Sprout!

I received the following message in my email this morning:

Your tea tree has sprouted Congratulations! Your tea-tree has been selected & is being raised in an indoor nursery until it is ready to begin its outdoor journey. In the next few weeks we will update you as to its status & provide instructions on how you can help to take care of it along the way.In the mean-time, please enjoy the glimpse of what your Earth Day contribution has done thus far!

Yeah!

I like to think my plant is pictured in the second photo (the lowest picture) and that my plant is the tall one.

GREEN!

Green. Because it was Earth Day Wednesday.

Yes, I'm a day late. UDATE: Turns out, I'm right on time, actually.

But I have a very good excuse.

You see, I spent my Wednesday hiking through Valley Forge National Park slicing, dicing and chopping through non-native species of plants and vegegation in honor of Earth Day. We get two volunteer days per year, and this was the first of mine. It was a pretty good time. I'm pretty sore today, however.

The coolest thing was julienning the grape vines. They varied in size from walking stick size to the size of moderate-sized tree stumps. But the cool part was that when you cut them, they leaked. And not the thick, gooey sap you might associate with trees. This was clear, quick-flowing liquid. Some of them were like a shower head with the supply turned to on ever so slightly.

We were told that as a survival method, if you are ever lost in the woods (and apparently have a saw) you can drink the liquid. I didn't. Drinking something for survival and for the mere sake of drinking it are two differen things, in my mind.

Anyway, that was my Wednesday. And my other good Earth Day deed. As an added bonus, I direct you to the The Four Things You Should Be Focusing On This Earth Day.

Tea tree for me; tea tree for thee?

So, Adagio has this pretty neat thing going on for Earth Day. You can plant - i.e., reserve space - a tea tree on a tea plantation in one of three locations. An area of China - known for its white teas; and area of India - known for Assam; or an area of Sri Lanka - known for its Oolong.

Click here, Captain Planet, to save the world - one tea tree at a time.

Now, I'm pretty sure the farmer/Adagio would plant the tree anyway. They let you pick the spot in the field you want to plant the tree, but something tells me if you pick a spot way in the far corner and no one picks the ones near you, they aren't just going to forego planting in the rest of the spaces and then go out and tend to your tree standing 200 yards away by itself. My hunch is the whole field is going to be planted anyway - probably with or without you and possibly it already has been.

So, from an Earth Day stand point, its might really be a wash. If the tree is going in the ground anyway, my selection isn't really doing very much. But it seems like it couldn't hurt.

Oh, and you have to digitally care for your tree. Like a Digipet, except its a Digiteatree. I assume that means watering and weeding, probably along the lines of the god forsaken Farmville crap that is on Facebook, but whatever. The actual instructions weren't all that clear. But hey, its not actual weeding and watering, which is kinda hard work, so again, no harm, no foul. Or at the very least, little harm, little foul. Certainly little enough to ignore.

And last but not least: If you ditigally care for your plant to maturity, they will send you four free ounces of tea from your plant.

This last part is just not believable, and is somewhat makes me question the whole program, even if it is for a good cause and blah blah blah. I can believe the tree will be planted. But am I really to believe that a poor/poorish farmer in a little regulated tea plantation in India os going to label my tree and keep track of it and then when it comes time for harvesting seperate my tree's leaves from the others to ensure that I get tea from - again - my tree?

Sure, why not.

Anyway, I planted a tree. Its in India. Its the third plant from the left in the first row in the second field. If you want to know why I chose the third planting spot, you haven't been paying attention. Three. Triangles. Pyramids. Strongest, least likely to tip over? Ringing a bell? Don't get it? Ask in the comments and I'll explain.

A tea tree takes 3 years to reach maturity. Which means in all liklihood I will have long since forgot about digitally nurturing my little tree and foregone the free tea. But I thought it was neat, cool and worth a try.

How we learned to hate the Nuke and ruined (?) our own environment along the way

This is a bit late, but I didn't want to step on the feet of my UnChristmas Story, nor Christmas itself.

The answer to the titular question is: 1970s environmentalism. At one point in the 1970s, it was hoped that 200 "breeder" reactors would be online by 2000, which would have reduced our carbon output by 1/3.

Sadly, President Carter, aided no doubt by a 1973 lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Scientists Institute for Public Information, killed the plan.

Of course, back then nuclear was the Devil, the environment was the Endangered One. Now, carbon is the Devil, and the environment is the Even More Endangered One. Sadly, if we had only chosen the proper course 30 years ago, we might have been able to knock a prefix and suffix off of endangered (that's a beginning and an ending; for those of you who might not get it - that means we'd be left with simply Danger.)

Choices choices. And of course their consquences, people.

Here's the reason link from pre-Christmas week.

An UnChristmas Story Part I: Scrooge: The original environmentalist?

Ebeneezer Scrooge:

"Coal burns. Coal is momentary and coal is costly. There will be no more coal burned in this office today, is that quite clear, Mr. Cratchit?"

It could be ripped out of a news story from today. Or from the President's most recent speech. I'm certainly not the first to note it, but Scrooge shared environmentalists' hatred of coal's use, saying

"These are garments, Mr. Cratchit. Garments were invented by the human race as a protection against the cold. Once purchased, they may be used indefinitely for the purpose for which they are intended."

Scrooge: The original environmentalist? Environmentalists would probably sympathize with old Ebeneezer, that's for sure. Wearing warmer clothing in the winter and using less heat, and using a lot less air conditioning, would be right down both their alleys. Politics makes for strange bedfellows.

So was Scrooge the first environmentalist? I'm not saying he was; I'm just saying.