As horrible as the Covid pandemic was, there were several valuable lessons learned before the vaccine was produced. One of those lessons pertains to the environment. Because of quarantines, every person that possibly could worked remotely from home, and people shopped online, ordered online from restaurants, streamed entertainment. Environmentally, this was an amazing boon in many ways: traffic jams were non-existent, there were no rush hours, and most importantly, smog cleared. Carbon emission levels dropped to record lows.   And that should mean that employers and employees should figure out together how to continue to work remotely as much as possible. I know there are economic impacts of working remotely, but surely, to help remove a global threat of pollution and its deadly impact on our planet, some compromises could be made. Perhaps only commute to work one day a week. Imagine the energy and fuel that could be saved if buildings full of electric lights, computers, prin

The sun is setting on Earth Day as I write this.  I worked on Green Geezer memes all day, including one promoting Wild Lives by Lori Robinson and Janie Chodosh .  It's an excellent, informative book, sort of a mini-who's who of the wildlife conservation and preservation world.  Even the accolades on the back cover are by some of the most esteemed scientists and activists in the world, like Jane Goodall (primatologist and founder of the Jane Goodall Foundation), Vanessa Woods (Author of Bonobo Handshake) , Marc Bekoff, (author of The Animal's Agenda: Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Human Age) to name a few. Between those book covers is amazing stuff. There is a foreword by Carl Safina , and then twenty chapters of pure gold from Thomas Lovejoy, who coined "biological diversity", Beverly and Dereck Joubert , scientists and advocates for African Wildlife and Wilderness, Anne Dagg , giraffe advocate, Yossi Leshem , bird advocate and expert, Laurie Mark

   Painting by Vi Huntley-Franck I was digging up material for another article I was going to post today, but I stumbled across some troubling facts about another issue. A very serious one that needs to be addressed. That happens to be Superfund sites. These are, quite simply, any lands within the USA that are contaminated by various hazardous wastes. In 1980, the 96th Congress established the Superfund program to clean them up. Many of you are aware that these sites exist. Probably, some of you thought the necessary cleaning of these sites was either already completed or was being worked on. New Jersey, a state I called home for many years has more of these sites than any other state in the nation. It has 114 sites. The owners of the worst of the worse sources of pollution commonly had practices of dumping toxic chemicals on the ground, in rivers, in the ocean, out in the open. And more. Much more. Abandoned warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and processing plants utilized landfill

Deferring to the fact that the attention span of many Americans had dwindled to the length of a soundbite, (or in some cases dog whistle) I have begun sharing factoids, quotes, adages, and pleas about and for the environment and wildlife in memes I've created. I find that something really short – headline length – gets more attention and reaction than essays, no matter how concise and brief those essays are.  I've wanted to zero in on the most important issues on the planet – environment and wildlife – which, like most indigenous cultures, humans have cancelled out. People that deny these problems, and that we are sleepwalking into our own extinction, and taking the rest of nature with us, are the ones that can't see past their own selfish indulgence or lust for convenience, comfort, and out-of-control consumerism to consider the needs of other beings on this planet – or even vast numbers of their own species – for mere survival. I'm writing a horror novel about ani