In an effort to combat global warming, The Fintura Corporation along with MetaBank has developed the GreenPay MasterCard credit card program for environmentally concerned individuals and corporations.

The GreenPay credit card's objective is to reduce carbon dioxide's impact on the environment by neutralizing the "carbon footprint" produced by daily activities (such as greenhouse gases created by burning fossil fuels or from the decomposition of everyday household products.)

I live with two other people and five animals in a 1,400 square-foot house that includes my workplace. I know that compared to most of the world I live like a queen. I’m aware of this fact every day and I’m constantly grateful (except on really cranky days).

When children return to school this fall they will be exposed to the topic of climate change much more than ever before.

A sweet-looking older woman with a cloud of hair and an oxygen machine at her side told me a story recently about a friendly squirrel that lives in her yard. “It seems to want us to adopt it.” I love hearing about interspecies connections, so I listened eagerly. She went on to describe how it comes on her back deck, eats nuts from the tree there, and walks right up to her and her husband as if to say hello every morning. Getting to the point, she then explained that they were going to kill it, either by poisoning or trapping, because it just didn’t respect their property. “I’ve had enough of them [animals]. We [people] are so generous, and they don’t respect it. We are the ones who know how to share, and they just abuse it.”

by Sarah at ProgressiveKid

A woman I know lives with her family in a house that backs up against a forest. The forest is being clear cut, a not so infrequent occurrence in this part of the country. One day, while the woman was on a business call in the house, her nine-year-old son rounded up his two younger brothers, and the three of them marched out onto the logging road and stood in front of an oncoming logging truck. The truck driver managed to stop in time. At the children’s request, the driver wrote down on a piece of paper the name of the logging company.

Parenting in the Time of Climate Change

by Julie at ProgressiveKid

After decades of capitalist indoctrination by the pervasive persuasions of our modern media, we Americans have almost come to believe that we are what they say we are—consumers. We slog through the workweek and then seek community at the mall or superstore, where, instead of communing with others or with nature, we are confronted with only one option: to spend. So we spend the weekend spending, hoping to appease that hollow feeling with more stuff. Buying, our modern substitute for the gathering our ancestors did, provides a rush that resembles satisfaction. Yet that near-good feeling often drains away later, at home, away from the marketplace and unfulfilled promise of community—the connection to others that we were actually, if unconsciously, looking for.

With the February 2 IPCC report released, I think many Americans have had a wake-up call.

I have followed Global Warming for a year since I saw "An Inconvenient Truth" -- but I didn't know until now that CO2  stays in the atmosphere for 100+ years.  Since with every passing year that we hurl extra Greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we will pay for 100 years with drought, extreme temperatures, disease, famine and so on.

A few weeks ago I made up my  sign and did a one-man march down the Glendale Avenue of the Cards -- the signs read, "Ask me about global warming", and "Global Climate Change is fact."

I find that there is so much information on Global Climate Change, that it can be a little hard to wade through it all. I also find that I like to see video evidence of what's happening. It often makes me cry to watch it, but I don't want to hide from the truth anymore, and I find it inspiring to see who else is out there working to help the planet.

I've begun going through the 5,000 videos tagged "climate change" and "global warming" on YouTube.com, and will post my favorites here on my blog. Here are the first ones.

Powerful segment from the ABC 20/20 Special, "Last Days on Earth", about global climate change:
Part 1:

The Christian Science Monitor just published a great article on a grassroots approach to climate change called Low Carbon Diet: A 30 Day Program to Lose 5000 Pounds. It’s an illustrated workbook that guides individuals and small groups through a 22-step program to reduce their CO2 footprint. The author, David Gershon, spent a couple of decades researching how to get people to change their behavior concerning the environment—and the conclusion he reached is: if you work with a small peer support group, you are much more likely to actually do something different. (as in, Weight Watchers/AA meets Global Warming). He created a program call “Eco Team” which got a lot of praise for its effectiveness at shifting consumption behavior. Then he created the Low Carbon Diet based on the Eco Team program to specifically tackle climate change. Apparently, they’re getting great results. You can read the Monitor article at: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1228/p14s01-sten.html