One such game is ominously entitled “Fate of the World.” It’s a PC strategy game that deals with some pretty heavy issues—natural disasters, population growth, and energy consumption are but a few of the problems game players must face. As the game’s official website explains, “Your mission: Solve the crisis. But, like life, it won’t be easy. You’ll have to work through natural disasters, foreign diplomacy, clandestine operations, technological breakthroughs, and somehow satisfy the food and energy needs of a growing world population. Will you help the planet or become an agent of destruction?” And if your kid is more into iPhones, there’s the iPhone/iPad compatible “Face the Waste,” which also addresses environmental waste concerns.

Another interesting environmental game is National Geographic’s “Plan It Green.” In the game you play as the Mayor of Greenville, and your mission is to change the city for the better by creating green jobs, constructing eco-friendly homes, and beautifying your surroundings (from sidewalks to garage doors). CEO Kirk Owens explains, “This is the right product for the times. Not only is it a fantastic game, but it integrates a theme we all hear hundreds of times a week. . . . By working with National Geographic, we were able to go beyond pop green ideas and make a game that truly conveys the possibilities of the future.”

Do you feel that green video games are the key to get kids more involved and interested in green issues? What do you think is needed for these issues to resonate with adolescents? All comments are appreciated.

Photo credit: Julien Harneis

Lord David Puttnam, ambassador for Unicef UK, asks on BBC’s Green Room what kind of price our children and future generations will have to pay for “the three or four carbon-happy generations that have lived before them?”

“Climate change is not just an environmental problem, it is a human rights issue. In fact it’s the biggest child rights problem of our time.

With the potential rise of up to 160,000 child deaths a year in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia directly resulting from climate change, it is children, the most vulnerable children, who will be caught at the centre of the storm.

They will unquestionably carry the greatest burden – both as children and as future adults – and yet they are the least culpable for its damage.”

Puttnam demands that the world “must stop borrowing from the future and act now” on man-made climate change, and that the rights of children should be put as “the core of the climate change policy framework”.

Our society is suffering from estrogen overload. No, I’m not referring to Sex and The City reruns—estrogen overload refers to the increasing amount of estrogen in our environment, our food and our bodies.

“Good” Estrogen

Estrogen, the primary female sex hormone, is responsible for normal body processes in women such as secondary female sex characteristics, menstruation, fertility, protein synthesis, bone density, metabolism and much more. Actually, there are three kinds of estrogens in the body: estrone, estradiol, and estriol, which all have specialized roles to play at different points in a woman’s life.

Although estrogen levels are greater in women, estrogen is also needed for libido and maturation of sperm in men.

Sources of Environmental Estrogens

Synthetic (or environmental) estrogens are known as xenoestrogens, or estrogen-mimickers. Although they are not strictly estrogen, their similar structure allows them to bind to estrogen receptors in the human body, causing estrogenic activity.  

• Drugs and Medicines

A primary source of estrogen comes from taking oral contraceptives, which contain high amounts of synthetic female sex hormones. And what happens to all the hormones in drugs and oral contraceptives? Well, the excess estrogen leaves the body in urine, which then enters the water supply which everyone (men and children included) consumes daily. 

Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), is another form of synthetic hormones, often used for women suffering from menopause symptoms. HRT has been linked to breast cancer, blood clots, heart disease and strokes.

• Natural Food Sources

Plants with estrogenic activity are called phytoestrogens, the most common of them being soy. Although this estrogen is not synthetic, it can still affect one’s health by raising estrogenic activity. For this reason, people, especially men, may wish to avoid excessive soy intake. (For a great look at the issues surrounding soy, read Liz Thompson’s Green Blog article “Soy: Super Food or Troublemaker?”)

• Synthetic Food Sources: Dairy and Meat

In the USA, dairy and beef cattle are given synthetic estrogens so they grow faster and produce more milk. In Canada, growth hormones are only allowed in beef cattle. However, since hormones are stored in fat cells in the body, these growth hormones end up in the milk, cream, yogurt, cheese and meat we eat on a daily basis.

• Synthetic Food Sources: Pesticides and Herbicides

Pesticides can be dangerous estrogen-mimickers, and unfortunately, its hard to tell what has chemicals and what doesn’t. Generally, most food that is not 100% certified organic has come been grown with pesticides and herbicides, or has come into contact with the chemicals during processing. As well, many lawns, gardens and parks receive chemical treatments on a regular basis.  

• Plastics

Bisphenol-A (BPA) is a harmful xenoestrogen found in number 7 plastics. Primarily, its used in water bottles, tin cans, baby bottles and food storage containers. Heating and freezing these plastics (even by leaving a water bottle in a hot car) further the release of the toxins into the water, to be ingested. (See “BPA Update: Examining the Plastic Debate 1 Year Later” in this blog for more details.)

While bisphenol-A was designed to keep plastics hard and unbreakable, phthalates are a type of plastic designed to keep plastics soft and flexible. Research has shown that phthalates are powerful endocrine disruptors for growing bodies and can even cause birth defects. The iconic rubber duck is a prime of example of phthalates at their worst. Even worse, they’re marketed to the most vulnerable demographic—children. The recent book Slow Death By Rubber Duck tackles this issue in full http://slowdeathbyrubberduck.com/. The writers also analyse many other household toxins, including more examples and effects of xenoestrogens.

• Cosmetics and Other Products

Sadly, so many products marketed to women and used every day contain dangerous chemicals. Cosmetics, hair dyes, nail polish, chlorine-bleached feminine sanitary napkins, sunscreens and household cleaning products are just some of the products that contain dangerous xenoestrogens.

Effects of Environmental Estrogens

So we’re getting lots of estrogen…does it matter? Well, although big business doesn’t want you to think so, it matters. It is well known that oral contraceptives with synthetic estrogens can cause breast cancer, strokes and blood clots. What is less publicized, however, is how the smaller amounts of environmental estrogens affect people.

In women, environmental estrogens can wreak havoc on the body’s delicate reproductive system, causing all kinds of problems. Some examples include: early puberty, painful period cramps, irregular menstrual cycles, heavy periods, PMS, fibroids, endometriosis, cysts, low sex drive, infertility and menopause symptoms.

Unfortunately, when these conditions become too difficult and painful to deal with, doctors recommend (often unnecessary) hysterectomies. Canada and the USA have the highest rates of hysterectomies in the world. However, even after childbearing years, the uterus is important extremely important. Removal of the uterus has been linked to depression, osteoporosis, risk of heart disease and stroke, loss of libido, and increased rate of reproductive cancers.

But…I’m a Guy

Men can be affected too! In fact, recent research has suggested that men are being affected in extreme ways that we are only beginning to realize. The CBC documentary “The Disappearing Male” provides an insightful look at these issues and is definitely a must-watch! To give a glimpse, here are some scary but true statistics from the documentary:

• “The quality of sperm is declining. Eighty-five per cent of the sperm produced by a healthy male is DNA-damaged.
• The average sperm count of a North American college student today is less than half of what it was 50 years ago.
• The number of boys born with penis abnormalities and genital defects has increased by 200% in the past two decades.
• Paternal exposure to solvents, pesticides, and metals has now been associated in animals and humans with the occurrence of spontaneous abortion, low birth weight, birth defects, childhood leukemia, brain cancer, change in the male to female sex ratio of offspring.”

(Source: http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/doczone/2008/disappearingmale/index.html)

Prevent Estrogen Dominance

• Diet

Dietary estrogens are one of the easiest to avoid. If you eat meat of dairy, avoid commercially produced brands. Instead, opt for local or organic dairy and meat products which do not contain growth hormones.

If you consume soy on a regular basis, look for alternatives. Other protein sources include beans and lentils, lean meats and fish, nuts and seeds, and grains like quinoa. Non-dairy milk alternatives include beverages made from almonds, hemp, potatoes or rice. 

Whenever possible, eat organic produce and grain products as well. Remember, xenoestrogenic activity is caused by pesticides and herbicides as well.

• Supplements

At your local health food store, you can find supplements to reduce environmental estrogens, while restoring the healthy estrogens. Examples include herbs like vitex and black cohosh. Women’s supplements can treat menopause symptoms, low libido, PMS and more. There are hormone-balancing supplements for men as well.

Liver supplements (milk thistle, green tea extract, etc) are extremely important for men and women, since the liver is responsible for cleansing the body of toxins.

• Avoid Environmental Estrogens

Try to avoid plastics as much as possible, especially in children’s toys. In water bottles and food containers, avoid number 7 plastics. Never freeze or heat plastic containers or bottles. Don’t use pesticides, herbicides or other chemicals on your lawns or gardens. Use natural cosmetics, skin, nail and hair care products whenever possible. Use natural cleaning products in your home.

I Think I Have Too Much Estrogen!

If you believe you’re suffering from estrogen dominant conditions, look into visiting a naturopath who can prescribe natural hormone-balancing vitamins, herbs and homeopathic remedies.

Many young girls who experience period cramps or other estrogen dominant conditions are put on oral contraceptives by doctors. The birth control pill doesn’t fix these symptoms, it hides them, while exposing girls to further health risks from the pill. 

If you’ve been to a doctor and had hormone tests, and the results come back normal, don’t be convinced. The range of estrogen levels doctors consider “normal” is too wide to be accurate. Everyone is different—what may be normal for someone else may be too high for you. A good naturopath will take thorough hormone tests, combined with other methods to determine your individual situation. For those who have not been to a naturopath before, it is a shockingly different experience than a traditional trip to the doctor. The visits can last over an hour and the naturopath takes time to listen and understand all your detailed concerns, symptoms and history, before suggesting treatment of any kind.

The plant’s smoke stacks are pretty short since the plant was built way before that part of town had anyone living there. This means the smoke doesn’t travel all that far from the plant.  The lucky thing for the students and park users is that the winds blow the smoke south, not west (generally). This is bad news for the soccer field that is just a little bit further south of the plant. My Air Pollution professor explained how he used to play on that field when he was younger and how you would get mild rashes or slight chemical burns from the grass. He said now practically no one uses that park. If the wind blew to the west, my park would not be nearly as healthy and breathing would be a lot more difficult when playing soccer. Knowing whether or not you live near a large source of air pollution is very important, but knowing the wind patterns in your area is important too.

There were plans to close down the plant and move it far from town, but due to the global economic crisis, they can’t afford to do that. And since they want to move the plant there is no point in upgrading its pollution filters or extend the smoke stack. So we still have a toxic and useless soccer field to the south. The silver lining is that this fertilizer plant doesn’t make its own sulfuric acid, a chemical needed to make inorganic fertilizer whose manufacturing process is very polluting; it buys the chemical from factories in less populated areas.

Supposedly, this plant is a pretty important one in Spain as it satisfies a large percentage of the ammonium fertilizer needs of the nation and since it exports to other EU nations. But right now, it looks run down. My ball went over the wall the other day while I was playing soccer so I hoped the fence thinking it was some abandoned factory. I was very surprised when a guard came out and told me I was not allowed there. Here is to hoping that the economic situation improves so the factory can be moved further away from children.

I belong to a Melbourne-based Climate Action Group called the Yarra Valley Climate Action Group (YVCAG) which is very active in public education through public meetings, participation in public demonstrations and by providing a series of very well-referenced Climate Emergency Fact Sheets on its website. Thus people confused by the vehement and dishonest denial by climate sceptics can use the YVCAG resource and discover what top climate scientists and top scientific bodies think about the accelerating global warming crisis by consulting “Climate Emergency: what top world scientific experts say“.

Our local Climate Action Group is variously linked to scores of like-minded Climate Action Groups around the Continent and Commonwealth of Australia through two umbrella organizations, namely the Climate Emergency Network and the Climate Movement. However our efforts at public education are negated by the Power of Money. Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporter with coal exports currently worth A$55 billion per annum; about 92% of Australia’s electric power comes from fossil fuel burning; and the Australian coal industry is worth in total about A$100 billion annually – with the coincident reality that Australia resolutely ignores the disproportionate impact it is having on the Earth’s environment through its world-leading annual per capita Domestic and Exported fossil fuel-derived CO2 pollution.

Thus consulting the US Energy Information Administration database we obtain the following information on “annual per capita fossil fuel-derived carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution” in “tonnes (t) per person per year” for Australia and other major polluters (2004 data): 19.2 (for Australia; 40 if you include Australia’s coal exports; 2007 value about 47), 19.7 (the US), 18.4 (Canada), 9.9 (Japan), 4.2 (the World), 3.6 (China), 1.0 ( India) and 0.25 (for Bangladesh). Of course “annual per capita fossil fuel-derived CO2 pollution” is but one – albeit a very important – indicator of climate impact. The Germanwatch Climate Change Index 2008, a comparison of the 56 top CO2 emitting nations, takes other parameters into account in ranking. In this ranking of 56 top CO2 emitting nations, Sweden and Germany are #1 and #2 for greenhouse responsibility, while shale-oil-rich Canada (a US ally), coal-rich Australia (a US ally), the USA and oil-rich Saudi Arabia (US-linked) rank #53, #54, #55 and #56, respectively (Source) .

However the 2 major Australian parties ( Labor and the Liberals, collectively known as the Lib-Labs and together commanding about 90% of the Australian vote) are resolutely committed to the Coal Industry and remorselessly ignore Australia’s disproportionate contribution to global CO2 pollution and global warming. This Culture of Ignoring also extends to Ignoring of the consequences our participation in all post-1950 US Asian wars (so far associated with 25 million Indigenous Asian excess deaths); Ignoring of horrendous genocidal crimes of Australia’s great allies the UK and the US (from the British-imposed Indian Holocaust involving 1.5 billion excess deaths in the period 1757-1947 to the real 9-11 atrocity, the 9-11 million violent and non-violent avoidable deaths in the Bush wars, 1990-2008); and Ignoring of passive mass infanticide in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories (about 1,000 under-5 year old Indigenous infants dying every day) and horrendous child sexual abuse at home in Australia (1/3 of Australian women are sexually abused as children).

As a biological scientist I decided to attempt to Measure (to Quantify, Quantitate, get Numbers on) this Australian Culture of Ignoring in which “business as usual” Australia “looks the other way” in relation to its involvement in Genocide (according to the UN Genocide Convention “intent [by stated policy or sustained action] to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”); the Climate Emergency (accelerating Global Warming that is already associated with mass species extinctions and the melting of the Arctic); the Sustainability Emergency (diminishing biological productivity with increasing population); Climate Genocide ( millions are already dying impacted by Climate Change and Dr James Lovelock FRS estimates that over 6 billion people will die this century due to unaddressed Climate Change); Climate Racism (imposing deadly effects of Climate Change on people of particular races, specifically the non-Europeans of the Developing World); and Climate Terrorism (cold-blooded imposition of death and the threat of death upon billions of innocent people in pursuit of Australia’s fanatical ideology of greed and growth regardless of consequences).

My Experiment has involved sending the following Letter to about 2,000 Australian journalists, politicians and academics and assessing the Response. You will be SHOCKED by the Response, which is detailed at the end of the Letter.

Letter

I am writing to eminent and influential Australians about serious threats to Australia and the World from the Climate Emergency, Exceptionalism and a Culture of Ignoring. I would be very grateful if you would disseminate this analysis to everyone you can in the national and global interest. Rational risk management successively involves (a) accurate data, (b) scientific analysis (with a scientific methodology involving the critical testing of potentially falsifiable hypotheses) and (c) systemic change to minimize risk. Unfortunately, as outlined below, this protocol is typically subverted in Australia and elsewhere by media, politician and academic substitution of (a) spin, lies, censorship and intimidation, (b) anti-science spin (involving the selective use of asserted facts to support a partisan position) and (c) “blame and shame” (with war and genocide being the ultimate expressions of this perversion).

1. Holocaust ignoring & “history ignored yields history repeated”. Few Australians would be aware of the following atrocities involving Great Britain that have been largely deleted from British history: the Great Bengal Famine (1769-1770, 10 million victims), the man-made World War 2 Bengal Famine (1943-1945, 6-7 million victims) and the real 9-11 atrocity, the 9-11 million avoidable deaths associated (so far) with the Bush Wars (1990-2008). While 3 major histories published recently in Australia utterly ignore the WW2 Bengal Famine, in 2008 this atrocity was exposed in a BBC broadcast involving myself, 1998 Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and other scholars. Denial of the World War 2 Jewish Holocaust (6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) attracts 10 years in prison in Austria.

2. Climate Emergency ignored & Great Barrier Reef doomed. According to top US climate scientist Dr James Hansen (Head, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies): “paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm” and “we face a climate emergency”. Nobel Laureate Professor Peter Doherty:“We are in real danger”; Governor of Victoria Professor David de Kretser AC: “There is no doubt in my mind that this is the greatest problem confronting mankind at this time and that it has reached the level of a state of emergency”; and top Australian climate scientists: ditto. Yet the Federal Government and its advisers propose an increase in atmospheric CO2 to 450-550 ppm despite the scientific advice that coral dies above 450 ppm due to ocean acidification and warming; that ocean phytoplankton and the Greenland ice sheet go above 500 ppm (with dire consequences); and that 550 ppm is globally catastrophic. The Federal Government and its advisers have effectively ignored Australia’s world leading coal exports and annual per capita Domestic plus Exported CO2 pollution; the deaths of about 5,000 Australians annually from coal burning-derived pollutants; and the “true cost” of coal burning-based power (4-5 times that of the highly subsidized “market price”). “10% off 2000 levels by 2020” (Garnaut) means a 50% increase in Australia’s Domestic and Exported CO2 pollution and “60% off by 2050” (Federal Government Policy) means a doubling of total CO2 pollution.

3. Ignoring of horrendous Australian child abuse. Unreported by media, UN Population Division data indicate that the “annual death rate” is 2.7% and 6.2% for under-5 year old infants in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan, respectively, as compared to 10.2% for Australian prisoners of war of the Japanese (for which crime Japanese generals were tried and hanged). This appalling infant mortality is 90% avoidable and largely due to Occupier non-supply of life sustaining requisites demanded by the Geneva Convention. Thus WHO data indicate that “annual total per capita medical expenditure” permitted in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan is $130 and $26, respectively, as compared to about $3,000 (in Occupier Australia) and $6,400 (in Occupier US). Domestically, while the “Little Children Are Sacred” Report was unable to quantitate the extent of abuse of Indigenous children, it quoted data indicating that 34% of Australian women have been sexually abused as children. Yet these horrendous realities are effectively ignored and were ignored at the Australia 2020 Summit.

4. Genocide commission and genocide ignoring. Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”. “Intent” can be surely established from “sustained, remorseless policy leading to destruction”. Australia is complicit in an ongoing Iraqi Genocide (post-invasion excess deaths 2 million, post-invasion under-5 infant deaths 0.6 million, 6 million refugees); Afghan Genocide (post-invasion violent and non-violent excess deaths 4-6 million, post-invasion under-5 infant deaths 2.1 million, 4 million refugees); Aboriginal Genocide (9,000 avoidable deaths annually; 90,000 avoidable deaths under the previous Coalition Government; annual avoidable death rate (1.8%) about twice that in non-Arab Africa; “annual death rate” 2.2% (Indigenous Australians) and 2.4% (Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory) as compared to 2.5% (Australian sheep)); and Climate Genocide ( Australia is a world leader in greenhouse gas pollution; climate change is increasingly impacting Third World deprivation that avoidably kills 16 million people annually; Professor James Lovelock FRS says that over 6 billion people will perish this century due to unaddressed climate change). These horrendous realities are ignored but I have made a detailed, formal complaint to the International Criminal Court.

5. Australia ignores acute nuclear, greenhouse and poverty threats. The prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has nominated nuclear, greenhouse and poverty threats as the acute threats facing humanity. Yet Australia is a major uranium exporter and is intimately linked to US nuclear terrorism via joint communications facilities, military cooperation and welcome to nuclear-armed naval vessels in Australian capital cities. Australia’s “annual per capita fossil fuel-derived CO2 pollution” in tonnes CO2 per person per year is 27 domestically but 47 including CO2 from coal exports –10 times worse than for China and the World and 40 times worse than for India. Indeed Australia helped the US sabotage the December 2007 Bali Climate Change Conference by firmly rejecting any greenhouse gas reduction targets and the latest estimate based on Government Policy is that Australia will actually double its annual greenhouse gas pollution by 2050. Australian greed and profligacy is already contributing to the submergence and salinization of Pacific Island States and devastation of coastal deltaic parts of India, Myanmar and Bangladesh adjoining the Bay of Bengal.

6. US state terrorism is killing and threatening Australians. It is estimated that about 0.1 million people (about 300 in Australia) die avoidably each year due to opiate drug-related causes. About 0.6 million people (about 2,000 Australians) have died due to the US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from 5% of world market share in 2001 to 93 % in 2007 (UNODC World Drug Report data). In mid-2006 25,000 Australian citizens were subjected to bombing and rocketing in Lebanon in the face of Australian bipartisan support for the perpetrator. UNICEF data indicates that 2,400 Occupied Palestinian infants (many with Australian relatives) die avoidably each year due to denial of life-sustaining requisites by the Occupier – however an Australian Muslim meeting the zakkat religious charitable obligation by donating money to sorely deprived Gaza hospitals potentially faces up to life imprisonment under Australian Anti-Terrorism laws. 7,000 Westerners have been murdered by Muslim-origin non-state terrorists in the last 40 years (this total including Israelis and assuming no US complicity in the 9-11 atrocity). No Australians have been murdered in Australia by Muslim-origin non-state terrorists yet UNICEF data show that Australia is war criminally complicit in the avoidable deaths of 1,000 Occupied Iraqi and Occupied Afghan infants every day.

7. Australia now ignores the fundamental truth that love of Australia means love of Australians, wild Australia and Australian values. By “looking the other way” Australia is complicit in the avoidable deaths of 9,000 Indigenous Australians every year and the avoidable deaths of about 300 Australians annually due to US opium industry promotion in Occupied Afghanistan. US intelligence organizations have found that Australians (and Americans) are now more threatened from non-state terrorism due to the Bush War on Terror (in horrible reality a War for Oil and Hegemony). The families of hundreds of thousands of Australians in the Middle East are subject to real terror from US Alliance and Apartheid Israeli violence. Australia is acutely threatened by linkage to US nuclear terrorism. Bipartisan commitment to fossil fuel burning kills about 5,000 Australians each year from the effects of coal burning pollutants alone. There now appears to be bipartisan agreement for a new, biological “Brisbane Line” involving the destruction of WA coral reefs and the Queensland Great Barrier Reef in the interests of the Australian coal industry. Notwithstanding the 1967 Referendum result, there is bipartisan agreement for race-specific suspension of the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act in relation to Northern Territory Indigenous Australians. The entrenched mainstream media, politician and academic IGNORING of the horrendous realities outlined above violates not only rational risk management for the safety of Australians but also violates the principles of a “fair go” and of being “fair dinkum”. My words and statistics having failed, I have painted HUGE paintings for Peace and Mother and Child that I would dearly love to DONATE to public institutions (for images see “Truth , Beauty & Saving the World – Science, Art & Nuclear, Greenhouse & Poverty Threats”. For further details and detailed documentation of the above see Yarra Valley Climate Action Group Fact Sheets: and my recent books “Body Count” (see: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ and http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya ) and “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History”. Please inform everyone you can.

Responses

The Response so far has been minimal. People associated with the Australian Greens have responded positively but the “score” of people actually responding to my plea to “please inform others about my concerns” currently stands at 4 out of about 2,000 addressees or about 0.2%. In relation to Jesus Christ’s parable of the Good Samaritan who helped the badly beaten Jewish traveller, about 99.8% of these variously eminent and influential Australians surveyed here have “walked by on the other side”.

I am actually an agnostic Humanist scientist but love the humanitarianism of Jesus Christ and indeed am Number 1 in the World on the Web for saying “thou shalt not kill children“. I am therefore happy to reiterate the Christian theme that decent folk aware of the Climate Emergency must “bear witness” to the horrendous reality. We cannot walk by on the other side. We must inform everyone we can.

Dr Gideon Polya published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003). He has recently published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007); see also his contribution “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007). He has just published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others). When words fail one can say it in pictures – for images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for Peace and for Mother and Child see “Truth , Beauty & Saving the World – Science, Art & Nuclear, Greenhouse & Poverty Threats”) .

They say it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks, and this is never so true as in the case of adults who find it hard to change habits and characteristics that have been formed over a lifetime. And this is why it’s imperative that we teach our children the importance of good habits right from childhood, when they’re at a more malleable age and tend to listen to adults. Saving the environment may not be child’s play, but it is a child’s place to get involved in the process.

There’s a pressing need today to increase awareness of the crisis called global warming that’s looming large and threatening the very existence of the earth. And there’s no better time than now to educate our kids on the harm we human beings are causing the environment with our indiscriminate and irresponsible use of energy and other resources. If your children understand today how important it is that we save the environment from ourselves, they will have learnt a valuable lesson for life. If not, there’s a serious chance that they may not have a world to leave behind for their children and future generations to come. Here’s how kids can contribute to saving the environment:

• Turn out the lights and other electrical appliances when they’re not in use. Energy not used is energy saved.
• Pick up litter and recycle stuff like paper and metal cans, bottles and cardboard. Recycling helps save on the amount of trash we send to landfills and also conserves natural resources like aluminum and trees.
• Use water sparingly and close the taps tightly so that there are no leaks.
• Ride a bike, take a bus, carpool or walk to school rather than get mom to drive them over.
• Plant trees with their parents or as an initiative at school. Trees are good for the environment because they create oxygen, prevent erosion of the soil, create homes for wildlife, save on air conditioning and heating costs depending on the season, and regulate climate change.
• Take part in neighborhood and school green programs.
• Get parents to buy and eat only organic food.
• Take a quick shower to conserve water.
• Use notebooks without wasting paper.
• Take a lunch box to school rather than a paper bag.
• Use green pencils that are made of wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.
• Go on green vacations to places near you.
• Eat food that is produced locally.
• Send emails rather than letters and cards that use up paper and fuel to get to their destination.
• Buy gadgets that are energy efficient and come with the Energy Star rating.
• Buy recyclable products that have the three-arrow-circle recyclable mark.

Getting kids involved in doing their bit towards the environment will go a long way in changing the way they live and in the choices they make.

This post was contributed by Heather Johnson, who writes on the subject of green shopping. She invites your feedback at heatherjohnson2323 at gmail dot com.

Image above is based on a photo by a4gpa.