Greetings to all you beautiful Sadhana-ites on this bright blue and green globe!

First things first, I want to congratulate and express my awe and gratitude to the Rozin family for taking the Sadhana Forest model to Haiti! This recently devastated and long-suffering nation could truly use the kind of sustainable and restorative project that Auroville has had the benefit of hosting for the past several years. In a country where nearly all forests have been decimated up to this point in time, Sadhana Forest can truly begin to make a difference in helping to restore this lost ecosystem and assist Haitians in building self-sustaining communities that are also adaptable to the effects of global warming. And, of course, much love goes to all the long-termers and other volunteers who have traveled to Haiti to get the project up and running!

Now…so much of the attention today surrounding the global heating problem focuses on carbon emissions, carbon footprints, political wrangling amongst the nations of the globe, the ”failure” of Copenhagen, errors in the Nobel Peace Prize-winning reports of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, etc, etc, etc..All of these issues are,of course, important and hugely relevant to the climate disruption issue. But what often gets lost in the shuffle of this enormously complex and far-reaching pickle humanity and its fellow creatures find itself in is the on the ground adaptations necessary for the common folks across the globe.

There is nothing that we can do alone, as an individual human being, to combat the effects of locked-in and future greenhouse gas warming (according to a recent letter in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Geoscience, Earth is locked into an average worldwide temperature increase of about 1°C or a bit less over pre-Industrial Revolution levels even in the incredibly unlikely event we were to cut our carbon emissions to zero immediately. And, this level is based off models used in the U.N. IPCC climate change report of a few years ago, which did not take into effect possible positive feedbacks such as Arctic methane release). We must help and assist one another, to further extend our bonds of empathy to fellow humans and to all of Earth itself, so that we can thrive and lead infinitely more peaceful lives. A worldwide consciousness is beginning to awaken with regards to the pollution and other forms of environmental destruction that humans have wrought. Just look at the activist groups who attended the UNFCCC negotiations in Copenhagen. Or the 350.org day of action-designed to draw awareness to a goal of achieving 350 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere- in October 2009, which Sadhana Forest participated in by way of an awesome morning of TDEF tree planting!

This is by no means a lightning-quick shift and much of humanity and other creatures on the planet will, and already are, facing long-lasting effects of climate change. But we can and must share our hearts and knowledge with those throughout the world, especially those in the Global South who have to adapt and mitigate to global heating’s effects, despite causing very little of the greenhouse gas problem. I am going to highlight some sweet projects that focus on bettering the lives, in a clean and non-polluting manner, of folks who may not otherwise have the resources to do so much:

America does have some awesome people, despite some thought to the contrary

A group of young students at Harvard University in Boston, USA, have developed a soccer ball that stores the motion energy produced while kicking the ball to use as electricity later! And all you have to do is kick the ball around! According to the above article, 15 minutes of use is enough to light a bulb for 3 hours!

Man goes back to roots, literally plants roots. OF A MILLION TREES

This Ethiopian-born, American citizen went back to his country of birth and discovered his home had been severely deforested. A crusade to mega-plant trees was launched and 1 million trees on 11,000 acres were planted.

I’ll trade you several fuel-efficient wood stoves for a solar system

A retired professor from Brandeis University in the United States encourages villagers in Tanzania to purchase very fuel-efficient, cleaner burning stoves (ala Sadhana’s rocket stoves!) and receive a small solar system that charges a battery for lights, cell phones, and other household items. Cool! And the amount of trees, carbon dioxide, and soot/”black carbon”is reduced. Win Win Win!