Enjoy What You've Got, While You've Got It.

"It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it's still here." - Edward Abbey

There is a list of places to see before they disappear due to climate change. Places that we take for granted in the same manner of thinking that our friends and family will always be by our sides. There is a circle of life that occurs and it now appears that the same cycle applies to many of our beloved historical sites.

According to CNN there are some specific sites that scientists expect to be altered or ruined due to climate change. Those locations are: Great Barrier Reef in Australia, Rocky Mountain National Park in Estes Park, Colorado, Alpine Glaciers, Switzerland, the Amazon Rain Forest in Brazil, and my beloved favorite New Orleans, Louisiana. Others have hinted at the demise of The Pyramids of Giza, the Tower of London, the city of Venice, The Dead Sea, Florida Everglades... the list goes on and on. Heck, Frommer's has created a whole book on the 500 places to see before they disappear.

In my world I cannot imagine the possibility of not visiting the rain forest, alps or heading back to N'awlins. In my world we all dance with flowers in our hair while dreaming of places such as those mentioned above. Instead we are destroying the beauty around us. I suppose this metaphor could be used for many scenarios. [insert favorite noun here]. As a sheltered girl who didn't get on a plane until the age of 16 there is nothing more that I want for my children other than to be happy and travel. Traveling opens our eyes, our hearts and our minds. It is a tragic occurrence that we are losing some of the beauty that makes our planet so incredibly wondrous. What will we be left with once its all gone? Pixar has left an indelible mark on me as my mind usually wanders to the scenes from Wall-E when imagining our future world. It looks nothing like the future I imagined as a kid: can you say, Jetsons?!

So get your travel on and go. Forget the new carpet and paint. Forget the boob job you don't need. Go travel. Learn. Listen. See. Those images you stumble across might be gone tomorrow.

Climate Change, anyone?

It is mid-January. It is mid-January and we are having a heat wave. So much so that I took my daughters swimming for a late afternoon dip at our local pool yesterday while watching the sun set over a carbon layered city. It's amazingly beautiful what sunsets and pollution can create. The lights of the city never sparkled so bright. But it's freakin' mid-January and feels like the middle of summer.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. I am. I enjoy warm weather as much as the next girl, but this is bad. We have not had weather like this since the early 70's, and if we don't get some rain soon it will equate to equally bad statistics. Perhaps we can all gather round for some lovin' rain dances, which could explain all that dancing they did in the 70's if they were having their own heatwave.

So, I'm really serious people. It might be too late, but what if it isn't. What if we could start doing little things everyday that could turn this climate change around. What if we become like the Aunt Becky's of the world by taking little steps in a humble way to change things. Seems like a better solution than good 'ol Uncle Gary who laughs it off with a chuckle and a grin while mumbling something about Al Gore. Just give it a shot. You might end up with a warm, fuzzy feeling rather than an oddly warm January.

Aunt Becky's 10-step program:

• Make your own coffee at home. Heck, you can even through in the organic, unbleached filters.
• Find some re-usable water bottles rather than buying bottled water. Sigg has some very durable, and very groovy designs.
• Recycle those beer cans, soda cans, salad dressing bottles. Heck, just recycle anything your recycle-picker-upper man will take, and in the sake of green awareness, you can also check out what those pesky little numbers on the bottom of the containers mean.
• Wash and reuse your ziplock bags and then dry them with the handy-dandy plastic bag dryer.
• Make your own cleaning products which are likely much less toxic and more environmentally friendly than that bottle of 409 under your sink.
• Reuse your lawn and leaf bags after dumping them into your compost pile, or if your waste management does not provide a composting option you can choose biodegradable lawn, leaf and yard bags.
• Tshirts! Save those tshirts! Wear them until they have settled into the soft, fashionably worn item that is all the rage these days. Or if you are desperately trying to shed anything older than your youngest child you can donate them to your local shelter or red-cross-like store. Someone out there is bound to appreciate that Pink Floyd concert shirt from 1973 almost as much you.
• If it's yellow let it mellow, if its brown flush it down. Yes, it's true. No one likes to think about these things, but do we really need to flush for every little tinkle? No. Every flush uses approximately 4 - 7 gallons. That's enough water to hydrate a small village in some desolate locale for a day. Instead, just keep it mellow, or if you really want to earn your dark green standing, you can install a low-flow toilet or waterless urinal.
• Reusable grocery bags. You can't find an easier way to go green. Plastic bags have wreaked havoc on our ecosystems from bags floating through the atmosphere and ending up in our water systems. 500 billion plastic bags are used each year, 84 billion in California alone, yet only a small percentage of them are actually recycled. That means the remainder end up in landfills or the stomachs of the millions of sea creatures that you call dinner. In the end, that plastic breaks down in your system after making its way into your body via Van de Kamp and Chicken of the Sea. Paper or plastic? Neither!
• Just walk. Try to jump into that F-150 a little less frequently, and get out and enjoy this beautiful weather that global warming is currently providing. By walking just a little you are preventing that extra C02 from entering the atmosphere. Multiply that by the 6 billion inhabitants of earth and it might actually add up to something significant.

Now go out there and get your green on!

(*it should be noted that I actually do love my Uncle Gary despite the constant razzing that takes place on this blog.)