armadillo

Shopping can be a really refreshing habit that has been proved to make the purchasers feel happier. It also satisfies basic human needs. Thus, it would be a pie in the sky to say that shopping should be stopped. But it can't continue with the pace it has now either. Visiting the shops means using means of transport, which burn fossil fuels and produce carbon dioxide,( sometimes monoxide which is worse), and other gases. These gases are the main factors that causes breathing problems, the greenhouse effect, and of course, global warming. Even if you shop online, transportations do take place, as the products come to you. It is an eco way of shopping only when done wisely. Then it comes to the product itself. All products are sold into packaging, paper and plastic wrap. These materials, useless to the buyer, go straight to the rubbish dumps. The same thing happens with the products themselves. The one-use products, as all products in general, end up at the dumps shortly after their wrap. The more we buy, the more the dumps grow bigger and bigger. But the worst part is what happens in the industrial world. Mass production during manufacture demands great amounts of energy, which means burning fuels. When we shop non- stop, products are in demand on the market all the time. So even bigger amounts of carbon dioxide and depositions reach the atmosphere and the sea. And last but not least, many products contain animal by-products, such as fur or fat. Buying those products, which are common in the clothing and cosmetic fields, means that animals are tortured, usually to death, in order to satisfy the market's demand. So the point of all this, is that we have to categorise our purchases to really useful and useless, and try to focus only on the first category. Understanding the dramatic effects that over-shopping has on the Earth will help us take measures to reduce them.

All developed countries have started taking measures to reduce their bad impact on Earth. Banning incadescent lightbulbs, cars from the city centres, or introducing laws for greener factories and industries. Greece at last followed their example by promoting a greener life in the capital. After its apathy at Bali's summit, where the greek spokepersons had no specific proposals or positions, Greece seems to start thinking more about the environment. Such late a start can be partly justified, as the country lacks basic means. Most people are way too indifferent and uninformed about global warming and facilities don't meet the specifications for major changes (for instance the way buildings had been built makes it impossible to widen the roads and introduce cycle lanes etc). On April the 14th of this year, Greece starts promoting green bags made from eco-friendly materials. All major super markets have agreed to heavily promote and sell the bags for no more than what it costs to produce them. As of this writting, the price is still unknown. The campaign will run for five years using the motto ''I am not a plastic bag'' targeting nearly 4.5 million Athenians, or half the population of Greece. It may sound as the minimum that could be done, espacially if it is compared to other countries, where green bags have been available for years. But it is definately a new start that shall teach the people to live and act in a greener way and care more about this planet.

German engineers have devised a way of tugging merchant vessels along with huge, computer steered kites, known as Skysails, that catch the ocean winds. It marks the beginning of a revolution in the way that ships are powered. The sails are calculated to be able to reduce fuel consumption by 30-50 per cent,depending on the wind conditions. The system could be applied to about 60000 vessels out of the 100000 listed in the Lloyd's register. Orders are already coming in ranging from trawlers to a super-yacht. If the world fleet is equipped with sails, it is calculated that 142 million tones of CO2 could be saved per year! The sails, made of an ultralight synthetic fibre,are shot up as much as 300m into the sky. They are linked to the ship by a single cordand and are steered by an automatic pilot. Acomputer console on the bridge feeds in data on wind strength and direction. A track running around the ship allows the kites to move and scoop up the wind from every direction. It seems to be a good start to reduce CO2 emissions, since merchant ships produce more sulphur dioxide than all the cars and lorries on the planet. They also generate about 27% of the world's nitrogen oxide emissions. If this new method is improved within a short period of time, humanity will be one step closer to saving the world... Image credit: Tidewater Muse. Image licensed under a Creative-Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license.

Up to 350000 newborn seals were estimated to be killed last summer in Canada, and the number is thought to be much bigger this coming summer. In 2005 the 98,5% of the babies killed weren't even 2-months-old, and autopsies showed proved that most of them were still alive during the extraction of their fur. If you want to help, don't wait till summer to hear about these things again on the news. Sign the petitions of www.protectseals.org and stop buying cosmetics or clothes that contain seal fat or fur. Maybe a decrease in the demand on the market will decrease the number of seal murders. Image credit: Mike Baird. Image licensed under a Creative-Commons Attribution license.

The following touching text is a letter written by a fireman, some months after the one thousand fires Greece endured last summer, and addresses to people all over the world. "I would like to forget: - Those 3-4 sheeps we didn't make it to save and heard them terrified as the flames reached them. - Those birds that didn't make it to leave their trees as the flames circled them, and were falling all over us like leaves in autumn... - The terrified faces of my colleges when we saw 50-metres-high all around us. - The panicked voices of other firemen on the phone, telling people got burnt in their houses... But I wont forget: - The people on the helicopters who found us a way to avoid the flames at the very last minute. - The governments, who let people build houses at places where once stood dense forests. - That we made it to save a family and their dog, animals and properties from the flames.. it will help me sleep at night... - THAT I AM A HUMAN BEING, WHO SHOULD BE SORRY FOR ALL HIS LIFE ABOUT THE BIGGEST CATASTROPHIES LIFE ON EARTH HAS EVER ENDURED, DUE TO ITS SPECIES ACTIONS. My question is: addressed to all governments and rich people on this planet :What are you going to do with all this money if you can't see a tree growing near your big cold house?When you won't be able to breath due to lack of oxygen..? Just some ash left on our hair...murderes..." Image credit: NASA.

It is a fact that more than 1000 whales and dolphins are killed every year by whalehunters, who make some endangered species head torwards extinction. Mainly Japan, with support from Norway and Iceland, refuses to obey the rules of the moratorium set in 1986, from the Worldwide Whalehunting Commitee, which had as a goal to let the whale population increase, after it's dramatic drop between the years 1925-1975. However, more than 20000 creatures ended up in the hands of Japanese whalehunters. Japan claims that whales are to be blamed for the decrease of the fish population (obviously humans cannot be blamed, since they can feed only with fish, unlike whales, who could may as well prefer rabbits or vegetables) .Plus, the moratorium said that whales could be hunted for scientific reasons, and that's exactly what Japan is supposed to be doing. But noone believes that last year's gigantic ''mission'' was for scientific research. The so-called scientists weighed the whales and then took their meat on the market to sell it. But why can't other countries control Japan? Apparently because it's not only the governments' fault. As long as people want whale, dolphin or shark meat in their diet, hunters will still find ways to keep hunting. So the main aim should be to awake all those people, and persuade them not to eat whale's meat. And when their argument includes the phrase: "it's part of our tradition,we wont let it die out", the reply should be that: "tradition that harms in an uncontrolable way the earth and it's species supports the most cruel instincts humans could have, and therefore is not a tradition that deserves to keep going..."