Church: God Cares About the Environment

The Church of England has deemed it good religious policy to protect the environment. I hope those SUV driving religious people are reading this post. I digress. The Church is calling their environment-protecting campaign “Shrinking the Footprint,” a noble cause indeed.

“The current climate change situation is such that it will be a long walk – simply to restore the world’s balance we need to cut carbon emissions worldwide by 60% of current levels by 2050. Not only is this a daunting goal but its end lies at least two generations in the future. The results of our actions will only be felt by our children and grandchildren. For individuals and institutions alike, taking action (however simple and obvious that action may seem) and sustaining it will require considerable effort.”

You too can lower the impact you have on the environment, check out My Foot Print and Carbon Footprint.

Issue Lab

issue lab logoIssue Lab looks like a pretty neat concept! Essentially it’s a place for non-profits, charities, and other research bodies to amplify their research results. You can post your research there to ensure that more people can get access to it and know that it exists in the first place.

Every month they have a feature topic, this month is concentrating on immigration.

“Nonprofit organizations consistently build on an important body of written work that focuses on understanding and solving societal problems. IssueLab was created to help bring this body of work into focus.

Launched in 2006, IssueLab is a wide-ranging, searchable and browseable archive of critical publications. It simplifies the process of locating and accessing research and policy analysis materials, including reports, white papers, fact sheets, case studies, data sets and more.”

Man Grows Furniture, Art From Living Trees

It’s called arborsculpture, and Richard Reames has been doing it for years. He plants trees in patterns, and uses bending and grafting techniques to form the saplings into benches, staircases, sculptures, and an assortment of other amazing living things.

I believe that if enough people put their minds to using living trees, we can learn to grow houses. I believe that if we put our minds to it, like going to the moon, there’s no reason we couldn’t all be living in houses where the walls and ceilings are composed of living tree material and there are leaves coming out of the roof. We could accomplish this in one generation. We’d build doorways and windows that the trees would grow around, and also plumbing and electrical conduits. The trees would just swallow all the pipes. We’re going to call this “arbortecture.”

You’ve just got to see the pictures in this article!