Climate Change – Are we in Dire Striaghts

I have recently reviewed a You-Tube® video called the most important video you will ever see.  It has made me think and conclude that we truly need to all be thinking more about our future generations.  Though I am not sure that the video gave any conclusive ideas on what to do to help us with this climate change.  So i would like to start this blog as a grass roots effort to get people to give ideas and a call to action to start doing everything we can to clean our air so we don’t end up destroying much of the life we have made for future generations.

Here is an exert from a website:http://www.climatecrisis.net/thescience/

The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years.2
	Malaria has spread to higher altitudes in places like the Colombian Andes, 7,000 feet above sea level.3
	The flow of ice from glaciers in Greenland has more than doubled over the past decade.4
	At least 279 species of plants and animals are already responding to global warming, moving closer to the poles.5

If the warming continues, we can expect catastrophic consequences.

	Deaths from global warming will double in just 25 years — to 300,000 people a year.6
	Global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide.7
	Heat waves will be more frequent and more intense.
	Droughts and wildfires will occur more often.
	The Arctic Ocean could be ice free in summer by 2050.8
	More than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction by 2050.9

Blow are some things that I am vowing to do to make our planet better before it’s too late.

1.  Plastic Bags/Paper Bags.  Get a Cloth Bag or carry your groceries to your car in the basket and load them in and out by hand.  I saw a power point on how much we waste these things that are made from oil!  If we reduce the number that we use, then we can cut down on the making of them and the pollution caused from them. This is a small thing, but on a global scale it will help.  I am not saying don’t use them , but only for necessary things.  Do we really need to put our garbage in plastic bags?  Or the things we recycle?

2. Driving Less.  Car pool, ride the train, what ever you have to do to, just make the trips less.

2a Check your tire pressure.  It really helps

3. Since Coal is used to produce electricity, using less electricity in everything is another way to help.

3.a. Change your light bulbs to LED Lights.

3b. Turn off electrical devices

4 Recycle – you can save around 2400 lbs of co2 a year

5 Plant a tree.  Goes with out saying.  Have more plants.

6. recycle!

7. Adjust your thermostat – just two degrees in summer and winter and you can save 2000 lbs of carbon dioxide from entering the air each year.

8. you can save 1,200 lbs of CO2 just by Avoiding excessive packaging.. (goes with my no plastic bags rule)

Basically anything that can reduce our use of energy and gas is good.  And just think about it you will be saving money, too.

So far these are the things I have come up with.  I do think that there are more ways out there and I would love to hear from you.

I will say that I am happy to share some of the sites that breath an air of relief to my fears.  We are on the right track if we all do our part.

A site on how we are working toward a small solution to the air problrm

http://www.physorg.com/news96732819.html

Not so promising but hopeful

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/S2P

Proposal for Changing Dallas, Texas City Ordinance 28 – 81

I am a small business owner in Dallas, living in Oak Cliff, where I spent most of my child hood. Recently, I upgraded my vehicle to a box truck so I didn’t have to rent a U-haul every weekend. Sometime ago a city ordinance was past about people parking their tractor trailers, semis, and other over sized vehicles from being parked in a neighborhood and even more so on their own property. They can actually receive a ticket for parking their own vehicle on their own property if it falls under the description of over 32 feet or 1 and a half tons. Under this description, I have found that my Truck that is only a 15″ box truck is now too large to park in my own drive way. How was I informed? A ticket for $25. The code enforcement officer said that she would be back to give me a ticket a day until I parked it somewhere else.

Now, I understand that living in a neighborhood we have a responsibility to our neighbors to keep our property in a suitable way so that their property value doesn’t go down or go too high. Unless they love paying more in taxes. Like it or not we are in this together and need to live in harmony together. I have made revisions to my drive way so that the truck can park on the side of the house to be less in sight, but I am still susceptible to receiving tickets just for having it on my property.

My proposal is to change one word in the ordinance from “property” to “street”. If this happens then people have the ability to park their own vehicles on their own property and protect people from getting tickets from parking a midsize truck like mine on their own property. I don’t think we will see an increase of semis as they don’t have the room to park it on their own property.

When this proposal was written, the purpose was to keep people from parking Really big Trucks on their property like a Semi or a large Crane. My next door neighbor’s RV is larger and heavier than my mid-sized truck! Yet, they can park it in their drive way because it is not defined as a truck? It’s called discrimination. Just because one vehicle looks different and goes by a different name. You get the point. He should be able to park it on his property, just as I should be able to park my vehical on my property. My neighbor on the other side of me works for the cable company and from time to time parks their cable truck out front or the back. It never bothers me. But by the definition of the ordinance he is also breaking the ordinance.

More over, with the cost of gas these days, it is waste of our resources to have someone go out of their way to drop off their mid sized truck at one location and then drive another smaller car from that location to their home every day that they use it. In a world where we are becoming more aware of our influence to the climate change by way of more CO2 in the air, we need to think of ways to use our vehicles less and less and to stop putting our vain pride in front of our generations sustainability on this planet.

Please email me if you agree and would like the change or if you think the ordinance doesn’t need to be changed than a reason behind your opinion would be appreciated. I am not in this just for me but to compromise with all to make this ordinance the way it needs to be for all to live in harmony.

Here is the ordinance in full:SEC. 28-81.     PARKING OF VEHICLES WITH CAPACITY OF MORE THAN ONE AND ONE-HALF TONS IN CERTAIN DISTRICTS.

(a)     A person commits an offense if he stops, parks, or stands a truck-tractor, road tractor, semitrailer, bus, trailer, or truck with a rated capacity in excess of one and one-half tons, according to the manufacturer’s classification, upon property within a residential area.  This subsection shall not apply to the parking or standing of a vehicle for the purpose of expeditiously loading or unloading passengers, freight, or merchandise.

(b)     A person commits an offense if he stops, parks, or stands a motor home, house trailer, or recreational vehicle with a rated capacity in excess of one and one-half tons, according to the manufacturer’s classification, upon any public right-of-way abutting a residential area.  This subsection shall not apply to the parking or standing of a vehicle for the purpose of expeditiously loading or unloading passengers or property.

(c)     In this section, RESIDENTIAL AREA means any block face containing a single family, duplex, or multi-family dwelling. (Ord. Nos. 14584; 19455; 20269)
richard@goographics.net or post a comment here.

Hello world!

I want to thank everyone who pushed me to do this and the people that believed in me.

My wife, my mom, my maker.

Billy Gibbons, Hector Esquival, and his brother Charlie, Cheryl Ashcraft and Julie Hernandez, Jeff Creely, Diana Frazier, Ryan Brown, Victor San Miquel, Representative Anchia, and so many more.