Flotsam and Jetsam

It's been a strange week of weather, more like May than January. It should delight us all to have seventy degree days in mid-January, but around here it's making us very nervous. Even my niece visiting from normally frigid-in-January Rhode Island is freaked out by this strange warmth, though she's loving being able to go running in a t-shirt. By Sunday, however, we're expecting...snow. And tomorrow - no, today, I see it's one a.m. already - we will have the Full Wolf Moon, be sure to get outside and take a look. The names for our full moons come from the Native Americans, and this one has to do with the weather that used to be normal at this time of year:

Full Wolf Moon - January Amid the cold and deep snows of midwinter, the wolf packs howled hungrily outside Indian villages. Thus, the name for January's full Moon. Sometimes it was also referred to as the Old Moon, or the Moon After Yule. Some called it the Full Snow Moon, but most tribes applied that name to the next Moon. (Farmers' Almanac)

There's been good news and bad news this past week. Good news from Whole Foods, a company that began as one hippy "health food" store in Austin back when the world and I were much younger, and has grown into the international giant of natural foods. From the Austin American Statesman: Whole Foods switching to all wind power in U.S. Deal for wind power credits makes Whole Foods the biggest corporate user of wind power in the country.

If you don't understand "wind credits," this piece from Shea Gunther, the Eco Entrepreneur, will make it all quite clear: How Does Wind Power Really Work?

And then, the bad news. Neil put it in today's Blue's News sidebar, from the NYT: U.S. Reverses Accord and Opens 389,000 Acres in Alaska to Explore for Oil. The lifecycles and patterns of migratory birds, the livelihoods and cenuries-old traditions of the Inupiat native people who live there - these things don't matter. Nahhh. Only that oil exploration and drilling matter. Even though, as Chuck Clusen, Clusen, director of NRDC's Alaska Project, says:

Scientists, sportsmen and conservation groups all agree we should protect the last 13 percent of the most sensitive habitat in the Western Arctic's Northeast area. Eighty-seven percent was already open. The Bureau of Land Management today decided to hand all of it over to the oil companies. The agency is supposed to balance all values of our public lands. Giving 100 percent to the oil industry is not what anyone would call 'balanced.

"We can drill every last acre of wilderness and it won't make us any more secure. We only have 3 percent of the world's oil, and the Middle East has 66 percent. Do the math. We can't drill our way to energy independence. (National Resources Defense Council)

So, if you feel held hostage by the oil companies and the government they have purchased (as I certainly do), you can still do your part wherever you are, to help the planet and the creatures living on it. National Audubon has a great list of ten things you can do to help the birds and the environment: Audubon's Action List. For many of us who call ourselves enviros, much of the list is already a way of life. But, there's always room for improvement, and the list is full of great suggestions.

I'm off to Albuquerque on Sunday, for a week of house-hunting, and I doubt there will be much time to be the Green Blue Voice during that time. Have a good week, keep the thermostats turned down, the birds fed, and your Senators aware that Mr. Alito is not a friend to the land, water, and air in this country.

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