How Much Water do you Really Use?

Making the right choices to reduce your water footprint.

To Cool the Planet . . .

Scientists to make cows fart like kangaroos.

How to be an Eco-Friendly Bibliophile

One of my friends who hates reading maintains that he abstains in order to save the trees. Each time he visits my home and looks at bookshelves in my room and the books that are piled up on my table (for want of shelving space and some laziness) he invariably remarks that my room is littered with the corpses of scores of dead trees. He also accuses bibliophiles like me to be the cause of global warming. The only way to offset all the damage to the environment that I (and other book lovers) cause to the environment, he tells me with all the seriousness he can muster, is by giving up my addiction altogether and planting trees—one tree for each book that I own.

While I can't give up my addiction, finding some space to plant trees in today's urban India is more difficult than one can imagine it could be. I am sure there are quite a few others out there facing the same difficulty. While I continue to accumulate the books, any plans of working on my friend's suggestion to offset the damage have not gone beyond the occasional potted plant.

Well, help is now at hand. I can now outsource the planting through Eco-Libris. Eco-Libris offers to "balance out" your books by offering you the opportunity to plant one tree for every book you buy at a cost of only $1 (roughly Rs. 40 at the current exchange rate) per tree. All that you need to do is to choose the number of books you want to balance out with Eco-Libris, pay for it online, and a tree will be planted for each of these books.

More details about how Eco-Libris works here.

So count those books. And count your money.

Our Future on a Hotter Planet

The Earth could be more than 6 degrees celsius hotter than it is today within another century. Just how bad is this for us?

Mark Lynas examines the perils of a warmer earth in his new book on global warming: Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet.

Why Biofuels Could be an Environmental Disaster

George Monbiot contends biofuel is worse for the planet than petroleum.

Top 50 Things to Do to Stop Global Warming

Amongst other things, India will have to drink less milk and use fewer milk products. Cows produce a lot of methane, which we all know, does the atmosphere not much good. Maybe the bovine population needs to be cut a bit. (Wonder how the VHP and other assorted parties will react to this.)

But jokes apart, each one of us can make little changes to the way we go about living our lives everyday -- small things can have a big impact.

Here's the entire list of the 50 things to do stop global warming. While the list is US centric, it can of course be adapted to our conditions too.

Do help by adopting a more responsible lifestyle.

Ecological Footprint Quiz

Have you wondered how much "nature" your lifestyle requires? Take the Ecological Footprint Quiz to find out.

The quiz estimates the productive land and water you need to support what you use and what you discard and also tells you how many earths would be needed to get resources from if everyone in the world lived like you.

This is how I fared:
The quiz here.