Climate, Cows, and Cars by Mitch - HTML preview

Some Good News

There is good news in all of this gloom and doom. The key here is to understand that knowledge is power. It’s not that we see different things then those who are unaware of these issues.... But once we understand the reality of these issues on a deep level, we simply see the same things differently.

I’ve been amazed at the level of genius which has been showing up on the internet in recent times. People young and old, from all over the world, are coming up with awesome solutions to our current shared global crisis.

• William Kamkwamba was a 15 year old boy from Malawi who became famous for building a wind turbine from scrap parts to provide electricity to his village.
• In 1979, Jadav Payeng started growing bamboo on a parched island near Bangalore. He devoted 30 years to the project and has now built a dense forest covering over 550 hectares (1300 acres). Of course most of us aren’t going to spend that much time, but groups like Friends of Trees can help you find ways to plant trees around the neighbourhood.
• Food not Bombs is an international group of people who take food that would otherwise be • discarded, and turn it into meals that they serve to the public for free.
• Lauren Singer decided in 2011 to cut out the wasteful production of trash from her life. Since  then she’s not contributed a single piece of trash. Read more about her story here.
• A lot of smart people have figured out how to build their own solar panel for super cheap. Here is an instructables on how.
• Want to heat your house for free? No I’m not selling anything. But there is a thing, called passive solar heat. It’s actually super easy to make a solar heater out of soda cans. You can look up ‘pop can solar heater’ on youtube, but here’s the quickest way that I’ve found
• Composting is a great way to turn food waste into healthy soil. If you don’t have a yard or a lot of space, a worm bin is an easy way to do compost right under the kitchen sink. This woman shows you how.

Notice, these ideas don’t involve spending a week’s paycheck at the store.