New GTG Blog Category

Right now, this very minute, do you want to help save the world? Be a superhero to kids and a leader to your peers? All while saving money, energy, health and without sacrifices?

This is for all of us, a new Going True Green Blog category:

MAKE A DIFFERENCE NOW

I find taking questions lately, after I speak with a class of students, more troubling. When I see fear in the eyes of teenagers and they share that fear about the world becoming unlivable due to the destruction of our environment, this becomes painful for me. There is always a few students who believe there is no hope unless we end all CO2 emissions now. This belief is the result of stating a narrative along with the process of omission. To me this is another form of verbal abuse, especially when no solutions and no hope is offered. For me, there is always another way. Adults must be superheroes to the very young. We must teach all the facts, along with solutions and hope, to teenagers and adults of all ages.

We have to collect all the details, evaluate the complete picture, because if we believe just ending humankind’s injection of CO2 into our environment will save the day, then we are all fooling ourselves. Our environment has multiple issues that may or may not occur, but are in need of intelligent execution by each one of us, so that we don’t manifest those predictions of horror or evoke the occurrence of negative future outlooks founded on current statistics increasing in the wrong direction.

First we must work to change what we are capable of changing and be at peace with what is truly beyond our control.

Two Beyond Our Control Examples:

1) There isn’t anything humankind can do to stop our planet’s inner iron and nickel core from flipping, thus for a time (no one knows how long) lowering our protective magnetic field surrounding Earth. Yet, we can invent protective systems for our electronics and shelters for us against the increase in solar radiation. Yes, this is an environmental issue and no one knows for sure any of the facts or time frames. We will do what we can over time and we must be at peace with this. I will be including my European lecture tour in different languages for GTG members under GoingTrueGreen’s Membership section later this spring. This lecture covers additional information on Earth’s core and magnetic field.

2) There isn’t anything humankind can do to stop our planet’s largest volcano, located under Yellowstone national park, from erupting. Some calculation show that a major eruption is already overdue. Additional predictions show the population of the world being decimated if there is indeed a full size eruption. No one knows for sure ‘when’ or ‘if’ this major event may occur and worrying about this, is useless. 

However, I mention these potential disasters to put in perspective what we can do for other major environmental issues. The current virus situation shows how fragile our supply chains are and how their collapse will cause hardship and death. If our infrastructure for the power grid crashed, some calculations are horrifying. Systems that can’t come back online within months will cause massive starvation. If the power grid is down nationwide, within the year some predict over 50% and higher, of the population will perish. Think about this for a minute, delivery drivers for food and gasoline cannot conduct their routes, because they can’t get gas for their cars. If they can’t drive to work, they can’t drive delivery trucks, trains, cargo ships, or planes. Also they have their own love ones to care for in addition to job responsibilities. On top of all that, if there is no electric power, then there isn’t any working refrigeration units and gas station pumps are rendered useless.

Examples Within Our Control:

Nevertheless, we have many intelligent options and actions that can be taken by each one of us in all three areas of concern:

1. For the events we have no control over, hopefully we have faith to give us peace.
2. For natural and human made disasters, we can prepare.
3. For all other environmental issues, we have solutions we can do now to make a difference.

GoingTrueGreen’s new Blog category addresses the third area of concern, however, let us briefly review all three:

1. To have God’s peace within you, that is a journey each of us travel alone. That is not to say there isn’t anyone among us to assist, but that we must accept peace ourselves.

2. When a natural or humankind disaster comes upon us, we only have our preparations and knowledge to survive. One action I took was to become state certified in preparedness under a division of Homeland security and emergency services. Today, programs like that are available online. Additionally, I am trained and teach survival courses, which I will be including as videos for GTG members in GoingTrueGreen’s Membership section later this summer. However, with all humankind disasters, we will be "all the better" when we take actions to avoid and prevent them. Such as nuclear power plants creating risks to human life in the event of a disaster when operating or even afterwards with spent fuel creating radioactive waste.

3. As an individual we can execute multiple solutions to help our world’s environment. These actions that can be done save us Money, Energy, Health and Earth. Additionally, all actions are done without making any sacrifices to the life we know. So please peruse the new GTG blog category MAKE A DIFFERENCE NOW in the near future to review actions that can be done today. Solutions and actions with explanations showing the how and why, then in turn, that information enables us to empower others.

If we could end all CO2 created by humankind tomorrow, there will still be natural amounts of CO2 in our atmosphere which is necessary for our planet’s balance. This virus has shown us that after a major close down of the world’s transportation systems, CO2 levels were not depleted by much. Some estimates hover around five percent. Until we truly know the percentage of natural and humankind CO2 levels, we all must address every issue in our environment within our best ability to implement solutions feasible to our budget of time and money. I do not expect a family struggling to put food on the table to put solar panels on their roof. However, they can continue doing actions such as recycle, reuse, reduce, along with additional actions perhaps not yet taken. Such as: composting, growing some vegetables in a yard or windowsill, not littering and using a surge protected with an on/off switch to power down products that still use electricity, even when off, because they are plugged into an outlet. The cost of these surge protectors pay for themselves within a few months and money is saved off the electric bill every month.

I trust my new GTG blog section will help in areas such as providing the powerful reasons for actions like NOT littering, because we all enjoy breathing! The connection between litter, our oceans and our oxygen supply is real and just as concerning as increasing levels of CO2. Let us start today, let us start with ourselves and let us change what we can and have peace with what we can’t.

Bill Lauto, at GoingTrueGreen.com; Environmental Scientist

International Sustainability and Energy Consultant