I always feel like American politicians are taking shots at me as a Canadian because we have a nationalized Health care system and the US is this great and unfettered free market. One of the real problems with not nationalizing some services is that the free market has to look at profit even when it hurts people. I know Adam Smith may be right but not always.

So I had to laugh a bit this weekend when I saw that the US Government is stepping in to the US mortgage markets big time by seizing control of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and therefore nationalizing the mortgage markets. Again I know that this is important but I also sure hope that it is a sign that the US is going to take it’s people at least as seriously as the big shots running the big industrials and the banking sector in the stats.

On the weekend I had a chance to finally watch An Inconvenient Truth and just like any good documentary the movie gives you lots of facts and there is some drama as well as a bit of a bio on Al Gore the environmentalist but one of the problems with the movie is that it really illustrates global warming and how it has come about and who is at fault and who can change things but does not really drill down to what you can do to change things.

Well the website for An Inconvenient Truth does in fact tell you how to fix the Global Warming issues that we see and will see now. Here are some of the best links from the site.

An Inconvenient Truth > News & Blog

http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/carboncalculator/
An Inconvenient Truth > Carbon Calculator

http://www.climatecrisis.net/pdf/10things.pdf
10things.pdf (application/pdf Object)

http://www.nativeenergy.com/Splash/ClimateCrisis/ClimateCrisis.html?ClimateCrisis#total
Welcome Climate Crisis Visitors

One of the highlights of the Climate Crisis site is that you can figure out how much of a carbon footprint that you are creating and can donate money to a cause that will then create power through wind generation.

OK back to being preachy for just one post. After watching Al Gore (hope he beats Jeb in 2008) at the Oscars, and after putting off watching An Inconvenient Truth because Al Gore is probably a bit scary, I thought I should see if I could find much on one person changing the world against global warming.

Well I have found some stuff. There is a great page with 50 things YOU can do to affect global warming.

This is a very good article on what is coming for the feeding of 6 billion people in the world.

There are a lot of issues including Climate Change, lack of people in the agricultural industry, lack of fresh water and many more things that make the future a bit of a challnege as long as the human population keeps growing.

I was just surfing around my favorites and thought I would pop these links up this Sunday morning.

Seed: Where to Go Now. Seed is a science magazine online but they have a great article of places to go and see before environmental changes wipe them out. The Amazon, Canals of Venice and others are featured.

ECO is an environmental site that puts on campaigns for human awareness about climate change.

Wikipedia has a great page on the issue of climate change

OK enough for today but just no one tell Stuart that I believe that global warming is in fact happening

Well last year I posted my first post about the importance of Urban Responsibility and that some people are just asleep when it comes to taking care of those around them. Hillary Clinton a few years ago wrote a whole book about it takes a village to raise a child. In this case I think that it is important for us all to ‘remind” others of how they should trat everyone around them. for this here are my tips for this year.

If you see someone spitting on the ground, spit back at them
If someone is mowing their lawn late at night, get up early in the morning and start a session of Primal scream therapy
If someone parks in two parking spots make sure that you post it note the windshield of their car.
When someone ties sneaking around you when you are pushing the shopping cart and is rude about it make sure that you do not slow down.
If you get cut off in traffic make sure you take one of those old eggs out of your glovebox and hit the car with it.
When someone opens a door and tries to let it swing back and hit you push the door open really quick to knock them into realizing how unkind they were not to hold the door.

As with any change in society these changes may at first cause a little bit of trouble but over time they will help lead to being a great spot check to make sure that all in society are treating others with respect.

Changing the world is not quite as hard as you might think. Right now there are only a handful of people that make all of the major decisions about nearly everything that impacts a majority of the population of our planet. In order to be an agent of change you must know and leverage the following.

Know the importance of proximity
Understand cause and effect
Discover the power of influence

Okay, these three rules may seem to be easy enough but it is important to see how they interact when you want to make changes in any area that you are interested in.

Know the importance of proximity

Proximity in my mind is one of two things. Firstly there is a physical proximity and secondly there is a belief system proximity, I will seal with the first physical proximity first.

Physical proximity means that the closer a person is to you at most times then the greater the chance to make a difference. If you were to decide to make a dramatic change like ending hanger then the people in your family would not be able to do a lot, you could as a family give money to a group that could feed people in third world countries but as I have just stated proximity is very important. You could make a much larger change by giving food directly to those in your community. I am sure many people will rail against this as it seem you can feed many more people in third world country but between giving money and the final foodstuffs going to those people there will be a lot of intermediaries and a few greased palms that will take a percentage of those dollars. So let’s all try to agree that your greatest change comes closest to your physical residence.

The second kind of proximity if belief proximity, if you want to make a great change it is easier to make that change if you can find a few like minded people that can all direct their attention on making that change that you as well as them want to make. If we take the world hunger example you have to marvel how some of the big groups such as http://www.foodrelief.org/ or http://www.thehungersite.com are almost always in reality a very small group of people that have worked together across national boundaries but with a very similar belief system to concentrate on only that change that they are interested in.

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What is with Extreme Makeover Home Edition? I watched last season when they had deserving families get a house built on their lot to replace a crappy house already there. Whoever the marketing brains are behind this show are, they have definitely raised the stakes this season.

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