Yesterday I heard someone say “i got Organic shampoo-but who knows what that means.”
So I realized two things;
#1 there is so much green washing when it comes to Organic, for example the brand name Organics which doesn’t clearly identify that their products are Organically Grown and Produced.
#2 the green shift has gotten to the point of mindless following, which I am not opposed, but common, you are doing a good thing, don’t you want to know how positive your actions are for our communities !

So I wanted to quickly highlight one major reason why you should decide to grab the Organic version:
A Certified Organic Product equates to the non-use of pesticide !
Pesticides :
-The most common pesticide used is Atrazine, a weed killer used on corn, soy and more. It is the #1 contaminant for our drinking and ground water. It has been found in labs at the University of California Berkley that Atrazine is an endocrine desrupter & it de-masculanized the males frogs, making them all females.
-the terrifying thing is Atrazine can travel 600 miles in Rainwater
-Atrazine contamination has also been linked with increased incidence of Prostate cancer, Ovarian Cancer and Breast Cancer.
Entire European Union Banned Atrazine: Norway 1990, Sweeden 1989, Finland 1993, Italy 1991 , Germany 1991, Austria 1995, Denmark 1995, Belgium 2002 , France2003

known public facts:
-Fertility declines throughout Europe primarily in areas with heavy Pesticide use
-Tasmanian cancer rates shoot up 200% after heavy use of pesticides
-Birth defects in Mexico increased near agricultural areas
-Discovered in non-public labs the fish in La Seine actually changed sex, the males grew female organs and there were no more male fish.

http://www.cleanairalliance.org/node/707

ONTARIO ! How many times do you have to spell out the unbearable negative impacts of Nuclear power?

I just read a very intense article named “Plan B for Global Warming” by Jonathon Gatehouse
it pretty much wraps up the fact that most concious poeple in this world (including Obama and UK’s the Royal Society) fear climate change as much as I do.
So there is more and more interest and financial aid to research a back up plan for Climate Change; all schemes designed to re-direct a fraction of the sun’s rays back to the universe and give us more time to wake up CUT OUR GREENHOSUE GASES.

Some ideas are
seeding the stratosphere with Sulphate or other particles,
covering deserts with reflective material,
developing millions of lenses the size of doughnuts in geostationary orbit between the sun and the earth,
the creation of vast banks of artificial clouds over the world’s ocean.

YES, we are talking some very serious global manipulations here, they are naming this field of research geoengineering. The terrifying thing is that geoengineering is such a new endeavour that some are sceptical that we are moving too fast. On the ground level, there are more unknowns than knows. No one knows how our climate would react to such massive invasions, no one know what would happen downstream. Could our ecosystems haddle the massive influx of sulphur? Would our marine life and oceans be able to be the CO2 sink they are expected to be, and would a colder arctic affect the tropics rain patterns? Cutting edge geoengineering defies the United Nations ban - but that didn’t stop the joint Indian-German expedition in January this year dumping 20 tonnes of iron sulfate particles off Antactica hoping to yeild a higher population of the CO2 eating plankton. To reference our previous statement of an unbalanced ratio of known to unknows; shrimp ended up eating all the plankton blooms. We can never truly measure the effects on the ecosystem, but we can measure the fact that that geoengineering attempt failed.
Even with so many unknows and such limited public awarness, last week President Obama’s Cheif science adviser John Holdren, revealed his research to scatter sulphates in the upper atmosphere to replicate a volcano.

Have we created a whole new challenge because of our inaction to reduce our greenhouse gases…

I know the economy is bad and it’s tooo easy to talk about these days… but if you take a step back- what the heck does the big picture look like?

Climate Change is at the point of no return; even if greenhouse gas emissions halted today, that means completely reduced to zero emissions worldwide, it will take 1, 000 years to dissipate the alarming amount of CO2 we have dumped into our atmosphere… worldwide temperatures would still rise about 3/4 of a degree Celsius.

Global Carbon emissions have grown 3.5 % a year since 2000.

It is estimated that by 2013 our arctic waters will be ice-free during the summer
and
sea levels are rising a centimetre a year estimating to be 78cm higher by century’s end.

This means the terrifying worst case scenario etched by the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) is much too optimistic at this point.

The Independent, a British Newspaper surveyed 80 international climate specialists to discover that 54% of them are so scared that they believe we need a plan B.

Do you morally agree that we (globally) should start making a back up plan for our royally dense and irresponsible inactions? and how unknown and intimidating could these plan Bs be.

Check this out !!
Global, carbon neutral, sailing using a combination of solar, wind and wave energy to power a state of the art super yacht:
Exemplar Zero http://www.exemplarzero.org
Talking about the new Global Green Economy!
On this Yacht, there will be office space for international business folks with mobility across the planet.

innovation / creativity / green power.

I am deep in research planning my next step in life… and I really want that step to positively affect our health, our future, our global economy, our global relations, our children
and
our efforts to see past oneself and to see that we are all in this together.

For me, every element of Climate Change is terrifying. Many will admit that they are scared of the unknown, well… this is the biggest unknown that our human civilization has ever had to forecast. Everyday I feel the effects of climate change and everyday I am humbled by the power of both Human comfort and our planets determination.
We are comfortable due to greed, we are greedy due to competitiveness and we are competitive because we have all lost the understanding of family.
We are all family.
Our great-grandparents in Africa and our new born siblings in China. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said; would you ever ask your Granny to “step up and get hauling those boxes from the cellar” and to your new born baby “play with these old rusted and toxic toys” and to your teenage sister “contribute great sums of $ to our family bank, all your allowance. birthday money and savings”.

WE are all facing the greatest challenge of humankind, its mass survival. We are all facing this challenge together and we need to find a solution that both allows our developing countries to develop (as we have) and our developed countries to maintain sufficient quality of life, enough to continue to generate innovative ideas to harmonize this balance of development.

Is it green technology sharing, is it global legislature, is it a new global green economy ?

here is a quick stat i would like to share…..
Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions:
35 % comes from fossil fuel production, industrial processing and manufacturing – and oil and gas production account for more than half of that.
22 % comes from services, residential, waste and agriculture
16 % comes from electricity and heat generation.
And the remaining 27 % comes from transportation – about half of that from cars and light trucks.

Happy Earth Day - je t’embrasse fortement … Avec tout mon coeur.

a quick thought to share…
It is tax season and every single time I go through this I am totally baffled that every single Canadian Citizen is going through the same thing as myself… and… we are all ok with it?

We are all being punished for our hard work. We are all paying more and more the more we contribute to a better community, to a greater economy, to a more advanced society. The harder we work the more we are punished.
Since when is our efforts, brains and hard work a public good.
According to myself, the Green Party’s globally and many other Countries worldwide; the only thing that is apublic good and can be taxed are our natural resources and our environment. None of us have ownership on the water, land, air and energy. These are public goods and therefore when we pay our taxes we should pay for how much we use of these public goods.
A Carbon tax is fair !
A carbon tax Canada would discourage mass consumption instead of discouraging hard working individuals.
A carbon tax Canada would encourage conservation, and encourage the protection of our natural resources instead of encouraging laziness and trickery.
A Carbon Taxed Canada would bring awareness to our consumption and help all of us understand and relate to our foot-print.
A Carbon Tax Canada give YOU the CHOICE to save money on taxes by using less energy, water, producing less waste.

Lets give the choice and awareness back to Canadian and stop punishing them for their efforts.

Hello hello !

I had to share in my excitment as I have just been invited by a good friend, Bremley Wanbantei Lyngdoh, http://www.element-tv.net/news/2008/09/episode-8/whom i met at the UNFCC COP 13 to attend the Millenium Development Goals Award Ceremony at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City ! 
Myself, my sister April Mullen and my best friend and fellow strong green activist Thomas James Allen (http://eimaj.net/) are to attend this influential meeting together with Raymond Ratti Beato.

Awards will be given in each of the eight categories addressed by the Millennium Development Goals with an additional 9th Award: “The Lifetime Achievement Award” will be given to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a remarkable individual who has positively impacted the world and helped to raise the consciousness of humankind.

what an honour….

Mullen Bringing Positive Change through Politics.

The Times
October 2008