7gen Bloc

One of our favorite doctors, Dr. Alan Greene, a practicing pediatrician, renowned authority on family health issues, and a partner to Seventh Generation, has done the close-to-impossible. He's spent the last three years eating entirely organic food -- sometimes going hungry for lack of options.

We posted Annie Leonard's Story of Stuff when it was first was released a year ago. I wanted to repost the short film to remind everyone about what "mind" we need to create the deep shift needed in both the economic and environmental realms to "reach" true sustainability. This "mind" (or way to think) is brought out most profoundly in this film.

And so the season of giving is upon us. It's a peculiar time of year to be environmentally aware. We're flooded with messages urging us to shop and spend, buy and give even as our better instincts caution us against consumerism in a time of growing ecological and financial pressure.

Our 2007 Corporate Consciousness Report has a $5,000 Contest for Ideas That Will Change the World.

If I've noticed one thing about the world at large these past few years, it's that reality has been quickly catching up to science fiction. In just a few quick blinks of history's eye, we've gone from whale oil lamps and horse-drawn wagons to invisibility cloaks and body parts grown in Petri dishes. Now comes perhaps the strangest development yet: Extinct species resurrected from the grave.

In a recent blog post, I opined about recent news that mixtures of popular pesticides are almost always fatal to tadpoles and other living things. That post ended with a plea for us all to stop using these chemical poisons. But if not pesticides...what?

I admit that I have always harbored the greatest affection for nature's less photogenic creatures. I've always thought that creepy crawlies were cooler, weirder, wilder. I see toads and salamanders, walking sticks and beetles, and all of their kin as magnificent works of natural art, the beautiful endgame of an ancient evolutionary chain that is as miraculous as it is mysterious.

My thanks to Seventh Generation for helping the dream behind Know Your Source materialize: to provide health practitioners of all stripes the source of what they use on and with clients to create a model inverse to greenwashing to acknowledge vendors who make efforts toward building a sustainable economy and wellness healthcare system

I had my "a-ha" moment with the iPhone on a trip to New York City last winter. Breezing down 95 into New York, traffic began to back up and eventually stall. With time on my hands, I looked to see if I missed any calls on my newly acquired gadget (thanks Santa!).

So...what's the big environmental news of the past two weeks? Don't ask me. I have absolutely no idea.