Terra Firma: Not as 'Firma' as You Might Think
By Our Green Team | Mar 5 2010, 15:17

Terra firma. Rock solid. On solid ground. While expressions like these suggest the Earth as a fixed and immutable place, reality says otherwise.

Over its 4.5-billion-year history, our planet has changed dramatically, sometimes at a slower-than-snail's pace, sometimes in sudden and cataclysmic fashion. The massive asteroid that slammed into the Earth 65 million years ago, for example, set off widespread fires, magnitude 10-plus earthquakes, devastating landslides and tsunamis, and a deadly global winter that killed off the dinosaurs and some 50 percent of all plant and animal families.

Today, astronomers track the heavens for signs of similar sized asteroids that might be headed our way. But giant hunks of rock in space aren't the only potential upheaval our planet might face.

Consider the magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck Chile in late February. The massive quake not only toppled buildings and set off tsunamis (the most deadly occurring along the Chilean coast) but actually shifted the Earth's axis of rotation and shortened the length of a day by 1.26 millionths of a second .

Climate change could also affect how our planet spins by shifting the distribution of mass as ice caps melt. In fact, scientists say a warmer globe is also likely to be a more geologically active one as stresses on the surface change. At a conference in London last fall, researchers discussed a host of impacts that global warming could bring on, including earthquakes, landslides and tsunamis .

Then there's the Earth's old habit of reversing magnetic poles every so often. It appears we're long overdue for a switch , since the last one took place about 780,000 years ago and they were coming every 20,000 to 50,000 years or so apart before then. The possible effects such a geomagnetic flip might have on society is uncertain .

Society, on the other hand, is bringing about some planetary changes of its own. Even if you discount climate change, the human impact on Earth is already significant in many ways... and growing. Last year, an international team of researchers warned that we've already overstepped the planet's ability to cope in terms of climate, biodiversity loss and the nitrogen cycle, and are pushing the limits on ocean acidification, freshwater use, land system changes and stratospheric ozone depletion. Any one of these impacts could have huge ramifications for life on Earth - taken together, they're beyond worrisome.

In fact, a growing number of scientists today believe that humans have impacted the planet to such a degree that we've brought about a whole new geologic epoch: the Anthropocene .

It's all a far cry from life as we knew it in the 1970s, when fooling Mother Nature and inviting her wrath meant replacing butter with margarine , isn't it?

Change is Still Constant, But It's Constantly Faster than in Heraclitus' Day
By Our Green Team | Mar 12 2010, 14:21

It was nearly 2,500 years ago that the Greek philosopher Heraclitus made the observation that, "The only constant is change." If that fact was obvious to him so long ago, back in the days even before Socrates, imagine what he might have thought today.

Technology alone is changing so rapidly these days that a five-year-old computer or a two-year-old cell phone looks practically primitive. And scientific discoveries and understanding have accelerated so much, it's all but impossible for even the smartest people to keep up in a single field of study... much less to understand as many fields as Leonardo da Vinci did during the Renaissance.

Society itself also seems to be evolving faster and faster, with the impacts on our lives and behavior ever harder to appreciate: Is Google helping us stay more informed than ever, or is it making us stupid? Have video games, computers and texting caused today's kids to be wired differently than children in the past? Are political institutions born 200 or more years ago unable to keep up with today's world, as futurist and author Alvin Toffler has suggested?

And then there are the rapid changes we're seeing in our natural world. Where once we expected the normal, changing cycles of nature - seasonal rains, migrating robins, the ebb and flow of tides - today we see more chaos and unpredictability. Asia's monsoon seasons are arriving at the wrong time. Flowers are blooming earlier in the spring. Once-every-100-year floods seem to be occurring once every 20 years, or even 10.

With so much change swirling all around us, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. But it's also worth contemplating, if for no other reason than that change won't stop just because you don't want to think about it.

For those of us who want to live green, sustainable and healthy lives - and to pass those habits on to future generations - there's a lot to consider. Do you buy what's touted as the most effective sunscreen for your child, or do you choose something else because the so-called best brand contains nano-sized particles that could enter the environment with uncertain consequences? What's the best way to plan for retirement if you have no clue what the world might look like in 20, 30 or 40 years' time? How can you avoid information overload - the near-endless compulsion to check text messages, Facebook and Twitter - and stay focused on what's really important in life?

You might not always settle on the right answer to questions like those, but the important thing is to ask such questions in the first place. After all, steering your own life in the right direction means you need to keep an eye on all the traffic around you.

Heraclitus himself would have understood.

Nature to Civilization: Your Bill is Coming Due
By Our Green Team | Mar 19 2010, 17:21

In her latest book, science historian Naomi Oreskes describes a "colossal banquet" for hundreds of millions of guests who eat and drink without pause until they're finally confronted by a waiter with a bill. Rather than pay, the diners express shock, argue with the waiter, then decide to ignore him.

That scene, Oreskes says, mirrors "where we stand today on the question of global warming. For the past 150 years, industrial civilization has been dining on the energy stored in fossil fuels and the bill has now come due. Yet we have sat around the dinner table denying that it is our bill, and doubting the credibility of the man who delivered it."

In fact, Oreskes' banquet analogy works for literally every aspect of our relationship with nature. For example, for most of us, water flows cheaply and easily from our taps without us having to give it a passing thought. But if our water bills added in the full impact our society has on the natural water cycle - from the nitrogen-polluted farm runoff that's fueling ocean dead zones to the oil industry's increasing reliance on hydrofracking fluids that can contaminate water supplies - we'd probably start doing a whole lot more to conserve than turn off the faucet while brushing our teeth.

Likewise, that box of cookies we bought on sale at the grocery store would be much less affordable if it came with a surtax from Mother Nature. That fee would put a price on the deforestation, orangutan deaths and other environmental damage caused by the rise of palm oil plantations, which produce one of the ingredients found in many of our processed foods.

Those are just two areas in which we take for granted the unseen, yet very real, benefits that the natural world provides for us. While they seem free of cost when we consider just our wallets and bank accounts, they're really not. And, sooner or later, whatever natural resource we're talking about, the bill will come due.

The name at the top of that bill is "ecosystem services." And it's got an itemized list of things we've purchased that's a lot longer than you might imagine, from the medicines we've discovered - or have yet to discover - amid the abundant plant life of the rainforests to the vast amounts of carbon dioxide that have been pulled out of the atmosphere courtesy of the world's oceans.

That's why our efforts - whether undertaken individually or through a group or network like GlobalForce - to build a sustainable future are so important. The whole idea behind sustainability is not that we're saving the rainforest or the oceans or the mountain pines or the honeybees just because it's the right thing to do. We're saving them all because we're also saving ourselves.

Endless Growth? It's Time to Stop Thinking Like Newborn Hamsters
By Our Green Team | Mar 26 2010, 15:25

It's becoming increasingly clear that, before we can change our world for the better and build a truly sustainable future, we have to change our way of thinking first.

Why? Start by asking yourself this question: "How did we get here, to a planetary brink where the oceans are dying, freshwater is running low, the number of species going extinct is rising fast and the very climate itself is on the verge of revolt?"

Certainly the answer starts with the fact that there are now 6.8 billion of us people on Earth, but it goes beyond that. It's the fact that so many of us are motivated each day by the quest for more: more money, more economic expansion, more stuff.

That's not entirely our fault as individuals. Look, for example, at how most of the world's governments judge how well they're doing - by gross domestic product. The more the GDP goes up, the better things are, they argue. But is that really true? GDP, for example, doesn't measure the value of volunteerism. But it does include rising spending on things like chronic health problems and polluting fossil fuels.

Advertisers continually send us the message, too: new is better, more is better, so buy, buy, buy.

The problem is, that way of thinking can't work when there are so many of us pursuing infinite growth on a finite planet. Or, as the think-tank nef recently put it in a report titled, "Growth Isn't Possible":

"From birth to puberty a hamster doubles its weight each week. If, then, instead of levelling-off in maturity as animals do, the hamster continued to double its weight each week, on its first birthday we would be facing a nine billion tonne hamster. If it kept eating at the same ratio of food to body weight, by then its daily intake would be greater than the total, annual amount of maize produced worldwide. There is a reason that in nature things do not grow indefinitely."

Like your typical hamster, we find ourselves running on a treadmill. Except we're not doing it to get exercise but to "keep up with the Joneses." Trouble is, studies are finding that pursuit is an empty one that doesn't lead to happiness... much less help the planet on the road to recovery.

What's the answer? Think about what truly matters to you and those you love. What makes you happy and helps bring you toward a saner, greener way of life? Is it stuff, or is it time spent together working in the garden or browsing books at the library? The answer's probably pretty obvious to most of us.

In fact, chances are you've already felt that pull to a different way of thinking and living, even if you haven't been able to pin down the "why?" Whatever we've called it - stress, burnout, information overload, lifestyle disease, Western diet syndrome - more and more of us have felt in recent years that something in our lives is out of whack, off balance somehow. It's time we recognize it for what it is.

So let's work - on our own, with our families or through online communities like GlobalForce - to help shift to a new way of thinking. If enough of us can make the leap and view our world through a more sustainable lens, we can more easily chart the way to a satisfying, healthier future. It's the right thing to do for ourselves. It's also only fitting that we, the species that created so many of today's environmental problems, should take ownership of that mess and make it right for the rest of life on Earth too.