For me, it’s The Currant Organic General Store, a great store that always has funky, eco-cool stuff and is owned by a funky eco-cool woman, Angie; For my husband, it’s Cityview, a mom-and-pop greasy spoon that looks as old as it is. My kids love Attic Books, a second-hand bookstore on our city’s main street that holds untold treasures…priced for kid-sized allowances.
Most of us have our favorite local spots, where the owner knows us, or where he’ll order in what we want even though he won’t make a profit on it. You know the places I mean.
An organization is urging us to put our money where our memories are. The 3/50 Project offers up this simple formula: Pick three establishments we would hate to lose in our lives. Then commit to supporting each of them, to the tune of $50/month. You can finesse it to suit your budget. But check out all the reasons why it’s good business to support local businesses at the350project.net

I’ve watched incredulously as the world prepares for a swine flu “pandemic”. The press, the debate, the money – all to fight a vague threat.
Yet, as we count down the days to Copenhagen and the Climate Conference that might well determine this planet’s – and our children’s future – I’m met with a deafening silence.
Thanks to the best science available and a now global acknowledgement by leaders that the data is valid, we know that climate change will alter the geographical landscape, rendering some places uninhabitable. We are aware that thousands if not millions will be displaced, environmental refugees in numbers we’ve never seen.
We have been warned of the increase in disease.
We understand the impact – thank-you Nicholas Stern – climate change will have on economies worldwide.
Sure climate deniers still exist. But, as evidence of human-caused global warming piles up and even the naysayers are being forced to admit that global cooling theories are not backed by science, what – exactly – are we waiting for?

We know that our planet’s atmosphere must stay below 350 ppm greenhouse gases if we wish to avert catastrophic climate change. Yet instead we’re lining up to be vaccinated for H1N1, which, incidentally, I had last week. Yes, I felt lousy. No, it wasn’t as bad as watching glaciers melt and hurricanes wreak havoc.

I’m left with this one thought: If only climate change could be pinned on a pig. Then maybe the world would rally its forces to keep it at bay.

A recent UK ad is under fire for scaring children about climate change. It depicts a father reading a story to his child, which raises issues of rising waters, drought, epidemics and so on.
While I tend to walk a fine green line with my own three kids – to empower them to make smart choices, while trying not to scare them with the urgency – I’m not convinced it’s working. While I don’t want to terrify my children, or anyone else, I’m feeling increasingly agitated by what seems to be dangerously slow progress.
With the Copenhagen Climate Conference taking place in December, the world’s eyes will be on our politicians. Can we count on them to create a global mandate – and distinct goals for each country – that goes far enough? As Bill McKibbon has pointed out, we must get greenhouse gas emissions down below 350 ppm. We’re currently at 390 and gaining. We have no time to waste.
We’re beyond worrying about who we’re scaring with this reality. Of course, we don’t want people paralyzed with fear, but we do want the world to recognize that we simply don’t have many more tomorrows in which to get this right. Our leaders can’t let us down. Climate change is THE critical issue of our time, encompassing health, economy, civil rights, tourism, trade.
We should all be scared… Very scared.

For years, I’ve been preaching the gospel of green. Buy less, buy better, or don’t buy at all when you’re being sold a bushel of nonsense.
When I started my crusade, green was about as appealing as a bikini wax. But in the five short years since I began – and in the three years since my book, The Virtuous Consumer came out – green has become the new black. It’s cool. It’s hip. It’s…now.
Which, of course, means that much of it is…phony.
If there’s money to be made, the shysters will follow. Take, for example, the rush to provide bamboo clothes. Except for the fact that it’s not necessarily bamboo but rayon masquerading as it.
I hate greenwashing…and it’s rampant, says TerraChoice. In a 2008 study of greenwashing (making a product seem more eco-friendly than it really is), TerraChoice revealed that “of the 1,018 products examined, all but one made claims that are demonstrably false or that risk misleading intended audiences.
But for the past month or so – October being the official month of supporting breast cancer research – we’re being urged to buy “pink”. From lipstick to cars, t-shirts to toasters, companies have stocked the shelves with pink – promising us that a portion of the price we pay for our pink products will support various initiatives associated with breast cancer.
Which is all well and good, except. Except that we’re increasingly learning that many cancers, including breast cancer, can be linked to the products we use. Take lipstick, for example. Many lipsticks include ingredients that are known carcinogens, main among them are parabens, which mimic estrogen and which have been found in breast tumor samples. It seems disingenuous at best to sell me a potentially harmful lipstick, then donate a few cents from my purchase to support breast cancer charities. How about not exposing me unnecessarily to carcinogens in the first place?
I’m all for corporations sharing their profits with solid charities. But not when the products they’re selling are implicated in the problem itself.
Greenwashing? So last year. Pinkwashing is the new green.

Just in case we think that taking our reusable bags to the grocery store has made much difference…check out the UN’s most recent climate report.
We must get our governments to act now to at least mitigate the worst possible scenario. The economy and health care are all tied to the state of our planet’s health – and right now, we’re heading into the pooper.
Bill McKibbon who’s valiantly tackling climate change by imprinting the number 350 on everyone’s brains insists that there’s no time to waste. The number 350 signifies the level of greenhouse gases in parts per million that the atmosphere can absorb without dramatically altering ecosystems. Right now, we’re closing in on 390. The world, he says, is simply not doing enough.
What are you doing to create change – at a personal level? At a political level?