Global Warming

Earth day home improvements for free

Earth day is coming up this week. Here's one simple tip that just about anybody can do that will save money and help the planet at the same time. Search your house and find light fixtures with more than one bulb. Simply remove half of the bulbs. Most likely you won't notice the reduction in light and now you're using half as much energy every time you flip the switch.

Local food and the global supply chain

Waking up listening to Weekend Edition Sunday is one of the best parts of the weekend. There are the features like the weekly puzzle with Will Short and there are some of the best stories on radio. This Sunday was no exception. A story talked about the possibility of finding locally grown foods and one couple's year-long experiment of eating a local diet. It started, as so many things do, as a necessity to put together a good meal from the locally available resources and turned into an exploration of the follies of the global food supply chain.

Recent stories about the pet food recall have pointed out some of the problems with getting food from the lowest bidder. Free marketeers will boldly proclaim that if we just leave the market alone it will correct the problem. Ultimately they are correct. The question is are we willing to pay the price? When the market is left to correct this situation on its own it will be a brutal correction. There won't be a simple soft landing and awareness of the need to change. Rather there will be a catastrophic failure of the supply chain and there will be thousands of people starving when the market makes the folly known.

Act locally

With this past weekend's story about 2006 being the warmest year on record one is left to consider what each of us can do to reduce our impact on the atmosphere. Only a few politicians still suggest with a straight face that the jury is out on the matter of global warming. However, few governments will do anything substantial about the problem. So the important question becomes what are each of us doing?

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