Here is an article that gives you hope that a lot of our interconnected environmental, climate-change, waste disposal, energy and resource scarcity, pollution and geo-political threats can be tackled through technology before our world implodes:

Floyd Butterfield and Thomas Quinn launched E-Fuel Corporation.  Their product allows you to create ethanol in your backyard.

The holy grail will be reached when someone comes up with equipment that takes bio-trash and turns it into clean energy.  There you have the cleanest solution to so many problems.

It is not impossible - the core technology actually already exists. My crazy fellow Mexican Jewish friends Zeev and Zak Zaidman run a health foods company called Kopali that goes from place to place on a bus fueled with trash. 

Tags: Innovation, Environment by daniel
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We have grown so distant from nature that we no longer know, or even care, about where things come from, or how they look in their original state.

I was curious about these, so I finally looked it up.  Can you guess their origins and natural form?

1) Water Chestnuts
2) Sesame Seeds
3) Oats
4) Cashmere: do you know what it is? Is it a process for treating cotton? Does it come from a plant? Does it come from sheep, or a goat, or a cow or other animal? Is it just the name for combing wool very softly?
5) Figs
6) Vanilla
7) Peanuts
Macadamias
9) Horseradish
10) A Head of Lettuce

First visualize whether you really know the above.  Then click below (in "More") for the answers.

[Honor System Reward - anyone in the US who guesses 5 or more right gets one free KIND bar - drop a note to dnixon[AT]peaceworks.net with your address and let Donna know Daniel offered this on his blog - offer valid for up to first 500 people who email her and who actually visited this site before May 31 2008; sorry for limitation but last time we offered a free KIND bar we got 16,000 emails]

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Tags: Health, Environment, KIND Snacks, Funnies by daniel
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Today Sherazad Hamit and I were in the Bay Area to discuss OneVoice’s campaign for 2008 with several of our supporters.

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Tags: Iran, Environment, PeaceWorks Foundation, United States, Middle East, OneVoice Movement by daniel
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With growing human population and consumption, our planet is already strained with water scarcity, fossil fuel scarcity, food scarcity, mineral scarcity, and environmental degradation.  Is the big picture that humans will eventually kill each other to compete for scarce resources?

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Tags: Science and Technology, Health, Economics, Environment, Global, United States by daniel
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The most humble eat grains and seeds.  They don’t have anything else.  They live off the earth.

The poor eat refined starches, rice, beans.  They can’t afford anything else.

The luxury many strive for is perceived to be meat.

Then the cycle gets completed.  As people learn more about nutrition and the environment, they start avoiding meat, they start avoiding refined sugars and starches, and they steer back to grains, seeds, vegetables and fruits straight from nature.

Tags: Health, Environment, Global by daniel
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It sounds so crazy.  With growing climate change, planet earth as we know it is on the brink of a radical transformation that could endanger the very survival of the human race, if not at best require the most painful and radical adjustments for us all.

Why then would any rational human being want to stand in the way of finding solutions to prevent an epic catastrophe?

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Tags: Democracy and Freedom (or lack of), Economics, Environment, Iran, Global, United States by daniel
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Something serious is going on when rice is rationed by the largest retailer in the world in the wealthiest country in the history of the world.

My team member Phil caught this story about it!

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Tags: Economics, Environment, United States by daniel
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At the Skoll World Forum, Al Gore spoke poignantly about the imperative of joining forces to rescue our planet.  If enlightened self-interest is to mean anything, it has to be that our personal well-being is dependent on the well-being of our planet.  And each of us has to share in the responsibility to prevent climate change from endangering future generations, not to mention ours.

So how do you create an identity and a logo to convey this?  The job went to Brian Collins, who did a superb job at merging the concept of global and personal responsibility for planet earth.

The New York Times does a very good job at explaining the thinking behind Al Gore’s new logo.  You can also learn more about what you can do at www.wecansolveit.org.

Tags: Environment, Global, Marketing by daniel
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Cosmologist Martin Rees does not think that modern civilization will make it past this century.  Scientific and technological progress carry
with them the seeds of human destruction, whether through the harm we
cause to the environment, or straight out nuclear or biological
destruction.

So ironically, one of the core limitations to connecting with intelligent life elsewhere in the planet is our own unbridled ‘intelligence.’

You can make your own predictions about this at www.msnbc.com/modules/drake/default.asp  
Sent from my iPhone - pardon typos

Tags: Science and Technology, Environment by admin
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Clif Bars is one company in the healthy snacking arena that KIND inhabits that I find a very worthy and also admirable player in the space.  Here they came up with a very creative and positive contribution against environmental waste.  Not sure how far this can get us but it is definitely a step in the right direction, smart marketing, innovative, and beneficial…

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Tags: Innovation, Environment, KIND Snacks, Marketing by daniel
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