Natural Living Tips

When I came across this piece of news, my mind immediately fell to the Archaeopteryx. This was a bird/dinosaur combo that flew around 65 million years ago or so. It was purported to be the missing link between birds and reptiles. Apparently, they found another type of these flying reptiles in China.

“The extensive feathering of this specimen, particularly the attachment of long pennaceous feathers to the pes, sheds new light on the early evolution of feathers and demonstrates the complex distribution of skeletal and integumentary features close to the dinosaur-bird transition”, researchers from the Shenyang Normal University wrote.

The fossil is 160 million years old, and is the oldest of its kind to be found so far. At that date, it is millions of years older than the archaeopteryx, putting it at the forefront of being the missing link instead.

Discoveries before this one had put archaeologists in a little bit of a temporal pickle because the fossils found were younger than the fossils of birds they had found. So that didn’t really work out so well. What might have happened is birds and reptiles splitting off evolutionarily from this guy millions of years before, and then you’d have both the hybrids and the birds showing up in the fossil record after. The only thing that could mess up the chronology now would be a 160 million year old bird fossil.

The research findings will also be published in “Nature” magazine on Oct. 1. Take a look at it there for a more in depth survey.

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As part of the conservation and environmental movement worldwide there are several campaigns aimed at banning the plastic bag.

A quick search on the web will take you to the California’s San Francisco Bay Area, “Bay vs Bag”, to the Daily Mail’s (UK) “Banish the Bags” as well as similar situations in Canada, Holland, China, elsewhere in the US and even Zanzibar.

A lot of the focus is based on the damage done to wild life, including sea mammals and birds; the effects on waste and the average number of bags used per person in different countries. In one of the lists I saw, Singapore was topping the list at 625 bags. One of the targets is to reduce by 10% the yearly consumption of these bags.

On the other hand there are also “Save the Plastic Bag” campaigns, with the plastic industry behind it. Their main focus is highlighting what they call misinformation. Their points are based on “exaggerations” on the damage done to wild life; errors in how plastic bags are made (from ethane gas that would otherwise be burnt and not petroleum); effects of co2 vs methane; potential job losses and so on.

On the banning side of the argument, there can be exaggerations as well as questionable scientific data - questionable as in anybody can question it, after all to have an argument you must always have at least two points of view.

From the “saving” the industry point of view, there can be many counter arguments to the data that is presented.  And this is quite understandable, after all their industry could be hit very badly.

(This just reminds me that all businesses have a life time curve that goes from birth, to growth, to maturity and finally to demise.  The time scale can be as short as a year to as long as a hundred years or more, but the end result is that it is replaced by something else).

To get back to the plastic bag banning situation, where paper bags have the negative effect of more trees cut, the information that is being retrieved is very important.  But it must also be as objective as possible.  Having said that, we know that it takes literally centuries for plastic to degrade and this should be the foremost argument.

Just to expand a little on the paper bag argument, which is totally reasonable, the option is not to cut more trees.

The options are to recycle and use bio-degradable alternatives.

In the old days, when plastic bags hadn’t been invented but grocery shops had, natural fiber bags were used and the customers were the ones who brought their own to the shop. With just a little effort on the individual front, these campaigns wouldn’t be necessary.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

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The term Eco-conscious has become quite popular now. And so there is a growing risk that it will be misused and become another marketing success.

There should be no problem with an ethical use of the term “Eco-conscious” but the probabilities are that many non-green products will try to benefit from it. In other words it can be used to manipulate people into buying things under false pretenses.

There is a growing awareness that we have to start changing the way we treat ourselves and the environment.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with material things, at the end of the day they are developed, produced and used to make our lives better. The point is that they are all tools to be used for something, and not an end in itself.

Some natural resources are non-renewable, but we keep on wasting them as if tomorrow never comes. The waste and disposal attitude of our society complicates matters and is usually based on cost, profit and comfort levels.

Attitudes are difficult thing to change, but they do. Sometimes what is needed is a crisis to force the change. But the best way of changing attitudes is to open our minds and break away from reacting in the form of habits.

A natural life is possible once we change our attitudes.

If you look back forty or fifty years ago, the ordinary household did not have all the conveniences we have today, and the idea is not to turn back the clock, but perhaps we can learn form them.

Fifty years ago the term Eco-conscious, or green, hadn’t been coined, but in general terms (there are always exceptions to every rule) life was lived in greater balance with nature, basically because there weren’t as many options as today.

Old clothes were reused as cleaning cloths instead of paper towels. When cold, people put on another layer of clothing. The house was lit at night with the right amount of light, and bulbs were turned off when not needed.

The food was fresh and varied. Cooking was an event in itself and mealtimes were family times with less stress and more bonding opportunities. This had the added benefit of strengthening the family and providing a healthy environment - which has now been shown to reduce health issues, such as heart disease and so on.

If you look at some of the benefits of eating healthy and varied food, companionship, family relations and community spirit, you may notice that the levels of diabetes, heart disease and stress, was much lower than today.

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Yesterday the Supreme Court allowed the Navy’s use of sonar in training exercises off the California coast. This is a defeat for environmental groups, but more importantly for the whales.
See my previous post: Killer Whales Sonar Confused by Navy Call

The basis of the decision appears to be that the Navy needs to perform realistic exercises to prepare for potential threats from enemy submarines.

What’s worse is that the decision was taken because federal courts abused their discretion by ordering the Navy to limit sonar use in some cases and to turn it off altogether in others.

The decision was not based on the merits of the case.

So, “legalese”, triumphs over responsibility.

I trust this isn’t the last we hear about this.

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