A list of simple things the public can do to make clean air choices every day:

•    Bike to work or around town
•    Take public transit
•    Work at home or telecommute
•    Carpool and link your errands to reduce driving
•    Avoid using gas-powered lawn mowers and leaf blowers
•    Reduce household energy use
•    Cook indoors, not on the barbecue
•    Avoid using aerosol spay cleaners, paints and hairspray

Motor vehicle exhaust, gasoline vapors, industrial emissions and household chemicals contain volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides that combine with oxygen in the presence of heat and sunlight to form ground-level ozone. Breathing ozone can cause throat irritation, congestion and chest pain. It can trigger asthma, inflame the lining of the lungs and worsen bronchitis and emphysema.

“Smog irritates the respiratory system, and can reduce lung function, making it more difficult to breathe, especially in children. It also can aggravate asthma and make people more sensitive to allergens, such as dust mites, pets, and pollen, and worsens chronic lung diseases.” said Dr. Thomas Addison, a pulmonologist with Kaiser Permanente San Francisco. “By taking steps to reduce emissions, Bay Area residents help all of us breathe easier.”

Long-term exposure to ozone can reduce lung function. High levels of ozone pollution are particularly harmful for young children, seniors and those with respiratory and heart conditions. Vigorous outdoor exercise should be undertaken only in the early morning hours when ozone concentrations are lower. The Air District issues Spare the Air Alerts whenever air quality is forecast to reach unhealthy concentrations.

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The highlight of Earth Hour 2011 will see the world’s most iconic landmarks go dark for one designated hour, as hundreds of millions of people transcend race, religion, culture, society, generation and geography, switching off their lights in a global celebration of their commitment to protect the one thing that unites us all – the planet.

Earth Hour 2011 will be held on Saturday March 26 between 8.30PM and 9.30PM in your local time zone.

4616 cities, towns and municipalities took part in Earth Hour 2010 across 128 countries/territories, including 89 national capitals and 9 of the world’s 10 most populated cities.

They included:

New York – Beijing – Los Angeles – Nairobi – Hong Kong – London – Moscow – Sydney – Rio de Janeiro – Toronto – Paris – Rome – Singapore – Mexico City – Dubai

And many many more of the world’s biggest cities in a truly global action that took place in major metropolises on every continent.

1551 landmarks also went dark for Earth Hour 2010, including some of the world’s most iconic:

- Sphinx and Pyramids of Giza – Bird’s Nest (Olympic Stadium) in Beijing – Eiffel Tower in Paris – The Las Vegas Strip – Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro – Buckingham Palace and Big Ben – The Acropolis in Athens – The Coliseum in Rome – Rio de Janeiro – Empire State Building – Table Mountain in Cape Town

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1. Put on leather gloves and safety glasses. Consider going outside since this process involves breaking glass.
2. Peel off the contact at the base of the bulb using the needle-nose pliers.
3. Crack the black glass at the base of the bulb by tapping it lightly with the hammer. If this doesn’t work, try sticking one of the jaws of the needle-nose pliers into the hole of the black glass and twist while applying a little pressure. it requires some persistence, so keep at it.
4. Insert the 1/4-inch Allen wrench into the glass tube inside the lightbulb after removing black glass. Apply some leverage to break the glass inner tube; a different size key may be necessary depending on the brand of bulb.
5. Pull out the innards of the bulb through the hole you’ve created with the pliers. if the hole is too small, make it bigger as you did in step 4. The filament and attached glass may need to come out in a few pieces if they are too large.
6. Create a stand for your new vase using the 3/32-inch aluminum welding rod, available at your local hardware store. Sculpt your stand to your own design, or mimic the one in the pictures—a square base with one end of the wire coiled around the metal part of the lightbulb.
7. Insert your favorite flower, water, and enjoy!

Looking for beautiful flowers to fill your vase?  Have flowers delivered directly to you and start making your home look fantastic.

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This is a popular street invention to scare flies away, not chosen for its sustainable benefits but for its cheapness.

Being an easy prey with poor defense skills, flies and other bugs are not happy being around too much movement –a sign they can interpret as the proximity of a predator. So the water in bags and bottles acts as an amplifier of reflections, movements and colors to their eyes, which scare bugs away.

Another common local belief related to water in containers –in Argentina at least; is that placing a water bottle next to a tree will prevent a dog from doing its needs there, though that measure has not proven as effective as the fly antidote.

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Yet an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year—380 billion of those in the U.S.—and governments have been slow-moving at best to do anything about them.

Starting January 1, 2011, single-use non-biodegradable plastic bags will be outlawed in Italy. And while plenty of questions remain about the ban’s rules and efficacy, it’s a considerable leap, seeing as how Italy uses 25% of all the plastic bags in Europe — around 25 billion a year.

Neighboring Bulgaria‘s move to impose a tax on plastic bags as of July 1, 2011, as reported in the Sophia Echo is only the latest attempt across Eastern Europe and the Middle East to discourage the use of disposable bags.

The nascent Environment Ministry in Syria – where an estimated 15 million bags are consumed each day just Damascus and the area around in the capital — has distributed fabric and paper bags to markets as part of a campaign to get people to just say “no” to plastic bags. While paper bags are not particularly environmentally friendly in their manufacture, they pose less of a danger to animals.

In the United Arab Emirates, dead camels have been found with lumps of plastic in their stomach weighing up to 30 kilograms — the equivalent of 4,000 plastic bags. According to the UAE’s Ministry of Environment and Water, which plans to ban plastic bags in the UAE by 2012, 85 percent of emirate residents “say they have heard or read about the detrimental effects of plastic bags, but fewer than half do anything about it.”

Turkey is also taking slow steps toward breaking the plastic-bag habit, though they have not been without some implementation troubles. The Kadıköy district of Istanbul was praised last year for being the first municipality in Turkey to ban plastic bags.

In California, the ban started in San Francisco in select stores; if pending legislation goes through, it could soon expand to all stores not only in the city, but in the entire state. A similar ban exists in coastal North Carolina and was recently passed in Portland.

In 2007, Modbury became the first town to ban the plastic bag in Britain, where 13 billion plastic bags are given away every year. If customers forget to bring their own, reports the Times Online, “a range of bags made of recycled cotton with organic and fairtrade certification will be available from £1.50 to £3.95 and cheaper paper and biodegradeable cornstarch bags will cost 5p and 10p.” Other cities have followed suit, some just a few months ago, and there are efforts to make London plastic bag-free by the time the Olympics come around in 2010. According to the Daily Mail, “Londoners use 1.6billion plastic bags a year – for an average of just 20 minutes per bag.”

Mexico City adopted a ban last summer—the second major city in the western hemisphere to do so.

India seems to be taking the lead in bans on plastic bags, although enforcement is sometimes questionable. Cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Karwar, Tirumala, Vasco, Rajasthan all have a ban on the bag.

A ban went into effect (with little notice) in Rangoon, Burma, late last year.

In neighboring China, the use of plastic bags is restricted.

Plastic bags have been banned in Bangladesh since 2002, after being found to be responsible for the 1988 and 1998 floods that submerged most of the country.

Rwanda is the country, which has had a ban on plastic bags for years, has a reputation for being one of the cleanest nations not only on the continent, but in the world.

Sydney’s Oyster Bay was the first Australian suburb to ban plastic bags. Twelve towns in Australia are now said to be plastic bag-free—an effort to cut down on the estimated 6.7 billion plastic bags used in Australia every year.

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While splashing boulders with eco friendly white paint made from lime, egg white and water, may seem like a crazy idea—there actually science behind it. White paint reflects sunlight, sending solar radiation back out into space, and a colder surface temperature could cause mountain glaciers to reform.

Eduardo Gold was one of the 26 winners in the World Bank’s “100 Ideas to Save the Planet” competition held last year.

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In international cooperation, it was possible to follow the route of the approximately 100 kilometers thick Indian continental plate beneath Tibet. To achieve this, a series of large seismic experiments were carried out in Tibet, during which the naturally occuring earthquakes were recorded. By evaluating weak waves that were scattered at the lower edge of the continental plate, this edge was made visible in detail. The boundary between the rigid lithosphere and the softer asthenosphere proved to be much more pronounced than was previously believed.

The entire Indian sub-continent moves continuously north over millions of years and has moved 2 meters below Tibet in the last 50 years alone. The Himalayas and the highlands of Tibet, the highest and largest plateau in the world, were formed this way. But the recurring catastrophic earthquakes in China are also caused by this collision of two continents. For a better understanding of the processes involved in the collision of the two plates, it is hoped to ultimately reduce the earthquake risk to millions of people across the entire collision zone.

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During California’s 2000-2001 energy crisis, BC Hydro, a state-owned utility,  aided in the rampant market manipulation that ended up costing California consumers millions.

California has become America’s largest electricity importer.  With 37 million people producing about 13 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, California imports about 23 percent of its electricity.  This situation is compounded by the state’s environmental laws which, if a power plant can be built at all, typically consume seven years for permitting and construction vs. three years in competing Texas.

Complicating matters are a trio of California energy policy laws : a 30 percent reduction in California’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, the one that outlaws the renewal of coal-fired electricity contracts, and the requirement that California derive 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources this year, renewable being defined as small hydro, geothermal, wind, solar, and biomass.

The Irony

With abundant hydro power potential, British Columbia is becomimg the Saudi Arabia of “green” energy.  California environmentalists don’t see the irony in British Columbia damming rivers to provide power to California, while in California, environmentalists fight to demolish dams as unsightly threats to salmon.

The irony gets even deeper, though. Severe drought (when California gets a good water year, British Columbia often sees a drought) means that BC Hydro will be importing $220 million more electricity than it did last year.  You read it correctly, hydro energy colossus British Columbia will be importing almost a quarter billion dollars more electricity this year than last.  In fact, BC Hydro has imported more energy than it has exported in 10 out of 11 years.  And, from where does this energy come?  Washington State and Alberta Canada.  And, what is the source of this electricity?  Brace yourself.  Coal and gas-fired plants.

The fact is, BC Hydro is buying “dirty” power and then, in an act I’ll dub “electron laundering” is repackaging it for the silly, naive, environmental-minded Californians.

If Canadian reselling of coal power to California wasn’t enough of an insult to common sense and the environment, then here’s one more.  Many British Columbians oppose their government’s push to make their province an energy colony of California by submerging more tree-lined river valleys. Some studies suggest the dams drown carbon-impounding trees, which, in turn, rot when they are submerged, releasing large amounts of methane, a gas that is 80 times stronger than carbon dioxide in the greenhouse effect.

The victim, California, actually knows most of what’s going on and either doesn’t care or doesn’t want to know the messy details, but now you do!

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Chlorine’s damaging effects on hair are well known, but few people realize that a number of studies have linked inhalation of the chemical by swimmers to increased asthma rates (in fact a new Irish study published this April reported a significant link between the number of years a boy had been swimming and the likelihood of the child being wheezy in the past year).  A Norwegian study also documented an increased risk of wheezing among children who swim in pools before 6 months of age. Further, in an unpleasant reaction, pee and sweat in water can react with chlorine to form toxic breakdown products known as chloramines.

For health, environmental and aesthetic reasons, a lot of people have expressed interest in alternatives to chlorine pools, and luckily there are more and more options to get wet without smelling like cleaning products. Companies offer alternative pool systems that treat water by pumping it through a chamber containing coated titanium plates and copper and zinc ions. Some make ozone injectors that can reduce the need for chlorine up to 90% — there’s been one installed at the White House for years! Some systems rely on a combination of ozone and copper and silver ions, while others are saline, though saltwater pools result in the formation of chlorine in the water.

One elegant, eco-friendly solution that has had enthusiastic supporters in Europe for decades is the so-called natural swimming pool, which is slowly beginning to gain buzz in the U.S. Natural swimming pools, often called swimming ponds across the Atlantic, can be beautiful oases of greenery and sustainability, as well as safe, fun places to take a dip.

Managed properly, natural swimming pools have crystal clear water and require no chemicals to maintain, as they are self-cleaning mini-ecosystems. The natural pool designers say the systems also have lower maintenance costs than conventional pools, and their installation costs are not much more than standard designs.

The possibilities for natural pool designs are nearly limitless, from traditional looks to serene settings that closely resemble wild ponds.

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About 50 protesters organized by women’s activist group Code Pink  were at BP headquarters this moday to protest the oil spill in the Gulf.

The protesters mourned the deaths of the 11 workers and devastation of wildlife and livelihoods all along the Gulf Coast.

“We call for stripping BP of its corporate charter and seizing its assets to pay the victims, clean up the Gulf and try to restore the devastated wildlife.”

“What do you get when you drill, drill, drill?” chanted protester Medea Benjamin, wearing a bright pink wig, pink tape covering her breasts and skin-colored spandex shorts covered by a fishing net. “The naked truth, spill baby spill.”

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