InnerSelf

In this short four minute interview President Carter was asked if there was one thing he regretted not doing when he was President. His answer? Preventative medicine.

by Marie T. Russell. There is a kingdom where farmers grow everything organically. There are no chemical fertilizers, no pesticides, no herbicides, no fluoride-based products, and no GMO seeds. Utopia, you say? Well yes, and no. This is the new policy of the tiny kingdom of Bhutan...

by The Reverend Canon Sally Bingham. My world changed drastically when I first recognized that religious voices were crucial to addressing climate change. Few, if any, religious leaders were making the connection between environmental stewardship and their call as ministers of the word. For me, it was the deepest of connections. Within the Christian church our response to climate change has the potential to...

by Dan Chiras. Energy conserva­tion and efficiency are to solar what walking is to running. Ignore these important steps, and you're bound to fail. You'll have to oversize your system to create heat, the vast majority of which will just leak out into the bitter cold winter air.

by Stephen Hren. Growing from humble backyard tinkering in its early days to a multi-billion dollar industry today, solar electricity has the capacity to one day knock planet-killing fossil fuels from their nefarious perch, and its early his­tory exemplifies the...

by Anthony Weston. I propose that our task is to reconnect with the natural world right next to us, and all the time. Imagine everyday life — home, family, work, school — in modes that are thoroughly embedded in and open to nature. Waking to sunlight and birdsong and morning breezes. From backyard or neighborhood garden or...

Rachel Carson's legacy looms huge. Many people have the impression that climate disruption is the worst environmental problem humanity faces, and indeed, its consequences may be catastrophic.

by Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone. Contact with the natural environment can be powerfully restorative to our well-being. Prisoners who can look out of their cells get sick less often, and patients in hospitals recover more quickly when...

by Barry Dennis. Climate change is not the number one issue of our time. The number one issue would be facing, addressing, and changing the aspect of humanity that would allow such a thing to occur! Regardless of what is happening around us, what is truly needed is a “climate change” on the inside.

As parts of Central America and the U.S. Southwest endure some of the worst droughts to hit those areas in decades, scientists have unearthed new evidence about ancient dry spells that suggest the future could bring even more serious water shortages.

Join InnerSelf - Celebrate The Earth. 8:30-9:30 pm your time. We only have one planet.  You can help protect it. Participate in the world’s largest single campaign for the planet: Earth Hour. It starts by turning off your lights for an hour at 8:30 pm on March 31, 2012 in a collective display of commitment to a better future for the planet.  Think what can be achieved when we all come together for a common cause.

by Stephen Rees. Making cars consumes huge amounts of resources and produces large quantities of waste and pollutants. So does scrapping the car at the end of its life...

by Debra Lynn Dadd. Life After Toxics. I know that sounds like there is some toxic-free land over the rainbow somewhere or a new era when toxics are a thing of the past. Well, there is. There is actually a whole world of toxic-free possibilities. Not everything is toxic. Many people around the world are already...

Oil, gas, coal, and other industries would have you believe that renewable energy is just not practical. One remarkable German city of 2600, Wildpoldsried, Germany, proves this notion wrong.

by Louisa L. Williams.

Toxic chemicals have become so pervasive in our society that trying to decide exactly where to begin and what treatments to undertake for these chemicals can feel rather overwhelming. However, several significant measures can considerably reduce...

Protestors of the Keystone Pipeline, fracking and other environmental concerns are finding common ground with the Occupy movement -- but there's more to the story.

Here at the Heartland Institute’s Sixth International Conference on Climate Change, the premier gathering for those dedicated to denying the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is warming the planet.

The two male African penguins, who came to the zoo about a year ago from Toledo, appear to have eyes only for each other. And everybody wants to know what the real story is between Pedro and Buddy. While it is cute story, there is no reason it should be embellished to be anything else.

An asteroid the size of a city block will zoom by Earth inside the orbit of the moon today (Nov. 8), but it poses no danger of smashing into our planet, scientists say.

2011-2012 Forecast: A winter like last year is predicted for the US. La Nina will make it a cold and snowy winter in most parts of the country

Global warming is playing a significant role in diverting much-needed wet winter weather away from the increasingly dry Mediterranean, a new study led by a NOAA scientist suggests.

A 300-square-mile portion of the Pine Island Glacier is expected to break off in the next few months, creating a massive Antarctic iceberg. The glacier is contributing the sea-level rise.

by bobby jennings.

Wendy Schmidt's X Prize Oil Cleanup Challenge is proof positive that many times the technology is available or close at hand to solve many of our problems.

by Roy Holman.

Many ancient and indigenous groups have written or warned about the dramatic changes that would happen on planet Earth, culminating around this very time. It has been said that if we do not take care of the Earth, the Earth will take care of us! It is both an...

by Priscilla Short. The Greatest Generation (whatever that means) made personal short-term sacrifices for the good of the country and emerged victorious. In the name of patriotism, citizens of the United States subjected themselves to the rationing of consumer goods, cutting back on necessities and denying themselves a lot of the niceties that we take for granted today.

There is a "garbage patch" in the pacific ocean greater than the size of Texas.

On his return voyage, after a 1997 yacht race to Hawaii, Charles J. Moore, an oceanographer and racing boat captain, veered from the usual sea route and saw an ocean he had never known. "Every time I came on deck to survey the horizon, I saw a soap bottle, bottle cap or a shard of plastic waste bobbing by. Here I was in the middle of the ocean and there was nowhere I could go to avoid the plastic."

by bobby jennings. The national discussion is getting a bit out of hand. Let's see. Republicans and the Bush administration are mostly tight-lipped. The loyal opposition return to their wimpishness at the slightest snarl of the attack dogs. So that leaves the national debate between the News Media and the American public -- and the public only has clout every two years. So here goes, let's call a spade a spade. Let's look for some "blame" for 9-11.

by bobby jennings. Life is a series of crossroads and when wrong choices are made at these crossroads, at best we open ourselves to criticism and to doubts about our integrity. At worst, these choices remain to haunt us and they reappear time and again, sometimes in our own lives, and sometimes in the lives of those around us. This seems to be the situation with the cases of corporate fraud that are now coming out of hiding.

by Arne Naess. Building a Green party at the national level is occurring only in the relatively few "democratic" countries. It is necessary for Green politics to spread to other parts of the world. But the content of the various Green party programs will have to adapt to differing political and ecological situations and will inevitably show great differences.

by David Brower with Steve Chapple.

"Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too."

by David Brower. Asked how many people the Earth can sustain indefinitely, Harvard professor E. O. Wilson, certainly one of the world's great biologists, replied: "If they have the appetite for resources of Japan and the United States, 200 million." I finally got Professor Wilson on the telephone to check up. Had he said that? "No," he responded, "but it sounds reasonable."

by Gareth Patterson. Recently I began to understand that unless we address the health of the earth, collectively and holistically, the symptoms of our own inner health will persist and will worsen. The health of the planet and our own inner health are one. Our harm of ourselves, our outer destruction and self-destruction, can be viewed as a modern disease...

by Dirk Mathison. "I knew someone had to take the first step and I made up my mind not to move." --ROSA PARKS, on her decision to sit in the white's only section of a bus.

by Wayne Teasdale. I have come to believe that people living on the street have a lot to offer us: profound insights gleaned as we process our experiences with them. Although they are not intentionally our teachers and most likely don't realize the insight into life they offer, they can offer us deep understandings about life.

by Julia Butterfly Hill. Like many teenagers, I rebelled against my upbringing and questioned the way I was raised. Because we were extremely poor and religious, I rebelled by valuing money and deviating from organized religion. I decided to study business in college because I truly believed that our value in society was measured by our financial wealth.

The destruction of nature is the destruction of humanity. Nature is our home. All life on this planet, including, of course, human life, was born from the natural environment. The further we alienate ourselves from nature, the more unbalanced we become. Our future...

Transformations is a column about mankind?s evolution towards the purity of justice, fairness, equality, freedom, and absence of tyranny.