Re-Gain

Food, water, agriculture and energy are interconnected. Each of these factors needs to be addressed if this planet is going sustain a world population expected to surpass 10 billion in years to come. For years I have studied food waste and food conservation, as well as having worked with numerous organizations attempting to start composting enterprises.  Conserving food requires lessening waste and better management in every link of this nutrient chain.  From the farm, factory, store and home; the US wastes enough food to feed Canada. Every year, consumers in industrialized countries waste almost as much food as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (222 million vs. 230 million tons). The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that Americans waste 133 billion pounds of food every year, or 31 percent of their overall food supply.  In the USA, organic waste is the second highest component of landfills, which are the largest source of methane emissions...

Americans drive over a trillion miles each year. Today the Washington D.C. area has the worst traffic jams - commuters spend 82 hours each year stuck in gridlock.  We have also another form of carbon gridlock.  Our Congress is not addressing our international climate crisis. Tragically many Americans today deny there is any present danger despite the alarming and increasing scientific evidence.  Worldwide we emit ten billion metric tons of CO2 while we were discharging in the early 1990's six billion metric tons of carbon. For ten centuries up to the industrial revolution climate scientists observed carbon dioxide around 280 parts per million (ppm).  By 1992, CO2 levels reached 350 ppm.  Because of these increases our global temperatures have risen almost 1 degree resulting loss of half the Arctic ice cap, and tens of thousands of cubic miles of Antarctica ice, and hundreds of millions of acres' of our oxygen producing trees. President Obama has made a...

For almost a quarter of a century I have lived in the middle of the woods for most of my week. Over the years if I am not in the forest after a few days I feel exposed.  Also being in such a stress free environment enhances my very well being.  With today's increasing challenges finding how to best how to best cope with our ecological crisis is vital.  Maybe this is why at times I feel anxious, unsettled, despairing, and depressed. In the course of my life I have observed much disconnection, distraction and denial of what we are doing to our planet. However, I have shifted my focus from the macro to the micro. My inside game or mind-set allows me new freedom and possibility. Glenn Albrecht has a name for psychological condition. In a 2004 essay, he coined a term to describe it: “solastalgia,” a combination of the Latin word solacium (comfort) and the Greek root –algia (pain), which he defined as “the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one ...