Welcome to this week’s Carnival of the Green!

Last week was Everyday Trash (Aug. 4) and next week (Aug. 18) is Enviroblog. And many thanks to Kara for keeping the Carnival trucking along (along with being the famously nice hostess of Newport RI’s Green Drinks).

Here’s this week’s round-up of terrific posts and links…

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Tiffany Washko sends in a timely post called Back to School - Green Style posted over at Natural Family Living Blog. Where did the summer go???? 

Along these lines, Ted has the lowdown on Green Colleges over at CampusGrotto.

cfgoulart has some great advice in Backyard Gardener - CONSIDERATIONS BEFORE CONSTRUCTING A WATER FEATURE posted at Backyard Gardener.

Building a pond or waterfall in your backyard is not difficult, get some how to advice from a professional.

Kimberly’s got her Top 5 Favorite Things About Green Travel posted at Go Green Travel Green.

Tip Diva has two Top 10 lists (guess that would be a top 20 altogether): Top Ten Tips - Greening Your Bathroom and Getting Rid Of Things.

If you’re looking to become more green, why not start with your bathroom? Here are ways to conserve energy, water and more…  Do you have unneeded items laying about your house? Don’t know what to do with them? Well, don’t throw them out - there are other ways you can get rid of them without contributing them to landfills.

Great change of pace post from a Neo-Hippie Blogger: Symphony at Dolores Park. Scan the whole thing, and you’ll know what I mean.

Phil for Humanity gives his perspective on Why Nuclear Power Plants are Horrible. It’s true that every sort of energy source has its goods and bads.

The reasons against nuclear (fission) power plants are because they are non-renewable, dangerous, and create radioactive waste.

Kelly Sonora at Organicasm encourages us to Go Green Early: 100 Tips, Resources, and Networks for Raising Kids the Environmentally-Friendly Way.

Sally Kneidel reports on Rosa Vasquez who lives in Iquitos, Peru, on the Amazon River. Read about her project with the Rainforest Conservation Fund to help Amazon villagers become stewards of their disappearing forest. It’s on the Veggie Revolution blog this week.

José at EcoJoe’s tells us how to get a free sample of a cheap, organic, all-natural cleaning product called Econo-Clean. Always love free, eco-friendly stuff!

The Digerati Life plays mileage skeptic with a post called Fuel Efficient Cars In Your Future? Watch For The MPG Ilusion.

The true math behind choosing a fuel efficient car…

And finally, last Monday, “Green Moms,” joined by “Mothers of the Earth” and “sons of Moms” came together at OrganicMania.com to talk about strategies for dealing with global warming. Check out this post by author Lynn of OrganicMania plus many other contributors, including LaMarguerite, Fake Plastic Fish, Diane MacEachern, Mary Hunt, ‘ecoburban Mom, SmartMama, NatureMoms, and more….

Thanks for dropping by! (And thanks to all of you who contributed)

Grace and peace,

Don

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

It is indeed fortunate that Our Father has seen fit to quech our appetites in another way and put you in a new role despite your losing in quite dramatic style your former patient to our Enemy. At least you have the good sense to continue our counsel together.

I note what you say about your patient’s apparent obsession with things terrestrial and that you’ve been taking care that he sees a good deal of his apoplectic friends. You have an opportunity here that with any modicum of sound judgement and decisiveness will yield more favorable results.

Recall that our business is formost to get him away from the Eternal (not to mention any association with our Enemy) and from the Present, lest he conduct his life in a way that makes him of any real use to Them. Keep his passions pointed at the Future and all such wildly imaginable possibilities that the present warming of the terrestrial could cause — significant hardship, terrific bouts of weather, drouts, disasters ad nauseum — with no way to know the outcome.

For him to act as you wish your patient must believe himself capable of both utterly dismantling creation and being its savior. Encourage him to depend on cleverness and ingenuity to think his way out of these problems, never mind that they exist only in his own mind. He is thus kept foresquare in the midst of all of Our Father’s best vices - fear, avarice, lust and ambition - all the while thinking himself the selfless humanitarian. I say again, we want a man hag-ridden by the Future, haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth, dependent for his faith on the success or failure of schemes whose end he will not live to see.

Make the results of his scientific inquiry of a veiled past certanties to him. As long as Hypothesis is truth he will use it to guide all of his actions and attitudes. Since his truth is devoid of “grace” scorn and blame will abound. Others will be goaded into following, expanding your influence. Never allow him access to Truth else he will become like that Moses who used the Enemy’s famines and disasters over our Lord Ra in Egypt to benefit the Slaves. Or worse still - the Son of the Enemy to whom weather and swine submit.

Our Father always encourages in humans the sense of ownership – ownership of life, body, time, the elements, & etc. Humans are always putting up claims to ownership which sound equally funny in Heaven and Hell. Much of his environmentalism (such an artful term!) comes from the patient’s belief that his world is utterly affected by the smallest of his actions. His “ism” becomes a pastime in which it is only a matter of time until he can bring it completely under his maternal submission.

Just as he reaches the zenith of his personal piety don’t neglect to remind him he is merely an ape and has no more right to lord over the planet than any fungus. Or that he is in fact toxic fungus with no right to exist. Such despair is a feast for the senses!

Our Father has not yet ascertained why the Enemy is gently warming the terrestrial world, nor why He is granted free reign to unite governments and scientists and industrialists and activists in fruitless attempts to stop it. Until then you must ask what use the Enemy wants to make of it and then do the opposite. If all that can be accomplished for now is blame heaped upon mankind and the patient alike, and blindness to the Enemy’s hand in these affairs, you will likely achieve more success than before.

Your affectionate uncle,
SCREWTAPE

An interesting email from Wittenburg Door Senior Editor Robert Darden. More of the Door’s outrageous satire? Will let you be the judge… Continue Reading �

“We are the Same Species as God”

We need to understand that all of creation is beautiful and wonderful in its own way, the plants and trees, the angels, the planetary system, but only man is the same SPECIES as God. Genesis 1:26 says man was created in the image of God. We are made in His image and in His likeness and only man is created the same species as God.

                                                                 — Jeff Jansen

UPDATE: Neglected to mention National Downshifting Week 21-27 April. “Slow down and green up!” Tracey Smith has a good thing going here. Spread the word!

Remember, the more money you spend,
the more time you have to be out there earning it
and the less time you get to spend with the ones you love.

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To lead off, here’s a blog piece on the “holy war” over global warming and the environment:

For many years, environmental debates in this country have been framed predominantly in scientific terms. Are humans responsible for ozone depletion? How much of a threat does mercury from coal-fired power plants pose? Is global warming happening and are we to blame? That’s not to say that other concerns, such as morality, fairness, and intergenerational equity, have not played a role. But science has dominated the terms of the debate. Now we may be witnessing the beginnings of shift toward values-based debate on these issues at the expense of science-based debate.

To the extent that environmentalists succumb to feelings of rapture over this turn of events — and their new-found evangelical allies in particular — they may be doing so at their peril. A values debate, particularly one focused on religious values, is likely to be much more caustic than a scientific one. So don’t be lulled by the nice nice now being made between environmentalists and evangelicals.

Which is why I’ve been arguing for a while now that Christians need to keep our collective eye on the ball. Our values bring us to the table, but our decisions should be based on scientific analysis. That said, it’s a bit unfair to lay the blame on evangelicals for this when pretty much everybody is moralizing over climate change. And this:

I would like to hope that thoughtful secularists and creation-care evangelicals will continue to find common cause and prevent extremists from recasting the issue as a holy war over the environment.

Agree, but which extremists would that be? I haven’t heard any Christians calling for environmental jihad lately. Isn’t CEJ the one doing the “recasting” here? Seems to me the author is the one who thinks this sort of strife is something to look forward to. And don’t for a moment think secularists aren’t driving any wedges:

A local group of environmental scientists and philanthropists broke its own rule and met with a Christian group to discuss the possibility of joining forces to solve environmental problems.

 One more: OpinionJournal today - How the faithful came to embrace psychology.

Psychologists have long been a secular bunch–modern psychology itself was built upon the rejection of religion as unscientific. Because Freud and other early 20th-century psychologists were eager to establish psychology as a “real” science, they went out of their way to denigrate the truth-claims of religious belief, seeing them as a mere manifestation of personal forces (e.g., the need for a father figure).  

Tracks along a bit with how the faithful are coming to embrace ecology, I think.

Kudos to Rev Jon:

Earth Keeper Initiative founder and co-organizer of the clean sweeps, said that combining religion and environmental protection is a perfect fit. “This will be another step of a deepening connection between the traditions of faith and the critical challenges of the environment,” said Rev. Magnuson. “The clean sweep is one of many signs of a new awakening, an historic shift of consciousness into the mystery of God and a gentle love for the planet.”

Fulbright scholar Lauren Gritzke is breaking the PK mold. I expect we’ll hear a lot from her in climate ecology circles in the future.

A bit here on last week’s “Interfaith Walk for Climate Rescue” in Boston. J-Mac has much more, including this faith-based version of the Gore Effect:

The walkers that started the march on Friday had their conviction tested as the year’s biggest winter storm was moving into the Northeastern United States.

Hey - maybe they’re on to something. If every church does this we could save the climate from global warming after all!

Rob is a missionary guy blogging from Uganda. Has some thoughts on environmentalism (or the lack of it) there. Speaking of, where’s Ed? At least you can still get his book.

Quotable: I believe the church has a responsibility to set an example of living out the life that God desires. By caring for all of God’s creation in meaningful and responsible ways that help bring about positive change, people outside the church might change their negative views of the church.  — Jason Morris

Trading ANWR for Fort Worth.

And trading in an 11 year old disaster for a return to righteousness:

Evangelista emphasized in his letter to the faithful read in all the Sunday masses on March 18 that: “It is high time for the entire Marinduque community to work together in reclaiming the integrity of our creation as part of our responsibility before God to enrich the beauty and bounty of our remaining natural resources. In this sense, our collective dignity as Marinduqueños will wipe out the infamy which the Boac River disaster of 1996 brought to our island-paradise. However, the local church and the local governments have the common tasks to continuously seek justice for our people and for our environment.”

Steve Bishop has a couple of posts here and here on why Christians are “reluctant greens.” Some things in here I haven’t thought about before along these lines - check it out. And bookmark him - apparently there are more posts coming.

The Catholic Church took a drubbing this week. Polluted holy water in Northern Ireland. “Fish Fridays” blamed for depleting oceans among other reasons. And Catholics promoting overpopulation. “Slum lords?” I doubt it’s that simple, and scrolling down further gives away the writer’s motivation for that statement. The Church has always been an anachronism for socialists, especially green ones. A counterpoint to these door dings: Forty top British companies and the Church of England are planning an “unprecedented campaign” to shrink Britain’s carbon footprint, by cutting their own energy use and trying to turn “green consumerism into a mass movement.” Green Giants. Heh.

This is interesting, assuming John Ray’s source is right:

The level of CO2 coughed up by a 4×4 is not that much greater than various other modern machines. Campaigners say that 4×4s emit more CO2 than most other cars - that may be true, but they emit less CO2 than some of the things we use in the home day in and day out. According to research published in 2005, one cycle of a kitchen dishwasher releases around 756g of CO2, more than double that produced by a short spin in a Range Rover Turbo Diesel, which releases 299g per kilometre. Using a petrol lawnmower for an hour releases more than 1,000g of CO2. Why are there no campaigns against `evil’ dishwashers, or demands that Gordon Brown slap big fat taxes on lawnmowers?

The anti-lawnmower faction hasn’t caught up with them I guess, but this is the first I’ve heard about dishwashers.

Carbon indulgences update. In HealthNewsDigest.com?? Really, now that’s mainstream.

Barbara Marx Hubbard. Antichrist a woman? Hadn’t thought of that.

This Bill Moyers piece is making the rounds. Guess the blogosphere can’t resist a lecture titled “A Time For Anger, A Call To Action ”

Finally, these rumblings from the Interior:

The court documents show that, beginning soon after Person A introduced Abramoff to Griles, Abramoff and certain of his Native American tribal clients became “significant donors to the purported tax-exempt organization which this person founded and operated. Ultimately, Abramoff personally and through his Native American tribal clients donated a total of $500,000 to the person’s organization between March 2001 and May 2003.” (snip) Griles lives in Virginia with Sue Ellen Wooldridge, who until January was an assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s environmental division.

Wooldridge, 46, served as Norton’s deputy chief of staff, then as a Interior Department solicitor before moving to the Justice Department in November 2005. She resigned from the Justice Department days after her colleagues in the criminal division met with Griles’ lawyer to lay out their case against him. The AP reported in February that Wooldridge, as the nation’s environmental prosecutor, bought a $980,000 vacation home last year with Griles and Donald R. Duncan, the top Washington lobbyist for ConocoPhillips. Nine months later, she signed an agreement giving the company more time to clean up air pollution at some of its refineries.

Environmental groups sounded the alarm about Griles’ illegal activities early in his tenure at the Department of the Interior.

Good for them. This sort of corruption does nothing good for taxpayers or ecology. By the way, I’ve always wondered why we spent so much environmental tax money on ”sovereign” indian reservations when they are making casino money hand over fist. Our super-spiritual Native American friends are “one with the earth” in more ways than one.