Perhaps the worse-than-dirty-toilet-like toxic stews brewing in the Gulf, in China, and in the Chesapeake Bay are not enough to stir developed-country citizens into action. But, even still, we’ve got nothing on the problems faced by “global weirding” (a more apt term than the poorly descriptive “global warming”) for most Africans.

Increasingly unpredictable and extreme weather events in the backyards of Africans are destroying their abilities to depend on natural economic harvests from their land, lakes, and oceans. While the U.S. and other supposedly advanced nations argue over public opinion and political inaction, Africans are beyond tipping points and need to take real measures. The main problem is their lack of relevant, useful information that speaks directly to them.

Hopefully this changes a bit with a major report just released by the BBC World Service Trust and the British Council at the Africa Talks Climate Conference. The current mindset, the report authors found, from their interviews with more than 200 opinion leaders throughout the continent, is that Africans have a wealth of perceptions about the voluminous cases of extreme weather patterns, but very few connect it to the outside world’s discussions of climate change.

Most, notably women and people in rural areas, attribute the impacts to the “will of God.” Many attribute it to a form of divine punishment, which sounds eerily like public opinion in Africa at the onset of the HIV/AIDS catastrophe.

Terminologies about climate change have not translated well from the global stage to local areas in the 10 countries studied throughout Africa. Most consider tree cutting and bush burning as greater causes to their troubles than the rest of the world’s addiction to the harvesting of coal on land and water and the burning of it into our global and shared air.

There is a real chance for politicians, global assemblies like the United Nations, artists, environmental non-profits, militaries, development organizations, and others working on the ground in Africa to begin speaking to Africans about ways to alter their daily activities in order to adapt to the ever-growing climate catastrophe.

A shocking report published in 2006 by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, showed that the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions than transportation, and is also a major source of land and water degradation. Livestock production uses about a third of the world’s arable land, and as land becomes scarce, expansion of livestock production encroaches into forest land and is causing mass deforestation.

That report generated renewed interest in the adoption of a more plant-based diet—a diet already recommended by experts for its health benefits for decades—for environmental reasons.

Greenhouse gas emissions related to food choices

A recent paper in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition looks at the greenhouse gas contribution of different foods and gives number values to our food choices.

There’s widespread conversation about carbon dioxide, and its contribution to climate change, and fossil fuels are used in agriculture for fertilizers, transportation and other energy requirements.

But two other gasses produced mainly by agriculture have an even larger greenhouse effect: methane and nitrous oxide. Methane is produced by ruminant livestock (such as cattle, sheep and goats) and stored manures, but also by rice grown under flooded conditions. Nitrous oxide is generated through feed-production processes and is an animal waste by-product.

A study of 22 food items sold in Sweden shows that the greenhouse gas emissions associated with foods differ greatly. For this study, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide were assessed for the farm-to-table production cycle, so storage, transportation, preparation and processing all factored into this calculation.

Here are the main findings:

• The lowest emissions are produced by domestic vegetables, cereals and legumes (excluding rice).

• The highest emissions are produced by domestic beef, which produces about 70 times more greenhouse gasses per kilogram of food than fresh domestic veggies fruit and grain.

• All animal products have higher greenhouse gas emissions than plant-based products, with the highest emissions produced by beef, cheese and pork, in that order.

• Fowl meat and eggs are relatively climate-friendly compared to beef; a kilogram of chicken produces about a sixth of the greenhouse gasses generated by a kilogram of beef.

• Tropical fruit, flown by plane, had emissions that were similar to animal foods.

• Fruit and grain shipped by boat had about double the amount of emissions compared to domestic fruits and grains, but their emissions were still 1/40 of domestic beef.

• Rice has greater emissions—about three times more—than other grains.

• Fish may cause high emissions due to high use of fossil fuels for fishing. Many fish are on the verge or under a severe threat of extinction, and the article sees the fish option as environmentally unsound for the most part.

To put these emissions in perspective, the researchers compare food emissions to those of the average European car: Consumption of one kilogram of domestic beef equals driving for about 100 miles in green-house gas measures.

How green is your dinner?

The authors then analyzed the green-house gas effect of three meals, each containing a vegetable, a fruit, cereal, and a protein source, and all with similar nutritional value (i.e., the same amount of calories and protein).

• Meal A contained domestic carrots, domestic whole wheat, soybean from overseas by boat, and an orange from overseas by boat.

• Meal B contained green beans, potatoes, pork meat, and an orange from overseas by boat.

• Meal C contained frozen vegetables, rice from overseas by boat, domestic beef, and tropical fruit from overseas by plane.

The emissions of meal C are about 11 times those of meal A, while those of meal B are three times the emissions of meal A. I daresay that besides the tropical-fruit-flown-by-plane, meal C is a pretty typical American meal. Meal A, a vegetarian one, is the greenest.

The authors conclude:

“The analysis shows that changes toward a more plant-based diet could help substantially in mitigating emissions of GHG (green house gasses).”

Bottom line

There are many reasons to eat a more plant-based diet, ranging from health benefits to animal welfare arguments.

Clearly the environmental impact of the expanding meat industry is huge, and evidence shows that if we just reduced our meat intake we’d see substantial environmental gains for our planet.

Unfortunately, the demand for meat is still growing as developing countries aspire toward a typical Western diet. The current global average daily consumption of meat is about 100 grams or 3.5 ounces per person, but there’s great disparity: The US intake is about half a pound a day, and Africa’s is about an ounce a day.

It’s clear that meat production even at current levels is unsustainable. If we want to combat global warming, land and water degradation and all of the other ills caused by industrial meat production, we need to reduce meat consumption. And the major reduction needs to occur where meat intake is high—half a pound a day is seriously way too much from a health point of view even if it were beneficial for the planet.

No matter what your reason, I believe if you eat lots of meat, reducing meat intake is a significant personal action you can take to help reduce greenhouse gasses and improve your health.

Read more from Dr. Ayala at http://herbalwater.typepad.com/

Unlike the isolationism and post-apocalyptic survivalism that seem to be the focus of the anti-government, anti-globalization crowds, there are some obviously fundamental common-sense positives to energy independence.

Federal and private money aimed at clean energy start-ups is one of the paths upon which Barack Obama has been most vocal. As with many climate and energy-related issues, this direction will not see true reflections in new jobs and economic recovery for several years. So while that might not help the president’s re-election chances, solar power, electric vehicles, and a recent $11 billion investment in smarter grids are the correct choices for him to be preaching.

Along with the grid funding, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 will eventually provide more than $70 billion on tax credits and direct spending for programs involving clean energy and transportation. That includes $6.3 billion for state and local energy improvements, $5 billion to weatherize low-income homes, and $4.5 billion to make federal buildings more energy efficient.

Plus, the new National Fuel Efficiency Policy for cars produced between 2012 and 2016 will require an impressive average fuel efficiency of 35.5 mpg by 2016.

So Obama is introducing many welcome and important steps on the road to energy independence, especially in comparison to George W. Bush. His contributions included “thinking about energy independence” and exploring domestic natural-gas production.

“Energy independence” is a good goal, but also an obviously ridiculous one. We will never be 100 percent independent, and if we were, it would probably mean a lot of suffering and Glenn Beck-like apocalyptic scenarios. With the term hijacked in a “drill baby drill,” all-or-nothing fashion, it is finally time to stop using the term altogether.

“Domestic energy reduction” is a lot less flashy, but it is much closer to what people are trying to say when they talk about energy independence. And since nobody wants to reduce our iPhone-loving energy use, it is great that governments at all levels throughout the U.S. are thinking about how to do it for us.

Rampart Detection Systems is a small Canadian company that specializes in the development of products for the police; security; counter terrorism and industry using advanced electromagnetic technologies.

After the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists at Rampart were determined to prevent the possible recurrence of another similar disaster. So, they invented a long-term, failsafe solution capable of practical application to existing and future oil and gas production no matter the location.

The idea was inspired by natural phenomena that occurred over a century ago. In 1905 a lightning conductor on top of a chimneystack at Hartley Vale was struck by lightning. The lightning pinched the copper conductor shut. It took researchers several decades to determine that magnetic forces were the sole cause of the conductor crimping. Rampart’s scientists were familiar with this obscure event and used the phenomena as the basis for creating their novel, patent pending Magnetic Crimping technology.

In the case of a garden hose, there are two ways to stop water from gushing out of the nozzle: one is to shut it off manually and the other is to crimp it.

Unfortunately, what works with rubber does not apply to steel. Any attempt to stop oil or gas gushing out of a typical industry steel pipe by crimping it will generally result in the pipe cracking above and below the crimp.

Rampart designed a revolutionary new magnetic crimping technology. This patent pending system uses the extraordinary power of intense magnetic forces to permanently crimp most forms of metal pipes, including the steel pipes commonly used throughout the oil and gas industry. Rampart can accomplish this without any risk of cracking.

The new technology could not only have effectively stopped the Deepwater Horizon leak but it will also provide the ultimate failsafe for controlling similar blow-out disasters from happening again within the global oil and natural gas industry.

This is how it works:

First, a proprietary Rampart magnetic crimp collar covers the circumference of the pipe. Then, very intense magnetic fields are generated within the pipe casing. And finally, highly interactive electric currents are injected into the casing.

Massive electrodynamic interactions cause an instantaneous crimping effect with very little heat generated. The magnetic forces affect the atomic structure of the pipe so that the crimping energy being generated causes the pipe walls to momentarily act like soft plastic thus ensuring a leak proof permanent seal. And because the magnetic forces are evenly distributed throughout the whole interior of the pipe wall there is no risk of cracking.

The entire magnetic crimping development process is self-funded. And a new corporate entity was created called Rampart Environmental Solutions to develop magnetic crimping technology as the ultimate failsafe application in preventing uncontrollable oil and gas blow-outs and leaks. In a time where serious environmental, social, and economic problems are never ending, Rampart is offering a proven scientific solution to the most pressing environmental problem of the day.

“A number of environmentalists in the developed world are wary of the spread of global prosperity, arguing that it would wreck the planet. Conversely, in the poorer countries of the world, many people are wary of environmentalism, seeing it as an attempt by rich countries” to get richer.

“The romantics are right that we are seriously mismanaging nature and that our practices are indefensible. The ostriches are right that much of what is said about nature is ridiculously pious, casting the rich world as the villains and the rest of the world as their victims. But they are also each half wrong. Both will take us to oblivion, albeit by different routes.”

Collier, a supporter of economist Lord Nicholas Stern, believes any economic models should be deemed failures if they neglect to eradicate poverty with an ethical approach to the natural world. He claims to write The Plundered Planet for all the people who are neither ostriches nor romantics.

One major area of concern: the demand for raw materials has driven up the prices of natural resources and food, which has triggered a new scramble for Africa. Africans who don’t have a preconceived notion of the Chinese as colonizers have largely welcomed China’s arrival on the African scene. The rich countries, and former colonizers, view China’s arrival there as an undermining of governance reforms of extractive industries.

“The opportunity that nature presents to the countries of the bottom billion [most impoverished people] is the enormous value of their natural assets.” The sale of carbon rights is one path to create “new natural assets.” Since Lord Stern’s review was issued in 2006, global warming has “slammed into the economic mainstream.” That said, economists still treat nature as they do any other asset, which is “to be exploited for the benefit of mankind.”

For true success, the next economic models must introduce what has traditionally been a fundamental oversight: “nature is special. Our rights over the natural world are not the same as our rights over the man-made world. Economists need that insight.”

BP will have to pay damage claims out of this fund, which will in turn be administered independently by former Treasury Department “compensation czar” Kenneth Feinberg. BP will only have a say in claims of $500,000 or more.

One of the main goals of the fund is for shrimpers, fishers, and property owners to file for reimbursement through the fund rather than through lawsuits aimed at the oil company. This sounds like a smart course to take, and Feinberg certainly has the experience to lead the efforts, but just how successful have escrow funds been over the years?

This funding will be especially difficult to judge, as many businesses will have to prove their losses over tricky timelines with many gray-quantifying areas.

But it can be done. Despite a major assault on the way he launched into thankless work on the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund, Feinberg eventually won over most of his critics and the fund paid out $7 billion to 97 percent of those affected. About 7,400 claimants received an average of $2 million each, certainly not the value of a loved one’s life, but not bad either.

The Consumer Product Safety Act of 2008 includes provisions for company-financed escrow accounts for recalls. U.S. government escrow efforts have also been largely successful in accompanying reviews of troubling assets in bank-executive compensation packages and in tobacco litigation.

While not a government-backed escrow fund, $8 million in donations appears to have been distributed successfully to those most in need in the aftermath of the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings, which Feinberg also oversaw.

Only time will tell whether the escrow account is a government “shakedown,” in the words of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce top Republican and chief anti-Earth spokesperson Joe Barton, or extremely smart handling by the Obama administration of corporate excess.

If history is a judge, the one-stop administered fund will better benefit victims and reduce lawyer fees in comparison to a one-by-one court-case handling of victim compensation. Even BP itself and, surprisingly, the American Petroleum Institute, have not fought the need for the $20 billion fund.

The Imprint Comfort Mat is made out of non-toxic materials, like heavy metals, formaldehyde, and phthalates. The mat also conforms to your feet and takes the pressure off key points easing back and leg pain. It’s great to stand on while washing dishes, doing laundry, getting ready in the bathroom, and of course studio filming.

What is formaldehyde?

Formaldehyde is a widely used chemical that irritates the eyes, nose, and throat. It can cause fatigue, nausea, coughing, severe allergic reactions, skin rashes, and cancer. Formaldehyde is also the biggest indoor air quality issue since it is in just about everything including building materials, household products, furniture, and wood products. Essentially the mat improves indoor air quality by not adding to formaldehyde concentrations.

What are phthalates?

Phthalates are a bunch of compounds primarily used as a vinyl softener or plasticizer. American Chemistry claims that phthalates are essential to wiring, cabling, flooring, vinyl blood bags, and IV tubing. There are a lot of different forms of phthalates. Phthalates are incorporated in a bunch of products, made their way into the food system, and new forms are continuously added to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory.

Favorite Quote: “Certainly it looks awful as it coats the water, shore, and helpless seabirds, and it can cause grievous short-term damage. But oil dissipates and breaks down, becoming food for microorganisms.” – 219

Flotsametrics was an entirely fascinating read. From Vikings to STDs (salinity-temperature-depth profiler), and garbage patches, this book is chock full of information about the rhythm of the ocean. The term, “one man’s garbage is another man’s gold,” rings true for Curtis Ebbesmeyer. Enthralled by flotsam, floating debris accidentally lost at sea, he revolutionized ocean science and tracked flotsam around the ocean’s gyres. Flotsam, he argues, lead Columbus to discover the New World, Vikings to settle Reykjavik, and Native Hawaiians to tell the missionary Titus Coan that their word for “virtue” was “Oregon pine.” And today, we are just as dependent on the ocean.

As the world reels from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill fouling the water, Curtis Ebbesmeyer makes the case that, although awful, it’s not even the half of it. Our trash, plastic, pesticides, insecticides, mercury, cadmium, lead, arsenic, and xenoestrogens (substances that behave like estrogen) regularly make their way into the world’s oceans and affect every living thing on this planet.

It’s a delightful look into the wet world that covers 71 percent of the Earth’s surface and how one man’s obsession can change the world.

Now, finally, he shows up on our Southern beaches nearly 60 days after Deepwater Horizon began spoiling the Gulf of Mexico, and it seems he may have gotten the memo. The work boots he’s wearing in all his photo-ops look appropriate for the dirty job of cleaning up this mess.

Obama’s boots also present a striking image of what’s tragically become of these beaches, long white-sand stretches that used to be places for only sandals and bare feet.

This anecdote of Obama’s footwear supports Maureen Dowd’s June 15 column about the oil spill in The New York Times. She concludes:

“President Obama’s bloodless quality about people and events, the emotional detachment that his aides said allowed him to see things more clearly, has instead obscured his vision. It has made him unable to understand things quickly on a visceral level and put him on the defensive in this spring of our discontent, failing to understand that Americans are upset that a series of greedy corporations have screwed over the little guy without enough fierce and immediate pushback from the president.”

I still vividly remember the hope I felt on the Mall in Washington DC the day Obama was inaugurated. And history will certainly show that he has been an improvement upon the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush. But that’s an extremely low bar.

Obama has done an admirable job with the economic stimulus and health-care package. But he must find a way to quickly produce more economic relief, reverse the high unemployment rate, establish meaningful climate and energy policies, and take control of the Gulf quagmire.

Obama’s national address on the Gulf response this week was uplifting, but like figuring out how to wear the appropriate footwear, it came disturbingly late. To say that we will “fight this spill with everything we’ve got” so long after the spill began seems almost laughable.

He was correct to classify the nation’s worst-ever environmental disaster as a call to action to pass meaningful climate and energy legislation. Now is the time for oil companies like BP and ExxonMobil to gain incentives and work with government bureaus like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Minerals Management Service to make massive transitions toward cleaner energy production.

And while it pains me to join the bandwagon of disapproval for Obama, it’s getting more difficult to stomach the Obama bumper sticker on the back of my car. I remember wondering how people could still have Bush/Cheney bumper stickers eight years after they were elected. Now I’m beginning to wonder the same thing about myself so soon into Obama’s first term.

We don’t hear enough in the media about these everyday heroes. But the bits that squeak out are certainly a lot more inspiring than the stream of gaffs out of BP CEO Tony Hayward’s mouth. Here’s a brief compilation of the best nuggets I’ve found online.

Don Abrams and Melanie Allen, friends from the Mississippi coast, launched OilSpillVolunteers.com after the disaster unfolded and, within hours, had more than 700 people signed up to do whatever necessary to protect the region’s wetlands, estuaries, and barrier islands. Allen, a retired communications executive, remembered the damage in the early hours after Katrina and immediately got on the phone to drum up media interest about the gushing oil. Meanwhile, former engineer Abrams built the website.

Fifth-graders at West Main Elementary in highly impoverished Ravenna, Ohio, sold paper turtles and raised $300 to donate to the National Wildlife Federation. Other kids at the school “forfeited ice cream and popcorn to donate their quarters.” The money will be used by NWF to help protect birds, fish, and other animals in the spill zone.

More than 13,000 volunteers have signed up for a brand-new National Audubon Society program that takes bird surveys, captures and transports injured animals, performs citizen science, and serves as wildlife hotline operators.

Dr. Heather Nevill of the Internal Bird Rescue Research Center has been handling some of the cleaning by covering oil-slicked birds with Canola oil and bathing them in dishwashing detergent and water. The process takes at least an hour for each bird, with little guarantees of eventual survival.

Captain Alwin Landry and the crew of his offshore supply vessel, the Damon Bankston, rescued the 115 survivors of Deepwater Horizon by “repeatedly and tirelessly retrieving rig personnel from the burning Gulf waters and into the rescue craft.”

And we can’t forget the 11 workers who were killed simply doing their jobs on April 20. Nine of them worked for rig owner Transocean and a drilling company named MI-SWACO employed the other two. Their surviving families were each presented with bronze hard hats at the memorial service.

With global warming seemingly wiping out so many of the world’s natural wonders, here’s a select list of places to visit quickly before they are gone.

Mt. Kilimanjaro – The glacier at the top has retreated by more than 80 percent in the past 100 years and should be gone in the next 10. Glad I checked this off the list. It just wouldn’t be the same without Hemingway’s “snows of Kilimanjaro.”

Great Barrier Reef - The “Blue Outback” is quickly becoming a dinosaur on this planet. It is largely agreed that extinction will happen by 2030 because of coral bleaching turning it white and brown, warming water temperatures, and acidification from carbon dioxide pumped out of our factories.

Amazon Rainforest – Episodes of Johnny Quest as a kid have provided a lifetime of yearning by me to get to this massive land of beauty, and I may still have time yet. Reduced rainfall and warmer temperatures (along with the region’s much-documented deforestation) are expected to decimate the Amazon, but possibly not entirely for another 80 to 100 years.

Hawaii – Higher storm tides will cause more frequent flooding and erosion of coastal areas. Many of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and other Pacific lands are already being submerged and many more are expected to be under water by 2100.

Mt. Everest – As if this monstrous peak were safe to climb, it is now becoming almost impossible to mount due to reduced snowfall and melting glaciers. Sherpas are finding it more difficult to stick their ice axes and crampons into snow because much of it is now rock, which makes an extreme climb even more impossible.

Patagonia – Glaciers in this Argentinean region have receded nearly a mile in the past 13 years. Forty-eight of the country’s 50 glaciers are melting. That should make for a very different Patagonia if I ever get there.

Galapagos Islands – Dead coral reefs and warm waters are altering the ecosystem of Darwin’s volcanic island west of Ecuador. Too much fishing and too many tourists have reduced the number of wildlife in the seas, which in turn is reducing the number of animals on land. The end of this era for the Galapagos will remove its allure as a destination.

Sahara Desert - This is the true definition of New York Times columnist Tom Friedman’s catchphrase “global weirding:” the greening of the Sahara. Increased rainfall is slowly turning the desert back into the grassy savanna it was 12,000 years ago. It’s not that I wouldn’t want to visit a green Sahara; it’s just that it would be pretty weird.

There are plenty of other places I would like to see before they disappear, including Micronesia, the Virgin Islands, and the Maldives. And there are plenty more endangered places that I would like for my grandchildren to see: New Orleans, New York, London, Tokyo, Death Valley, Indonesia, Glacier National Park, and Yellowstone National Park.

Experts claim this is really a smidgen of the total species death toll that is unfolding in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill. Many of the animals will be so weakened by their coatings of toxic oil that the fierce carnivores of the region will have a feast.

Other than the fact that all these dead animals are terrible for biodiversity and BP’s image, what would be the actual real-world results of a Gulf with little or no life?

For starters, the beaches that are slowly being contaminated by oil will become a low-priority destination for beach-going vacationers and their tourism dollars. For those who do venture onto the beaches, there won’t be much wildlife to see. So birders and swimmers need not apply.

The Gulf used to be known as one of the most productive fish and shellfish catching grounds in the world, largely because fish dwell along its broad continental shelf. It would routinely pull in about 2 billion pounds each year. This amounted to a fifth of U.S. catches and a fourth of revenue generated from domestic catches. These numbers don’t include the massive attraction to recreational fishing in the region, which will remain depleted for the foreseeable future.

The $300 million annual trove of oysters for Louisiana fishermen appears to be a lost cause. Although the oysters themselves may survive the oil toxins, they will not ever be edible. The region’s shrimp will suffer a similar fate.

The already endangered Gulf whale population is likely to expend unusual amounts of energy to swim away from their polluted natural habitat. Experts are unsure how these migratory patterns for whales and other species will affect the area in the long-term.

In the end, the Gulf may be slightly ahead of the curve. A major global study published in the journal Science found that all the world’s commercial fisheries would be gone by 2050 anyhow. That means our over-fishing of the past 50 years is creating the extinction of all fish – and fishing – within most of our lifetimes. One author of that study said, “our wild seafood will be little more than sea squirt soup.”

On the flip side, the now-notorious Minerals Management Service claims that offshore operations in the Gulf produce a quarter of the U.S. domestic natural gas and one-eighth of its oil. Not that we should believe this agency, but gas and oil exploration is certainly something energy experts, environmentalists, and politicians can’t rule out.

Let’s hope Congress takes this opportunity to begin debating the merits of fossil fuel use versus protection of a beautiful domestic resource like the Gulf of Mexico and its surrounding coastlines.

The house was on the top of a mountain overlooking the ocean with the rainforest bordering it on all sides. At night howler monkeys serenaded us. Vampire bats loved us. And we were more than a little wary of reports that a jaguar was partial to the bathroom.

There were only two rules on this little piece of paradise. The first was that manual labor was mandatory, which we learned only after we arrived. And the second was that no one was allowed to kill any living thing.

After watching the baby sloth video for the fiftieth time, I was reminded of our trip to Puerto Jimenez. The week before we arrived, one of the guys working on the ranch, Chi, witnessed a silent protest that made his work just a little harder. Although this was to be an eco-community, certain facets of the modern world were unavoidable. Behind the house, was a small-scale sawmill.

In the mornings, Chi woke before dawn to power the machines. This particular morning, he was groggily preparing for a day of sawing, hammering, and heavy lifting. As he leaned over the saw, something furry brushed the side of his face. Surprised and a little freaked, he looked down and came face to face with the smiling, sleepy face of a fully-grown sloth hugging the saw like a tree. Chi was at a loss for what to do. As the workers poured in, they all smiled at the sight of the smiling sloth that (very slowly) lifted an arm and turned his bright little face in their directions.

“It was pretty clear that the sloth wanted a day of peace,” Chi recounted at the campfire. “And we couldn’t say no to the adorable little guy.”

Chi, whose name wasn’t really Chi, swore that the sloth had “chi,” a good energy that flowed through him. From then on, his signature move was to stretch out his arms, wrists together, and palms outstretched forming a giant “T” shape. He then grew silent, closed his eyes, and sent out “chi” to the rainforest or anyone that needed it.

Sloths are the slowest mammals in the world and sleep up to twenty hours a day. They are so slow that algae grow on their furry coats providing extra camouflage. They live in the treetops of Central and South America.

I believe that it was Yann Martel that first likened the sleepy mammals to “upside-down yogis deep in meditation or hermits deep in prayer, wise beings whose intense imaginative lives were beyond the reach of my scientific probing,” in his novel The Life of Pi.

I was getting my haircut the other day when my stylist, Patrick, mentioned that he loves shrimp but refuses to eat the tails. That reminded me how much I loved chomping mass amounts of peel-and-eat shrimp when I was a kid on vacations in Louisiana and North Carolina. But I don’t really enjoy shrimp anymore. Why is that?

Do shrimp taste worse now than they did 20 or 30 years ago?

The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is not going to help the taste of the famously delicious Gulf shrimp. It will most certainly drive prices up as supplies become more scarce this summer.

That means disgusting eateries like Red Lobster will have even more incentive to get their shrimp from faraway fish farms, which produce cheap and endless supplies. Nearly all of the shrimp consumed in the U.S. originates from farming in Latin America and Asia. These farms are rarely inspected or certified and produce up to 18,000 pounds of shrimp per acre in three to six months — extraordinary yields when you further consider that most shrimp farming is done in water pools that are typically no deeper than four feet. Yuck.

So farming practices are certainly one reason to at least be aware that we may be eating some suspicious crops. Add the ecological damages reaped from shrimp-boat trawling and removal of forests for shrimp aquaculture, and our collective conscious about eating these bottom-feeders can grow heavy.

I never did figure out why my hairstylist doesn’t like shrimp tails. And although I haven’t found overwhelming scientific evidence that shrimp is less tasty, it’s pretty safe to assume that the domestic, wild-caught shrimp of my youth are becoming more of an expensive delicacy and are the only kind we can consume in good health.

While those numbers can be argued about ad nauseum as to whether 17 percent is enough to keep us all from frying, the oil-drilling parts of the bill are something we can look at more clearly to determine a “yes” or “no” answer.

The bill allows states to veto drilling proposals that risk environmental degradation or that are within 75 miles of their shorelines. It would also allow incentives and revenue-sharing options for states to benefit from nearby drilling operations.

But let’s take a step back. Other than the obvious calamity of what happened on Earth Day in the Gulf of Mexico, what’s so bad about drilling in our own waters? The main logical and simplified arguments are that oil rigs make our oceans less beautiful on the surface and also contribute to the declining health of underwater ecosystems.

For an example of the latter, jellyfish are growing in alarming numbers. Jellyfish require less oxygen than other climate-affected underwater life. Their numbers are increasing due to overfishing. They also enjoy clinging to hard surfaces in the water such as rigs. And they are a growing pain for tourism, as not many people will choose to swim with the creatures.

If wind and solar alternatives are really possible, it makes a lot more sense for the U.S. to set a good example by not drilling everywhere it sees a fast buck and working with responsible countries to use the oil we still obviously require during a green transition. Further, almost all the non-industry-funded experts agree that gas prices for U.S. consumers will not decrease at all from offshore drilling in this country. There is also no solid evidence that opening the waters will create jobs.

President Obama said that his original plan to allow offshore drilling was “part of a broader strategy that will move us from an economy that runs on fossil fuels and foreign oil to one that relies more on homegrown fuels and clean energy.” He didn’t really give any other convincing reasons why this needs to be done. “Homegrown fuel?” Maybe this reduces our shipping costs, but it sure doesn’t sound like something my gas tank is exactly thirsting after.

We live in a global economy where it makes sense to buy imports such as oil, which we keep saying we’re trying to become less addicted to for greener alternatives. If Obama, Lieberman, and Kerry’s plans to open U.S. coastlines to oil drilling is more than rotten Beltway politics, now is the right time to drill some benefits into the minds of a skeptical public.

Hayward blames Transocean, the operator of the rig for causing the release of an estimated 1.6 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico since Earth Day nearly two weeks ago. (The 1989 Exxon Valdez accident spilled 11 million gallons off the coast of Alaska.)

And while it truly may have been a spill that was out of BP’s hands, the way it was communicated to the world was terrible. The company’s obvious lack of preparedness for such a spill is mind-boggling, because while the spill may eventually be contained at approximately $6 million per day, the reputational damage to a company that was once “Beyond Petroleum” very likely could be devastating.

British Petroleum’s rebranding nearly a decade ago has long been held as an exemplary study in transformative communications strategies, taking BP from a disrupter of natural resources to a protector of the environment. The Gulf oil spill could end any claim to “Beyond Petroleum,” especially after the 2005 safety violations and 15 employee deaths at its Texas City, Texas refinery explosion and the 2006 corroded and leaking pipelines that shut down its major Prudhoe Bay, Alaska oil field.

There may be time for BP to reclaim some control over the current situation, but it will need to stop issuing comments that deflect the blame. It will also need to do more than launch a Web site where people can voice concerns and post a few videos describing how hard the company is working on the ground.

Those are absolutely necessary and good steps. But Hayward has still missed many opportunities and he must get aggressive. He needs to issue a contingency plan to local residents and state officials who could soon inundate BP with lawsuits. The fact that BP offered $5,000 settlements to residents for waiving their rights to later sue for damages shows that lawyers, not public-relations experts, advised the company.

There also needs to be a flood of pictures, videos, social media, and other storytelling devices being issued from BP to the media and the public. For now, photos of the destruction to nature and wildlife are telling the story throughout endless news cycles, and that is not working in BP’s favor. The public needs to see the clean-up efforts of everyday American workers.

Hayward is also allegedly keeping a tight grip on the journalist credentials being allowed to enter the clean-up zone or to get a view from within BP’s company operations. He could at least begin having regular hourly, or several times each day, press briefings and photo opportunities. Remember how Rudy Giuliani enhanced his image as a hero during the worst of times after the September 11 attacks?

The Obama administration is not exactly doing any favors for BP’s image either. BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Shuttles told Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today Show that “we’ll take help wherever we can get it,” which again showed that BP had lost control and really needed the federal government’s help. Meanwhile, Obama apparently thought the problem would go away on its own. His lack of public inattentiveness is eerily similar to George W. Bush’s early public-relations missteps during 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina.

Obama clearly wants to keep the focus on BP’s slow response rather than his own. At least he has reversed his plan to allow for offshore drilling on several U.S. coastlines, and Congress has scheduled a hearing on the spill for May 12.

It may sound like a silly question, but I find that most news organizations simply report on the latest development, not the background information needed to fully comprehend what a national disaster like Deepwater Horizon really means to the U.S.

By now we’ve all seen the pictures and video of the oil spreading like giant tentacles across the Gulf of Mexico. Soon, pictures will start to surface of cuddly aquatic animals covered in oil. An estimated 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) are flooding the Gulf of Mexico each day.

What is affected by oil spills?

When most people think of oil spills, they immediately think of oil-soaked wildlife. Birds are the most vulnerable. However, the economy suffers as well. As is the case with the Gulf spill, all fishing is restricted from the mouth of the Mississippi to the Pensacola Bay for at least ten days. This means that fishermen that were already struggling from the economic downturn have been forced to seek other employment until the ban is lifted (which could take months). The price of seafood will rise as a consequence.

Tourism, an important source of income, will decrease as well. Not many people dream of vacationing to oil slicked beaches.

Air and water quality will also worsen from all the chemicals and carcinogens that are seeping into the ocean.

The disaster has already affected offshore oil drilling. The Obama administration recently approved offshore drilling expansion plans. But because of the spill, President Obama stated that all offshore drilling plans will be determined on how this crisis ends.

What is being done?

Fisheries: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is working with state governors to see whether they can declare a fisheries disaster, which would bring federal aid to fishermen. BP, the company responsible for the oil spill, is also offering fishermen temporary employment to help cleanup efforts.

Wildlife: International Bird Rescue Research Center is already on scene to rescue seabirds caught in the oil’s path. Many similar organizations are mobilizing to provide additional aid.

Water and Air Quality: The Environmental Protection Agency along with NOAA are working to provide up to date assessments of water and air quality. AIRNow has the latest Ozone Air Quality Index figures (updated hourly) for Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.

What is taking so long?

The rig is 5,000 feet below the surface and leaking from 3 different places. The CEO of BP, Tony Hayward, likened fixing the leaks to open heart surgery because it’s a delicate process where one wrong move can be the difference between life and death.

For more information visit Deepwater Horizon Response.

Even though that sounds bad, and the photos and videos look awful, it is a drop in the bucket compared to the worst spills in history. Considering that this spill could eventually spread to the size of Rhode Island, it gives us an idea of just how bad other spills have been.

Five hundred and twenty million gallons seeped into the Arab Gulf when Iraqi troops dumped oil to keep U.S. Marines from attacking by sea. That was the worst spill in history, and there have been another 32 – get that, 32 – spills before one gets to the famed 1989 Exxon Valdez in the rankings! (The Exxon Valdez spilled nearly 11 million gallons in Alaska.)

So what can we do about the continuous flow of oil into our water? It surely isn’t good for anyone. The Deepwater Horizon spill will cripple the amount of oysters and shrimp we have to eat and will reduce tourism revenue in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida.

It will be interesting to see how the spill (along with the recent catastrophe on the sensitive and endangered Great Barrier Reef) affects the Obama Administration’s plans to expand domestic offshore drilling. The images we’re soon to see of controlled burns on the gulf will be reminiscent of the bad old days, before we had an Earth Day, when the Cuyahoga River cooked outside of Cleveland and oil poured into a bird habitat off the coast of Santa Barbara, California.

Let’s hope the news coverage of these ecological disasters, which keep happening with little repercussions for the oil companies (unless you consider the further destruction of their images), will result in stricter prevention policies both domestically and internationally. The best time for Obama and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to combat future spills would be now, while the public is attentive and crews set the gulf aflame, puncture holes in the destroyed well, and build a dome to capture oil and pump it to ships on the water’s surface.

But hopefully others will feel the passion for Mother Earth that was evident all those years ago, when Harvard grad student Dennis Hayes led the beginning of a massive movement to make the first Earth Day, in 1970, a raging success. It led to the first environmental policies in the U.S., cleaner skies over Manhattan, and a reduction in the use of hazardous agricultural chemicals, as detailed in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

So even if I don’t make it to the rally on the Mall on Sunday (Earth Day is actually tomorrow, Thursday), at least I had my own little celebration by watching a captivating two-hour documentary on PBS entitled Earth Days. It features the story of the environmental movement and is narrated by major players like Hayes, former Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall, and former Merry Prankster and Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand.

The real star of this film, however, is the creepy archival footage. After World War II, Americans set out on a destructive course of consumerism. Everyone wanted to get rich or at least fool their neighbors into thinking they were. The way most people set about doing this was by eating space-age TV dinners, dousing their kids in chemical repellents, buying automobiles to use on the massive new interstates, adding fallout shelters to their basements, and loading up their refrigerators as full as possible. All the while, people in this footage have smiles glued a mile wide on their faces. Our oblivious downward spiral into creating this greenhouse mess for ourselves is shocking to see, even if we’ve already been told the story of the environmental movement numerous times.

The film also succeeds at asking what will become of the environmental movement. It made lots of missteps along the way and has often found itself at odds with common people and big companies that both want to protect their livelihoods.

Definitely a thought-provoking and quality film that just about anybody should enjoy.

After deforestation and poor agricultural practices, all that is left is arid land with nothing to hold the soil in place. One swift breeze and Beijing is enveloped in a toxic mixture of sand and dust. This year, however, the sandstorm didn’t stick to Beijing but made it all the way to Shanghai then went on to Hong Kong and Taiwan.

China is expected to have at least 10 more sandstorms in the next two months. Sand and dust in the atmosphere cause respiratory illnesses, even in healthy people, and mud rain. However, as dust falls it attracts nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide. These compounds are two of the three main contaminants that cause air pollution. Basically the dust deteriorates air quality and then improves it.

I read in the Shanghai Daily that the air quality was so bad in Beijing that officials were recommending that people wear masks outside and once indoors swab nostrils with q-tips dipped in rubbing alcohol. There is no doubt that China is trying to ameliorate their environmental degradation problem. They are in the midst of a green revolution and kicking the world’s butt in solar, wind, and alternative energy. Green building practices are starting to gain ground. Alternative transportation is the new trendy way to get around. The government heavily endorses alternative means of transportation, which is evident in their “Green Transportation” campaigns. The country is actually doing what most of the world is still just talking about: creating a low-carbon economy.