For anyone in the UK you can sign the petition by going here: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/HOMAGE/

For anyone who doesn’t know the significance of this stretch of road, it is used by the hearses taking the bodies of dead servicemen away from the airfield where they have been repatriated to.   It would appear that may people now go there to pay their respects when the heroes return.

..so next time you fill up the car and bemoan the fact that the price of petrol has risen, again, think about how much the same amount of fuel is going to cost you in the next five years…… more than twice as much.

In the last 12 months we have seen the price rise from £0.85 to £1.07 pre litre.  This represents a 24% rise and it does not look like it will stop.

So it may be time to start planning what to do so that you can continue to enjoy the lifestyle you have become used to…. before it is too late.

A report released in conjunction with the Ideal Home Show range suggests Britain is a nation of eco-cynics, with 75% of us using regular, chemical detergents.

With spring just around the corner, it’s time to freshen up your house (and your health) and lose the headrush from overusing the bleach. Clear away your heaving winter mess and give your quarters a good once over with these non-toxic cleaners.

Check out what Melaleuca is offering in natural cleaning products that are safer for your home and your health.

Due  to some sort of failure of the brakes or the blade angulation system, this particular wind turbine caught a bit too much air.  The turbine was in Hornslet, Denmark.

Normally in high winds the brake system cuts in and slows the turbine down, or the shuts it down completely and turns the blades to reduce their effect.  Unfortunately not this time.

Still it goes to show just how much force the wind can generate and we need to continue to harness it.

The Guardian reports that:

 When the crew of the Greenpeace ship Esperanza last year pulled in its 1-metre-net from the surface of the Atlantic about 200 miles south-east of the Azores, it was surprised only by the quantity of what it found.

Washing around in the net were nearly 700 minuscule and unidentifiable fragments of plastic; 57 pieces of synthetic fishing line and leftover strands from dumped nets and rope; a handful of flakes from old plastic bags, including one with a zip-type seal still attached; and a dozen so-called nurdles – white pellets, looking like grains of rice, which are the raw material of the packaging industry. All this microplastic had been collected in just four nautical miles.

“When we conducted the first trawl and brought the sample back on board, I was shocked, and so were the crew,” says Adam Walters, a researcher at Greenpeace’s laboratory in Exeter. “We had been sailing then for over a month, looking at the ocean every day, and had no idea that all this plastic was floating by the ship.”

Once again we are shown just how little we care about the environment and the damage that we do to it.  The “Not In My Back Yard” attitude continues to prevail.  When will we learn? 

Kite power means the ship’s engines down below can work on reduced power: and that means fewer carbon emissions. It also means smaller fuel bills. With the price of shipping fuel having doubled in the past two years, kite power is promising big savings.  MS Beluga SkySails believes its fuel bill will be cut by £800 ($1,560) a day.

The kite is controlled by computers. One computer helps it to fly in figures of eight in the sky – maximising the power it produces. Another computer adjusts the kite’s direction.  If the project is successful, expect to see even bigger kites soon – some up to 5,000sq m (53,820sq ft) in size pulling ships across the seas and oceans.   The kite sail will help reduce annual fuel costs by 10-35%. Reduced fuel also means fewer harmful carbon emissions

The guide starts with ways of measuring our carbon footprint: there are three sites that can help:

• Yahoo
• Carbon Fund
• Carbon Neutral

In addition it goes onto explain what we can be doing. You can explore the little green book here.

There is a really interesting piece by Christophe Poizat the founder of the International Network of Social Entrepreneurs, who, using the social web and guerrilla marketing tactics, has single-handedly created the word’s largest Web 2.0 network of social entrepreneurs.

We Won’t Be Doing Much Business On A Dead Planet

It is a sad but true fact: we won’t be doing much business on a dead planet. The pristine beauty of our planet is at risk of being destroyed. What has taken hundreds of millions of years to elaborate could be forever gone within a few decades because of the negative impact of the human species has on planet Earth. more..

Mark O’Neill reporst on Google Tutor on this interesting view of Global Warming

As Al Gore would probably confirm, there seems to be a lot of people in denial about global warming. So I was interested to read about a Google Earth animation which shows the rate of the Arctic ice melting.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center made the Google Earth animation to show the extent of the ice melting each year since 1979. Just download the file and when you double-click on it, Google Earth will open and pressing the play button will then start it. If you have it installed of course! Get it for free on our download page.

Visually gripping stuff – and it really hits home about how the problem seems to be getting worse. It’s apps like Google Earth that can really educate people about things such as environmental issues.

Look out for Al Gore using Google Earth in his next conference!

The website ecolibris is working to help people make a difference.

Let’s start with the bottom line: we believe in providing people with easy and affordable ways to take responsibility for their actions and go green. We don’t believe in preaching doom and gloom. It’s not our style. We do believe in taking action and in the power of small changes to make a big impact.

Books are everywhere, just look around: on bookshelves at home, in college students’ backpacks, in the mail from the book club or in that pile in your room right now. For some people they’re for education, for others they’re an entertaining escapade and for some, reading is really a passion. Eco-Libris is for everyone. It enables people to do something reasonable, affordable yet with an impact: plant one tree for every book they read. We believe that taking responsibility for the environmental costs of the books we read is only natural.