncle told him at the time.

The tragic episode launched Biggers on a decade-long examination of the history of the coal industry’s impact on local communities — not only the environmental imprint, but the effects on culture, health and family history as well. The result is “Reckoning at Eagle Creek — The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland,” released last week, in which Biggers describes the industry’s utter disregard for everything standing between it and the coal it wants out of the ground. It’s an apt study as the Obama administration advances its “clean coal” agenda.

“The old pond, the four plum trees, the sorghum and cornfields, the garden, the barn, and the one-hundred-fifty-year-old log cabin were buried in a crater formed before the Paleozoic era,” Biggers writes of his family’s experience with strip mining. “But it wasn’t just our family history. It also included a thousand years of bones of the first natives in the region, the modern Shawnee encampments and farms, the pioneering squatters and homesteaders in our family, and the slave and coal miners in one of the first settlements in the nation’s heartland — all of which had been churned into dust in the race to strip-mine the area.”

All told, the miners hauled an estimated 960,000 tons of coal from his family’s property and the adjacent plots — “enough electricity to supply American demands for approximately four and a half hours,” Biggers writes. “That was the choice we made.”

The book isn’t all. Biggers has also adapted the story for the stage, taking the two-man show — “The Saudi Arabia of Coal” — on a 22-city tour that arrives this week at Busboys and Poets in Washington. The story — about a strip miner and his wife faced with losing their home to the very project providing their income — features Biggers and Stephanie Pistello, a community organizer with Appalachian Voices, a North Carolina-based environmental group. Both are products of Appalachia; both are grandchildren of coal miners. The driving force behind the play, Biggers said in a phone interview last week, was simple: “How do we bring strip mining to people who have never seen it?”

It’s a timely story. For all the scientific warnings about the warming effects of coal combustion, the White House continues to view the fossil fuel as central to the nation’s energy future. Indeed, President Obama last week announced the creation of a new “carbon capture” task force charged with developing new “clean coal” technologies. The administration hopes to have between five and 10 new commercial facilities featuring these advancements up and running by 2016.

“Even if you disagree on the threat posed by climate change,” Obama said, “investing in clean energy jobs and businesses is still the right thing to do for our economy.”

Obama was referring to coal processing, not extraction. But in the eyes of a growing number of environmentalists and human rights advocates, the administration’s alacrity to embrace coal — combined with the mixed signals from the Environmental Protection Agency on mining permits — likely means that coal communities will remain vulnerable to the ravages of strip mining for many years to come.

“We see this as a criminal activity,” Biggers said. “And if you recognize there’s criminal activity taking place, how can you minimize it [instead of banning it]? It’s their mentality that they can regulate this crime.”

Human rights activists are hoping that Congress will step in to eliminate the most destructive forms of strip mining, a method featuring the removal of all materials (rock, soil, trees, etc.) resting on top of the coal. (That contrasts with underground mining, in which tunneling allows the overlying land to remain intact.) Of particular concern in Appalachia is one type of strip mining, known as mountaintop removal, in which the peaks of mountains are blasted away and the debris pushed into adjacent valleys, many of which contain tiny streams representing the headwaters of much larger rivers below. Bipartisan bills introduced in both the Senate and the House would end mountaintop removal by prohibiting such dumping into active streams. There appears, however, to be little congressional appetite to challenge the powerful mining industry in a tough election year when unemployment remains near double digits.

“My miners and the folks who are working and those who are unemployed are very concerned about some of your policies,” West Virginia Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R) toldObama last month, referring in part to the EPA’s denial of some mountaintop permits. “In our minds, these are job-killing policies.”

At a much-watched debate on mountaintop mining in Charleston, W.Va., last month, Don Blankenship, president of Virginia-based Massey Energy, echoed Capito’s concerns. “The mission statement for coal is prosperity for this country,” Blankenship said. “This industry is what made this country great and if we forget that, we’re going to have to learn to speak Chinese.”

The adverse health effects associated with coal mining have, of course, been known for decades. Biggers’ grandfather was among the tens of thousands of miners to die of coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, or black lung disease. Though the cases of black lung are down considerably relative to historic highs, more than 10,000 American miners died of the disease in the last decade alone.

But health problems are only one part of coal’s dubious legacy, critics argue. Coal communities also suffer from poisoned streams, the noise pollution associated with blasting and the barrage of heavy machinery constantly lumbering along local streets. In short, they just aren’t great places to live.

“Over 1,200 miles of waterways had been sullied and jammed with mining fill,” Biggers writes of mountaintop mining’s effect on Appalachia. “Blasting and coal dust had made life unbearable for anyone in the strip-mined areas. Wells had been busted and polluted with toxic waste. … The history was clear: Coal was not cheap, and coal was not clean.”

Backing that argument, Forbes magazine last November deemed West Virginia — the second largest coal-producing state and a hot-bed of mountaintop removal sites — the worst state in the country to live, ranking it 50th in “well being,” “life evaluation,” and physical and emotional health. That’s no coincidence, says Biggers, contending that the tactics employed by the coal industry all but ensure that coal communities will be one-industry towns.

“As long as they keep those communities poor, they can continue to plunder Appalachia,” he said.

For all the wealth that Appalachia’s coal beds have brought to coal executives and corporate shareholders, the money isn’t exactly trickling down to local communities. Indeed, West Virginia ranks 49th in the country in per capita median income, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, with a median household income of $37,989 — well below the national median of $52,029. Only Mississippi families fare worse.

Coal critics say that the message is beginning to sink in among residents of coal towns. Although recent protests have featured the arrests of such prominent figures as actress Daryl Hannah and climate scientist James Hansen, Biggers says the backlash against strip mining is being led by locals fed up with seeing their communities decimated. “We’re all children and grandchildren of coal miners,” he said. “The only people defending coal companies are on their payroll.”

This charge could extend to Capitol Hill, where coal-country lawmakers — backed byconsiderable donations from the giants of the coal industry — have built careers defending those companies, usually in the name of creating jobs for their constituents.

It’s an argument, critics maintain, designed simply to insulate the industry from stricter regulations on tactics like mountaintop removal, which actually rely more on dynamite and heavy machinery than they do manual labor. Indeed, while U.S. coal production is at an all-time high, the number of mining jobs has dropped off considerably in recent decades. Just 25 years ago, coal mining employed more than 169,000 workers, according to the Energy Information Administration. In 2006, the figure had fallen below 83,000.

“If mountaintop removal disappeared tomorrow we would start creating jobs,” Biggers said, advocating for more sustainable projects. Community groups, for example, are hoping to thwart Massey’s plans to level West Virginia’s Coal River Mountain, pushing instead for a wind farm they say will sustain more jobs and bring in more tax revenue for the state — all without destroying one of the oldest mountains in the country.

Yet Biggers is also aware that numbers and statistics, whatever secrets they might reveal, can never be as persuasive as real stories of human suffering in the face of privation. His play, he hopes, will bring that tale — his tale — to audiences sitting hundreds, even thousands of miles from coal country.

“We all relate to the human story,” Biggers said. “We all relate to a sense of loss. Hopefully, this can change more minds than all the statistics I could rattle off.”

At the very least, he’s provided something to think about the next time we flip on the lights.

Source Minnesota Independent

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Below you’ll read some of the facts and make your own mind up. The interview that you can listen to here Consumption in a finite world of resources – How can we sustain a future that isn’t finite? was conducted with me by Joanne Luke of Healthy Planet Healthy People. My appreciation for the opportunity to be involved goes out to Joanne.

You’ll hear on the interview some facts that I think will make your go WOW!

Some that will shock you and some that will give you reason to pause and ask; why? I hope you’ll enjoy it and that it will make a difference in the way you see many things often taken for granted in our busy fast paced world.

Below you might take note of some hard data discussed during the interview.

Click to Download the INTERVIEW AND LISTEN

Sub heading for the interview – Finite Resource Extinction

80% of cases the recyclable resource collected ends up in landfill.

That’s 80% of all that could be saved from the tip ends up there – it’s because the system works for the collector who get their 65 cents per bin but the compaction means that it’s often no good for the recycler.

When it comes to paper and paperboard for packaging China consumed 76 million this year alone and with an annual economic growth rate of 8% per year by 2018 it will consume 150 million tonnes per year and double that amount 8.75 years later. There go the world’s trees!

When looking at the plastic bottle for our milk we don’t realise it took with it to landfill for every single tonne of the virgin material it is made from 1,500 litres of oil, 10.4 tonnes of drinking water, produced 13.9 tonnes of CO2 and had the same energy needed to make it as would be used by the average home over a period of 5.3 years.

Every single aluminum can to drink from once and then put in the bin that to make it took 25.75 litres of water and contributed 270 grams of CO2 for it 15 grams maybe we should CAN the CAN. Think about those numbers for a second – it means that in the smelting process that hasn’t changed since first started in the 1880’s 1,716 tonnes of water has been used.

Australia exports over 1.4 million tonnes of aluminium per year – that’s like exporting OUR water.

In that industry of only 5,500 jobs it gets subsidised for electricity to the value of $40.000 per employee and uses a staggering 15 % of all the electricity generated in Australia

In the US presently 50 billion cans still end up in landfill.

US each year 79% of all plastic drinks bottles are NOT recovered for recycling – see the report HERE.

Some of the finite resources that are of main concern:-

The planet will be out of Copper in 21 years, Lead in 14 years, 16 years of tin, 60 years of iron ore 65 years of bauxite.

Our industries are drinking the planet dry

Ogallala aquifer in the US will be out of water by 2020.

Under the North China Plain and in Saudi Arabia, unsustainable depletion is well underway. Over pumping of aquifers is happening in Iran, Israel and Jordan, India and Pakistan, Mexico, Morocco and Spain, Tunisia and Syria, in the Yemen and South Korea.

We may only consume 4 litres of water per day but the food on our plates each day consumes 2,000 to get it to us. That’s 400 times as much.

Other unseen water facts are ……

1 kilo of maize = 900 kilos (litres) of water

1 kg of beef = 16,000 kilos (litres) of water

The production of 1 kg broken rice costs 3,400 L water

The production of 1 kg eggs costs 3,300 L water

The production of 1 cotton shirt of 300 gram costs 2,500 L water

Jeans (1000g) there is 10,850 liters of embedded water

Diaper (75g) there is 810 liters of embedded water

Bed Sheet (900g) there is 9,750 Liters of embedded water

To produce one cup of coffee we need 140 litres of water.

On average, a 1.1 tonne passenger car has about 400,000 liters of water embedded in it

The construction of a house, using a combination of methods, requires about 6 million liters of water

Solutions to these and other vexing questions form the second part of the interview. I hope you have enjoyed this program.

Bob Williamson – Greenhouse Neutral Foundation.

As a SUPER offer as promised on the show anyone who DONATES $5 or more to help the Foundation keep sending out it’s VOICE FOR CHANGE will receive a complementary copy of the book ZERO Greenhouse Emissions (e-book format) which is packed with lots more that you need to know. (Available until the end of February 2010.) A very special THANK YOU to the lady who having heard the show live, donated $50 to us.

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Dear Family and Friends,

With the closing of the Copenhagen Climate Conference (COP15), I’ve completed my World Hunger Strike commitment in raising awareness and funds to feed those starving in the world due to the climate change crises our world is in.

As I mentioned in my most recent email, it’s been an experience I shall never forget! I had a lofty goal, and proudly announce that I completed 648 hours of the 700 I had set my sights on.

I wish to thank you all again for your continued support, pledges, prayers and encouragement. It made my journey an attainable and achievable one.

Together, we have united our voices and made a difference in the world.

Some have commented with their contributions and pledges that it “may not be much” or “may not be enough” ~ what I can tell you is [our] “not much” or “not enough” to these children is priceless! It’s a wealth beyond comprehension to them! Know that YOU have given them hope. YOU have put food on the empty plate. YOU have put water in the empty cup. YOU have done this ~ WE have done this together!! By giving of ourselves, giving up something as simple to us as a lunch from a fast food restaurant, or maybe a dinner out one evening, to support us with your $5 or $10 or $25 or more, YOU have brought hope, food and water, and even much needed medicine or a blanket to wrap around their shivering shoulders, to their lives!

$1 = food for a week
$5 = food for a month

Do you see now? Do you see the incredible difference YOU have helped us to make? There will be children that go to bed with food in their stomachs instead of wondering will there be any today? or tomorrow? or next week??? There will be medicines that wouldn’t have been possible before. Do you see now how much your contribution has done? I do!! I see it! …and I couldn’t have done this without all of you!!!

You can still help if you haven’t yet. If you would like to do an electronic pledge, you’re welcome to send pledges through the PLEDGE page if you haven’t already. If you would like to mail a check or money order via postal mail, let me know and I’ll be happy to provide you with my address if you don’t already have it.

I thank you, each and every one of you, for your thoughts, your prayers, your encouragement, and most of all your pledges and donations making the difference between life and death to starving children of the world.

Thank you, thank you, and thank you again from me, the children, and the Greenhouse Neutral Foundation.

Bless you all, stay safe ~ Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays, Peace, Love and a Healthy New Year!

Inspired & humbled, and to all my deepest, heartfelt gratitude…

Suzanne Sparling
Exec. Dir, Greenhouse Neutral Foundation- U.S.
Twitter / @ByDezin