Climate Change and Global Warming

Its like opening a can of worms trying to get agreement on climate change (which many argue is not happening) and global warming which is evident from the erratic weather patterns, out of control super fires, tsumanis, tornados that are becoming ever more violent and appearing where they never did before and rising sea levels.

As world leaders did not succeed in Copenhagen to fix matters surely there is more that individuals can do. So what is your take on climate change and do you think about global warming and its consequences? Is there a master plan for climate change that makes it inevitable? That's the nature of this discussion on the efforts we might employ to save Planet earth and whether or not its possible for us to do anything.

Its amazing how these little creatures (worms) impact on our lives. Living as they do out of sight and out of mind they are one of the main things that plants and animals rely on for food and health. That's a big statement but without worms we will die because we too depend on them. Without worms the earth will die. But this is not a debate on worms as such but on what went into making this planet, what keeps it going, and how we can help, if we have a mind.

The Canopy Project

Since 2010, Earth Day Network has planted over 1 million trees in 16 countries through our Canopy Project.
The Canopy Project focuses on locations where reforestation is most urgently needed, including Haiti, Brazil and Mexico and urban areas of the U.S. Each tree planted is counted toward A Billion Acts of Green®.
Our tree plantings are supported by sponsors and individual donations and carried out in partnership with nonprofit tree planting organizations throughout the world. We work in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme's Billion Trees Campaign.
Help Earth Day Network grow the Earth's canopy by planting trees where they are needed most!

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CANOPY PROJECT FROM AROUND THE WORLD

Australia
Landcare Australia worked with national parks and land care groups to help restore vulnerable areas of metropolitan New South Wales and Victoria, focusing on areas with unique and threatened animal species.
Belgium
Vereniging voor Bos in Vlaanderen, or Organization for Forests in Flanders, worked to combat the environmental effects of intensive livestock and agricultural production by working with private landowners in Flanders to reforest their properties.
Brazil
To combat agricultural expansion and urban sprawl, SOS Mata Atlântica Foundation worked with local communities to plant native trees as a means to restore the Atlantic Forest, one of the most biologically diverse and severely threatened forest ecosystems in the world.
Canada
Tree Canada joined the Avatar Home Tree Initiative to restore 800 hectares (1,976 acres) of pine forest of southeastern Manitoba on land that was devastated by hurricane-force winds in 2005.
France
With its multicultural cultural mission, Kinomé’s Trees & Life program helped 9- and 10-year-old children in southern France plant their own trees. For every tree the children planted in France, kids of the same age in Senegal planted two trees, thus advancing global reforestation and intercultural awareness.
Germany
The Berlin Energy Agency’s environmental youth organization, Club-E, planted trees in southern Berlin as part of its mission to raise awareness among young people about sustainable development and lifestyles and to promote job opportunities for young people in the green economy.
Haiti
Trees for the Future, a U.S.-based organization that works with Haitian farmers to bring degraded lands back to productivity, is working with communities to plant fruit and other native trees using sustainable agroforestry practices. Their work helped combat centuries of environmental degradation and natural disasters, including the catastrophic January 2010 earthquake.
Italy
The community and Municipality of San Giovanni in Persiceto took on the Cassa Budrie reforestation project. They worked to restore and preserve a local wetland and forest located on a major flood plain, helping to promote local water security and prevent soil erosion. Other objectives of the project are biodiversity recovery and the creation of a local carbon sink to combat global climate change.
Japan
A tailored tree-planting at a Japanese school gave students and teachers the opportunity to plant trees on their campus and engage in related environmental education and school greening activities.
Mexico
Sierra Gorda Ecological Group (SGEG) has been working since 1987 to protect the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve, the most ecologically diverse protected area of Mexico. The SGEG worked with local communities and farmers to reforest cleared land, directly benefiting local communities as watersheds are restored.
The Netherlands
Stichting wAarde, or the Earth Value Foundation, worked with local youth to plant trees in areas around Amsterdam and Utrecht. The planted trees not only engage youth and communities in learning about their local environment, but improve air quality, create healthier outdoor spaces and restore urban habitats for wildlife.
Spain
Plantemos Para el Planeta planted trees in southeastern Costa del Sol, which was ravaged by wildfire in 2009, and created recreation spaces for people to appreciate the beauty of nature.
Sweden
Under Sweden’s Skogen i Skolan, or Forest in School program, children and their teachers go on excursions to plant spruce, pine, birch and beech trees in northeast Sweden with professional guidance and intensive environmental and reforestation education.
United Kingdom
The UK is one of the least wooded countries in Europe, with only four percent native woodland cover. Leading woodland conservation charity, The Woodland Trust is helping community groups across the UK to transform their local area by planting more native trees for the benefit of local people, wildlife and the environment.
United States
Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Flint, & St. Louis
The Fruit Tree Planting Foundation, through Earth Day Network and the support of the UPS Foundation, planted twelve fruit tree orchards across these cities in 2012. These orchards were located in low-income areas where the trees will not only beautify the community and enhance residents’ quality of life but also provide food.
New York City
MillionTreesNYC plants trees throughout New York City’s five boroughs, focusing on low- to middle-income communities to increase green spaces in the community and improve urban environmental health for area residents. MillionTreesNYC participated in the Initiative through their fall Reforestation Day’s city-wide tree plantings.
San Francisco
Since 1981, Friends of the Urban Forest has helped San Franciscans to plant and care for street trees and sidewalk gardens, thereby supporting the health and livability of the urban environment. The organization conducted plantings in low-income neighborhoods, resulting in increased community interaction and cooperation.
Los Angeles
TreePeople is a Los Angeles-based non-profit whose mission is to improve the urban environment of the city by planting trees. TreePeople’s Fruit Tree Program provides low-income families, school children and community residents with a source of free fruit to help alleviate hunger, address childhood diabetes and obesity, improve nutrition, and provide shade, beauty and cleaner air now and for decades to come.

Get Involved

Defend our Forests: We will plant a tree for every $1 you donate!
Take Action

Give to the cause

Help power the movement
Donate

Spread the word

0

 

0

 

0

 

New

 

Campaign Resources

There are no resources for this campaign.

Mapping the health of the planet

Important progress has been made in reducing poverty and improving the quality of life over the past several decades. Life expectancy and per capita income have increased, infant mortality has decreased and there has been fuller involvement of civil society in decision-making. But significant progress is still required.

Billions of people, especially the rural poor, still lack access to nutritious food, clean water, sanitation, electricity or a healthy environment. Disenfranchised groups lack empowerment, opportunity and security: this is evidenced by the inequitable distribution of benefits from globalization; the limited access which many poor people have to productive resources and technological innovation; and the exclusionary land tenure arrangements found in many countries. Environmental degradation at the local (e.g. water pollution) and regional (e.g. land degradation) scales continues unabated in most developing countries – depleting natural capital, undermining the livelihoods of the poor, and limiting rural economic growth. And, at the global scale, the Earth’s climate continues to change, and biological diversity is being lost at an unprecedented rate, undermining the ecological basis for sustainable development.

Progress towards sustainable development depends upon better managing the Earth’s ecosystems. These affect human well-being directly through supplying such goods as food, timber, genetic resources and medicines, and such services as water purification, flood control, coastline stabilization, carbon sequestration, waste treatment, biodiversity conservation, soil generation, pollination, maintenance of air quality, and the provision of aesthetic and cultural benefits. And they affect it indirectly through impacts on poverty, health, livelihoods, security and economic development.

Human impact
The magnitude of human-induced changes in terrestrial and marine ecosystems is unprecedented. Some 40 to 50 per cent of land is now transformed or degraded. Some 60 per cent of the world’s major fisheries are overfished. Natural forests continue to disappear at a rate of about 14 million hectares each year. And other ecosystems such as wetlands, mangroves and coral reefs have been substantially reduced or degraded. Other human-induced impacts on ecosystems include alteration of the nitrogen and carbon cycles causing acid rain, eutrophication, climate change and increased rates of species extinction. All these changes have had significant, but largely unquantified, impacts on the production of ecosystem goods and services.

Projected demographic changes and economic growth will lead to an increasing demand for biological resources. This implies even greater impacts on ecosystems and the goods and services that flow from them. Projections suggest, for example, that an additional one third of global land cover will be transformed over the next 100 years; world demand for cereals will double within the next 25-50 years; demand for freshwater will increase to an equivalent of more than 70 per cent of run-off: and demand for wood will double over the next half-century.

The magnitude of human-induced changes in terrestrial and marine ecosystems is unprecedented

It is now well recognized that there is a trade-off among ecological goods and services. While converting a forest to agriculture may increase food production, for example, it may decrease the supply of clean water, timber, biodiversity or flood control – which may be of equal or greater importance. An integrated approach to agriculture, land use, and coastal and ocean management must be adopted to encompass the differing ecological, economic, social, cultural and institutional implications of sustainable use and conservation.

As the capability of many ecosystems to provide essential goods and services is being diminished, many governments are now beginning to recognize the need for managing these basic life support systems more effectively: this is particularly important as a tool for poverty alleviation. The importance of managing ecosystems better is also recognized in the private sector, both by industries dependent directly on biological resources (such as timber, fishing or agricultural firms), and those that are not (e.g. extractive industries such as mining). Companies increasingly recognize the importance of being good ‘corporate citizens’ by focusing on the triple bottom line of economic growth that is environmentally and socially sustainable.

Multi-scale assessment
The United Nations Secretary-General recognized the growing burden that degraded ecosystems are placing on human well-being and economic development in his Millennium Report to the United Nations General Assembly, and said:

‘It is impossible to devise effective environmental policy unless it is based on sound scientific information. While major advances in data collection have been made in many areas, large gaps in our knowledge remain. In particular, there has never been a comprehensive global assessment of the world’s major ecosystems. The planned Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a major international collaborative effort to map the health of our planet, is a response to this need.’

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) is a multi-scale assessment: this means that it comprises interlinked assessments conducted at different geographic scales, ranging from local communities to the entire globe. It has been authorized by the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention to Combat Desertification and the Ramsar Wetlands Convention, and is carefully coordinated with other international scientific assessments. It will also contribute directly to decision-making needs at sub-national scales and within the private sector and civil society.

The Assessment builds upon earlier sectoral and integrated assessments and focuses on three issues: the current and historical trends in ecosystems and their contribution to human well-being; options for conserving ecosystems and increasing their contribution to human welfare; and future scenarios for change in ecosystems and human well-being. Its ‘value added’ is in its cross-sectoral and cross-scale analysis.

Three issues
The multi-scale framework is unique. Other global assessments have included strong regional analyses (e.g. the third assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), but the MA also incorporates formal assessments undertaken at the sub-global scale, with their own stakeholders, authorizing environment and user-driven process.

The MA has been structured to ensure that it meets the tests of saliency, credibility, transparency, legitimacy and utility. It has been designed to:

• meet high scientific and technical standards, including a rigorous and transparent peer review process;
• be policy relevant but not policy prescriptive;
• be independent from political pressure, while responsive to user needs;
• include an open process for nominating and selecting experts ensuring regional, disciplinary, gender and stakeholder balance, while seeking to expand the community of experts conducting the assessment to include local and traditional knowledge;
• ensure a balanced reporting of perspectives, identifying what is known and unknown, including key uncertainties;
• embrace issues associated with risk assessment, management and communication;
• be owned and authorized by all relevant stakeholders;
• include an effective strategy of outreach and communication of the process and results.

Major sponsors include the Global Environment Facility, the United Nations Foundation, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, the World Bank, UNEP, and the Governments of Norway, China, Japan and the United States.

The MA will contribute to increasing public awareness of the impacts of ecosystem change on human well-being and of the steps needed to address them; improved national and sub-national decisions concerning ecosystems, human development and poverty alleviation; stronger business strategies that promote ecosystem health and the sustained enterprises dependent on it; and improved international and global cooperation in ecosystem management

Mapping the health of the planet

Important progress has been made in reducing poverty and improving the quality of life over the past several decades. Life expectancy and per capita income have increased, infant mortality has decreased and there has been fuller involvement of civil society in decision-making. But significant progress is still required.

Billions of people, especially the rural poor, still lack access to nutritious food, clean water, sanitation, electricity or a healthy environment. Disenfranchised groups lack empowerment, opportunity and security: this is evidenced by the inequitable distribution of benefits from globalization; the limited access which many poor people have to productive resources and technological innovation; and the exclusionary land tenure arrangements found in many countries. Environmental degradation at the local (e.g. water pollution) and regional (e.g. land degradation) scales continues unabated in most developing countries – depleting natural capital, undermining the livelihoods of the poor, and limiting rural economic growth. And, at the global scale, the Earth’s climate continues to change, and biological diversity is being lost at an unprecedented rate, undermining the ecological basis for sustainable development.

Progress towards sustainable development depends upon better managing the Earth’s ecosystems. These affect human well-being directly through supplying such goods as food, timber, genetic resources and medicines, and such services as water purification, flood control, coastline stabilization, carbon sequestration, waste treatment, biodiversity conservation, soil generation, pollination, maintenance of air quality, and the provision of aesthetic and cultural benefits. And they affect it indirectly through impacts on poverty, health, livelihoods, security and economic development.

Human impact
The magnitude of human-induced changes in terrestrial and marine ecosystems is unprecedented. Some 40 to 50 per cent of land is now transformed or degraded. Some 60 per cent of the world’s major fisheries are overfished. Natural forests continue to disappear at a rate of about 14 million hectares each year. And other ecosystems such as wetlands, mangroves and coral reefs have been substantially reduced or degraded. Other human-induced impacts on ecosystems include alteration of the nitrogen and carbon cycles causing acid rain, eutrophication, climate change and increased rates of species extinction. All these changes have had significant, but largely unquantified, impacts on the production of ecosystem goods and services.

Projected demographic changes and economic growth will lead to an increasing demand for biological resources. This implies even greater impacts on ecosystems and the goods and services that flow from them. Projections suggest, for example, that an additional one third of global land cover will be transformed over the next 100 years; world demand for cereals will double within the next 25-50 years; demand for freshwater will increase to an equivalent of more than 70 per cent of run-off: and demand for wood will double over the next half-century.

The magnitude of human-induced changes in terrestrial and marine ecosystems is unprecedented

It is now well recognized that there is a trade-off among ecological goods and services. While converting a forest to agriculture may increase food production, for example, it may decrease the supply of clean water, timber, biodiversity or flood control – which may be of equal or greater importance. An integrated approach to agriculture, land use, and coastal and ocean management must be adopted to encompass the differing ecological, economic, social, cultural and institutional implications of sustainable use and conservation.

As the capability of many ecosystems to provide essential goods and services is being diminished, many governments are now beginning to recognize the need for managing these basic life support systems more effectively: this is particularly important as a tool for poverty alleviation. The importance of managing ecosystems better is also recognized in the private sector, both by industries dependent directly on biological resources (such as timber, fishing or agricultural firms), and those that are not (e.g. extractive industries such as mining). Companies increasingly recognize the importance of being good ‘corporate citizens’ by focusing on the triple bottom line of economic growth that is environmentally and socially sustainable.

Multi-scale assessment
The United Nations Secretary-General recognized the growing burden that degraded ecosystems are placing on human well-being and economic development in his Millennium Report to the United Nations General Assembly, and said:

‘It is impossible to devise effective environmental policy unless it is based on sound scientific information. While major advances in data collection have been made in many areas, large gaps in our knowledge remain. In particular, there has never been a comprehensive global assessment of the world’s major ecosystems. The planned Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a major international collaborative effort to map the health of our planet, is a response to this need.’

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) is a multi-scale assessment: this means that it comprises interlinked assessments conducted at different geographic scales, ranging from local communities to the entire globe. It has been authorized by the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention to Combat Desertification and the Ramsar Wetlands Convention, and is carefully coordinated with other international scientific assessments. It will also contribute directly to decision-making needs at sub-national scales and within the private sector and civil society.

The Assessment builds upon earlier sectoral and integrated assessments and focuses on three issues: the current and historical trends in ecosystems and their contribution to human well-being; options for conserving ecosystems and increasing their contribution to human welfare; and future scenarios for change in ecosystems and human well-being. Its ‘value added’ is in its cross-sectoral and cross-scale analysis.

Three issues
The multi-scale framework is unique. Other global assessments have included strong regional analyses (e.g. the third assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), but the MA also incorporates formal assessments undertaken at the sub-global scale, with their own stakeholders, authorizing environment and user-driven process.

The MA has been structured to ensure that it meets the tests of saliency, credibility, transparency, legitimacy and utility. It has been designed to:

• meet high scientific and technical standards, including a rigorous and transparent peer review process;
• be policy relevant but not policy prescriptive;
• be independent from political pressure, while responsive to user needs;
• include an open process for nominating and selecting experts ensuring regional, disciplinary, gender and stakeholder balance, while seeking to expand the community of experts conducting the assessment to include local and traditional knowledge;
• ensure a balanced reporting of perspectives, identifying what is known and unknown, including key uncertainties;
• embrace issues associated with risk assessment, management and communication;
• be owned and authorized by all relevant stakeholders;
• include an effective strategy of outreach and communication of the process and results.

Major sponsors include the Global Environment Facility, the United Nations Foundation, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, the World Bank, UNEP, and the Governments of Norway, China, Japan and the United States.

The MA will contribute to increasing public awareness of the impacts of ecosystem change on human well-being and of the steps needed to address them; improved national and sub-national decisions concerning ecosystems, human development and poverty alleviation; stronger business strategies that promote ecosystem health and the sustained enterprises dependent on it; and improved international and global cooperation in ecosystem management

The Truth About Health and Wealth

I don't believe that anybody can have a true abundance in ANY area of their life without first feeling immensely confident in themselves. And the main determining factor in any person’s confidence is how they feel about their physical being (or their body); and the shape and health of a person's body is determined, to a large extent, by certain universal laws that absolutely must be followed each and every day.

Here's an example of just one of those laws...I once heard it said that nearly 70% of all the energy a person uses during the course of a single day (70%) is used simply to digest the foods they eat. Therefore, if it takes 100 grams of energy (bear with me for using such basic terminology here) to digest each and every meal you eat during the day, but by improving the efficiency of your metabolism, we can get your body to digest each meal using only 50 grams of energy, then you could have nearly double the energy to put toward all your normal daily activities.
So if one of your main life goals is to make more money, would it beneficial to you if you had more physical energy to do the daily tasks necessary to build your financial streams? What about all the added mental energy that you would have to put towardcreatively designing new ways to handle all the daily challenges that every entrepreneur faces today?
Personally, I never had success in my life until I took control of my body. I remember feeling like a failure in everything I did. I remember not even wanting to go out of the house because I didn't like the way I looked, in fact, I specifically remember not wanting to leave the house even to go to the store to buy food because I hated the way I looked in all of my clothes.

 

Today, I rarely think about the clothes I'm going to put on each day because I feel confident that, no matter what I wear, my body will make those clothes look good. All clothes just hang better on a body that's in shape. That means that guys who wear their shirts 'untucked' no longer HAVE to do that (unless they truly like that style) - and women who wear black because it's 'slimming' can now wear any color they like - because their BODY will make that color look good on them.This is the way everyone should feel! When I finally took charge of my physique, everything in my life got better - my social life improved, my health improved, my family life improved, my spiritual life improved, and my financial life skyrocketed. I went from feeling like nobody noticed me to being picked out in a crowd of people (the right people)

Here's a horrible fact that I regularly speak about in my teleseminars and live events; in today’s society, without a nice body, people subconsciously make life a bit harder for you. You see it all the time. People who are in good shape almost always get treated differently by others. Now I’m not saying that’s fair it’s absolutely not - but it’s a fact of life, so why not take advantage of it? You see, you can’t change the fact that most everybody else in the world seems to treat good-looking people better, but you can change the one person who really matters, and that’s you. You can make yourself as strong and healthy-looking as possible, making life easier for you and setting a good example for your family so that they can also live a more successful and healthy life.

Good looking people climb the corporate ladder faster, they portray more authority when they stand in front of their staff, they get more preferential treatment, and they have far more stamina to take on all the work that's necessary in order to build a powerful company or business.
There are eight people in my inner circle of friends, all of which own businesses which gross from $5 million to $700 million annually - the bigger the business, the more focus that owner puts on staying in top shape. These people aren't stupid, they don't want to grow a huge company then not be in good enough health to enjoy the rewards -- and the secret that all of these folks have is that being in good shape didn't start when they became successful - it started way before that - and probably had a lot to do with their success.