Kitchen Gardening During Global Warming

The earth is warming. It seems most scientists think humans are at least partly responsible. If the scientists are right, we should all work together to reduce how much CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere.

The major sources of human generated greenhouse gases are transportation, heating homes, and industries. If you seriously want to reduce how much humans are contributing to global warming, go for reductions in those big three CO2 sources. If you want to do all you can to reduce how much CO2 you are contributing, also do the smaller reductions, like planting a tree, using non gasoline powered garden tools, and not mowing the lawn so often.

Regardless of whether people are a significant cause of global warming, it seems certain that the earth has been warming and it may continue to warm.

As the earth warms food supplies may decrease because of drought and other factors relating to higher temperatures. Having a garden gives you a source of food that could fill in for shortages in the present system of supply. If food shortages happen, food prices would rise sharply. Food from the garden could become very practical for many people.

Having a food garden reduces the amount of CO2 put into the air because the food is not shipped and refrigerated. Gardening is good exercise and it is an enjoyable hobby. For me, gardening is insurance against a possible sharp increase in food prices caused by any of a number of possibilities - global warming, severe pandemic, war, plant diseases, or some unsuspected cause.

Gardening is already a risky venture. Late spring frost, droughts, plant diseases, insect pest... the list goes on for what can and often does goes wrong. Global warming may increase some of gardening's pitfalls. Worse droughts are predicted. There could be bigger storms and more fluctuations in temperature such as late spring frost, heatwaves, and early fall frost. So it seems prudent to adopt gardening practices that best enable your garden to thrive in spite of climate change.

As temperatures rise plants need more water. For more reliable crops, choose drought resistant plants. Examples are blackeyed peas, tepary beans, asparagus, okra, and tomato. Somewhat tolerant of drought are squash, cabbage, New Zealand spinach, and asparagus bean.

Growing quick maturing vegetable that can be planted early so they mature before the dryness of summer is another strategy. That is true of peas, spinach, and short season corn. Some vegetables do much better in the coolness of Fall. Vegetables I sometimes grow in the Fall include beets, carrots, cabbage, brussel sprouts, lettuce, and broccoli.

Deep soil holds water longer than a thin layer of soil. Adding another foot of topsoil adds significant drought tolerance if your topsoil is a foot or less thick now.

Grow a variety of vegetables. In a cool, wet year, tepary beans may die in clay soil but rutabaga will flourish. Unusual hot weather when fava beans are in flower will cause the flowers to abort but will not bother tomatoes. If bean beetles destroy your green beans, blackeyed peas will go unharmed. A late spring frost will not harm peas or spinach. Early frost in the fall cause little or no damage to kale, cabbage, brussel sprouts, and rutabaga.

You can reduce water usage by using drip irrigation instead of sprinklers. Adding straw mulch will keep the soil moist longer after watering. Applying water very early in the day reduces losses to evaporation.

A gardener is very concerned with how his food is produced and how the many factors of nature combine to enable food to be grown. That concern somehow makes food more appreciated and more enjoyed.

Gardening is an enjoyable and satisfying hobby that may become very practical.

Could Eco Friendly Clothing Help Reduce Global Warming?

In the recent release of The Worldwatch Institute's State of the World report, consumerism was called out as the main cause of the world's current environmental issues, from climate change to unsustainable depletion of natural resources. In other words, there is simply not enough to go around, and the demand for resources is going up exponentially compared to the Earth's population. This means not only are there more people to compete with for resources, but everyone is asking for more than their preceding generation. As it stands today, and since so many individuals are living far below their means, we would need one and one-third planets to meet our basic demands.

So who are the over-consuming offenders? It really boils down to about seven percent of the world's population (roughly 500 million people) who are responsible for greater then 50 percent of total global carbon dioxide emissions. On the other end, 50 percent of the world's population (three billion people) is only responsible for six percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.


At the top of the heap of over-consumers is North America, whose citizens consume twice as much in natural resources as the average European.

It has been well documented that carbon dioxide emissions are the major cause of global warming, as 72 percent of total emitted greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide, and the rate at which the world increases its carbon dioxide emissions is three percent annually. In 2005, the world-wide average of carbon dioxide emissions per capita was four tons annually. However, for North America the per-capita average was 20 tons. Most experts believe that by 2050, to avoid an environmental catastrophe, the world-wide average must get below two tons per capita, which also means that North Americans will have to reduce their emissions by far more than 50 percent to obtain a lower world-wide average. Since North Americans are the largest contributors; they also bear the greatest responsibility.

In order to understand what is causing greenhouse gas emissions, we can look at a breakdown of harmful emissions by sector. Isolating carbon dioxide emissions, we find that over 20 percent of total carbon dioxide emissions stems from Industrial processes - that is the manufacturing of goods for consumers. This contribution is larger than transportation (19.2 percent) or land use/biomass burning and residential/commercial uses combined (17.5 percent).


So it does matter from where we buy our goods, how much we buy and the buying decisions we make. If we continue to demand cheap, disposable goods, we are allowing ourselves to be part of the global warming problem. By saying yes to eco friendly clothing, organic produce and, low emission vehicles we are doing our part to help drive positive changes which in turn can help turn the tide on global warming.

The reality is, our planet has finite resources and a finite ability to absorb the pollution we create. If we do not get off this consumerism treadmill and soon, the effects of global warming will be far reaching and all encompassing and long lasting.

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