ada_cartianu

Navy environmental rules relaxed for

Arctic operations because

 of global warming

3 hours ago

OTTAWA (CP) — The Canadian navy is relaxing some pollution rules for warships plying Arctic waters after skippers warned their ships were at risk of becoming smelly garbage scows.

Instead of having to carry all waste food on deck for eventual disposal at port, the ships will be allowed to dump it at sea.

The changes “help alleviate our COs (commanding officers&rsquo concerns (with regard to) accumulated food remnants stored in garbage bags on decks during ever-increasing global warming summers,” says an internal memo, obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

“These food remnants may decay or putrefy and generate an occupational health and safety issue on board ships (that) our COs can ill afford while striving to enforce Canadian sovereignty in our internal Arctic waters.”

The revamped orders, expected this fall, would also allow Canadian ships to dump raw sewage offshore in the Arctic and even to toss garbage bags overboard if there are “operational” reasons for doing so.

“If the above instructions and limits cannot be met for operational or safety reasons when at sea and the ship’s holding capacity is about to be exceeded, then garbage shall be made negatively buoyant prior to discharge and released at the farthest practical point from land,” says a proposed revision.

Military-source pollution in the sensitive Arctic environment is becoming a navy headache as the federal government sends more warships north on sovereignty patrols in a region already under assault from global warming.

“Any new flora, fauna or pollution in our Arctic internal waters carries a risk to adversely impact its embattled ecosystem, as the intensity of past climate limitations gradually decline due to escalating global warming,” says a draft version of the new orders.

Reliably cold temperatures once helped naval commanders deal with the garbage problem through freezing, but warmer weather is changing protocols.

Now, the new orders will allow “moderate amounts” of pulped-food waste - once banned from disposal in the Arctic - to be dumped if a ship is at least 12 nautical miles or about 22 kilometres from shore.

The orders will also allow raw, untreated sewage to be flushed into the sea at the same minimum distance and, to help dispersal, only while the ship is moving at a moderate clip.

Previously, the navy banned the disposal of raw sewage in Arctic waters but the new orders will reflect the more relaxed provisions of the Arctic Water Pollution Prevention Act.

Submarines, which have highly limited storage capacity for waste, are being given even more leeway, including a provision allowing oily bilge water to be flushed directly into the ocean. However, all of Canada’s four new Victoria-class subs are being equipped with technology that will remove oil from bilge water, making the problem moot.

All Canada’s warships are technically exempt from the Canada Shipping Act as well as from other laws with environmental restrictions, although navy ships are legally bound to comply with ecosystem protections under the Fisheries Act.

However, senior brass have ordered that the fleet will nevertheless act as though all federal environmental legislation applied to navy operations, with exceptions for emergencies and operational restrictions.

The problem in the Arctic is that the only major port facility for offloading garbage and sewage is Iqaluit, and waste matter can overwhelm the storage capacity of ships during extended missions.

At the same time, Ottawa is ordering more ships north to bolster Canada’s Arctic sovereignty claims. In August, for example, the 10-day Operation Nanook involved three navy vessels - including a submarine, HMCS Corner Brook, the first time a Canadian sub has participated in such an operation.

Navy spokesman Cmdr. Jeff Agnew said the recent revisions to pollution-prevention orders simply reflect changes in civilian law, and allow ships’ commanders more flexibility.

“Notwithstanding that we’re less restrictive than we used to be, we are far more restrictive than the law requires us to be,” he said in an interview. “It’s good stewardship.”

Another spokesman noted the navy is in the Arctic partly to be able to react quickly to environmental disasters.

“One of the components of Operation Nanook was responding to an environmental crisis, and it’s only by being up there that we’re going to be able to respond to environmental crises caused by increased traffic in the region,” said Lt. Jordan Holder.

A spokesman for the Sierra Club of Canada said the melting Arctic - already under pressure - can ill afford any more pollution.

“Having to take waste to a port to be properly disposed of is worth the inconvenience . . . rather than dumping it into our newly exposed ocean,” said Jamie Kirkpatrick from Toronto.

“We’re no longer in an era where you can say the solution to pollution is dilution.”

CLIMATE PATTERN CHANGES

Consequence: warmer temperatures
Average temperatures will rise, as will the frequency of heat waves.

 

Warning signs today


• Most of the United States has already warmed, in some areas by as much as 4 degrees Fahrenheit. In fact, no state in the lower 48 states experienced below average temperatures in 2002. The last three five-year periods are the three warmest on record.
  
  
• Many places in North America had their hottest seasons or days on record in the late 1990s.
  
  
• Since 1980, the earth has experienced 19 of its 20 hottest years on record, with 2005 and 1998 tied for the hottest and 2002 and 2003 coming in second and third.
  
  

 

Consequence: drought and wildfire
Warmer temperatures could also increase the probability of drought. Greater evaporation, particularly during summer and fall, could exacerbate drought conditions and increase the risk of wildfires.

 

Warning signs today



Greater evaporation as a result of global warming could increase the risk of wildfires.

• The 1999-2002 national drought was one of the three most extensive droughts in the last 40 years.
  
  
• In 2002, the Western United States experienced its second worst wildfire season in the last 50 years; more than 7 million acres burned. Colorado, Arizona, and Oregon had their worst seasons.
  
  
• The period from April through June of 1998 was the driest three-month period in 104 years in Florida, Texas, and Louisiana.
  
  
• Dry conditions produced the worst wildfires in 50 years in Florida in 1998.
  
  
• April through July of 1999 was the driest four-month stretch in 105 years of record-keeping in New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Rhode Island.
  
  
• Montana, Colorado, and Kansas experienced severe dust storms in 2002, a product of dry conditions.
  
  
• September 2001 to February 2002 was the second driest six-month period on record for the Northeast.
  
  

 

Consequence: more intense rainstorms
Warmer temperatures increase the energy of the climatic system and lead to more intense rainfall at some times and in some areas.

 

Warning signs today


• National annual precipitation has increased between 5 and 10 percent since the early 20th century, largely the result of heavy downpours in some areas.
  
  
• Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts each got more than double their normal monthly rainfall in June 1998.
  
  
• Severe flooding in the Texas, Montana, and North Dakota during the summer of 2002 caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.
  
  

 

 

HEALTH EFFECTS

More frequent and more intensive heat waves could result in more heat-related deaths. Photo: Gary Braasch, Chicago, July 1995. See the World View of Global Warming website for more Gary Braasch photos illustrating the consequences of the changing climate.

Consequence: deadly heat waves and the spread of disease
More frequent and more intensive heat waves could result in more heat-related deaths. These conditions could also aggravate local air quality problems, already afflicting more than 80 million Americans. Global warming is expected to increase the potential geographic range and virulence of tropical diseases as well.

 

Warning signs today


• In 2003, extreme heat waves caused more than 20,000 deaths in Europe and more than 1500 deaths in India.
  
  
• More than 250 people died as a result of an intense heat wave that gripped most of the eastern two-thirds of the United States in 1999.
  
  
• Disease-carrying mosquitoes are spreading as climate shifts allow them to survive in formerly inhospitable areas. Mosquitoes that can carry dengue fever viruses were previously limited to elevations of 3,300 feet but recently appeared at 7,200 feet in the Andes Mountains of Colombia. Malaria has been detected in new higher-elevation areas in Indonesia.
  
  

 

 

WARMING WATER

Consequence: more powerful and dangerous hurricanes
Warmer water in the oceans pumps more energy into tropical storms, making them more intense and potentially more destructive.

 

Warning signs today


• The number of category 4 and 5 storms has greatly increased over the past 35 years, along with ocean temperature.
  
  

 

Consequence: melting glaciers, early ice thaw
Rising global temperatures will speed the melting of glaciers and ice caps, and cause early ice thaw on rivers and lakes.

 

Warning signs today


• At the current rate of retreat, all of the glaciers in Glacier National Park will be gone by 2070.
  
  
• After existing for many millennia, the northern section of the Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica -- a section larger than the state of Rhode Island -- collapsed between January and March 2002, disintegrating at a rate that astonished scientists. Since 1995 the ice shelf's area has shrunk by 40 percent.
  
  
• According to NASA, the polar ice cap is now melting at the alarming rate of nine percent per decade. Arctic ice thickness has decreased 40 percent since the 1960s.
  
  
• In 82 years of record-keeping, four of the five earliest thaws on Alaska's Tanana River were in the 1990s.
  
  

 

The satellite photo at far left shows the Larson B ice shelf on Jan. 31, 2002. Ice appears as solid white. Moving to the right, in photos taken Feb. 17 and Feb. 23, the ice begins to disintegrate. In the photos at far right, taken Mar. 5 and Mar 7, note water (blue) where solid ice had been, and that a portion of the shelf is drifting away. Photos: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Consequence: sea-level rise
Current rates of sea-level rise are expected to increase as a result both of thermal expansion of the oceans and of partial melting of mountain glaciers and the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps. Consequences include loss of coastal wetlands and barrier islands, and a greater risk of flooding in coastal communities. Low-lying areas, such as the coastal region along the Gulf of Mexico and estuaries like the Chesapeake Bay, are especially vulnerable.

 

Warning signs today


• The current pace of sea-level rise is three times the historical rate and appears to be accelerating.
  
  
• Global sea level has already risen by four to eight inches in the past century. Scientists' best estimate is that sea level will rise by an additional 19 inches by 2100, and perhaps by as much as 37 inches.
  
  

 

 

ECOSYSTEM DISRUPTION

Warmer temperatures may cause some ecosystems, including alpine meadows in the Rocky Mountains, to disappear.

Consequence: ecosystem shifts and species die-off
The increase in global temperatures is expected to disrupt ecosystems and result in loss of species diversity, as species that cannot adapt die off. The first comprehensive assessment of the extinction risk from global warming found that more than one million species could be committed to extinction by 2050 if global warming pollution is not curtailed. Some ecosystems, including alpine meadows in the Rocky Mountains, as well as tropical montane and mangrove forests, are likely to disappear because new warmer local climates or coastal sea level rise will not support them.

 

Warning signs today


• A recent study published in the prestigious journal Nature found that at least 279 species of plants and animals are already responding to global warming. Species' geographic ranges have shifted toward the poles at an average rate of 4 miles per decade and their spring events have shifted earlier by an average of 2 days per decade.
  
  
• In Washington's Olympic Mountains, sub-alpine forest has invaded higher elevation alpine meadows. In Bermuda and other places, mangrove forests are being lost.
  
  
• In areas of California, shoreline sea life is shifting northward, probably in response to warmer ocean and air temperatures.
  
  
• Over the past 25 years, some penguin populations have shrunk by 33 percent in parts of Antarctica, due to declines in winter sea-ice habitat.
  

Hurricanes and global warming - a link?

Scientists need more data - and that only comes with time Here is a recipe for an explosive news cocktail. resident of the world's most powerful nation. Add two intense and damaging natural storms which bring destruction to that country; then mix in the widely held view that the same nation's environmental policies are partially responsible for those storms. In the polarised world of climate change, this cocktail has proved an irresistible temptation to organisations which campaign against President Bush's administration in support of enhanced action to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The latest to succumb was the British newspaper The Independent, which screamed on its front page: "This is global warming", above an alarmingly portentous graphic of Hurricane Rita's projected path. But is it global warming? What is the evidence that the growing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are changing weather systems in such a way that hurricanes become more powerful, or more frequent? Well above average Certainly, 2005 appears to have been an unusually active year. The US National Hurricane Center/Tropical Prediction Center comments in its August summary that "thus far in 2005, there have been 12 named storms and four hurricanes. "These numbers are well above the long-term averages of 4.4 storms and 2.1 hurricanes that would normally have formed by this date." But a single year's observation does not permit the divination of a long-term trend, or the attribution of that trend to a cause such as climatic warming. "Based on recent research, the consensus view is that we don't expect global warming to make a difference to the frequency of hurricanes," explains Julian Heming, from the UK Meteorological Office. "Activity is naturally very variable in terms of frequency, intensity and regional occurrence; in the Atlantic, there are active phases and not so active phases, and currently we're in the middle of an active phase. "It's very dangerous to explain Rita or Katrina through global warming, because we have always had strong hurricanes in the USA - the strongest one on record dates back to 1935." Regular changes Records from the 20th Century suggest that hurricane formation over the Atlantic has changed phase every few decades: the 1940s and 50s were active, the 70s and 80s less so, while the currently active phase appears to have commenced in 1995. A key factor in the formation of a tropical cyclone - a low-pressure region that can turn into a hurricane - is sea-surface temperature, which has to be above about 27 degrees Celsius. Population growth means there is now more property to damage So anything which changes the sea-surface temperature in the right parts of the world could theoretically affect hurricane formation. ecent study on the issue, published this month in the journal Science, found that while the incidence of hurricanes and tropical storms has remained roughly constant over the last 30 years, there has been a rise in the number of intense hurricanes with wind speeds above 211km/h (131mph). The leader of that research project, Dr Peter Webster, believes there may be a link to climate change. "What I think we can say is that the increase in intensity is probably accounted for by the increase in sea-surface temperature," he told the BBC News website, "and I think probably the sea-surface temperature increase is a manifestation of global warming." "The problem is," observes Julian Heming, "that we can only look back about 35 years with satellite data; before that the record is somewhat unreliable, and 35 years isn't long enough to draw a definite conclusion. "Before global satellite coverage, we're pretty sure there are gaps in the record; storms would start at sea and die out at sea, so we never knew about them." Global connections The changing phases of Atlantic hurricane activity are not completely understood; but there appears to be a link to fluctuations in the thermohaline circulation, the global pattern of ocean currents which in western Europe appears as the Gulf Stream. By causing the sea-surface temperature in the tropical Atlantic to change by even a degree Celsius, these fluctuations can bring major differences to the number of hurricanes generated in a particular year. Other natural climate cycles such as the El Nino Southern Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation may also play a role. The other crucial factor with Katrina and Rita is where they landed. Some hurricanes never reach land; others will hit a sparsely-populated area, causing minimal damage. ight="250" alt="Bar chart showing hurricane land strikes (Noaa)" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40843000/gif/_40843284_hurricane3_history_gra416.gif" width="416" border="0" /> This also appears to be determined by weather systems, in particular the location of a region of high atmospheric pressure, the sub-tropical ridge. "In the Atlantic, storms form in the east and move towards the west," says Julian Heming, "and at some point they turn northwards. "Where they turn northwards has much to do with the weather conditions further north; 1995, for example, was a very active season with 19 named storms, but the US got away very lightly because the sub-tropical ridge did not extend right across the Atlantic, and many storms turned north before reaching the US. "Last year it did extend across the Atlantic, and so hurricanes were forced much further west - hence Ivan, Jean, Charlie and Francis all hit the US." Bigger and bolder Every time a hurricane comes along - or a flood, or a drought, or a freeze, or a heatwave - the question is now asked "is it linked to global warming?" A decade ago, that was not the case - a clear signal that climate change is now firmly established in the public mind and in the political arena. > Galveston's great storm ntists are being taken seriously, they are also under pressure to produce instant answers. m is that not all of those answers exist. Another problem is that some scientists - not to mention lobby groups, environmental organisations, politicians, newspapers and commentators - will go much further in their public statements than the data allow. With such incendiary material, that is unlikely to change; but it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that we would all benefit from people on both wings of the issue looking rather more to research, however laboured its progress, and rather less to screaming headlines and easy quotes. tr>

The struggle to save Earth's largest life form ******************



TOWNSVILLE, AUSTRALIA – Leaf through the latest tomes on the status of coral reefs worldwide and a grim picture emerges. Because of overfishing, soil and nutrient runoff from land, and climate change:
• A fifth of the reefs - among the planet's most productive habitats - have been destroyed and are not recovering.

• Another quarter face the threat of imminent collapse from human activities.

• Another quarter are said to face long-term collapse.

"If we've learned anything in the last 10 years, it's how to kill a coral reef," says coral ecologist Terry Hughes ruefully.

Those dire facts, drawn from the latest "Global Coral Reef Status Report," however, are serving as a springboard for devising strategies to save the world's coral communities and, by extension, the thousands of marine species that rely on them. The best way to do this, many marine ecologists now maintain, is to focus on a reef's ability to bounce back from hardship. Where ecologists once talked about saving species, habitats, and biodiversity in a tropical reef ecosystem, many now speak of preserving "resilience."

Nowhere is this approach to reef conservation being put through its paces more rigorously than along Australia's Great Barrier Reef - dubbed by some the largest living thing on Earth. In fact, the GBR is a chain of 2,900 reefs stretching some 1,200 miles along Australia's east coast. Slowly expanding its reach as sea levels have risen following the last ice age, the network covers just over 135,000 square miles of coastal ocean.

Beyond its immediate biological value, the reef system represents a ringing cash register for the state of Queensland. Tourism and related activities bring in roughly $1.2 billion (Australian; US$950 million) a year to the region. The reef network also serves as a buffer between the mainland and the high seas that accompany tropical cyclones.

In the past, researchers would study tropical-reef response to single events - such as a hurricane, tropical cyclone, or coral bleaching - to evaluate its ability to bounce back.

"People wrote about these as one-off events," explains Dr. Hughes, a professor at James Cook University in Townsville. "But on longer time frames - from decades to centuries - those are recurrent events. We're now asking: How can this system, on a scale of thousands of kilometers, absorb recurring disturbances without going belly-up? Resilience is about the system absorbing changes" and conservation managers "being proactive in anticipating them."

Calls for this broader approach have been heard for some time. But the need was driven home by virtually back-to-back coral-bleaching events in the summers of 1998 and 2002, during which coastal waters grew unusually warm. Under conditions of high heat and light, the algae that lived in the coral, provided it with food, and gave it its distinctive color underwent a Jekyll-and-Hyde change. The algae became corrosive, eating away at the coral from the inside. In self-defense, the coral expelled the algae - and with it the coral's source of food. The coral turned white and died.

Both bleaching events involved vast tracts of coral, with 2002's event marked as the worst bleaching event on record along the GBR. To many scientists here, these were harbingers of the future as Earth's climate warms - at least in part because of carbon dioxide rising into the atmosphere as humans burn coal, oil, and other fossil fuels.


"Climate change is no longer a future issue for Australians - it's happening," Hughes says.

Even modest sea-surface warming, say 1 or 2 degrees C - the midrange forecast of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - could prompt large declines in coral communities by 2050, according to Ray Berkelmans and colleagues at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in a study last year.

The concern: As global warming heats the ocean surface, bleaching events will happen more often, giving reefs less time to recover - all other things being equal, Dr. Berkelmans and others say. Added to that stress, they say, is the destruction that would come from tropical cyclones, which are expected to grow more intense, if not more frequent, as global warming proceeds.

One potential offset to bleaching could be coral's potential for adapting to warmer waters. Some coral communities have been able to survive warmer waters by embracing algae that are more tolerant of heat than their previous tenants, according to a team of scientists led by Andrew Baker, a researcher with the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation at Columbia University in New York. Their findings were reported in the journal Nature last August.

But there may be limits to how broadly these results apply, others say. Even without pressure from climate change, reefs also face pressure from overfishing, farm and ranch runoff, and soil erosion.

Last July, after several years of debate and negotiation, Australia's federal government took a significant step by declaring fully one-third of the reef a no-take zone - no fishing, capturing live fish, or collecting corals. Previously, no-take areas covered only about 5 percent of the reef.

At the same time, the state of Queensland adopted a program for reducing the silt and nutrients that flow onto the reef from rivers in the region. The silt can cut light and smother young coral before they can replenish a bleached area. The nutrients can lead to explosions of algae and Crown of Thorns starfish, which can turn healthy reefs into drab undersea barrens.

When scientists play history sleuth
Canberra, Australia

To persuade people to protect the environment, scientists' future projections can fall short. Often they need to tease out clues from the past.

As Queensland was debating whether to protect the Great Barrier Reef by restricting river runoff, coral researchers could point to historical records - not to mention contemporary recollections - that the state's rivers had grown more silt-filled since European settlement, threatening the reef. But they had very little data to back it up. "We knew things were happening," says Malcolm McCulloch, a geochemist here at Australia National University. "But we didn't know the true scale of what went out to the reef."

In what many here see as a seminal piece of sleuthing, Dr. McCulloch and colleagues from the Australian Institute of Marine Science took core samples of coral, which develop annual growth bands like trees. Looking for chemical signatures of soil run-off, particularly the element barium, they found that from 1750 to about 1870, sediments from the Burdekin River - the country's second largest when it floods - reached the inner portions of the reef "only occasionally." After about 1870, the amount of soil disgorged to the inner reef grew five- to 10-fold as land upriver was cleared for ranching and grazing began.

Queensland passed runoff regulations last year.

Having figured out the historical impact of silt from rivers (see sidebar), an AIMS team is embarking on a five-year project to pin down more precisely the biological effects of the nutrients and soil across broader reaches of the reef system.

As these scientists head to the reef to get a better handle on the factors that determine the GBR's resilience, others are using those data to build models to forecast resilience.

For example, Scott Wooldridge is developing a "state of the reef" computer model at AIMS that will allow conservation managers to rank the resilience potential for different reefs or reef segments. The model has the potential for use worldwide. So far, he's included three elements: adequate levels of grazing fish on the reef to keep algae at bay, water quality, and increased heat- tolerance among coral - which he acknowledges is the weakest link in the chain in terms of biological research.

The model points to some disturbing results. Australia - and specifically, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority - may have chosen the wrong approach when it set up its no-take areas, he says.

His preliminary results suggest that the northern third of the reef probably should get the most conservation attention. The park agency, by contrast, set aside ecologically representative areas scattered throughout the reef. That made sense at the time, Dr. Wooldridge says, given what scientists then knew. But the northern segment is more pristine and faces fewer stresses because fewer people live and visit there. While it will likely feel the bleaching effects of climate change more strongly at first than reef sections farther south, it still stands a good chance of surviving. Thus it will be able to provide the larvae that will ride prevailing currents south to reseed portions of the reef that are under greater multiple stresses.

It's a controversial notion, Wooldridge acknowledges, and calls into question the strategy over which the government spent so much time and political capital.

"With proper management, you can still have a viable reef by 2050," he says. "But the implications are that we need to conserve more in the north."


PROTECTED AREA: Fish swim along Wheeler Reef, one of the newly enacted no-take zones of the Great Barrier Reef, which stretches some 1,200 miles along Australia's east coast.

TEN SIMPLE WAYS TO HELP THE ENVIRONMENT************
This list assumes you already recycle, turn off unnecessary lights and do other obvious things, and also assumes you don't have a lot of extra time or money to do some of the environment-friendly things that appear on most lists like this. In other words, these are all simple , inexpensive, non-obvious and non-time-consuming ways to make a difference. See if you can make these "Second Nature ":
***********


1) Buy things that last, even if they cost more: Long-life lightbulbs, stuff that Consumer Reports says is durable and reliable, products with meaningful warrantees that don't cost extra, stuff that isn't made in China (sorry to pick on one country, but the reputation for shoddiness is merited).
***2)Buy things that have already been recycled: Recycled, not recyclable, it'll say right there on the label, especially computer paper, toner, latex paint (available recycled and a huge saver of toxic landfill), paper towels, garbage bags, even styrofoam if you have to use it at all. And while you're looking for the 'recycled' logo, look for the 'not tested on animals' one as well.
***3)Buy energy-efficient lights, insulation and appliances : All of these things are rated, and a little comparison shopping could save you more than the cost of what you're buying in energy savings. Or call your utility and have them do an energy audit of your home - it's inexpensive and guaranteed to provide ideas that will save you money as well as energy.

***4)Turn off the tap: While you're lathering in the shower, brushing your teeth, rinsing the dishes, turn the water off. You'll save an amazing amount of water, and I promise it won't get cold that fast. Likewise don't turn the tap of your dishwasher or clothes washer on until you have a full load. And for God's sake don't hose down your driveway , use a @%#$ broom.
***5) Buy non-fossil fuel energy: In many areas you can choose to purchase clean energy alternatives (like wind, solar, and biomass energy) for modestly more than fossil-fuel-produced energy, and the proceeds are used to build more windmills etc. Here's more info.
***6)Vote green, and lobby green: Not necessarily for the Green Party, but for candidates who stand for environmental protection and conservation. There's lots of resources on the Web to help you identify them. And while you're at it, research the worst polluters in your area, and e-mail them and your politicians to tell them to clean up their act.
***7) Try less toxic cleaners, herbicides and pesticides: Before you buy the line that environmentally-friendly alternatives aren't as effective, try them. Bet you can cut the number of cans in your home with toxic warning labels on them in half without anyone noticing.
***8) Don't buy overpackaged goods: Not only are minimally-packaged premium no-name and bulk products more environmentally friendly without sacrificing quality, they're cheaper as well. Awkward bulky packages can be repackaged at home into smaller, resealable containers.
***9)Keep your car tuned, tires inflated and don't fill the tank completely full: Take your car in regularly (make a note in your diary to remind yourself) for maintenance. If you don't know how to properly check and maintain tire inflation (80% of drivers don't), go to a non-self-serve gas bar and have them show you once, and then do it yourself first fill-up every month.
***10) Plant trees. Figure how much your home energy use impacts global warming (and get your employer to do the same) using this calculator: http://www.americanforests.org/resources/ccc/ and then plant enough trees (set aside a couple of weekend days a year to do so) to neutralize the impact.