Good News and Inspirational Words
March 12, 2007
I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things... I play with leaves.
I skip down the street and run against the wind.
-- Leo Buscaglia
March 9, 2007
Determined to reduce its energy consumption by 20 percent by 2020,
the 25-nation European Union will require stringent new efficiency
standards for boilers, water heaters, air conditioners, photocopiers,
televisions, computers, and lighting. Any company that wants to sell
products in the confederation will have to comply, so consumers
around the world can look forward to seeing more energy-efficient
goods.
-- Dashka Slater, Sierra Magazine, January/February 2007
March 8, 2007
I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors,
nature is company enough for me.
-- William Hazlitt
March 7, 2007
I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant
I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility.
Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.
-- Bertrand Russell
March 6, 2007
Need proof that Green has really gone mainstream?
The latest issue of Glamour Magazine features a cover
story on green living tips, right next to Drew Barrymore's
smiling face!
March 5, 2007
Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons.
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep
with the earth.
-- Walt Whitman
March 2, 2007
Rain! Whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and
chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains.
-- Henry Ward Beecher
March 1, 2007
Seattle has cut its vehicle fleet's use of fossil fuels
by 12 percent since 1999. That has kept 2,900 tons
of global-warming pollution out of the air annually--as much
as 570 cars emit in a year.
-- Sierra Magazine, March/April 2007
Feb 28, 2007
How strange that nature does not knock, and yet
does not intrude!
-- Emily Dickinson
Feb 27, 2007
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
-- Emerson
Feb 26, 2007
No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place.
-- Zen saying.
Feb 23, 2007
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth
find reserves of strength that will endure as long
as life lasts.
-- Rachel Carson
Feb 22, 2007
Australia will be the world's first country to ban incandescent
lightbulbs in a bid to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The
incandescent bulbs will be replaced with compact fluorescent
bulbs, which are considered to be more efficient. Australia's
ban is proposed to cut 800,000 tons from Australia's current
emissions level by 2012 and lower household lighting costs
by 66 per cent.
--Reuters, Feb 2007
Feb 21, 2007
A single rose can be my garden...a single friend, my world.
-- Leo Buscaglia.
Feb 20, 2007
Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.
-- Wordsworth.
Feb 16, 2007
Buyblue.org started out as a purely political
(and partisan) site, but now it offers rankings
of companies based on labor and human-rights
practices, environmental responsibility, employment
equality, corporate and social responsibility, and industry
practices, in addition to campaign donations.
-- Sierra Magazine, January/February 2007
Feb 15, 2007
If you're looking for proof that global warming
has fully hit mainstream consciousness, look no
further than the Academy Awards. An Inconvenient
Truth, Al Gore's film about climate change, has been
nominated for Best Documentary. Check out our
pre-Oscar interview with the director, Davis
Guggenheim, on Sierra Club Radio.
Feb 14, 2007
There are many paths to the top of the
mountain, but only one view.
-- Harry Millner
Feb 13, 2007
Life has loveliness to sell, all beautiful
and splendid things, blue waves whitened
on a cliff, soaring fire that sways and sings,
and children's faces looking up, holding wonder
like a cup.
-- Sara Teasdale
Feb 12, 2007
Knowing trees, I understand the
meaning of patience. Knowing grass,
I can appreciate persistence.
-- Hal Borland
Feb 9, 2007
A society grows great when
old men plant trees whose
shade they know they
shall never sit in.
-- Greek proverb
Feb 8, 2007
New American Dream focuses on reducing
wasteful consumption with its tips for
the "conscious consumer."
-- Sierra Magazine, January/February 2007
Feb 7, 2007
As long as I live, I'll hear
waterfalls and birds and winds
sing. I'll interpret the rocks,
learn the language of flood, storm,
and the avalanche. I'll acquaint
myself with the glaciers and wild
gardens, and get as near the
heart of the world as I can.
-- John Muir
Feb 6, 2007
A London architectural firm will
roll out an energy-harvesting
staircase in 2007 that uses new
technology to capture the vibrations
caused by footsteps and convert it
into electricity. According to a
company spokesperson, "For every
footstep we can harvest three to
five watts of energy."
Feb 5, 2007
In New York State, Club volunteers
spruced up the Gertrude's Nose Footpath
in Minnewaska State Park Preserve. The
area, which many have likened to Yosemite
Valley, was slated for development a few
years ago; nearly 350 homes and a golf
course were planned when a local landowner
tried to sell some 2,600 acres of ridgetop.
The Club and other groups helped block the
project, and the state park annexed the
land last March. "Bringing people outdoors
to see the beauty of an area," says Don
Pachner of the Club's Lower Hudson Group,
"is a very effective means of saving
endangered, wild open spaces."
--Sarah Ives (Sierra Club Bulletin, Nov/Dec 2006)
Feb 2, 2007
As for men, those myriad little
detached ponds with their own
swarming corpuscular life, what
were they but a way that water
has of going about beyond the
reach of rivers?
--Loren Eiseley
Feb 1, 2007
First I thought I was fighting
for the rubber trappers, then
I thought I was fighting for
the Amazon, then I realized I
was fighting for humanity.
--Chico Mendez
Jan 31, 2007
The lightbulb finally went on for New
Mexico's largest electricity provider
PNM. After reaching a settlement over
air-quality violations in 2005 with
the Sierra Club, the Grand Canyon Trust
and the state environment department,
the company has started an estimated
$270 million project to upgrade its
San Juan Generating Station. "They
could have continued to fight their
pollution violations," says Marissa
Stone, communications director of the
New Mexico Environment Department, "but
they decided to reduce their emissions
and be proactive about it."
Through 2009, the coal-fired power plant
will install pollution-control equipment
that should cut mercury emissions by 75
percent and reduce sulfur dioxide releases
to 65 percent below currently permitted
levels. Says attorney Reed Zars, who
represented the Club, "This is the story
of local people coming together and
sustaining a long fight, and in the
end achieving a great success."
--Robynne Boyd
Jan 30, 2007
What was full was not my creel, but my memory.
Like the white-throats, I had forgotten it
would even again be aught but morning on the Fork.
--Aldo Leopold
Jan 29, 2007
Looking for consumer information for progressives?
Check out the Co-op America website for tools and
tips for the conscious consumer -- including a
search function that allows you to type in the
name of a company and learn about its employment,
environmental and human rights records.
Here the 'ohia trees
filled with red flowers red birds
water notes flying music
the shining of the gods
--W.S. Merwin
Jan 25, 2007
Barring love and war, few enterprises are
undertaken with such abandon, or by such
diverse individuals, or with so paradoxical a
mixture of appetite and altruism, as that
group of avocations known as outdoor
recreation. It is, by common consent, a good
thing for people to get back to nature.
--Aldo Leopold
Jan 24, 2007
The Hands-On Journal of Home Made Power
features articles about sustainable electricity
generation, home energy efficiency, solar hot
water systems and green building materials.
http://www.homepower.com/
Jan 23, 2007
In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and
behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia.
-- Charles A. Lindbergh
Jan 22, 2007
I am in love with this world. I have nestled lovingly in it.
I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed
its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting of its frosts,
the oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the
fury of its winds, and always have beauty and joy waited
upon my goings and comings.
-- John Burroughs
Jan 19, 2007
I think the man who just likes to look at geysers
has as much right to do so as the one who likes
to look at a geyser and see God.
--Bernard De Voto
Jan 18, 2007
ReNew is a practical magazine published in Australia
for folks interested in applying solar, wind, micro-hydro
and other renewable energy technologies. It features
articles about solar pumps, composting toilets, water collectors
and wireless weather stations.
http://www.ata.org.au/
Jan 17, 2007
The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely
or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where
they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature
and God…I firmly believe that nature brings solace
in all troubles.
-- Anne Frank
Jan 16, 2007
Flowers in a city are like lipstick on a woman -- it
just makes you look better to have a little color.
-- Lady Bird Johnson
Jan 15, 2007
The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the fundamental emotion at the cradle of true art
and true science. He who knows it not is as good as
dead, a snuffed-out candle…
-- Albert Einstein
Jan 12, 2007
The earth
laughs in flowers.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Jan 11, 2007
Never a day passes but that I do myself the
honor to commune with some of nature's varied forms.
-- George Washington Carver
Jan 10, 2007
A "green" vegetated roof on Chicago's City Hall shows
how local governments can rise to the challenge of global
warming. Nationwide, more than 320 mayors representing
53 million Americans have promised to slash their cities'
greenhouse-gas emissions by 2012. The Sierra Club's Cool
Cities Campaign is devoted to helping them succeed -- and
convincing more municipalities to take the pledge.
-- Sierra Club Magazine, Jan/Feb 2007
Jan 9, 2007
The earth, like the sun, like the air, belongs to
everyone -- and to no one.
-- Edward Abbey
Jan 8, 2007
What a joy it is to feel the soft, springy earth
under my feet once more, to follow grassy roads
that lead to ferny brooks where I can bathe my
fingers in a cataract of rippling notes, or to clamber
over a stone wall into green fields that tumble and
roll and climb in riotous gladness!
-- Helen Keller
Jan 5, 2007
Want to host a Tupperware style party
with an environmental twist? Host a Fair
Trade Party! Fair Trade certified products
ensure that workers are paid a fair wage
for a hard day's work, helping stabilize
communities and promote environmentally
friendly business practices.
Find out more here.
Jan 4, 2007
Look: the lute sounds in the girl's arms
delighting the heart with its beautiful voice.
Like a baby crying in its mother's arms
while she sings and laughs as he cries.
--Judah Al-Harizi
Jan 3, 2007
You will tame this sea
either by humility or rapture.
But you can laugh in its face.
--Anna Swir
Jan 2, 2007
The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.
Scruples are alien to the black panther....
The killer-whale's heart weighs one hundred kilos
but in all other respects is light.
There is nothing more animal-like
than a clear conscience
on the third planet of the Sun.
--Wislawa Szymborska
Dec 29, 2006
In the rear-view mirror suddenly
I saw the bulk of the Beauvais Cathedral;
great things dwell in small ones
for a moment.
--Adam Zagajewski
Dec 28, 2006
For God, of his most gracious
friendliness,
Hath wrought that every soul,
this loving morn
Into all things may be new-
corporate born,
And each live whole in all: I
sail with thee,
Thy Pelican's self is mine...
--Sidney Lanier
Dec 27, 2006
Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountain
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go
down to the shore or a few yards
up the road, on a clean day,
to reconfirm
that witnessing presence.
--Denise Levertov
Dec 26, 2006
So much depends
upon a red wheel barrow
glazed with rain water
beside the white chicken
--William Carlos Williams
Dec 25, 2006
Who ever you are, no matter how lonely
the world offers itself to your imagination
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
--Mary Oliver
Dec 22, 2006
The sun sets in the cold without friends
Without reproaches after all it has done for us
It goes down believing in nothing
When it is gone I hear the stream running after it....
--W.S. Merwin
Dec 21, 2006
I envy you [Americans] your deserts -- not just
because they are deserts -- but because you can
afford to keep them deserts.
--David Ben-Gurion
Dec 20, 2006
Mazda Motor Corporation offers its Japanese employees up to 1,500 yen
(about $12) a month if they walk to work.
-- From the Green Life, May 2006
Dec 19, 2006
The Lord did well when he put the loon
and his music into this lonesome land.
--Aldo Leopold
Dec 18, 2006
I am the poet of reality
I say the earth is not an echo
Nor man an apparition
But that all the things seen are real.
--Walt Whitman
Dec 15, 2006
We call it a grain of sand
but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.
It does just fine without a name,
whether general, particular
permanent, passing
incorrect or apt.
--Wislawa Szymborska
Dec 14, 2006
He who knows what sweets and virtues are in the he ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens, and how to come to at these enchantments, is the rich and royal man.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dec 13, 2006
There are always flowers for those who want to see them.
-- Henri Matisse
Dec 12, 2006
Nature seems to have retreated into a private sanctuary, where she could work on different models from any she used elsewhere. There, you meet bizarre and marvelous forms.
-- Philibert de Commerson, 1771
Dec 11, 2006
Changing the temperature at work helps curb global warming. The Japanese government's "Cool Biz" campaign prompted businesses to loosen their dress code and ease off the air conditioning. One company kept the thermostat three degrees higher at its headquarters and reduced their carbon emissions by 97 tons.
Dec 8, 2006
A perfectly simple room remains a dream until I step outside, onto the Plains. A tree. A butte. The sunrise. It always make me wonder: What is enough? Are there enough trees here? As always, it seems that the more I can distinguish my true needs from my wants; it is a shock to realize how little is enough.
--Kathleen Norris
Dec 7, 2006
Each time that I look at a fine landscape,
Each time I meet a loved friend,
I raise my voice and recite a stanza of poetry
And marvel as through a God had crossed my path.
--Po-Chu-I
Dec 6, 2006
Potters for Peace -- a 20-year-old nonprofit teaches people worldwide how to make ceramic water purifiers. The filters are simple, inexpensive and extremely effective at killing the bacteria that causes typhoid and dysentery. Selling the water filters also helps the potters make a living. According to Outpost magazine, potters in Cambodia went from making a dollar a day to earning $50 a month.
Dec 5, 2006
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on you knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting
You only have to let the soft animal of you body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
--Mary Oliver
Dec 4, 2006
Small stuff adds up. And eating Vegan adds up. Research from the University of Chicago says you can do a lot for the planet by eating vegan. 28% of the typical U.S. diet comes from animal sources -- and that diet "generates the equivalent of nearly 1.5 tons more carbon dioxide per person per year than a vegan diet with the same number of calories. If you are not ready to go vegan -- eating fewer processed animal products will help.
Dec 1, 2006
At 3,165 feet, the summit of Mount Monadnock in Jaffrey, New Hampshire is imposing but not impossible. All it takes is a map, a good pair of shoes, the $3 trail fee, stamina, and a desire to stand, like Emerson, amid clouds.
--Sam Hooper Samuels in Sierra Magazine, July/August 2006
Nov 30, 2006
Mapquest and other websites that offer drivers directions are great -- if you have a car. But now there are websites for public transit riders. HopStop.com and BusMonster.com are helping bus subway and rail riders in some cities get from here to there.
Nov 29, 2006
In Texas, Thanksgiving is helping to fuel biodiesel cars. Residents in Plano, Texas, are donating the oil from their deep-fried turkeys to a renewable energy-powered plant producing biodiesel fuel. Plano collects more than 1,000 gallons of oil from residents who call in and ask for pickups.
-- Reuters News Service
Nov 28, 2006
Wilderness may temporarily dwindle but wilderness won't go away. A ghost wilderness hovers around the entire planet, the millions of tiny seeds of the original vegetation are hiding in the mud on the foot of an arctic tern, in the dry desert sands, or in the wind."
--Gary Snyder
Nov 27, 2006
Dreams come true. Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.
-- John Updike
Nov 24, 2006
Jerry's Famous Deli in Los Angeles is replacing their delivery cars with hybrids and reaping the benefits. They saved over $800 in the first six months, and are planning on replacing even more of their fleet with Priuses.
By using hybrid and other existing technologies, U.S. automakers could manufacture new cars, trucks, and SUVs that would all average 40 miles per gallon by 2016, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. This would save 2 million barrels of oil per day--almost as much as we import from the Persian Gulf.
-- Sierra Magazine, May/June 2006
Nov 23, 2006
i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
-- e.e. cummings