that GREEN blog

To know that one has a divine right to live in abundance means that one has a respect for nature’s supply. Usually those who have become abundance conscious are also environmentally conscious. With respect to nature, many who have aligned themselves with universal laws strive to incorporate every aspect of their lives with abundance principles and concepts.

Consequently, as we become more conscious, we understand that money is a seed and in many ways we are responsible for where we plant our seeds. It is only wise to search for investment options that reinforce our beliefs and lifestyle.

Environmentally sound investments are more available this century than ever before. Such investments are known as Social Funds. Social Funds made its debut on Wall Street in the 1970’s and has been soaring ever since. Years ago there was concern with these funds ability to be profitable. But with growing technological advancements and an ever increasing interest in the age of spiritual and environmental consciousness, socially conscious investing has proven to be not only profitable, but consciously probable.

From investing in solar panels to buying fuel efficient cars, living a green lifestyle has never been more attractive. Due to increasing popularity with becoming environmentally conscious, one is not labeled as a weird tree hugger with too much time on their hands. Instead, taking care of Mother Earth has been championed by influential celebrities, well respected politicians, and altruistic business leaders.

With the flow of wealth and consciousness beginning to take root and manifest in many, there has been a growing concern among conscious green and holistic individuals regarding the atrocities that may have been funded using their money. Individuals who once invested, through stocks and mutual funds, for example, in companies that have been responsible for damaging the earth (i.e. alcohol, tobacco) and abusing its people (cruel labor) are now conscious and aware of their prior investments. Those living a conscious, abundant, and green lifestyle are appalled that their dollars have contributed to situations that do not match their personal values.

According to The Social Investment Forum, an environmentally friendly organization made up of like minded investors, estimates that 10 percent of all investments are made with social values in mind. The forum also counts 151 socially responsible mutual funds with assets of more than $148 billion, up from $111 billion in 2001; an outstanding increase from its humble, yet highly influential beginnings.

Many who are environmentally and socially conscious gain the greatest return on their investments knowing that their money hasn’t supported or had any type of horrid effect on nature, its people, and the community at large. These types of investors have seen the bigger picture and realize that the end results yield the highest return.

But still there are those individuals who don’t quite yet feel comfortable trading their conventional stocks for socially conscious funds. One shouldn’t beat themselves up. Start slowly. Begin to use the profits of conventional investing to further your socially conscious agenda. Use the funds to reinvest in your causes by:

1. Becoming a “Green” Angel Investor. By supporting start-up/ environmentally conscious organizations, in time nature and its people will begin to feel the positive trickle effects of these worthwhile efforts.

2. Independently invest in organizations that advocate social change. Become involved and rally around organizations which lobby and challenge congress to create “greener” laws.

3. Diversify your investment portfolio by having more Social Funds than Conventional Funds.

Spirituality and morally, if you take care of nature, nature will in turn take care of you. It is never too late to discover spiritual and universal laws that will guide you into creating the life that one desires. Trust in and align yourself with the Laws of Nature and you will soon see that living green will yield much green, spiritually and financially.

Roslyn Randle is an accomplished writer. Create a life of continuous wealth and flow. Visit Abundance Training 101: The Universal Law of Abundance at http://universalclass.com/i/crn/14056.htm . Also learn how to Lose Weight While Becoming A Wellness Coach at http://universalclass.com/i/crn/9478.htm
More on Ethical Consumerism

Andrew Pelletier, director of corporate affairs for Wal-Mart Canada, says Wal-Mart took up the cause about a year and a half ago. “We believe the business world has a major role to play in helping preserve the environment for future generations, and specifically in reducing the world’s waste and greenhouse gas emissions. Wal-Mart is in a unique position to take a leadership role on environmental sustainability given the scope of our business.”

According to Pelletier, Wal-Mart is testing a range of sustainable features in ‘experiment stores.’ In January, the retail giant opened a store in Kansas City, Mo., that uses 20% less energy than existing stores. He says the company is retrofitting stores across Canada with energy-efficient lighting. “Last summer we reduced all the lighting in our Ontario stores by two-thirds. That meant we were able to reduce our greenhouse gases by several thousand tons of CO₂.” Wal-Mart won’t reveal the details it has planned for March — when it announces its 2007 waste-reduction targets — but Pelletier boasts the company will reduce its waste by “millions of kilograms” this year alone.

From: Canadian Business

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I’m sorry, this is going to be a rant, I’ll just tell you right now…. I’m kind of frustrated.

Phil Nail, was quoted in an article at Top Hosts as saying… “… and buying green credits doesn’t make your company green” Errrrr And, according to AISO’s website, many of the so-called green Web hosts out there don’t run any environmentally friendly technologies at all, but instead buy RECs as a marketing tactic in hopes of making you think they’re helping the environment…. I say, with friends like that, who needs enemies?

Well, I run a green web hosting service and we buy REC’s. I recycle religiously, I garden my own food, I buy local when I can’t get what I need or don’t have room to grow. I bicycle when I could drive, I buy sustainable organic and fair trade as much as is humanly possible. I accept all the bags of leaves and grass clippings I can get from all the neighbors in my town, and I do my best to research where the money from my green tags is going. What more could one want from a small company? Should I not BE a small business because I can’t afford a windmill of my own or the solar panels that should run a green hosting business. The individual that I buy my hosting from is a greenie too, the way he lives, etc… in the backwoods… How could we collectively be better role models? Last I checked, being poor didn’t make one bad, and being rich didn’t make one better. I mean, is THAT what this is all about… egads, big business?

While I would give my eye teeth to host all my thirty some sites and those of all my clients on truly solar/wind powered servers, AISO makes it cost prohibitive for me to do so. (they are over ten times more expensive as all my hosting expenses put together, including our green tags) there is an addon price for every service I need. As a reseller who hosts design clients, I have little choice but to buy energy credits to help make a difference. (Just like I use electricity in my home until I can come up with the fundage to install solar panels) Researching where that money is going can be a full time job, but it’s a step in the right direction. If Mr. Nail would create a program that is as affordable as it is green, we’d see a HUGE difference in the number of truly industrious and sincere site owners that wish to participate in sustainable technology.

As it is right now, I don’t think that saying, “… these so called green web hosts” and “… and buying green credits doesn’t make your company green” is helpful at all. Not to mention the fact that it is counterproductive. (and YES, buying green tags for home and office in addition to all other sustainability practices makes us GREEN) Those comments don’t take into consideration those very small and home based businesses that are making every attempt to be sustainable in their business practices doing everything they can from recycling at the office and at home, buying sustainable products to gardening their own food and/or buying local.

I agree with Michael Bloch’s (from ThinkHost) opinion of the situation much more…

“Around the world, there’s an awful lot of data center infrastructure already in place and while it would be nice to have solar panels and wind turbines directly powering each one of them, it’s horribly expensive at this point, somewhat wasteful of current infrastructure and is going to be some time coming.”

“The purchase of green tags is a great way for hosting providers to do something environmentally positive right now by ensuring the equivalent power that they use is fed into a grid somewhere from renewable sources such as solar and wind (these are the offsets we use). It’s a big picture concept and a practice that should be encouraged rather than being seen as the poor cousin to direct renewables powering.”

These things are all intertwined and they all must work synergistically as must we who are all, in our own spheres, striving to effectively promote public awareness. I can understand attacking those that are proven to only trying to ride an economical ‘green’ wave, but those sort of sweeping statements really leave out the conscientious small business, which in my humble opinion is the backbone of all larger ones. I don’t mind paying a bit more for sustainable technology, but not more than ten times more. Sorry, those condescending statements just really rubbed me the wrong way this morning. I’m going out to the garden and work off some of this steam…

So how much money was invested by governments during the 1970s to scare-monger the population about Global ‘Cooling’? Good question. During the 1970s about $5 billion [in today’s money] was paid by governments in Europe and North America to various government-dependent institutes, to not only study, but broadcast the impending ice age. Now just 30 years later the same cycle repeats, except that the monies involved have increased by a factor of 20 – and this is only the beginning

Global cooling funding was just a warm up exercise using some chump change to get ready for the big Globaloney warming scam. Back in the Bee Gees era, ice sheets in major cities were supposed to be just as common as Gay Pride parades or Muslims protesting this or that infidel desecration of their wonderful, peaceful, ‘faith’, are in our modern megalopolises. Now 30 years on we go from icicles to the toasted oven effect. While Globaloney scams are inconvenient truths for citizens who bear their costs and psychological effects, they are very convenient forms of government, political and activist, power-mongering.

Nicely greased on public money, what were the ‘Cooling’ institutes unanimous conclusion during the era of bad clothes and big hair? After 10 years of public grants, the establishment of various ‘Environmental Protection Agencies’, and the giving of grants to scientists to scare up some doom and gloom, by 1975 the toiling citizen-slave was being screamed at by governments and their institute-dependents about the coming end of civilization – circa 1980 thanks to a coming ice age. Such blather was taught in high school with little children brow beaten about the deleterious effects of putting out a bag of garbage since humanity’s reckless consumerism was destroying earth. Nothing like brainwashing the young to support the cult.

This Global cooling scaremongering had it purposes. It allowed governments to construct regulatory agencies, increase taxation on various goods, and create unaccountable bureaucracies that doled out money to government friendly and activist supporting friends. This created government dependent allies, including scientists, institutes and university research groups who would be out of business if not the for the business of scare-mongering and who could be called upon to rush to the barricades to defend various government-sensitive initiatives. Nothing breeds friends more than the handing out of unaccountable and non-transparent public money grants.

The erection of eco-friendly institutes and funding schemes and the sloshing around of millions only made it a matter of time before Global cooling [or whatever scam was appropriate] would find its way into the media as a ‘truth’. With all that cash scientists and research institutes had to justify the grants and if government was concerned about the impending ice age, then so be it. So they went after the media and the political class with great effect. Nary a politician or media pundit was a Global cooling denier in 1974. Just as today nary a socialist or Marxist deep thinker denies warming.

Notice the language from an erstwhile Global cooling believer, Time Magazine June 24, 1974: ‘Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth’s surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.’

This article goes on to link Global cooling with the annihilation of agriculture; famines; and millions of dead.

Notice the language from an erstwhile Global warming true-believer, Time Magazine, March 26 2006; ‘Melt enough Greenland ice, and you reach the point at which you’re not simply dripping meltwater into the sea but dumping whole glaciers. By one recent measure, several Greenland ice sheets have doubled their rate of slide, and just last week the journal Science published a study suggesting that by the end of the century, the world could be locked in to an eventual rise in sea levels of as much as 20 ft.’

This article goes on to link the destruction of ice sheets with agricultural annihilation, climactic upheaval, famines and millions of dead.

So in a mere 30 years the so-called ‘scientific consensus’ goes from worrying about deepening ice sheets in Greenland, to the home of Eric the Red becoming the new swanky Cote D’azur and Caribbean vacation competitor. That seems intelligent.

What about the hated eco-holocaust denying, SUV toting Americans? In 2007 those neo-fascist-corporatist-oil mongering-blood on his hands-Bush and co. will only give out $7 billion to eco-institutes to study and advocate Global warming along with only $16 billion to fund ‘alternative’ sources. How dare they be so stingy!

In the past 10 years in the US, Europe and from the ever-honest and dependable UN, only $100 billion has been given out in grants, funding and government sponsored program money to government friendly institutes and fear mongerers to ring the bell about impending doom and eco-hysteria. Come on boys, surely that is not enough! If you love mother earth, show us the money!

Of course approximately zero cash is given out to scientists who question the nonsense of Globaloney warming. That seems fair to the impartial observer.

With all that money available to be cashiered what do you think the market effect is on institutes and scientists? Gee let me think. Hold on I think I can do this math.

Option 1. I can become a cult believer, have influence over government policy, make a load of cash, get published, have media interviews and have hot chicks recognize me in swanky bars.

Option 2. I can be a real scientist, dispute the unscientific basis behind Global warming, ask for grant money to dispassionately analyze climate cycles, receive no money, be a nobody and get attacked by the media for being a holocaust-eco warming denier and killer of mother Gaia, and eventually get fired for being ‘unorthodox’.

Maybe I will take a pass on Option 2 and go for the gold.

Yet the media is usually full of teen-age angst over Exxon or some other evil ‘corporation’ spending a few nickels to try and get some balanced coverage of climactic cycles. A Marxist group with the Orwellian name ‘Union of Concerned Scientists’ who sided with the Soviets; warned against military strength during the Cold War; and have advocated that the modern world is untenable, were crying about Exxon supposedly giving a paltry $19 million in the past 10 years to public policy institutes that promote climate holocaust ‘denial’.

Sorry but such nickels and dimes don’t stand a chance against big government’s BILLIONS. In any event Exxon gives out annually, tens of millions to the eco-cult Globaloney warming true believers, and along with BP spends hundreds of millions on alternative energy development. This hardly sounds like a capitalist cabal intent on putting a large carbon footprint on the pretty little heads of the eco-cult.

How many stories have you read about the $100 billion funding of the eco-doom and gloom gang? Not many. But chances are that the pathetic $19 million, 10-year Exxon funding story was near the front page of your local newspaper and highlighted on your liberal media news show. For the record the Union of Concerned non-Scientists is one of the top five recipients of U.S. public money to study Global warming [see George C. Marshall Institute 2005 study.]

And therein lies the problem. I could take the Globaloney Warming ‘millions-will die in famines-the modern world is a crock-white civilization is to blame theory’; a little more seriously if the mouthpieces were independent voices of scientific repute, glorying in the scientific method, and impartially observing reality. The implementation of Francis Bacon’s ideals would impress me more than the hysterics of an old 1970s government-style and funded scam. But apparently humans need to believe in cults – even government inspired ones.

The current eco-cult is a government funded nightmare. The hundreds of billions that will be poured into the cult would be better off spent to clean up streams; reduce particulate pollution; improve garbage incineration and removal; or even provide hydro and clean water to struggling villages in Africa. But that is too rational.

Pouring monies into the sewer of arrogant, dissident and self-loathing institutes and academics is a crime and a fraud. Instead of helping literally millions of people with concrete measures, the eco-cult and its Marxist minions are engaged in a huge lie to destroy wealth; lower living standards and accrete power. It is a disgrace built on the backs of taxpayers, created through the dishonesty, power-mongering, arrogance and ignorance of elites.

I wonder what all these deep thinkers will say in 20 years after the earth’s temperature has noticeably cooled. They will probably say something intelligent like, ’see told you so, Global warming caused Global cooling, now we need more billions to deal with the threat of a new ice age.’ Or some such anti-rational mystical Globally warmed over cart load of fertilzer enhancer.

Sources:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Govt.htm

By:

Sustainable Living Articles @ http://www.articlegarden.com