Redeeming Our World

Man, created in the image of God, received the world to use it for the best and not the worst. The man had to take care of it, but has proven to make a mess of it.

All problems that come over man are created by man himself, him polluting his own living quarters and not respecting that what he has received in loan from His Creator, the God of heaven and earth.

Mother Earth cries for distress and signals that it is high time to do something to get better. Each individual has to take his or her own responsibility.

Let us not wait but take this pandemic to make a turnover and start to find a more respectful way of living for each living being.

Wouldn’t it be great if, along with learning from this world crisis how to take better care of ourselves, we also learned how to take better care of our world? {Earth Day Lockdown}

Mitch Teemley

“Then the LORD God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and watch over it.” ~Genesis 2:15

As we return, post-lockdown, to the world around us, so does the pollution we create. If it is true, as some have said, that we ourselves are the disease (and there is truth in that), it’s also true that we hold the cure. But it seems those who focus habitually on what’s wrong with the world take little action to make things right with it, whether the world without or the world within, our souls. Yes, by all means, let us remove the toxins from the garden. But then let us go on to re-plant the garden.

“Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.” ~Henry David…

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What Did We Do?

Source of Inspiration

Not even night
brings relief from the heat.
What have we done
when pools boil
in lands where
forests have been slain?

Climates gone haywire
ice caps melting
waves of water wash
life away, pollution the norm.
What have we done?

Across the globe, people
gather to find solutions
to the destruction greed
has caused. Join their voice
start the change wherever you live.
Plant a tree, save water
stop buying that which
contributes to the loss
of this earth’s resources.
Each of us can make a difference.

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The near-indestructible giant trees in danger

The miraculous story of the near-indestructible giant trees that millions of Americans tell their children is no longer true.

In America they may be proud of their giant trees, but the inhabitants of that great space of wonders are also helping to destroy what is given to them in loan.

By all the pollution man has created our environment is crying for help.

For the first time in recorded history, tiny bark beetles emboldened by the climate crisis have started to kill giant sequoia trees, according to a joint National Park Service and US Geological Survey study set to be published later this year. Twenty-eight have gone since 2014. The combination of drought stress and fire damage appears to make the largest sequoias susceptible to deadly insect infestations that they would usually withstand.

California’s great drought took already care that lovely trees were enormously damaged. One of the 28 great trees which could not keep up though optimistically named Lazarus, was standing with proud in the Giant Forest in Sequoia national park, surrounded by other sequoias and a handful of cedars and pines that died with it in California’s great drought.

When Dr Christy Brigham, who is responsible for the welfare of the ecosystems in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, saw Lazarus for the first time, all she could do was weep.

“This is a tree that has lived through 2,000 years of fires, other droughts, wet years, dry years, hot years, cold years. It’s been here longer than Europeans have been in this country and it’s dead. And it shouldn’t be dead.
This is not how giant sequoias die. It’s suppose to stand there for another 500 years with all its needles on it, this quirky, persistent, impressive, amazing thing, and then fall over. It’s not supposed to have all of its needles fall off from the top to the bottom and then stand there like that. That’s not how giant sequoias die,”

she says, standing next to the skeletal Lazarus as the occasional tourist wanders past.

2000 year old Lazarus in 2020 a dead monarch sequoia, standing surrounded by a handful of cedars and pines that died in California’s great drought

 

> Read more:

The age of extinction

‘This is not how sequoias die. It’s supposed to stand for another 500 years’

Warning! Hot Weather?

JamieAdStories

Feeling the brilliant heat,

Enjoying the balmy weather,

Stop for a minute and think,

For we are getting ourselves into a tether.

This heatwave is caused by us,

So yes I’ll be making a fuss,

To me the hot weather is sad,

A reflection of all we do that is bad.

Pollution, consumption and travel,

Are putting us under the gavel,

We need to think of a way through,

Where the climate is stable but the skies are still blue.

So I agree that the hotness is fine,

But the damage it does is causing Earth to decline,

We need to get governments to start fixing this mess,

So we prevent the world becoming a desert of loneliness.

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Window

We not only have the windows from our living quarters which may become dirty. Also our window on the world may become unclear because of the dust around us.

We should make sure that our window at the world is cleansed and that we can see further than the length of our nose.

Let us all dare to open a clean window to get some fresh air and to hear the birds singing their song, calling for attention and recognizance.

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To remember

• what is outside the window? = what is there in outside world?
  
• window screen filters any noise of the living from inside out + outside in=> hear nothing => unanswered screams
  
• sky = magnificent

Chai & Biscuits

I always wonder, what is outside the window? 
I can’t hear anything because the window screen filters any noise of the living from inside out and outside in. The unanswered screams, now I know them. 
In the distance I can see the clouds being populated and polluted with the smoke which gradually evaporates and fuses with the clear blue sky. 
The sky is a magnificent thing to watch. However long you gaze, all you get is the square piece to look out for. And again, I wonder – what is there in the outside world? 
Confined to this square box type room, I train my eyes through the window. The smoke keeps broadening like the spider’s web, invisible to the eyes of the prey. 
Before you reconcile, you will be taken to that chamber which performs the magic and converts you into the smoke, the one that is engulfed by…

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Ghosts of the mountains endangered big cat

In many countries certain animals are still being considered a threat for the population or for their food.  Lots of people consider wild animals as a menace instead of looking for a way to live in harmony with them.

Central Asia knows their “ghosts of the mountains” which are killed by farmers in retaliation for attacks on livestock and 20% are trapped by snares set for other creatures. Another 20% are killed for the illegal fur trade, though pelts from snow leopards killed for other reasons are often sold on.

Poachers aren’t the main problem for the snow leopard – Munkhtogtokh Ochirjav, WWF Mongolia

Figure of 220-450 annual deaths could be even higher, as killings by poachers or farmers often go undetected in the remote mountains of central Asia

As few as 4,000 snow leopards are thought to remain in the mountains of central Asia. Photograph: Klaus Honal/Getty Images/age fotostock RM

Hundreds of snow leopards are being killed every year across the mountains of central Asia, threatening the already endangered big cat, according to a new report.

Numbers have fallen by a fifth in the last 16 years, making it that there are only an estimated 4,080-6,590 snow leopards in the wild, listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) because their population is suspected to have declined by 20% over the past 16 years in the 12 mountainous Asian countries they inhabit.

Rishi Sharma, leader of wildlife charity WWF’s snow leopard programme and co-author of the global wildlife trade monitoring network non-governmental organisation Traffic says

“It’s a completely new insight, and provides a very important point for discussion on how to ensure snow leopards are protected.”

She warns

“More than half the killing is not for illegal trade as such, so as long as we don’t address these issues affecting local communities, it will continue.”

But between 220 and 450 are killed each year, found the report from , the wildlife trade monitoring network, published on Friday ahead of a meeting on the crisis at the UN in New York. The number could be much higher, the NGO warned, as killings in remote mountain areas often go undetected.

WWF works to reduce human-leopard conflict, increase anti-poaching efforts, and protect the fragile snow leopard habitat.

The snow leopards have evolved to live in some of the harshest conditions on Earth. They scale the great, steep slopes of mountains in Central Asia,including the Himalayan Mountains, with ease, blending into the landscape. But these majestic, endangered cats face many threats including habitat loss from climate change, reduced prey, poaching, and retaliatory killings.

Pelts are sold by both hunters and herders – Tessa McGregor

Skins being the main Snow Leopard product type in trade (78%), the primary motive for

buyers appears to be for display, with some observations of skins hanging on walls in homes and

restaurants, as well as stuffed taxidermy specimens.

Priced in the thousands of US dollars, skins have been described as a “symbol of wealth and power.” However, there probably exists very little in the way of a definable consumer segment deliberately seeking out such items. They are most likely

purchased opportunistically – “impulse buys” – and most consumers probably only buy one in their lifetime. Once in a home, the illegal possession has very low probability of detection, and moreover law enforcement authorities may be reluctant to investigate in such situations. The purchase itself also has a low probability of detection, as indicated by the sharp decline in observed numbers of Snow Leopard skins being offered for sale. While growing personal wealth in Asia has been highlighted as a primary driver of illegal wildlife trade, poverty is also recognized as a driver, and the Snow Leopard trade may be more driven by rural people in Snow Leopard habitat attempting to make money and make up for livestock losses to predators than by wealthy people placing orders for luxury household decorations. Unlike the demand-driven Tiger trade (Annex 2), to which it otherwise bears many similarities, the market for Snow Leopards may be more a function of supply, and actions should focus on the communities living near Snow Leopards to reduce incentives to poach and sell. This notion is reflected in the aphorism behind the title of this report: an ounce of prevention equals a pound of cure. Preventing livestock losses, offsetting the costs of losses and improving community support for Snow Leopard conservation are the most important approaches to tackling the problem of Snow Leopard trafficking.

Snow leopards their thick grey and yellow-tinged fur, with solid spots on their head, neck and lower limbs and rosettes over the rest of the body attracts many women, who love to wear that warm skin. for the design they should know there are other alternatives with modern synthetic yarn. The natural breathing warmth, we do agree can not yet be brought by the synthetic material, but here in the West such deep warmth is not necessary because it doe snot get so cold.

Argali (Ovis ammon), the largest living wild sheep, native to the highlands of Central Asia. Argali is a Mongolian word for “ram.” There are eight subspecies of argali. {Encyclopaedia Britannica}

These beautiful wild cats are known as the “ghost of the mountains” because of their solitary and elusive nature. Since it is so rare to see two snow leopards together, there actually is no term for a group of snow leopards. They are capable of killing prey up to three times their own weight and eat blue sheep, Argali wild sheep, ibex, marmots, pikas, deer and other small mammals. The animals which snow leopards typically hunt — such as the Argali sheep — are also hunted by local communities.

Lots of people do forget that it is often by their own actions that wild animals come closer to the human habitat or come to find food by people. In Central Asia like in other parts of the world wild animals their natural prey becomes harder to find because man over-hunting. Snow leopards are often forced to kill livestock for survival, in many cases leading to retaliatory killings of snow leopards by local farmers or herders.

Machhapuchhare, a peak in the Great Himalaya Range, north-central Nepal.

Hunting, habitat loss, retaliatory killings, poaching and climate change are the biggest threats that snow leopards face. Snow leopard habitat range continues to decline from human settlement and increased use of grazing space. An other factor where humans are the cause of the disturbance in nature is pollution and climate change. Climate change poses perhaps the greatest long-term threat to snow leopards. Impacts from climate change could result in a loss of up to 30% of the snow leopard habitat in the Himalayas alone.

It is not because we are living far away from their habitat we can not do anything to help those endangered species.

People all over the world could let their voice been heard. They could ask governments in the 12 countries across the leopard’s range to  increase the funds available to compensate herders whose animals are killed and to educate them, showing good ways of keeping nature in balance. all over the world people could help to build up funds to protect the animals and to help the population to receive extra materials to strengthen the pens, or corrals, where they keep their animals at night.

Focusing on herders – the bedrock of the local economy – also makes sense in regions where it is hard for rangers to protect leopards.

“These are very remote areas, so getting information on what’s going on and enforcement is very difficult,”

says Sharma.

“That’s why we need to focus more on community-based models, not just enforcement.”

Snow leopards play a key role as both top predator and as an indicator of the health of their high-altitude habitat. If snow leopards thrive, so will countless other species.

WWF’s work focuses on reducing human-leopard conflict and rural development, education for sustainable development, stopping mining in fragile snow leopard habitat, and the control of illegal wildlife trade. WWF also works with local communities to curb retaliatory kills by providing innovative solutions to mitigate human-snow leopard conflict.

Learn more about snow leopards. 

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Adopt a Snow Leopard

You can support WWF (WWF Europe) which works with local people and supports research and habitat conservation projects to protect these beautiful cats throughout their range.

Make a symbolic snow leopard adoption to help save some of the world’s most endangered animals from extinction and support WWF’s conservation efforts. In Belgium you may deduct your contribution from your income and for the adoption of an animal you can give once whatever you like or contribute a certain amount monthly.

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Save Europe’s nature

The EU Nature Directives protect over 26,000 nature areas and 1,000 species. They are under scrutiny since October 2013, when European Commission announced the fitness check. Here’s what is at stake

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Please do find to read:

1. An Ounce of Prevention: Snow Leopard Crime Revisited – by Kristin Nowell, Juan Li, Mikhail Paltsyn and Rishi Kumar Sharma, Traffic Report
2. Where do snow leopards live? And nine other snow leopard facts
3. Hundreds of snow leopards being killed every year, report warns
4. Hundreds of endangered wild snow leopards are killed each year

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Further reading

1. Yara
2. Tajikistan 2016
3. Ghost of the Mountain
4. Dailies: Snow Leopard
5. Daily Cuteness by mzsnowleopard
6. The Snow Leopards of Zhaxilawu Temple
7. Snow leopards and sustainability
8. Ramble 123: 5 reasons why snow leopards are my spirit animals
9. Born in China (2017): New Trailer For Snow Leopard, Panda & Monkey Documentary From Disneynature
10. Tracking the mystery of snow leopard populations
11. Hundreds of snow leopards being killed every year, report warns
12. The Cry of the Icemark by Stuart Hill
13. Cambridge’s postgraduate pioneers
14. It’s Saturday!
15. Get wild in the city: The Saint Louis Zoo
16. Weirdos at Korkeasaari – Helsinki Zoo
17. Central Park Zoo
18. Telos is in Trouble: Lucy the T-rex and the Snow Leopards
19. Save Endangered Snow Leopards and Their Habitat
20. Help me save snow leopards!
21. Wild Animals 
22. Get Wild for Wildlife!
23. tiger cubs
24. Amur Leopards
25. Bobcat Invasion
26. I am not wearing camoflague
27. Interesting facts about lions.
28. Destination #2 : Refuge Pageau
29. Wild Animal Training: A Glance at Circuses and Hediger’s Viewpoint
30. Animals Don’t Belong At The Circus
31. National Animal Safety and Protection Month
32. Surfin’ Safari
33. “TripAdvisor.com ends bookings to animal attractions”
34. Take Care of the Animals!
35. Lions, Tigers & Bears…Oh my!!! I ❤️ you all Ueno!!🇯🇵✌🏽️🐼🐯🦁
36. Bald Eagle Rescued After Getting Trapped In Car’s Grill — CBS San Francisco
37. This Real-Life Revenant Was Attacked By A Bear Twice In One Morning
38. Grandview Aquarium, China
39. Keep The Fox Hunting Ban
40. Report Animal Cruelty

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Winter and Spring wonders of nature showing the Master’s Hand

In the early 1860s, Gregor Mendel developed the concept of the gene to help explain results obtained while crossbreeding strains of garden peas. He identified physical characteristics (phenotypes), such as plant height and seed color, that could be passed on, unchanged, from one generation to the next. The hereditary factor that predicted the phenotype was termed a “gene.” Mendel hypothesized that genes were inherited in pairs, one from the male and one from the female parent. Plants that bred true (homozygotes) had inherited identical genes from their parents, whereas plants that did not breed true (hybrids, or heterozygotes) inherited alternative copies of the genes (alleles) from one parent that were similar, but not identical, to those from the other parent. {Encyclopedia, topic Genes} When you know that we have about 140,000 genes which instruct the body’s cells to put amino acids in the right sequence in order to build proteins, you might wonder how this all was provided in the first instance.

Mørketid or Polar night at the South Pole, Antarctica.

One type of light therapy lamp for classic (winter-based) seasonal affective disorder

After the “Majestic darkness”, the “Mörketid,” or the time when the sun does not rise at all in northern Norway the Northern Europeans may see light coming up the horizon. For two months, only a gray-red twilight glow was visible for a few hours at noontime. Having 21.2 percent of Norwegians living beyond the polar circle suffering from Winter depression they now may come back to life. Some looked for their therapeutic ‘sunlights’. The fresh light shall have the melatonin, a hormone produced in the brain, to increase again. They do know that an increasing number of tourists, however, are enticed to the polar circle by the flickering aurora, the glistening of the snow in the moonlight, and the cozy light of scattered villages. Also for them it are wonders of nature.

In Winter the social activities could have helped to keep people enjoying life. According to a Harvard University study, elderly people who participate in social activities, such as going to church, restaurants, sports events, and movies, live an average of two and a half years longer than less social people. It has long been assumed that it was the physical part of such activities that helped people, said Harvard’s Thomas Glass, who led the study. However, he added that this study provides

“perhaps the strongest circumstantial evidence we’ve had to date that having a meaningful purpose at the end of life lengthens life.”

Glass noted that doing more, regardless of the activity, extended life in almost every case.

With warmer weather awaited and the days becoming longer we should look forward to more outdoor activities which shall give us more fresh and hopefully better air. Though we do have to think seriously about preserving that fresh air and doing much more against the pollution.

TV watching may come in second to relax, after listening to music (according to a study of 2000), people should find more leisure in going to do outdoors leisure activities and socialising more. In this system of things throughout Europe more and more people are feeling pressed for time, reported in 1999 the German newspaper Gießener Allgemeine. The same is true whether people are working outside the home, doing housework, or enjoying leisure time.

“People sleep less, eat faster, and feel more rushed on the job than 40 years ago,”

says sociologist Manfred Garhammer, of Bamberg University.Part of that sleeping less is brought on by watching more television which is recently pushed more in the background by the youngsters who are spending lots of times on social media. Though they seem to accumulate lots of friends on them, they seem to be more lonely and prone depression than some years ago. We also hear of many more borderline personality disorders and eating disorders and broken families which do not help to have some good relations or making people happy.

The second decade of this century daily life continued to accelerate in all the European nations. You would think labour saving household devices and a reduction in hours at work would have brought about any “leisure society” or “time prosperity.” Instead, on average, time for meals has been reduced by 20 minutes and for a night’s rest by 40 minutes and people take less time to look at the beauties around them. The magic of nature, plants growing, animals going around, all seems to pass their eyes unnoticed.

In case they would give it more attention they not only would enjoy life much more but they also would come to see that all that vibrant exuberant activity is marvellously orchestrated and that there is a Master Brain behind it.

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Preceding:

Time to Unwind

Earth’s Unwinding

Autumn is in the land

Spring playing hide and seek

Spring-migration is on at the Holler

Beauty for beauty

Shy beauties

Time to bloom

3 daffodils

Echo

How to make sustainable, green habits second nature

We all have to have dreams

Savouring pictorial entertainement

Engagement in an actual two-way conversation with your deities

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Find also to read:

1. Democratic downfall
2. USA Climate Change Action Plan
3. 20 Best Gratitude Quotes
4. Bad company ruins good morals
5. Cleanliness and worrying or not about purity
6. Man in picture, seen from the other planets
7. Inequality, Injustice, Sustainability and the Free World Charter
8. Paris World Summit of Conscience, International interfaith gathering #1

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Further readings

1. Gratitude; by Lights media
2. Living Life to the Fullest
3. Animal Spirits: The Raven/Crow and The Hummingbird
4. The “Pursuit” of Happiness
5. Our State of Health and Happiness
6. Leisure-time – boredom-issues concerning college-students

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Related articles

• NASA data leads to rare discovery: Earth’s moon wandered off axis billions of years ago
• Climate Change Shifting Wine Grape Harvests in France and Switzerland
• India starts survey of elderly people to address their needs
• The genesis of schizophrenia
• Even if GMOs are safe, mandatory labeling is a good idea
• Is it “Wrong” to Believe that the Earth is a Sphere?
• Loneliness (as seen by Tess Connor)
• “Unnoticed”
• Lonely Life

How to make sustainable, green habits second nature

Good intentions are great, but wanting to do the right thing isn’t enough.

Kadir van Lohuizen has visited many areas of the globe which are especially vulnerable to rising sea levels. As land recedes under advancing waters, governments are faced with the costs of building defensive seawalls and relocating coastal populations — and in some extreme cases, finding new homes for entire island nations.

Lots of the waters he got to see were also very polluted. Perhaps people could not always see that it was contaminated water but we have so many sees which are full of participles of chemical waste.

The effects of climate change have led to a growing sense of outrage in developing nations, many of which have contributed little to the pollution that is linked to rising temperatures and sea levels but will suffer the most from the consequences.

In the New York Times of March 28, 2014 we can read:

At a climate conference in Warsaw in November, there was an emotional outpouring from countries that face existential threats, among them Bangladesh, which produces just 0.3 percent of the emissions driving climate change. Some leaders have demanded that rich countries compensate poor countries for polluting the atmosphere. A few have even said that developed countries should open their borders to climate migrants.

“It’s a matter of global justice,” said Atiq Rahman, executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies and the nation’s leading climate scientist. “These migrants should have the right to move to the countries from which all these greenhouse gases are coming. Millions should be able to go to the United States.”

On May the 23rd the Guardian wrote:

Climate change is a scientific fact, and increasingly a lived human experience. But it is not yet what sociologists call “a social fact”. It’s not an integral part of the way we shape our social practices, nor a significant enough cultural norm to act as a constraint on our behaviour.

The signifiers of climate change are part of the problem; we are supposed to see ourselves in the melting ice, the plaintive polar bears and the hockey-stick graphs, but most of us simply don’t. There has been a fundamental failure in the way in which the idea of climate change has been communicated, based on a misunderstanding both of human nature and the systemic nature of the challenge. {How framing can move climate change from scientific to social fact}

Biodesign buildings at Arizona State University. Photo by Nick Schweitzer. Tempe (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In The natural beauties of life we wrote about the photographers who want to share their images of this world with others so that they can witness themselves as well what happens to this world and which treasures we do still have but which should be protected for future generations.

We also said everybody has to contribute his own bit, be it small, it always shall contribute for a better place. In Belgium we are already sorting our waste for more than ten years, but still we can see lots of people are not so keen to do the job or loose interest of sorting well.

We may see some people around us who know such sorting is necessary and that we should avoid as much plastics as we can. Unfortunately, wanting to do the right thing isn’t always enough. Here’s a typical example of the problem: Knowing the environmental costs associated with disposable plastic bags, I keep several reusable bags in my car. It’s not difficult to use them, it involves little or no expense, and at some stores it can even earn a small rebate. Yet at the end of a long day at work, rushing into the grocery between my office and a quick stop at home before a round of evening activities, they’re forgotten, abandoned in the trunk or back seat, out of sight and mind until I reach the checkout stand.

Michelle N Shiota, associate professor at the Department of Psychology, Arizona State University wrote in the Guardian:

wanting to do the right thing isn’t always enough. Here’s a typical example of the problem: Knowing the environmental costs associated with disposable plastic bags, I keep several reusable bags in my car. It’s not difficult to use them, it involves little or no expense, and at some stores it can even earn a small rebate. Yet at the end of a long day at work, rushing into the grocery between my office and a quick stop at home before a round of evening activities, they’re forgotten, abandoned in the trunk or back seat, out of sight and mind until I reach the checkout stand.

This illustrates a longstanding problem in human behaviour, of which sustainability is just one facet. For decades psychologists have distinguished between two sets of processes that drive our actions: automatic versus controlled processes. Automatic processes operate effortlessly, and largely outside conscious control. These include cognitions, such as thoughtlessly applied stereotypes, as well as behavioural habits, impulses, and routines. Controlled processing can override our automatic reactions, but we have to think about it, and it requires effort. In a familiar example, the famous “marshmallow task” is used to test whether children deciding between eating a tasty treat now and waiting for a bigger reward a bit later will tend toward an automatic, impulsive response or self-controlled delay.

As most of us know from our own experience, self-control is a very limited resource. When we’re busy, stressed, or simply tired after pushing our minds and bodies for several hours, our self-control reservoir is running dry, so habits and impulses are especially likely to take over. Scientists have considered implications of this dilemma for a variety of behaviour change efforts, including promoting healthy behaviour, reducing alcohol and substance use, and predicting impulsive spending.

In Europe the European Union and the individual states try to get the costumers conscious about what they buy for consumption, how it is packed, transported, which ecological footprint it has, and what we do with the packing. The community tries to make more conscious customers who shall not mind to change their daily behaviour in name of the environment. Though we face a some problem in promoting many day-to-day sustainable behaviours, from reusing grocery bags to recycling, taking shorter showers, unplugging unused electrical devices, and changing the thermostat when leaving the house for the day. In each case, best intentions often come into conflict with our default settings.

Fortunately, research is starting to uncover some ways of resolving this conflict, making it easier to break old habits or develop new ones.

May we recommend to rad more about it in The sustainable living hub and finding there some tips to alter behaviour for the long-term in: How to make sustainable, green habits second nature.

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Related articles

• On the Run for Water Rising Seas Kadir van Lohuizen Photography (bintphotobooks.blogspot.com)
  Kadir said his projects always start small. “I never wake up one morning and think I’m going to do a big project,”“It always starts when I end up somewhere and realize what’s going on, then think that it should be bigger than just one story,” he said.

  One such incident led to his Diamond Matters photobook, which details the progress of diamonds from the mines of Africa to the world of fashion.

  In the early 1990s, he worked as a photojournalist in many conflict areas in Africa, including Angola, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Liberia and Congo. From 1990 to 1994, he covered the transition in South Africa from apartheid to democracy.

  “It was during that time that I started to realize that there’s a connection between mineral resources and the conflicts,” he said.

• Climate Council: Without Action, Rising Seas Will Cost Us Billions (science20.com)
  Australia’s coast is famous around the world – but rising sea levels are poised to make things a lot less fun.
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  Rising sea levels pose huge financial, economic and humanitarian risks, as shown by the Climate Council’s latest report, Counting the Costs: Climate Change and Coastal Flooding. If the world ignores the problem, by mid-century rising seas could cost the world more than a trillion dollars a year as floods and storm surges hit.
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  the recent report of the same name, Risky Business: the Economic Risks of Climate Change, led by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is much more apt. It starkly sets out the economic risks of climate change to the United States, including the threat of damage to coastal property and infrastructure from rising sea levels and increased storm surges.The report predicts that in just over a decade, this double whammy of higher sea levels and storm surges will more than double the costs of coastal storms along the US eastern seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico, to US$3.5 billion a year. Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy are harbingers of things to come.

  

• Climate Council: without action, rising seas will cost us billions (theconversation.com)
  Climate change is warming the oceans and increasing the flow of ice from the land into the sea. This drives up sea levels, causing coastlines to recede and making flooding more widespread. The primary cause of the 17 cm global average sea-level rise observed during the second half of the 20th century is the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human activities. And sea level is likely to increase by 0.4 to 1.0 m through the 21st century.Strong action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would keep sea-level rise towards the lower end of that range, while a business-as-usual approach to burning fossil fuels would drive it towards the upper end of the range – with potentially massive economic consequences.
• Famed beach in Jamaica slowly vanishing to erosion (thehimalayantimes.com)
  Tourists from around the world are drawn to a stretch of palm-fringed shoreline known as “Seven Mile Beach,” a crescent of white sand along the turquoise waters of Jamaica’s western coast. But the sands are slipping away and Jamaicans fear the beach, someday, will need a new nickname.Each morning, groundskeepers with metal rakes carefully tend Negril’s resort-lined shore. Some sections, however, are barely wide enough for a decent-sized beach towel and the Jamaican National Environment and Planning Agency says sand is receding at a rate of more than a meter (yard) a year.

  “The beach could be totally lost within 30 years,” said Anthony McKenzie, a senior director at the agency.

  Shrinking coastline long has raised worry for the area’s environmental and economic future. Now, the erosion is expected to worsen as a result of climate change, and a hint of panic is creeping through this laid back village, one of the top destinations in a country where a quarter of all jobs depend on tourism.

  “If the water takes over this beach, well, that’s the end of the tourists,” Lyn Dennison said as she tended to her beachside stand selling jewelry and wooden statues of roosters, horses and other animals.

• Famed Jamaican beach slowly vanishing to erosion (koreaherald.com)
  Fearful of losing their main draw, some alarmed hoteliers are pressing the government to refill the beach with dredged sand, a pricey step many experts say is a temporary fix at best.Jamaica is readying plans to build submerged breakwaters it hopes will absorb wave energy and slow loss of shoreline, using an initial $5.4 million in grants from a U.N. climate change convention.

  The breakwater project in Negril, which one study says could cost as much as $77 million over the course of 80 years, offers a glimpse of what may lie ahead for other coastal towns. Caribbean islands, many already heavily in debt, will be faced with the choice of trying to armor shores with seawalls and breakwaters, or conducting a costly retreat from seas that the U.N.-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says could rise by nearly a meter by the end of the century.

  Beaches across the region are being transformed by a variety of factors: shoreline development; surges from increasingly intense storms; coastal pollution that affects marine life; and coral reefs crumbling in warmer waters.

• R20 in Paris: Climate-KIC CEO Calls on Climate Change Leaders to Focus Their Efforts on Creating Sustainable Cities (pr.com)
  Nowhere is the climate challenge more pressing than in our cities. By 2050, some 70% of the world’s population will live and work in urban areas, which as well as heightening carbon emissions, will put huge pressure on local ecosystems from urban planning and transport to waste management and food supply.
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  An interdisciplinary initiative, bringing ‘systems thinking’ to bear on climate mitigation strategies for Europe’s cities, focusing primarily on non-technical imperatives in order to marry technological innovation with social transformation.Greenhouse gas monitoring, reporting & verification: Collaboration bringing over 30 public and private partners of Europe’s top research bodies together to create ground breaking greenhouse gas monitoring solutions for business, utilities, cities and public authorities.
• Climate-KIC Launches New Online CO2 Meter to Indicate Carbon Emissions Threat Level (pr.com)
  “CO2 levels are rising, it’s a fact – indeed the Global Carbon Project announced last month that Global emissions of greenhouse gases jumped 2.3% in 2013 to record levels. However, Climate-KIC and our broad network of partners are working hard to support and encourage the entrepreneurs, scientists and students inventing new technologies that will decrease the amount of CO2 that humans put into the atmosphere and thus avert disaster.”Jane Burston, head of the Centre for Carbon Measurement at Climate-KIC partner the UK’s National Physical Laboratory, commented: “We need to know the real size of the challenge and to be able to measure the success or otherwise of our efforts in reducing emissions and mitigating climate change. This new online CO2 meter is the latest step in making that information available to as many people as possible.”

We all have to have dreams

Dreams (Photo credit: hufse)

Without dreams we are nothing. As a child we bring our aspirations to live in our dreams. We are convinced that we have the right to dream whatever we want. In our dreams we any place ourselves in any role we want. We are also convinced the dreams are totally ours. In our mind and our soul we want to sojourn and create our own world. We claim it to be our individual right to dream as big as we want.

Who cares if it never amounts to anything ? But who knows ? It doesn’t take away our right to do so one little iota.

Claim your great individuality.

Why is it that so many adults do not want to give way to their dreams any more? why do so many adults laugh with the dreams of others, and mainly with the people who would love to share their dreams with others. On this platform we do hope to present dreams of many people. For us all the writers who join us may dream as if they’ll live forever. Live as if they’ll die today.

Here we do not mind dreaming aloud. Here we want to give a voice to the many dreams of people somewhere on this globe. We want to say to all that they should believe in the power of their dreams and should strive to get their dreams becoming true. The people joined here together may have dreams of which others think they never can become true …. but when everybody would think this way, it is unfeasible we shall never see the seeds of making something grow. The writers over here may believe in peace and unity between all folks. It may look utopian, but by holding strong on the dream they want to spread the message of those dreams and bring inner peace to many all over the world.

Who knows where such dreams may lead to? Who knows where such belief leads to?

If there is no peace in the future it is because not enough people wanted it. It is that simple.

It will happen. Make no mistake. No way to avoid it. It is a cycle and for those who believe in the Divine Creator, they received the assurance of that world-peace and can count on the prophecies coming true, even when they still shall have to face the third World War and an other thousands year before the end goal shall be reached.

Lubok-style cover of a Russian dream book. The book is solemnly named The Dream-Book, or an Interpretation of Dreams by Sundry Egyptian and Indian Savants and Astronomers. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For those who chased several dreams which never succeeded, they shall also be able to say they enjoyed them and perhaps they still have  fantastic memories by them.

We may never give up dreaming, and we better take more efforts in sharing our dreams and living them to come true.

Oh so many people have become frightened to dream. Perhaps we should accept that dreaming requires courage.

A courage to strive towards a mirage, to build castles, to go to many worlds, and a courage to trust the ones who are willing to give you a hand on their voyage or to trust that whatever you may find when you finally get there, that it will be worthwhile.
After all, although reality can never match our dreams, neither can a dream ever fully describe the complex and unpredictable reality.

Some of the writers in this club of guest-writers may have fought for their dreams in World War II, in the 1968 upraising or in some other contestations or in one of the many worlds which killed so many people. Also much  younger voices we would love to see here, because they are the future. As such people who could have been at actions like Occupy Wall Street the  Arab Awakening or Arab Spring might join us in the future. They had their voices going loud on the marches for peace, power and freedom. They marked recent decades but saw many dreams scattered and saw how the world present a backdrop for today’s human conditions of stress, anxiety, insecurity and turmoil.

There are as many civil wars and wars between nations. From the individual perspective, the cry for peace is heralded as respite from the turbulence of today’s hectic lifestyle. In the past four to five decades we have lived in such a way as to create challenging situations in our lives and create even more havoc as we try to solve the resulting problems. {Peace In Troubled Times}

World Peace Flag of the Universal Peace Congress. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today in certain countries we may not see so many “No War” “Make peace” stickers as we saw in the time of the Vietnam War. but we might still see somewhere a popular bumper sticker that states, “Peace begins within,” and a hymn that is sung in thousands of churches world-wide on Sundays, “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.”

Yes, peace begins within the heart and mind of every person. Until we reignite the flame of peace, love and unity there can be no lasting peace in individuals, among people and nations of the world. {Peace In Troubled Times}

Those who have had or still have so many dreams of friendship and peace should dare to give their dreams a voice. We all should ask ourselves whether or not we have lived responsibly in recent decades and if we really tried enough to change something in the world around ourselves.

On this platform we would love to give a voice to all who are interested to dare to out themselves and to give a voice to their dreams, prepared to spawn national and international debates. With the widely reported impending consequences of global warming, catastrophes of war and economic collapses, the outlook may be bleak. but we do believe whenever each individual would like to take up the figurative ‘arms’ and do something against our ‘pollution‘ (in a broad sense) we shall be able to make turning points.

When we are with many we may give some impact and create some fertile ground for the human condition as they are fed in large daily doses at breakfast, dinner and all throughout the day. Conditions of fear, stress, anger, frustration, rage, insecurity and strife are the results of the negative thoughts and the materialism of this world, but the humbleness, the brotherly-love and the sincere care for nature, can bring solutions by which future generations can continue to build a better world.

When we conform to the world we allow the dictates of the world and its appearances to control our lives. The real of man is spiritual and divine, not the ego driven personality that responds to the whims and fancies of every Tom, Dick and Harry. Stress and conflict occur when the inner spiritual self and its outer personality self are in opposing viewpoints.

Frankl theorizes that mans search for meaning is a primary force in his life which is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone. Our greatness as human beings lies in our ability to change our minds and the conditions of our lives. What is so great about living in a free, democratic country is that it affords us the privilege of freedom to be all we want to be. Individually we must desire freedom and make the choice for freedom as we live our life. The great author and self help guru, Stuart Wilde, teaches that we should “Concentrate on ourselves and leave the world alone. As we strengthen ourselves we save all of humanity, because we are all linked to one another.” {Peace In Troubled Times}

By getting to know ourselves better and by allowing others to know us better as well and to share our love for others, we can reach even more if we do not leave the world but would embrace it as if it is the thing we love most and we do care as our little baby. Fostering as a little child we should educate it and show it the different ways it can go.

It is true that we must desire a change from the stress and turbulent lifestyle we live today.

We must dare to rise up, declare, pursue and claim peace for ourselves. This will impact the lives of family and friends and spread out to our communities and our world. The pursuit of peace is perhaps the most followed path to spiritual enlightenment. A peaceful disposition calms the rough and tossed seas of turbulence, strife, fear and discontent. {Peace In Troubled Times}

We should join hands and not stand still, but walk together hand-in-hand, radiating out to touch the lives of others and willing to transform our world.

Individually transformed lives will create a mass consciousness of peace and there will be peace on earth, beginning with every one of us. {Peace In Troubled Times}

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

-Eleanor Roosevelt

***

Become a co-author of “From Guest-writers” and join the Bloggers for peace
and find 5 Steps to Peaceful Resolution, plus
7 Random Acts of Peace for Random Acts of Kindness Week
striving for happiness
regardless of material conditions, relationship status, or past history,
Re-hydrating Your Spirit,
sharing the miracles of everyday life to inspire, instruct, and supporting others and ourselves,
as one big family of this universe.
Friends and Enemies: The Malleable Keys to Peace

We Can Make a Difference–Right Here, Right Now
Letting others know that
The Universe Is All of Us

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Additional reading:

1. Live …
2. Be happy that the thorn bush has roses
3. Feed Your Faith Daily
4. A Living Faith #8 Change
5. In A World of Balance There Is Peace and Justice
6. Memories are important
7. Courage is fear that has said its prayers
8. Justififiable anger or just anarchism
9. The Y generation in conflict with itself
10. Violence or an other way to win
11. I want to be a better man than the one I’ve become.
12. Reflection for today…The Roots of Peace -Thich Nhat Hanh
13. Reflection for today…Compassion Is The Key To Enlightenment -Buddha
14. Reflection for today…Invite Peace
15. Reflection for today…Compassion Is The Key To Enlightenment
16. 1st Qtr-2011 World Peace Card Meditations
17. Next World Peace Card Meditations
18. There’s More to Life Than Being Happy
19. An Artist For Peace
20. Pass the Peace Post
21. Exercise for Spiritual Fitness
22. Steve Strother on Blogging For Peace
23. Bloggers for Peace March Challenge: Forgiveness
24. Teaching Children Peace – A Bloggers for Peace post
25. The Missing Peace
26. Let There Be Peace on Earth
27. The Peace Garden
28. The “Pursuit” of Happiness
29. Living Life to the Fullest
30. Professions for Peace musings on life, love and peace
31. Happy Birthday to a Warrior for Peace
32. Let us watch carefully the decent of mankind into the situation we see around us today
33. By counting our blessings we not only feel good, but we multiply our good

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