THE COVE

~THE GNOME IS BACK~

I'm writing this post because I recently watched the documentary called THE COVE and it really has an effect on me. I urge everyone that reads this to watch it. The fact that we cant globally agree to not kill dolphins breaks my heart. This species is self aware and may be more intelligent than we are (The gnome believes this may be true because they live with in there means), just because we can build things and can kill them very easily doesn't mean we are smarter. To me there is something so wrong about killing dolphins for any reason (the Japanese are eating them as food). I'm not going attempt give you a written post on what else was said the movie THE COVE MOVIE does a very good job of that and you need to see for yourself. The gnome want to talk about some of the things Ric O'Barry said in the movie one of the things that hit me really hard is that "your either and activist or a non-activist". Ive always considered myself to be an activist, BUT AM I REALLY~

1. Ive written many articles about the environment

2. I live an eco~friendly lifestyle

3. I educate most of my friends and family how they can be more eco-friendly

4. I've opened up eco~friendly business'

Most average people would consider me to be an environmentalist or activist, but I don't think most true environmentalist and activist would consider me one. See to Ric O'Barry being an activist means getting involved actually doing something about whats going on in the world that you see as wrong. THE GNOME IS SAYING GET INVOLVED!!


THE GNOME HASN'T POSTED ANYTHING IN A LONG TIME AND HE IS SORRY FOR THAT. IT WAS BECAUSE THE POSTINGS WERE WAY TWO LONG AND TOOK TO MUCH TO PRODUCE ON A WEEKLY OR EVEN A MONTHLY BASIS AND THEY BECAME TO MUCH LIKE WORK , SO THE GNOME STOP WRITING POST SO FROM HERE ON OUT MY POST WILL BE SHORTER AND MORE LIKE JUST THE GREEN GNOMES OPINION RATHER THAN A PROFESSIONAL ARTICLES THAT WOULD READ IN A MAGAZINE .

I HOPE YOU ENJOY THE NEW FORMAT!!!

GREEN GNOME OUT

Recycling is free! A Look at American Statistics and why we dont recycle more

Every other week I take my red white and blues(In Las Vegas our recycling bins are called this) out to the curb and I always look up and down the street to see how many of my neighbors also have theirs out usually its a very depressing number of about 20%. My first thought was its free why isn't everyone recycling? So started looking at all forms of recycling statistics online. There were plenty of stats on how much we consume and how much can be saved by recycling certain things. Here are just a few of the ones that jumped out me:

1. Recycling 1 aluminum can can save enough energy to power your TV for 3-4 hours.

2. A 60-watt light bulb can be run for over a day on the amount of energy saved by recycling 1 pound of steel.

3. The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years.

4. Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour! Most of them are thrown away!

5. Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.

6. Every year, each American throws out about 1,200 pounds of organic garbage that can be composted.

7. The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle can run a 100-watt light bulb for four hours.

8. An Aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can in 500 years.

9. If all of our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250 million trees a year.

10. The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50 million homes for 20 years.

These are just a few of the stats that there are on what we consume and what the savings would be if recycled certain things. With all that potential energy and cost savings why don't more people recycle? So I looked how many people recycle in the U.S. and I got some numbers that didn't add up. A Harris pole done in 2007 said that 77% of all Americans recycled. This was also reported by Treehugger.com

But when I went to the EPA and found out that 60% of all our solid waste(garbage) in ends up in land fills I was confused. This means only 40% of our waste was being recycled yet 77% of Americans say they recycle. Now with 90% of our waste being recyclable should that amount be much higher. Is the Harris pole wrong? The short answer is yes, but there is allot more to the numbers than just simple math. The first part is that some people lie when asked about being green(the gnome will write about this later). The second part is those who do recycle regularly do a piss poor job of it. Americans are asked to separate paper, plastic, metals, and glass(70% of all your trash) from the rest of their waste and place them in small bins. If your recycling nut like me I'm sure you spend allot time smashing containers and cutting up boxes so that everything fits in the little bins they give you that they only pick-up once every other week. So no matter how diligent you are separating your garbage some waste still ends up in the regular trash because you don't have room in the small bins. Now I'm sure if study was done on average American that recycled we would find out that they were recycling less than half of what they could be recycling. Lets also not forget a very small percentage of Americans have a compost(recycling of leaves, grass, and foods) witch is 18% percent of our waste.

There are approximately 8,600 curbside recycling programs in the U.S. and they are all free. If you are not recycling your waste because there is no program in your area then you have an excuse, but you can call your local politician and demand one. My purpose of this blog was to find out why more people don't recycle.
SO:

If you have recycling program in your area and you don't recycle I would like to know why?

If you recycle part time why don't you do more of it(what are the problems you have had)?

If you do recycle regularly what are the problems you have had in your home and area?

Recycling is a very big part of us living sustainable lives so the Gnome would love to hear your problems with recycling. I would also love to hear your ideas on how we can make recycling easier for us all to do. Also if you think you don't need to recycle because your garbage company recycles everything check and make sure. I'm sure you will shocked to find out that they don't. Most municipal waste companies only recycle what is giving to them by their recycling programs.

GREEN GNOME OUT!

P.S. I will be writing several more post on recycling or if you have something you want to see written about by the Gnome just let me know and will do my best.

Global Warming does it matter if it's real or not?

Recently some hackers broke into the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK. They stole 169 megabytes of emails and articles of their research. In these emails that were sent amongst colleagues was talk about how they changed some of there numbers in their climate models to fit the theory that global warming is man made. This has started a firestorm of controversy that man made global warming has been made up and that over the last decade the planet has been actually cooling. FOX news and other right wing media in the UK have been having a field day with this calling it Climategate.They are basically reporting that this is proof that man made global warming is not real. At the same time CNN and most main stream media has not even reported on Climategate. The Presidents energy and environment czar Carol Browner was asked to comment on Climategate and this is her statement:

“There has been for a very long time a very small group of people who continue to say this isn’t a real problem, that we don’t need to do anything,” Browner said at the White House. “On the other hand, we have 2,500 of the word’s foremost scientists who are in absolute agreement that this is a real problem and that we need to do something and we need to do something as soon as possible. What am I going to do, side with the couple of naysayers out there or the 2,500 scientists? I’m sticking with the 2,500 scientists.”


















OK so what does all this mean? The right is saying that the upcoming meetings in Copenhagen for climate negotiations should be stopped. That cap and trade on carbon is a bad idea. For those of you that don't know the President is hoping that a global treaty will be reach that would force all governments to pay billions in taxes on their carbon emissions. These taxes collected would then be giving to countries to develop and install green technologies. This whole idea is based in the fact that man made global warming is a real threat to the entire globe.

Both sides have reason to believe that they are right, but does it even matter?

The Gnome is here to stop all the debate and poppycock. Lets say that all the climate scientist are full of hot air(the gnome made a pun) and man made global warming is not real. The simple fact remains that we are getting most of our energy from coal and oil. No one can argue that these are both finite resources on the planet and if we continue to use them as energy resources one day we will run out, THEN WHAT? We can not change the way consume energy over night the process is going to take multiple decades. So if we do not start to make the necessary changes now and we continue to burn fossil fuels one day soon those resources will start to become harder to find causing prices to skyrocket and economies to collapse. After that wars will ensue over coal and oil claims and millions if not billions of people will die. So at the end of the day isn't that the same result that believers in global warming feel will happen.

This simple fact is that if we continue to use coal and oil as our main energy source we will run out. This is above any and all contestation from anyone!

So instead off calling cap and trade a carbon tax why don't we call it finite resource tax this would stop all the arguments from both sides and end the debate over global warming. We have to change our energy use over to a sustainable supply this is only way we can continue to enjoy the lives we have now in the future.

All of the arguing and political hot air needs to stop the longer we wait to make changes the more its going to cost us to switch in the long run. Do we pay billions now or trillions later? Common sense should tell everyone that time for action is now not later so lets stop the debate over whether man made global warming is real or not because in the long run it really doesn't matter!

GREEN GNOME OUT!