On a sunny saturday last month, about 20 people from the Long Island City Community Boathouse in NYC got together for a beach clean-up on South Brother Island.  The island is a nesting place for many birds and normally off limits to all humans.  That doesn’t stop trash from washing up onto its shores however.  So, the good folks at LICCB received permission for us to land our kayaks on the island to do the clean-up.  A power boat then met us to take our ‘haul’ back to a proper disposal site in the city.

It was a hot, sunny, wonderful last breath of summer picking up plastic bottles, of course your token condoms, and a surprising number of hula hoops!  After we were done, we paddled our kayaks further up the East River to visit another beach clean-up site, swim in the beautiful waters, and enjoy watermelon!  All told it was about 20 miles of kayaking, great company, and the best way I’ve found to feel good even while getting sun burned.  Remember to Recycle!

Lewis Gordon Pugh is kayaking across some of the most dangerous seas in the world to send a message.  His goal is to get as close to the North Pole as possible and help us hear this:

“Global warming is, I believe, a significantly greater threat to us, to our economies and to our way of life than any or all of recent issues that have headed national agendas: the credit crunch, global terrorism, the price of oil, healthcare, ageing populations etc. World leaders need to attack this threat head-on. This response will need to be as aggressive, and as global, as the world’s response to fascism and Nazism in the mid-twentieth century. And I think the best way to approach this problem is as though a war is being fought, a war whose outcome will determine the fate of all of us.

“Our response so far, such as it is, has been predicated on a ‘best case’ scenario - but any war that has a chance of being won is planned on a ‘worst case’ and it is the ‘worst case’ that I believe can be witnessed here in the Arctic. From what I have seen over the past week it is not a question of ‘whether’ but simply ‘when’ the Arctic will be free of summer sea ice. Those leaders who ignore the warming signs and fail to act with the vision, tenacity and determination that I believe is necessary imperil not only future generations, but the current one as well.”

Follow Lewis’ journey here.

A very cool campaign is underway in the UK, asking its citizens to “leave it off” for 24 hours. The goal is to show that cutting home energy use can have an impact on climate change. “It will measure consumption during the 24 hours against a “business as usual” forecast, and report back what savings have been achieved.”

Dr. Matt Prescott, founder of E-Day, says, “We have 70% of the public saying they accept climate change and wanting to do something about it; but almost everybody feels powerless, and I wanted to find a way of making people feel powerful and that they could change something.”

We couldn’t agree more, Matt. Thanks for a great idea! E-Day is February 27th.

Full article here.