The medical literature tells us that the most effective ways to reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and many more problems are through healthy diet and exercise. Our bodies have evolved to move, yet we now use the energy in oil instead of muscles to do our work.
Think about a seed. Once it lands, it's stuck. It can't move to find better soil, moisture or sunlight. It's able to create every part of itself to grow and reproduce with the help of air, water and sun.
Beyond reducing individual use, one of our top priorities must be to move from fossil fuels to energy that has fewer detrimental effects on water supplies and fewer environmental impacts overall.
I've always been more interested in organisms that can move on their own than in stationary plants. But when I canoe or hike along the edge of lakes or oceans and see trees that seem to be growing out of rock faces, I am blown away. How do they do it?
If we want to move towards a low-polluting, sustainable society, we need to get consumers to think about their purchases.
Less than 10% of the fuel energy burned in automobiles is translated into forward motion of the vehicle and even then most of this energy is needed to move the vehicle itself, which typically weighs 20 times more than its passengers.
Our identity includes our natural world, how we move through it, how we interact with it and how it sustains us.
Human beings are often at their best when responding to immediate crises - car accidents, house fires, hurricanes. We are less effective in the face of enormous but slow-moving crises such as the loss of biodiversity or climate change....