The EPA has a fun, interactive kid’s site that allows your child to learn

Did you ever wonder what the air quality is in your city? Going on vacation and need to know what the air quality is at your destination? Check out Air Now a really cool site that will let you look up you city’s or the nation’s air quality. You can also compare the air quality of locations.

What's the air quality where you are, right now?

Helpful resources:

Air Quality Index: A Guide to Air Quality and Your Health

Ozone- is it good or bad?

Kids Can Learn About Air Quality (also in Spanish): Games and Information (ages 7+)

Teach Your Child About Clean Air: For Kindergarten and First Grade

Air Now Publications in Spanish: Publicaciones De airnow

About 23,000 dolphins are killed in Japan every year. Here are some facts:

• The dolphins are killed in a secluded cove three hours south of Osaka. The slaughter is hidden from public view with tarps and nets. Access is blocked by steel gates, barbed wire, razor ribbon and guards. The government is clearly trying to hide something.

• Only a few people, 26 fishermen, are actually involved in the drive in Taiji.

• Migrating dolphins and porpoises are rerouted by 13 fishing boats. They become disoriented when the fishermen bang on long, metal pipes that have been lowered into the water, eventually getting herded, then sealed into the cove by drawn nets across the entrance.
• The fishermen kill the dolphins with spears, fishermen’s hooks and knives. Trashing about in their own blood, the dolphins emit high-pitched screams during the massacre.

• The Taiji dolphin drive season is from September 1st until April 30th.

• Most Japanese people are not aware of this annual ritual.

• The meat is distributed throughout Japan for consumption.

• Much of the dolphin meat is given away to Japanese children for school lunch programs and the parents do not know it is toxic.

• All dolphin meat has toxic levels of mercury. If an average bottlenose dolphin on the East Coast of the US washed ashore, it would technically be considered toxic waste.
• Live dolphins captured in a Taiji dolphin drive hunt recently sold for $154,000 per dolphin.

Please check out these links for more information:

The Cove the movie

Ocean Preservation Society

Where is The Cove the movie playing?

NY Times: Mercury Taint Divides a Japanese Whaling Town

Scientific American: Eat Flipper? Stealthy filmmakers spotlight Japanese dolphin slaughter in The Cove

What can you do?

 An Interview with Doug and Amanda Fine

by Justyn LeDrew

Bio: We live on a remote ranch in New Mexico with our three-month-old son, three goats, two dozen chickens and ducks, three dogs, two cats, and assorted owls and bats.  Most of the ranch is solar-powered, we drive on vegetable oil, and we try to raise (or eat) as much food locally as we can.  We are in our 30’s. We love reading to each other, hiking and floating rivers. 

One Green Wish: 

Amanda: that you won’t have to read labels anymore to see if your food is real, or manufactured poison.  Organic won’t b a special label.  Artificial coloring and flavoring won’t be considered part of a normal diet. 

Doug: All humanity will have learned to conduct individual life and society  in a sustainable manner – forest and coral reef cover will increase, water flows and quality will be restored world-wide, climate issues will be resolved, and yet humans will still be able to thrive.

 One life lesson learned:  

Doug and Amanda: In the words of Kingsley Amis, there is no end to the ways that nice things are nicer than nasty ones.  We prefer being happy, have learned that no one else need to be sad for us to be happy, and that worry almost never does any good.  In short, we feel like we are at our best when we’re full of joy. 

Justyn: How has living off the grid changed who you are? For example your relationship with self, the sacred, politics?

Doug and Amanda: Having more say over the basics in our life, like power, transportation, and food, carries over and proves empowering in all aspects in life.  For example, we laugh at what radio and television commercials try to sell us these days.  We don’t need much of it.

Justyn: Have you been inspired to find new interests?

Doug and Amanda: It all ties in.  We’ve started to think more about water collection and permaculture since it can have real and positive impacts on our lives.  Greenhousing is another new interest.  The internet (solar-powered) helps us research new interests. 

 Justyn: Many, I am sure, have asked you what the difficulties of living off the grid are, what I want to know is how has dealing with these difficulties deepened your compassion for yourselves?

Doug and Amanda: We hardly notice any difficulties.  Sure, there are tweaks like making sure the solar panels on our water pump get us enough water on rainy days, or that monsoon rains don’t take out our driveway (again), but the most significant impact of living remote and locally is  that we are so delightfully tied into home space.  We hardly need to or want to leave the ranch.

Justyn:  How has it changed your relationship with each other?

Doug and Amanda: We’re best friends and we’re starting a family now, but that would probably have happened wherever we lived.   We get to spend much more time together than if we had to commute.  We operate as a team in nearly everything, but then probably many couples do.

Justyn:  In June 2008 you welcomed Quinn into your lives. Has having had a baby made being green more complicated? 

Doug and Amanda: I’m writing a lot about this right now.  We think about green house paints, unfinished wood crib and toys, organic cloth diapers and clothes, and amanda’s diet so that her milk is the healthiest it can be.  

Justyn: Since having Quinn have you in anyway questioned how you are living?

Doug and Amanda: Quinn just makes us realize how important sustainable living is. 

Justyn: Do you feel your child might not be prepared to deal with american culture?

Doug and Amanda: American culture can mean a lot of things.  I think we feel proud and lucky to live in a place that is probably more free than any other society ever.  But we are also part of one planet, and unless everyone starts living sustainably everywhere, it doesn’t matter where you’re from – we won’t survive.  As far as the less desireable consumer-based aspects of digital age life, we’ll try to raise our kids to be independent conscious beings who are resistent to advertising, and realize from their upbringing that if they have health and love and home, they don’t need many consumer products like scented chemicals to make them smell good or brand name clothes to be cool.  I think any parents can raise their kids this way.  Also we hope to balance natural and digital age inputs so that our kids learn to enjoy being a member of the animal kingdom and treasure the earth, while also taking an inerest in the wider world around them.  So we’ll plant gardens and milk goats, but we’ll also surf the ‘net for info about the malian music. 

Justyn:  What initial changes would you suggest someone in the mainstream make who wants to be more eco-conscious?

Doug and Amanda: Try to live locally – in food especially.  This is possible anywhere.  Read labels on food and fabrics.  Don’t eat, clean with, wash with or put anything on your body that you don’t understand.  Try to wean from fossil fuels. 

Justyn: What non-green things (products, activities etc) are  still really tempting?

Doug and Amanda: Exotic food and airplane travel (hopefully the world airplane sleet will go solar).

Justyn: How has living off the grid transformed your global views? Your connection with humanity?

Doug and Amanda: The digital age as a whole makes us realize this is one small planet.  Everything is interconnected from the microbes in soil to the companies that harvest resources on a large scale.  At the same time, we realize that we want to be as responsible as possible for our own well-being, not relying on government or a heealth care system or any food companies.  Living remote also makes us very conscious of our own energy use and our carbon and waste production.  We want to harvest the methane from a composting toilet to cook with, for example.

Justyn: What do you hope to see change in Quinn’s lifetime?

Doug and Amanda: World peace, of course. 

Learn more about Doug and Amanda’s life living off the grid in rural New Mexico at their website: Doug Fine. You can also purchase a signed copy of Doug’s latest book, Farewell My Subaru, at their website. Doug has written several books, is an adventure journalist, and contributes to NPR.

©2009 by Justyn LeDrew