Apparently the U.S. Navy has been using trained dolphins and other marine mammals to support the Navy in warfare situations since the 1960s. I became aware of the program when, some 20 years ago, I was living on a boat in San Diego Bay and saw the Navy training dolphins from special-built skiffs.

Those wondrous marine mammals were trained to detect mines, take underwater photographs, bring things to Navy divers and who knows what else.

I was always horrified by the program. I’ve done a lot of sailing in the past, including significant time off shore – way off shore. So often a pod of dolphins would join us for awhile, surfing on our bow wake and obviously simply having a gloriously good time. It somehow seemed very wrong to use the good will of another intelligent sentient being and press it into the service of destruction.

Of course animals have been used in war probably since war began. But somehow, the training of the dolphins in my bay back yard was truly upsetting.

I was delighted to learn that on November 24th the Navy announced it was shutting down or at least cutting back on the dolphin training program at least in San Diego Bay. Apparently the Navy has found ways of building torpedo or dolphin shaped underwater vehicles that will accomplish the same tasks.

In my mind these replacements may well be like the unmanned drones that at least the U.S. is using. We are distancing ourselves more and more from the horror of war and killing, while the killing goes on.

And, of course, law enforcement in this country are clamoring for the same power.

Meanwhile, evidence of global warming increases, with Super-storm Sandy, and Typhoon Bopha that struck in the southern Philippines today, Dec. 4, 2012. At the same time the UN sponsored Doha Climate Change Conference,  successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocols (that the U.S. has never signed) struggles with no commitment from the U.S. and other major polluters.

I don’t know what it will take for America to develop the political will to acknowledge climate change is happening and it that will take our efforts along with many other countries to make the changes that have a chance of slowing rising sea level slim – and scary. This map isn’t perfect, but if you fiddle a bit you can get a sense of what various rises in sea level might mean.

Meanwhile, I continue not to bring plastic bags home and contact my elected representatives urging action – I don’t know what else to do.

What do you suggest?

Love, blessings, and abundance,

According to several sources, if everyone lived the way we most of us do in the U.S. we’d need something like 5 earths to be sustainable. And according to Thomas Friedman in an op-ed piece for The New York Times the consumption world around would require about 1-1/2 earths. He’s using Global Footprint’s numbers and you can find out what your life style represents in terms of the number of earths required.

With the gift giving season fast approaching, what can you do to make your gift giving more sustainable? Here are some ideas. None of them, of course, will totally solve the environmental problems we face, but even considering them may help you realize how to reduce your own consumption.

Agree to not give gifts at all. You might call this the Grinch or Scrooge option, but it doesn’t have to be that way at all. If you’re all adults it may be as simple as asking if you really want to exchange gifts or if you’d rather donate to some worthy cause or go out to dinner as a group instead.

Set up a gift exchange by number so people only have to buy one gift – for the number they drew. Our family did this and I, as the grandmother, opted out because I wanted to give my kids and grand kids gifts. It meant the others only had to figure out one gift. My adult children did give me a gift each, but mostly a token – a bag of my favorite coffee, etc.

Give good deeds instead. Instead of buying a gift, give a coupon that can be redeemed for cleaning out the garage, or washing the car, or… some chore that doesn’t get done often.

Donate in the name of the giftee. Instead of buying something, donate in your loved one’s name. You can choose a charity you know they’d approve of or actually donate goats or chickens etc. through Heifer.org or goats through Goats for the Old Goats.

Re-gift from your store of rarely used stuff. Re-gifting things you have that you don’t use can be a great way to keep from buying more stuff. And sometimes you’ll be able to re-gift an item with a story that makes it even better.

Do your gift shopping at thrift stores. It’s absolutely amazing what you can find in thrift stores. Find those closest to the richest part of town and you’re likely to score some amazing things.

Check out Craigslist’s free section in your area. The things you can find in the free section are amazing. To do this well requires looking well in advance.

Buy gifts from green/sustainable places. Items marked Fair Trade are likely to be more sustainable than those not so labeled. When you can find union made goods you know that at least the workers are treated well. Google green shopping and green shopping (city name)

Wrap the gifts in newspapers or brown paper bags. If you subscribe to a newspaper, use several to wrap your gifts; the comics section makes for colorful wrapping, but the regular sections work well too. The paper bags you get from grocery stores can also be used

Reuse gift bags. We all some to love gift bags and our family reuses them a lot. Some have been around long enough to collect a story or two.

Use raffia or yarn or even string for ribbon. Instead of buying ribbon that won’t recycle, and most of it won’t, use raffia or an organic yarn or even string. Get creative and you’ll be amazed at how good your packages will look. World.edu, EarthEasy.com and Gaiam all have suggestions for sustainable gift wrap.

How do you help make the holidays sustainable?

Love, blessings and abundance,

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Every year I make a list of 108 things I’m grateful for – you can see this year’s here.

During the fall of 2011 I decided I would make 2012 the year I would bring home no plastic shopping bags! I had seen plastic bags floating way out in the Pacific back in the 80s and couldn’t miss them wafting down almost every street I traveled.

I also was aware, in a vague way, that they are made from petroleum and that sea life often ate them only to die as they twisted up their guts.

It turns out the problem is way worse than I thought.

Recycling plastic bags isn’t working because there’s no market for that kind of plastic (PE).  Sure, when we put plastic bags in a recycling container outside our grocery store, they get picked up and taken somewhere, but it turns out they are just stored. While that’s better than letting them blow into our waterways and decorating our landscape, it’s a non-solution.

5Gyers.org, named for the huge geyers or ever turning circles of trash driven by the ocean currents, spells out the problem clearly. Yes, there are currently 5 gyers of trash in the world’s oceans – those are our oceans and we’re ruining them. Much of the problem is caused by plastic shopping bags.

BagMonster.com is a site devoted to both education about the damage plastic bags do and to banning them. You can learn and participate there.

Learning to stop using plastic shopping bags

The secret, of course, is substituting reusable shopping bags for the plastic ones.

Learning to actually use the reusable bags I’d been given and bought along the way turned out to really be about forming a new habit. Sometime in early November I made the commitment and practiced getting those bags from the car to the grocery store and from my house back to the car.

What initially stilted me was how to handle my own trash. I couldn’t remember what I had done with trash cans before plastic bags. So I asked someone. The answer turned out to be dirt simple – I no longer line them with anything.

Sure, the kitchen trashcan gets messy – in fact the first week I didn’t line it it got flat gross.

Composting makes handling garbage a lot easier. I also learned to rinse out, even wash, any container that had meat in it of any sort.

Besides, the trashcan is washable – what a concept!

I discovered that without the plastic bag lining it I got more trash into it, meaning fewer trips out to empty it, a small plus.

I’ve also been seen coming out of stores juggling un-bagged items because I’d forgotten my reusable bags, and once I had to buy yet another reusable bag because mine were already filled up with groceries in the car. But when I’ve told the clerks that I haven’t used any plastic shopping bags for all of 2012 they seem pleased. One even said he might do the same thing.

According to various websites, the average person uses 500 plastic bags a year. Subtracting my contribution by itself means nothing. Added to yours it starts to mount up. At the moment about 100 people see this blog – if we all stop using them that’s 50,000 bags. If all of you show one other person… and so it goes.

Finally, what about the companies that manufacture plastic shopping bags and the people they employ? It is possible to make bio-plastic bags out of corn. Not totally problem free, according to Smithsonian Magazines, they are a partial step in the right direction. The real answer is just to quit using the darn things.

Will you join me in giving up the plastic shopping bag?

Love, blessings and abundance,

Right now the local utility company is chainsawing a lovely palm tree down at the edge of the canyon view lot I live on.

They’re killing it because it’s beginning to interfere with the utility pole. That pole holds my internet connection so it’s important to me.

So why do I feel a real sadness? The sound of the saw hurts me!

The tree is down and now they are cutting it up to get rid of it somehow.

I hate this.

I hate that the first thing they (we) think of is the tree has to go!

I know it would cost more to move the pole, but that would be my choice and I truly believe it is the right choice.

I don’t know when the palm was planted. I don’t know if it was planted deliberately or just grew there on it’s own.

I don’t know when the pole went in so I have no way of knowing if this killing could have been prevented by some forethought.

I can make a case that opening up that corner will actually be good for the other plants and trees. And it may be so. Pruning is often necessary.

I’m glad, and grateful for my internet connection. And I’ll probably quit noticing the gap, which is considerable, in a month or two.

My wish is that all beings be happy and free from fear.

Darn! I want to apologize not only to that palm but to all the other plant beings humans wantonly destroy.

When they’re done I’ll go down to the spot and do some sort of ritual to heal at least me.

Thanks for listening.

Love and blessings,

Today the U.S. Supreme Court began to, as the Wall Street Journal put it, “mull” over life sentences for juveniles.

What’s to mull? How in the world can putting juveniles in prison for life make any sense at all? Even if they’ve murdered someone?

In 2010 the court decided that putting them to death was indeed a bad idea. I was horrified that it had ever happened or even needed to be heard in this country which used to pride itself on progressive ideas. But at least the Supremes made it illegal.

The cases the court is deciding today both involve black boys who were 14 when the killings occurred. Do you remember what it was like to be 14 years old?

According to the Journal article, Alabama’s solicitor general, John Neiman responded to a question by Justice Kennedy, “”Retribution, Justice Kennedy, would be the primary goal, bringing society’s retributive force to bear on those who commit the worst sort of crimes.”

Retribution? Against 14 year-olds?

Whatever happened to rehabilitation? Whatever happened to forgiveness? Whatever happened to a sense of proportion, that the ‘punishment should fit the crime’? How about some compassion?

The same article states we have 2,300 juveniles in prision without the possibility of parole. As far as I’m concerned one is too many.

I don’t know any more than what I read about these two cases. I can’t imagine what the relatives of the victims must feel.

I am convinced however that retribution isn’t the answer.

How do we protect ourselves from kids? We address proactively the problems that make them crazy. We turn the other cheek and teach love not hate. We learn to stop racism and to provide as much real equal opportunity as we can figure out how to do – and then we do some more.

We work to protect black children as much as we work to protect white children. And we start that by admitting there is a problem – in Alabama, in Florida and in my own back yard right here in San Diego – everywhere in the country in fact.

I work to confront my own now largely unconscious racism and to spot the institutional racism that’s so hard to see. I also work for social justice, largely through presenting Awakening The Dreamer symposiums. I also talk about these issues with my friends and work to have friends that don’t look like me.

Each and every one of us can help restore sanity to this country if we get involved – if we register people to vote, if we insist our elected representatives from the most local to the very top act in rational ways. Call, write, and talk with each other.

What will you do?

Love and blessings,

Anthropologist Margaret Mead said “A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” (I looked for and found that quote at Brainy Quote.)

What isn’t clear, of course, is exactly how many a small group of thoughtful people might be.

We’re watching what might become the right sized group in the round the world Occupy movement.

Four Years Go claims over 13,000 committed to shifting humanities direction to a more sustainable world.

Awakening The Dreamer has a goal of delivering its Symposium to millions by 2014. It’s goal is helping humanity move toward a thriving, just and sustainable world.

The Shift Network is helping folks mover toward roughly the same goal.

And there are more – you probably know some I’m not aware of and visa versa.

What each of these networks, or movements or organizations offers is a way for each of us, as individuals, but not alone, to make a personal commitment to the change we all sense is needed. None of these organizations pretends to have all the answers or the only answers, which I think is great.

I suspect you’re like me, just tired to people who say they know exactly what we should do. The problems are too new, and too vast for any single approach to be the only right one.

We do know, however, it will take commitment, a change of heart, a willingness to change and encourage others to do the same.

How many will it take? That’s unknown. Will it work? I certainly hope so.

I know I’m committed; how about you?

Love and abundance,

The Occupy movement has started a conversation here in the United States that’s perhaps overdue. Although often accused of not having an agenda, they do have a unifying agreement on their home page which says in part:

The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%.

The changes in the economy in the United States over the last roughly three decades have diminished the middle class and made things rougher for the poor. One way to demonstrate this is to look at the increasing income gap. According to the Congressional Budget Office  income of the richest one percent increased some 275 percent between 1979 and 2007.

People in their 60s and older remember clearly when it was unusual to have two working adults in a home. And that generation put a whole bunch of kids through college on a single wage. Although there are families in the US that make it on a single income, it’s been pretty rare – until recently, that is. Today a single income family with a poor credit report is more likely to be the result of unemployment, I suspect, rather than a thoughtful decision.

As the Occupy movement spreads around the world. According to The Atlantic the movement is now in 80+ countries.

In fact I think it’s safe to say that the Occupy movement has started a conversation around the world that’s perhaps overdue.

We Americans have grown up with the idea that free markets and capitalism make wealth and create a strong middle class. Prior to the 1980s or so this seemed to be true.  Following World War II the United States became the so-called economic engine of the world. What we were doing in terms of democracy, job growth, safety nets and, yes, even government regulation worked, for awhile. Then things began to change.

First of all, understand that when people talk about free markets here they are really referring to business – both large and small, but mostly big business. Starting in the 1980s regulations which used to put breaks on banking greed and create business irresponsibility in other arenas began to be removed under the banner of free markets. The Bhopal disaster is an example of free markets running amuck. So was the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and the more recent BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Or think about the food recalls or drug recalls or even how the tobacco industry resisted any regulation and manipulated public opinion at all. Or how many of our jobs have been off-shored in the name of free trade.

Each instance  is an example of exactly what the Occupy movement is talking about. The owners of one percent of the wealth, left to their own devices, with few exceptions, seem to only want more and are willing to tromp all over everyone and everything to get it.

As our western way of doing business spread around the world, the good things and the bad things spread with it. As big business became less and less responsible for their actions, more and more of the world got trashed looking for oil or fighting wars with US company-supplied weaponry and the like.

Although it’s difficult a direct cause and effect relationship between say deregulation in the United States and the various disasters in Uganda where charities like Just Like My Child struggle to help, the Occupy movement is on to something. They are voicing the voice of the here-to-for voiceless.

Karl Marx and Pope John II referred to it as “unbridled capitalism.” One was communist, one wasn’t – both had a point.

It’s not that all markets are wrong or that all businesses are greedy, it’s that apparently people on planet earth have not yet learned to live in peace with each other without some sort of break on their baser instincts. Here in the US unions and the government, while far from perfect, have until recently acted as a decent break. We can get that back if we really want it.

I don’t know what will come out of the Occupy movement. Change I expect, change that moves us more toward a sustainable future in a world that works for everyone. That’s my fondest wish and hope, and I’m willing to help work for it.

How do you think the Occupy movement will change things?

Love, blessings and abundance,

Years ago I was fortunate enough to do a workshop with Joanna Macy. Sometimes referred to as an Eco-philosopher with a PhD, she put me in touch with the grief I feel over the continuing destruction of the planet. That grief, which many, even most share, consciously or unconsciously, has informed at least some of what I do even today.

I went to her site today and found this quote by her on the front page:

The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on the way to destroying the world — we’ve actually been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves and each other.

And right below it is a link to continuing information on the nuclear disaster that continues to unfold in Japan – what a combination!

It was through Macy that I first learned of the Nuclear Guardianship Project, which started in the 1980s and continues today in an effort to both end the use of particularly nuclear weapons and guard them for all time.

Her Corporate History Timeline gives an overview of some of the ways we got here – a view I subscribe to even though it needs some updating, like the recent Supreme Court decision called referred to as Citizens United that affirmed corporations as people. (Google repeal corporate personhood to find petitions to sign and other actions to take.

She offers workshops, shares songs and generally makes the world a better place because she’s in it. Take a look at her site and see if you don’t agree. Then take some action.

Who inspires you?

I’ve set my browsers (yes, I use both Google’s Chrome and FireFox) to open on TheHungerSite. I can click on a link and 1.1 cups of food are donated, totally free to me. I also occasionally buy t-shirts and such from the site and each purchase donates as well. Good way to start the day with a gift.

Recently they commemorated the death of Wangari Maathai. She founded the Green Belt Movement which developed a method of raising and planting hundreds of thousands of trees that not only help the environment but provide a living for the people who plant them. First African winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, I miss her on the planet already.

This video gives an overview of some of her work. You can find many more by searching on youtube.com for Wangari Maathai.

The Girl Effect

Fellow freelance writer John Soares posted The Girl Effect: Why Educating Girls Is Important.

What a pleasure to see the video there and read what a man says about the importance of girls.

I couldn’t help make the connection to Wangari Maathai’s education.