Category Archives: The World We Live In

Another National Shame – Politics Over Science

In yet another sad loss to science, the Bush Administration has superceeded science in the name of politics. Since 2001 this politically motivated administration have made it almost impossible to denote an animal species as being endangered which has already led to the extinction of a number of creatures that are part of our world. This despite the protestations of numerous scientists within the Department of the Interior.

Furthermore, the present “Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has not declared a single native species as threatened or endangered since he was appointed nearly two years ago.” George Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton averaged adding around 60 species per year but these people see fit to blame everyone else but not themselves for this global shame.

We have the moral obligation to preserve life but I guess when you have such a low respect for science which this administration has, nothing is off limits and their is no shame. This is not a Republican or Democratic issue. This is not conservatism versus liberalism. This is about the total lack of respect for our people, our land, and the creatures who inhabit our country. It is a true national tragedy. You can read the full story here at MSNBC.com

The U.S. is Not the Leader in the Fight Against Toxicity

In a remarkable book written by Mark Schapiro Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What’s at Stake for American Power, he details how the European Union (EU) has supplanted the United States as the leader in the fight against environmental toxicity. On June 1, 2007, the parliament of the EU voted for a new law called REACH Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals.

One part of this law forces companies to prove the safety of chemicals before they come to market. More importantly, it forces previously grandfathered chemicals to be tested for safety which was vehemently opposed by not just the American Chemical Society but by our own government. It scared them so much that they sent in C. Boyden Gray, the heir to the RJ Reynolds tobacco fortune to lobby against it. This is the same Republican operative who worked to eviscerate the EPA under Reagan by applying cost-benefit analysis over risk-based decision making. In other words, make money first, care about peoples health second. According to the magazine the New Republic, “So many different money trails lead to, by and through Gray it is bewildering.”

In retrospect, I’m glad my government in their ultimate arrogance decided to lobby as hard as they did because in the end, this we’re better than you attitude is what pushed the EU parliament to pass the bill. According to one European diplomat quoted in Mr. Schapiro’s book “If their only message is why we should not do anything more than they’re doing in the United States, then why should we listen? The more the United States give the impression of mounting an attack against REACH, the less we listen….. We are not going to ask the United States for permission. If we were to listen to the United States, how would we explain to European citizens where the two hundred chemicals in their bodies came from? What are we doing to them? This is the same not just for Europeans, but for Americans and every country in the world.”

The Bush Administrations steadfast belief that it is more important to make a dollar today for their big buddies than protecting the citizens of the United States is causing us to lose the leadership role we had for decades. He has lost us the respect from the world, not just because of the ill-conceived war, but because the world sees us as only caring for profits, not for people under the guise of jobs. How many jobs could we create by leading the world in the research of safer products? Millions of them. Sad to say, we won’t see a change soon unless there is a change in the White House come this November. We need it to save our children and the billions of children unborn coming to this world in the next hundred years.

Why Is Our Health Care is So Expensive? Someone Finally Got It!

In the February 7th, 2008 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, page 549, a perspective written by Robert Kuttner should be mandatory reading for every politician, doctor, patient and anyone else who avails themselves or is involved in the United States health care system. In this brilliantly written article, Mr Kuttner, co-editor of the American Prospect, talks about the real reason our health care system is so ridiculously expensive. 

He writes “The extreme failure of the United States to contain medical costs results primarily from our unique, pervasice commercialization. The dominance of for-profit insurance and pharmaceutical companies, a new wave of investor-owned specialty hospitals, and profit-maximizing behavior even by nonprofit players raise costs and distort resource allocation.” Basically these profit hungry organizations cost you the patient between a staggering 400-500 billion dollars annually.

His comments and insight into the reasons why market optimization and competition does not mean greater efficiency in delivering health care and does not lower cost as with other industries is a must read. Do whatever you have to, to get a hold of this article.

His last paragraph was so telling. “Sometimes, we Americans do the right thing only after having exhausted all other alternatives. It remains to be seen how much exhaustion the health care system will suffer before we turn to national health insurance.” I have always been against this idea until I read this article. Maybe it is time to stop the greed and redo our failing and overly expensive health care system.

Change the World, a Little Step at a Time – Part Five

Tips for the caring in the world

Tip #21 – Buy organic whenever possible. In the ’60s, the world used 30 million tons of pesticides and fertilizers a year. In 2000, it went up to 140 million tons. Buying organic tells food producers that you don’t want that to continue. Organic foods are simply healthier than non-organic.

Tip #22 – Stop buying artificial air fresheners. They contain volitile chemicals like phthalates that are flat out bad for you and especially children. Use things like potpourri’s or the like. You can find lots of natural oils at the local health food store that work just as well as their chemical cousins.

Tip #23 – Lay off products made with palm oil. To make palm oil, vast areas of the rain forest are being cut down, especially in Indonesia for the palm plantations. Switch to better oils like olive, canola or sunflower instead.

Tip #24 – Switch to safe detergents – At the Schauss house, we use Ecos laundry detergent which we get at Costco. Many regular detergents contain environmentally unfriendly chemicals which ruin our waterways.

Tip #25 – Buy fish that are caught in environmentally safe ways. Overfishing is becoming a problem, farm bred fish contain lots of chemicals, and popular fish like tuna contains mercury. Buying sustainable and healthy fish is important. My favorites are Vital Choice out of Washington. Not only is their fish phenomenal, they are really nice people as well.

Change the World, a Little Step at a Time – Part Four

More tips to make your world greener.

Tip #16- Dump the gas powered lawnmower. Gasoline powered mowers generate as much pollution per hour as 40 cars. Switch to an electric or better yet, get a manual reel mower.

Tip #17- Plant a tree. Seems simple but we all need to do it. Even if you don’t have land to plant a tree there are a number of organizations that can do it for you. Dell Computers has a website that allows you to make a donation to help plants trees. Their program is called “Plant a Tree for Me” and it allows you to see how little you need to donate to offset things like computers, printers and other computer related products.

Tip #18- Turn off the heat when washing clothes. Did you know there is no reason to use hot or even warm water when washing your clothes? You use 30% less energy when you wash in warm rather than hot and even more when you wash in cold water. To top it off, your clothes will last longer which is also good for the environment. You save lots of money and make the world a better place. Not bad eh?

Tip #19- Donate your old cellphones. At my house, the kids love playing with our old cell phones but for those of you without kids, or those with different tastes in toys, donate your old cell phones to charity because if you throw them out, they will leach toxic chemicals into the environment.

Tip #20 – Drop the pesticides. One of the worst things you can do to the environment is the use of pesticides. There are so many natural alternatives like putting bay leaves into your flour and cereals will repel weevils, ants hate peppermint and cucumber peel, and if you have mice, soak cotton balls in citronella or oil of peppermint and leave them in areas you notice they like to congregate.

Come back tomorrow for more tips.

Change the World, a Little Step at a Time – Part Three

Here are more of my favorite ways to change our world.

Tip #11 – Invest in the rainforest. The United States is the richest country in the world and I am proud to say, the most giving. Still, every year we give gifts to our family members and friends and often times the gifts are used for a short time then either discarded or put away. Imagine a gift that will last a lifetime and make a difference. Go to the World Land Trust and buy an acre of the rainforest and you can do just that. Buy a half acre or an acre. Imagine 1/2 acre of land in lieu of 2 weeks worth of lattés.

Tip #12 – Don’t keep your cell phone charger plugged in. If you do, 95% of the energy it uses is wasted. Remember that what we want to do here is reduce waste first then consumption. I believe America can become energy self-sufficient if it cut back just one-quarter of its wasteful habits.

Tip #13 – Turn your office computer off each night. The amount of energy that a computer burns overnight when not being used is the equivalent of laser printing 800 pages  of documents. This adds up in one year to 1.9 tons of CO2 (which would cost you $10.45 to offset [Carbon Fund Offset Calculator]).

Tip #14 – Say no to junk mail. Aside from being horribly annoying, junk mail is horrible for the environment. Go to the Direct Marketing Association to opt out of receiving junk mail. It won’t eliminate it but it will lower it substantially which will in turn save trees.

Tip #15 – Turn off your screen and forget about the “screen saver”. Screen savers use almost as much energy as when you are using the screen. Turn off your screen if you will be away from your desk more than 1/2 an hour.

Come back tomorrow for 5 more tips.

Change the World, a Little Step at a Time – Part Two

Here is part two of my multi-part series on changing the world by lowering your environmental footprint.

Tip #6 – Don’t shave on weekends. Doesn’t seem like much but if you think about it, all we need to do are a number of small things to make a big difference.

Tip #7 – Recycle newspaper. For every yard in height of newspaper you recycle, you save one tree from being cut down. Remember, trees help suck up the CO2 from the atmosphere.

Tip #8 – Unplug electronic devices. When you leave computers, TV’s and other household appliances plugged in and on standby when they won’t be used for a few hours, they are draining electricity anyway. Unplug your television if you won’t be around to watch it for 8 hours or so. Better yet, reduce your television viewing and not only will you be saving money and electricity, you’ll be finding lots of better things to do with your life. They didn’t call it the boob tube for nothing.

Tip #9 – Buy organic milk instead of regular. Not only will you reduce the use of environmentally unfriendly pesticides, insecticides and hormones, you will benefit from the ingestion of healthier milk, richer in omega-3 fatty acids than regular milk.

Tip #10 – Reuse cooking water. Why dump the water you cooked your pasta in down the drain? Save it, let it cool and water your plants. Same with the water used to cook your veggies. Think about reusing the water you use to cook with and you’ll not only be saving water and money, but you will be adding nutrients to your plants as well.

As I said yesterday, find a couple of things here and there to change your lifestyle and pretty soon, everything you do will be green.

Wasting Time Being Angry

Ralph Waldo Emerson put it so well when he said, “For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness.” As a person who sometimes is known for being overly passionate, especially when angry, his saying rings so true. There were two people in particular who, when their names were even mentioned, would get me angry because of the nasty things they tried to do to me and my family.

Today, these same two people still try to say inflammatory things about me but I take a new approach which is best summed up by my little saying (not quite as eloquent as Mr. Emerson) “They are still pissing on me but I no longer get wet.”

Hold back the anger, let things slide off your back and relish in the good moments of life because before you know it, they’re gone.

Change the World, a Little Step at a Time

Now that the release of my book “Achieving Victory Over a Toxic World” is only a month away, I thought it’s time to start giving my readers tips on how you can make a difference when it comes to our environment. We tend to think that our footprint compared to big companies and governments are so small that any change we make is miniscule. Furthermore, so many of the books out there remind us that if ¼ of the population were to do something (like change from incandescent to fluorescent bulbs), the environment would improve greatly. This is nice in the abstract but how does this excite me to make a difference. My thought is that it doesn’t matter what everyone else does until you do it yourself.

If you can put your head on your pillow tonight knowing that you did something, even something very small, to lower your environmental footprint, then you will have helped save our planet.

My blog for the next few weeks will focus on tips of ways you and your family can make a difference. No need to do them all; pick a few that you feel you can accomplish and those that pertain to your life. I will be posting those things my family and I will be doing to change our habits to be better stewards of our environment. Together we can and will change this world.

Tip #1 – If you can’t lower your travel, offset your carbon dioxide (CO2) emission by going to the CarbonFund website and make a donation. They have calculators to show how much your travels generate greenhouse gases and what it would cost to offset them. An example is how much my car, a 2003 Saturn Vue would cost to offset for one year. I travel about 15,000 miles a year and to offset the 6.34 tons of CO2 it cost me $34.85 to offset that (My Prius only cost me $13.31). This money goes towards projects that will counter my polluting ways. My next car will be one that is about 20% more efficient than the Vue which is another way to lower my footprint.

Tip #2 – Automate your bill paying. Bills are never fun to pay but paying them online instead of via the mail reduces paper waste, lowers the gas needed to transport the payment and lowers postage costs. My family has been doing this for a few years now and it is much more efficient than the old paper way.

Tip #3 – Cook your meals from scratch. Stop buying pre-packaged foods that are a waste of material, energy hogs (creation of the product to the containers), and is infinitely healthier for you. My two daughters go to a Montessori school and they don’t allow pre-packaged foods to be used for their lunches which I believe is a great thing. The amount of time it takes to make a real meal versus a pre-packaged one is small. Make dinner creation a family event. It will bring you closer and will be good for your health and the health of our world.

Tip #4 – Don’t buy bottled water. Ugh, this one annoys me to no end. Fiji Water could be the worst. Imagine the amount of energy it takes to transport the bottling material from China to Fiji, then to pump the water up to the bottling plant and then shipping it to the US? Sound ridiculous to you? Does to me. I once wrote about this on my blog to show the insanity of buying bottled water. Get a glass or stainless steel container and bottle your own tap water (use a filter if you need to). It’s smart, environmentally right and you will save a bundle of money (remember, bottled water costs around $9.00 a gallon, tap is about .03¢).

Tip #5 – Stop using bleach. There are a number of alternatives and here is an easy one. Instead of using bleach tablets to keep your toilet clean, mix a cup of borax, mix in some vinegar (just a teaspoon should do) and leave overnight. Scrub in the morning and your porcelain is clean as can be and non-toxic. Guess what the Schauss family will be doing today?

The next few weeks I will be sharing lots more of these tips and then I will be uploading a tracker spreadsheet to help you see what kind of an impact you are having. It could become a fun, family affair or you can make it a neighborhood challenge to see who can make the biggest difference.