Herbal tea remedies -Alternative medicine benefits
Source: www.a1-natural-health-and-beauty.com
Clean coal, dirty press
By David Roberts
The coal industry cannot be liking the kind of coverage they’re getting on, e.g., ABC. (Watch that video and tell me Joe Lucas doesn’t look like a buffoon.)
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Field Sparrow and Chipping Sparrow Update
Source: naturetales.blogspot.com
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Israeli leaders decided to reject an immediate 48-hour pause in fighting and push ahead with the devastating air offensive against Hamas, sending jets and assault helicopters to pound targets in the Gaza Strip for a fifth day Wednesday. A rocket
Source: www.in-forum.com
Tribute: With magazine, Jeanette Schoenlaub-Jackson spread the word on - Kansas City Star
A visionary: Jeanette Schoenlaub-Jackson made a lifetime of friendships through her connections with the more than 18,000 readers she touched each month with her publication, Kansas City Wellness Magazine , which carried the subtitle Balancing
Source: www.kansascity.com
December 31st, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments
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Buy Something that Makes a Difference Day!
Last year at this time, I supported Buy Nothing Day, which encourages consumers to abstain from Black Friday shopping sales. This year, it s a different story. With Going out of Business signs all around the shopping centers, we see sad reminders of an economy in tatters. I m not suggesting you buy a bunch of useless [...]
Source: organicmania.com
Compassion Meditation Changes the Brain to Be Empathetic 
Being compassionate is no longer a feeling that is imbibed within you as your attribute, because according to a new research, such feelings can be cultivated
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December 30th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments
Source: www.howcast.com
Last Minute Stocking Stuffer - The Better World Shopping Guide
If you are a conscientious person who wants their shopping dollars to count, you might be confused by the many choices for products and companies that are available. It’s hard to remember which companies are environmentally and socially responsible and…
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Save the Canyonlands of Utah
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December 27th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments
Wordless Wednesday - Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Random Posts
Focus Organic for 2008. | Permalink | 4 comments |…
Moving Without Breaking the Budget
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December 27th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments
By Kit Stolz
Break Up the Concrete is a new record by Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders; Rolling Stone and numerous other reviewers have called it her best in years.
Hynde has been singing about environmental themes for decades (remember My City Was Gone?) But the title song off the new album, which sounds to me like a rewrite of “I Fought the Law,” for once is not a wistful yearning for a lost paradise or a complaint about the authorities. It’s a demand for real change, right here, right now.
Given that the Urban Heat Index is in many American cities a bigger threat to human health and happiness than climate change, the demand to return to a permeable, plant-friendly, water-cycling landscape actually makes a heckuva lot of sense.
But the song is great not because it’s enviro … but because Hynde and the boys make it rock.
Step right up to the fossil fuel roller coaster!
By Anna Fahey
The cost of oil has been a rollercoaster ride since the 1970s. Thankfully, we’ve hit a low in this season of recession, foreclosures, and a major Wall Street meltdown. But nobody expects the ride to be over — and the only way to go now is up.
Just ask oil industry insiders. A recent survey of senior oil and gas professionals by (auditing and consulting firm) Deloitte revealed growing concern among the top brass of the fossil fuel industry about the affordability and sustainability of oil and gas in the near future, along with a surprisingly strong belief in the viability of renewable energy. Most participants in Deloitte’s assessment group expressed a belief that oil and gas will no longer remain the world’s cheapest energy source in the next few decades: 71 percent said that oil and gas is today’s most affordable energy source, but only 23 percent feel it will still be the cheapest source 25 years from now – a 48 percentage point drop. Three-quarters considered it a good idea for the U.S. to phase out fossil fuels for transportation.
Over half believe that transitioning away from fossil fuels is a reasonable goal for oil and gas companies.
When fuel prices are down, the inclination is to back away from energy policy that would get us off this scary ride. But even as we catch our breath (and our knuckles aren’t white for the moment), the ride remains dangerous and unpredictable — and it’s likely not getting any better. I shudder to think what lies around the corner (a loop-de-loop perhaps?).
If oil execs — of all people (!) — are thinking about bailing off, shouldn’t the rest of us?
As Senator Barbara Boxer head of the Environment and Public Works Committee (D-Calif) puts it: “At the end of the day, gas prices go up and they go down. In the long run, we need to find alternative clean-energy sources to protect our nation from hikes in gas prices and from the ravages of global warming.”
The good news: Unlike past oil crises and their aftermaths, president-elect Obama doubled down instead of backing off his alternative-energy push. He promises to make green projects a cornerstone of the economic stimulus plan.
The work now is to put the brakes on political backsliding when it comes to important energy, climate, and green stimulus commitments at both the federal and state level.
Methodology: Deloitte conducted the sampling between November 5, 2008 and November 7, 2008, following the presidential election. It worked with the survey firm Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates to complete 52 phone interviews with director- and higher-level professionals at oil and gas companies with annual revenues of $100 million or more — more than half of the interviews, 33, were with C-Suite executives.
Mar 12, Spa with a difference
It seems, spas with doctors is the next big thing. Walk into a spa which has music, scented aroma candles, but here you’ll meet a professional doctor rather than a Linda from the North-East. And order for yourself a quick botox, lunchtime peel, nip-and-tuck liposuction or a nose surgery.
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Tibetan Heart Yoga offered every Thursday at 7 p.m., and every Sunday at 9 a.m., at ACI-Cape Ann’s Vajramudra Center, 154 Granite St., Rockport. Led by registered yoga teacher Dr. Pattie O’Brien. Ninety-minute program open to all. $10 donation per
Source: www.gloucestertimes.com
Americans discover laughter yoga - Independent Online
Not just any old laughter, but laughter yoga, a form of exercise that blends bold belly laughs and noisy “meditation” with rhythmic clapping, waddling around like a penguin or taking part in a conga line, and deep, yogic breathing. “Life is hard, the
Source: www.iol.co.za
December 26th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments
, I described a nonprofit bank’s program for financing building energy retrofits, as a way to speed the green-collar recovery. Here, I describe two new, innovative approaches to financing efficiency upgrades in buildings — meter loans and local improvement districts — and one old-school, utility-run approach that may be the best bet of all.
First, though, a couple more points about the challenges of financing energy efficiency improvements in buildings.
One big challenge is to guarantee that retrofits will save enough money to repay the loans, not only on average across all buildings but also in each individual building. Guarantees are hard to come by, because building energy systems are complicated and buildings’ occupants may have other goals beyond energy savings. For example, if before a retrofit tenants were keeping their thermostat low to save money, they may turn up the heat after a retrofit. In effect, they’ll decide to take some of the benefit of efficiency in increased comfort. (As I noted before, low-income families are especially likely to turn up the heat. Who can blame them?)
A related challenge is to harvest all of the efficiency potential in each building. Owners and loan makers are commonly tempted to skim the cream, investing only a modest amount of money and making only the cheap, high-return retrofits — changing light bulbs, installing shower aerators, and upping insulation in easy-to-reach attics. To put ourselves on a clean-energy path, we need to do deep, comprehensive retrofits — retrofits that double building energy efficiency, for example, by changing heating systems, insulating walls as well as ceilings, replacing windows and doors, and installing appropriate renewable technologies such as ground-source heat pumps and solar water heaters.
Deep retrofits are expensive, even if they save the most money over the life of a building. They are less sure to generate monthly energy savings during the term of the loan that pay for their loan servicing costs. Deep retrofits may pay for themselves over 20 years, rather than the six years or so that’s typical for existing conservation loans. When a loan term is as long as 20 years, many property owners will wonder whether they’ll ever see the financial benefit. Will they still own the building in 20 years?
This concern in particular is what inspired the creation of meter loans and local improvement districts, both of which allow conservation loan debt to transfer from one building owner to the next.
Meter loans (sometimes called “tarriffed improvement programs”) are retrofit loans collected by a gas or electric utility on its monthly bills. The loans themselves can come from the utility or from a bank, public agency, or nonprofit such as ShoreBank Enterprise Cascadia. They obligate the current and any future owners of the electric or natural gas meter to pay for energy improvements made to the building.
Oregon utilities are already authorized to serve as intermediaries for such loans, but meter loans are rare in that state, as elsewhere. Also, they haven’t been any more successful than other conservation loan programs, according to this study [PDF]. In fact, as I mentioned, two Cascadian utilities years ago discontinued their once-large meter-loan programs, preferring to pursue other efficiency strategies.
Local improvement districts are even more innovative. In July, California granted authority to its cities to loan money to building owners to pay for energy upgrades and solar panel installation and to collect loan payments on property tax statements. Because local improvement district loans are structured as public spending projects for which the property owner is levied a special assessment (a type of property tax), the assessment — like other property tax obligations — transfers with the title deed on resale. Consequently, deep retrofits with long-payback periods are no longer risky investments for property owners. What’s more, such loans are less likely to suffer defaults than other conservation loans because, legally, even in bankruptcy proceedings, special assessments get paid before private loans such as mortgages. Other loans, such as meter loans, line up after mortgages.
In Washington and Oregon, local improvement districts are legally reserved for projects that provide a public benefit — typically the construction of public infrastructure such as a new transit or sewer systems. Furthermore, the normal rules require that local improvement district dollars go into projects on public property that remain in public ownership. So deploying local improvement districts to finance retrofits for all will require a slate of legal reforms: defining energy conservation or climate protection as a public benefit and waiving requirements concerning public ownership.
Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski may introduce legislation soon to allow localities to create such districts for building retrofits. In Washington, the Priorities for a Healthy Washington project may do the same. In one scenario under consideration, the state would authorize local governments to create Climate Benefit Districts. These districts could then sell public bonds on private capital markets to raise money, and they could invest the funds in local building retrofits. (Of course, as I noted, conservation loan programs never pay for themselves entirely. They require public subsidy — a good use for economic stimulus dollars.)
Like meter loans, local improvement districts would seem to resolve some of the challenges of financing deep retrofits for huge numbers of building owners, as part of an economic turnaround. But they are also new and untested. So far, the city of Berkeley, California, has launched a pilot project to implement this new authority. It expects to install 40 rooftop solar energy systems through the pilot. Boulder, Colorado, meanwhile, has created a local taxing district to finance building energy upgrades. It’s hardly a track record that inspires confidence. It’s more a worthy experiment at this stage. The City of Seattle is eager to create such a district itself, after winning legislative approval. The city might engage ShoreBank to execute the lending portion of the program.
Still, the legal and legislative hurdles to local improvement districts are formidable, and an older approach may be a safer bet. Or, at least, this older approach might form the best backbone for large-scale investments in the short term.
As I mentioned last time, more than 150 programs make loans to finance building energy upgrades in North America. The overwhelming majority of these programs have lackluster records, but two stand out. The biggest in the United States is that of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, which made 3,200 loans in 2007 and has served about a quarter of all households in its service area since the program’s launch 30 years ago. The biggest program on the continent is that of Manitoba Hydro, which made about 8,100 loans in 2007. The success of Manitoba’s program despite the utility’s low electricity prices is something close to astounding. It suggests similar success may be possible in Cascadia, where electric rates are also low.
Interestingly, both programs are run directly by public utilities — by government-owned utilities. They’re not run by third party nonprofits like ShoreBank Enterprise Cascadia nor by municipalities’ local improvement districts. Instead, the utilities built themselves specialized departments to do conservation lending, staffed by loan officers with banking experience. (Side note: An awful lot of financial professionals with real estate expertise are looking for work these days. WaMu is laying off more than 3,000 people from its Seattle headquarters this winter.) In addition, these utilities offer a bundle of additional incentives, beyond the loans, such as large cash rebates for energy-smart appliances.
The lesson of Sacramento and Manitoba lies in that how payments are collected — on the bill, on the property tax, or on a separate bill (which is what these programs do) — matters less than how the loans are marketed. Because of humans’ innate aversion to making complicated choices, among the most important ingredients of success in Manitoba and Sacramento is the deep and thoroughgoing involvement of those places’ contractors — the people that building owners already trust to help them improve their properties. In both places, contractors are the most important sales force and intermediary for the utility lending programs. Plus, these programs are efficient, well staffed and well organized. In Sacramento, once a contractor and building owner have submitted a loan application, the utility approves or declines within 24 hours. Manitoba is almost as fast, and it has a colossal network of engaged tradespeople: 1,100 contractors and 200 retailers are enrolled in its program. Manitoba has essentially deputized its building tradespeople as loan officers and conservation evangelists. In fact, Manitoba’s program reminds me of SustainableWorks, which I described here. It’s a whole-systems approach that provides financing as one part of the package.
In British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington, both public and private utilities already have the legal authority to run programs like Sacramento’s and Manitoba’s. In fact, Washington amended its state constitution in 1979 specifically to authorize government-owned utilities to offer conservation loans as freely as private utilities companies can. This amendment lifted the constitution’s usual prohibition against giving public dollars or credit to private parties. The state’s Attorney General Rob McKenna could strengthen this amendment by revising a too-restrictive interpretation of it issued by his predecessor in 2001.
Cascadia’s utilities do not lack authority; they do lack will. As creations of the state, they would get a will transfusion in a hurry, if legislators and regulators made successful energy conservation the principal factor in calculating their rates and returns on investment. Decoupling would be a good start.
Meter loans, local improvement districts, and ShoreBank’s conservation loans are all promising paths to financing retrofits for all. All of these contenders, furthermore, complement each other. But replicating Sacramento and Manitoba’s programs in Cascadia — massively, under government directive, and likely with an infusion of federal stimulus dollars — seems like the main route from where we are to where we want to be: a green-collar recovery, a revitalized construction industry, increased energy independence, waning greenhouse-gas emissions, and cozier buildings with lower operating costs. It’s a welcome opportunity in the midst of this economic storm.
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December 25th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments
Herbal tea is a great way to prepare herbal remedies by boiling your herbs in water. Learn more about how to make herbal tea with tips from an herbalist in this free video on natural remedies.
Christopher Parr, Consumer Marketing VP for Sub-Zero and Wolf, on Green Appliances and Kitchens 
As the Consumer Marketing Manager of Sub-Zero and Wolf, Christopher Parr knows what people want in their kitchens, and knows what it takes for a fridge to be green. We had a chance to chat with him about Sub-Zero’s idea of green, the green kitchen inspiration video series — we recently interviewed architect Michael McDonough about the sam…
Most Discussed TreeHugger Stories of 2008 
No good blog goes a year without stirring readers up on certain subjects. So, which stories got you talking the most? We looked at all the topics we cover, and while discussion was sparked in every corner, there is one area where it dominated. Read on to find out which are some of the most discussed posts we ve published in 2008. …
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December 23rd, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments
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The Union Health minister, Anbumani Ramadoss refused to accept that some Ayurvedic drugs manufactured by leading Indian companies contained heavy metals above the permissible limit as reported in a US medical journal. Based on the information Go and sniff
NEW DELHI: The government on Friday categorically denied that some Ayurvedic drugs manufactured by leading companies contained heavy metals above the permissible limit as reported in a US medical journal. The US Food and Drug Administration had urged Go and sniff
December 23rd, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments
Mindfulness meditation may help slow the progression of HIV, according to scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). They say
Researchers from the University of Arizona and Mashhad Medical University in Iran have found that passion fruit skin may hold a cure for the world’s 400 million sufferers of asthma.