Doing good for the earth the other 364 days a year, too

Unless you've managed to somehow escape (or ignore) the recent onslaught of everything green advertising, you know that today is Earth Day.

Many people will do the symbolic ride the bike instead of drive thing today, or maybe bring their own reusable bag to the supermarket. All these small things are great steps in the right direction. Trying to be greener myself, I ride my bike when convenient, use eco-friendly cleaning products, and recently switched to Con Edison's green power alternative for my home--all painless things that I can do year-round.

Greenpeace has a blog today that sums up both the benefits and problems of how we act on Earth Day (and don't act the rest of the time) better than I can on only one cup of tea this morning. Taking the idea that a picture is worth a thousand words, Environmental Defense developed a hard-hitting video ad a few months back to highlight the consequences of not acting on global warming.

Historically there was a bit of tension between the environmental and relief communities. If, for example, you as an aid agency are trying to provide help to displaced people in the forests of the Congo, your top concern would not be whether or not they were killing gorillas for food. On the other hand, if you were a conservationist working for a wildlife group, your primary concern would have been the protection of the gorillas. You can see the dilemma, especially when both groups are right! The past few years have seen a positive change and with the mainstreaming of green thinking the relief and human rights community is increasingly working with the environmental groups, recognizing the link between environmental justice and human rights.

And, finally, here's my favorite piece for this Earth Day from treehugger.com: how to green up your sex life.

Happy Earth Day! ;)