I’m perhaps more fortunate than most because I don’t live in a big city … I don’t even live in the ‘burbs of a small city. My partner and I live in a small coastal town with quite a small population and so we don’t have to put up with all the noise and pollution that city-dwellers have to experience each day.

While we get to enjoy relatively clean air anyone who lives in a city has to put up with a lot of trucks belching plenty of exhaust fumes that not only damage a human’s health but damage the environment as well. Sometimes I guess people in cities wish we could survive without those trucks but we’re society that’s built on transport and if the trucks go then society will collapse.

But when you see those trucks and all the exhaust pollution coming from them you just know that we have to provide an environmentally friendly solution to our transport needs and that’s where a Kansas City based truck manufacturer comes into the equation. Smith Electric Vehicles has been building mid-sized electric delivery trucks for some time now and slowly but surely they’re making real inroads (pardon the pun) into the truck market here in the United States.

Already major companies that need large fleets of mid-sized trucks for use around cities in the United States are knocking on their door and the company is currently supplying trucks to Coca-Cola, AT&T and Frito-Lay.

While car companies are struggling to build electric cars with a range of 60 miles before they need a recharge Smith Electric Vehicles is building 12 ton trucks with a range up to 120 miles and a top speed of around 50 miles per hour.

Big fleet owners are currently getting plenty of government subsidies to change from gas and diesel powered trucks to electric trucks such as those built by Smith Electric Vehicles so we can expect to see more of these clean and very environmentally friendly trucks appearing on our city streets in the future and that has to be a win for the environment.

Ok so we’re a family that seems to generate a lot of rubbish … there might only be two of us and we’re always careful about buying products that have the least amount of packaging and we recycle till our fingers bleed but somehow we just seem to produce a lot of rubbish.

I suppose that it has something to do with the fact that we work from home but whatever the reason the fact that we do produce a lot of trash has got me interested in ways of being environmentally friendly and recycling what may seem to be non-recyclable. So this post over on LifeGoggles got me interested.

It seems that Coskata Inc has developed a process that will allow it to produce what it calls ‘flex-ethanol’ and this fuel can be used in today’s cars and trucks. The source of the fuel is wood biomass, agricultural waste and even household garbage and old tires. The company says that basically anything that has carbon in it can be converted into ethanol so the amount of garbage a plant like this can chew up and recycle into some useful is enormous.

And the good news is that according to the company the cost of production is less than the cost of producing a gallon of gasoline. When you think that we can be recycling huge amounts of our non-recyclable garbage and turning it into fuel to burn in our cars and trucks there is certainly a chance that we can cure our waste landfill problems in a very dramatic way.

Perhaps there is a company that we could be investing some of our dollars in instead of wasting it on trying to get politicians to do something about the environment. It’s certainly worth considering … especially when the cost of a gallon of this fuel may cost less than a gallon of regular gas.

Ok so it’s just two days till Christmas … that day we’ve all been working towards for weeks now. You’ve bought and wrapped presents … you’ve bought a tree and decorated it and now it’s time to sit back and wait for the big day to arrive.

Of course it is … what more could you be doing other than looking forward to having the family together and giving out all those great presents that are waiting under the tree?

Well you could be environmentally friendly and planning what you’re going to do with all the rubbish that’s left over after that big day and all the fun of the presents. It’s a bit strange really … right now there’s nothing that could be described as rubbish but by the end of Christmas day a lot of stuff that’s “good” now is going to be nothing but rubbish.

All the wrapping paper that’s been torn off the presents and discarded … you just know that there’s going to be a mountain of it. All that packaging and cardboard boxes that the presents come packed in … there’ll be another mountain of that stuff. What are you going to do with all that?

And then there’s the tree itself … what are you going to do with that once you’ve taken all the decorations down?

Are you planning on recycling all that rubbish and the unwanted tree? I certainly hope you are. I hope you’re planning on folding up all that old wrapping paper so that it won’t take up too much room in the recycling bin or crate.

I hope that you’re collapsing all those cardboard boxes and putting them into the recycling bin or crate too. Of course there’s so much to recycle that you’re probably going to run out of room in your bin or crate so I hope you’re planning on either hauling it in your car to the nearest recycling center or to the town dump or you’re going to store it in your garage and get rid of it in the recycling bin or crate over the coming weeks.

But that still leaves the tree … what are you going to do with the tree? Many local areas are offering residents the opportunity to have their tree fed through a chipper and turned into mulch and that’s a great way of recycling unwanted Christmas trees.

If your local authorities are offering that kind of service then be sure to take them up on the offer. These days there’s really no excuse for not being environmentally friendly and recycling just about everything that we don’t want after Christmas and you’ll be giving the planet a Christmas present if you do recycle.

With only four days to go till Christmas is upon us I hope you’ve got all your gift buying just about wrapped up and under the tree. No one in their right mind wants to tackle the crowds that will be filling the malls in the final few days before the big day.

But what about those gifts that you’re going to have to buy at other times throughout the year? There are always a few times through the year when you have to buy a gift and those are the times you should be looking for eco-friendly gifts and they’re not hard to find.

In fact these days you can do all your green gift buying right from the comfort of your own home and so you can save a few greenhouse gas emissions too. All you have to do is type ‘environmentally friendly gifts’ into Google and the first page Google shows you is going to give you plenty of ideas for everything from environmentally friendly gifts for a baby right through to patio furniture, environmentally friendly things you need around the home and even the office.

Right now I’m looking at several websites that are showing me everything from soy candles to handmade note paper, bags, beanies and even earrings made from environmentally friendly materials. And if you’re not sure what to give as a gift the sites even offer gift certificates printed on green paper just to reinforce the eco-friendly message.

I’m sure that in the year ahead more environmentally friendly gift shops will come online and there will be even more unique products for you to choose from so check them out and start setting a trend amongst your family and friends to give eco-friendly gifts that are not going to be a waste of scarce resources.

One of the most amazing things that has come about since people around the world began to understand the need to be environmentally friendly is the large number of purely organic products that have come to the market to try and replace those that are based on chemicals that will harm the environment and harm us too.

And none are perhaps more important than the products that we use on our body. Just recently researchers have begun to consider the possibility that the increase in allergies and asthma may be caused by the fact that we now wash our hands and other parts of our bodies far more frequently than our ancestors did.

Now neither I nor the researchers are suggesting that we need to stop washing our hands but we do need to think about the chemicals that we use in the soaps and other cleaning products that we use because it’s those chemicals that are actually damaging our skin and stripping away the layers that once protected our ancestors from the harmful germs that they came in contact with.

So we need to look for alternate products that are far more environmentally friendly … and friendly to us as well … than the products we currently use. Fortunately they are out there and one I’m looking at right now is some hair shampoo called ‘Jason’s Natural Sea Kelp Shampoo’.

Obviously its major ingredient is sea kelp but it also uses other environmentally friendly ingredients too such as Hawaiian ginger, orchid extract, kuku nut and plumeria. With all those very different ingredients you might think that this environmentally friendly shampoo may not foam up like normal shampoos do but from what I’ve heard you can washes just the same as other shampoos and it does leave your hair feeling very nice after you’ve used it.

You can buy it online from BigGreenSmile.com and you can learn more about it here

So the climate change talks in Copenhagen don’t see to be going anywhere. Poorer nations and trying to point fingers and play the blame game while wealthier nations are trying to tell the world that it’s not just them who should be bearing the burden of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile off in the wings there are still people who are trying to tell the world that climate change just isn’t happening and it’s all a figment of our imagination. Instead of worrying about climate change and being environmentally friendly we should all be out polluting and using up the planet’s scare resources just as fast as we can.

And then there are those desperate people who are watching the sea levels rise and their small islands become even smaller. They know that climate change is real and they know that they’re going to be the ones who will suffer first.

So the chances of the Copenhagen climate change talks achieving anything positive for the environment and becoming less and less every day. Sure there are some experts who are remaining hopeful that something positive will come out of the meeting but most attendees at the conference are beginning to see it all as a bit of a waste of time.

I guess if you believe in the power of prayer it really is time to start praying. If you believe in the power of positive thinking then it’s time to start sending positive thoughts in the direction of the climate change conference and if you don’t believe in climate change then it’s time to pull your head out of the sand and get in touch with reality.

If nothing happens in Copenhagen then climate change is going to come and bite us on the ass and even the climate change skeptics will feel the pain of that.

It’s the global disaster that everyone is hearing about right now. It’s what some people … and unfortunately what lots of people in Congress … don’t believe is happening.

It’s what is threatening the very existence of some of the island nations in the Pacific and it’s destroying Bangladesh … a nation with a huge population that borders India to the east. And it’s the subject of a huge conference that’s looking at ways of halting it but may end up achieving absolutely nothing.

So climate change is obviously very important but just how much do you know about climate change? Have you ever stopped to think about the way climate change is affecting people’s lives at all levels?

Well here’s a chance for you to see exactly what is happening in Bangladesh where millions of very poor people are going to be made homeless as climate change continues to have an impact on sea levels. For them, when the sea levels rise to high, there are very few alternatives other than to pack up what they can carry on their back and try to cross the border into India and try to start a new life.

Of course India is already overcrowded and it’s going to have its own problems caused by climate change so it won’t want all those refugees from Bangladesh … just as no one wants the refugees from those island nations in the Pacific either.

So what’s going to happen to those Bangladeshi refugees? Are they going to be driven back into the submerged land that was once Bangladesh? Are they going to be resettled in other countries like the United States?

We as a planet need to address the root cause of the problem and for that we need everyone to believe in global warming and climate change so we need to start telling our congressmen and senators to wake up to the reality of climate change.

You’ll find videos of the way climate change is affecting Bangladesh here and I need to give a hat tip to Life Goggles for a link to the videos.

I heard some very scary numbers about the number of Republicans in the United States who believe that global warming is really happening.

The numbers are scary not just because they’re Republicans but because they indicate that there are a huge number of people in this country who just don’t believe anything bad is happening to the environment.

Perhaps it’s because all the news we ever seem to get on TV is focused on what happens within our own country and if you’ve never been overseas to countries like Britain or Australia you will probably think that I’m crazy … but it’s true.

Sit down and watch a news bulletin on TV in one of those countries and you will hear the important news from all over the world. Watch a TV news bulletin here and all you will see is news about what’s happening here. So I guess it’s no wonder that there are many people in this country who don’t believe that global warming is happening.

If all they ever hear is news about the United States then they wouldn’t have heard about several inhabited islands in the Torres Straight between Australia and Papua New Guinea where … within just a few years … the islands will be covered in water at high tide.

They have already experienced tides where the sea has come in and covered much of the island. Even at low tide the sea is now encroaching on parts of the islands and the cemetery on one island has been all but washed away.

It’s something that hasn’t happened in thousands of years yet now that global warming is upon us the sea level is rising and these people have no where to go.

Those two islands aren’t the only islands affected either. There are a large number of islands in the Pacific that will be heavily impacted by global warming. The island nation of Kirabiti will disappear all together in the next few years as sea levels rise and a whole nation will need to be relocated.

Tuvalu is another island nation in the Pacific that is in real danger of disappearing under the sea if nothing is done about global warming. So how can people truly believe that global warming is something that we don’t have to worry about?

Have Americans really reached the point where they just don’t care about anyone else on the planet?

If you really want to be environmentally friendly then we definitely have to think globally and not just think about what may or may not be happening in our county.

If you haven’t already worked it out from some of the posts I’ve made here in the blog I have to tell you that I’m a bit of a petrol-head … or at least I used to be when I was younger. Give me a big booming V8 with more cubic inches than anything that had ever gone before and I was happy.

Actually I still am … but in a more reserved and environmentally friendly kind of way.

Last weekend my partner and I went on what we jokingly called our ‘Big Christmas Road Trip … over 1600 miles of driving there and back to see some of the kids and some of the grandkids.

When our family gets together it’s huge so we decided that we needed a little peace and quiet so we stayed at a motel and what should I find in the motel owner’s garage but one of those big V8s that I used to love so much. He had fully restored it and for a couple of hours the owner and I talked cars while I drooled over the perfect finish … we fired that monster up and listened to the burble of an exhaust that was almost as moving as a symphony.

Then I wandered back to our room and did some sums. These days I drive a small SUV and for the trip down we had averaged just under 30mpg. That beautiful V8 that I had gone all weak at the knees over would probably do no better than 15mpg.

I looked at those two figures and suddenly realized that I felt good about our fuel consumption … of course I want to do better but considering the driving conditions 30pmg was ok … and it was definitely being environmentally friendly. It also dawned on me that if I had driven that V8 and only achieved 15mpg I’d not only be feeling very guilty but I’d be a whole lot poorer as well.

When we left the motel to head home I wasn’t sorry to be leaving that V8 behind at all. The future is smaller and more economical cars and they may not sound as good as a big booming V8 but they’re still going to make the environmentally friendly future an exciting and interesting place to be.

The world leaders are meeting in Copenhagen this week to try and reduce the amount of emissions that we’re pumping into the atmosphere. We desperately need to bring those emissions down to the point where the rate of global warming will be reduced and by the end of the century there will have only been an increase in temperatures of two degrees.

Some who are attending the conference believe that two degrees is a very achievable figure and industrialized countries around the world are already on track to achieve this target. But there are others who are not so sure and there are more than a few who believe that we’re not going to even come close to achieving the targets that have been set.

Already several major climate change groups have added up the promises made prior to the Copenhagen meeting and the numbers do not look good at all. Despite being quite different and quite separate two of the groups who have done the number crunching have come up with very similar results and if they’re right then the Copenhagen meeting is going to have to go way beyond what most observers are expecting.

Both groups believe that by the year 2100 temperatures will have risen beyond the 2 degree target and the world will be looking at problems that approach a nightmare scenario that will involve just about everything that we really don’t want to think about.

So as the world leaders are meeting in Copenhagen this week we need to start bombarding them with emails demanding that they take serious action and go beyond what they had originally promised. The planet and the future of our children’s children depend on it!