Walking around all of the orange and brown is nice for a change. Happy Halloween. I hope that you had some fun, but we are now back to Greener Thinking. While watching TV this week something caught me by surprise. NBC is having a “Green Week.” 

What is this you ask? Well I can’t tell you, it’s a secret… Okay, I guess, since you asked nicely. “Green Week” is a week worth of shows that all have green content in them. They also have a website that gives you tips on how to keep green. “Green Week” is scheduled to start on November 4th 

Some of the notable shows on their main website are “Heroes” and “Days of our Lives.” In “Heroes” there is week of green at Claire’s school to help get the students involved in the environment. The clip of “Heroes” on the site shows Clare cheerleading to plant a tree. “Days of Our Lives” is having a “Green Wedding” and there are also some tips on having a “Green Wedding.” From the preview their idea of “Green” in “Days of Our Lives” means organic food or organic plants… yeah… But there are also some better points such as the rings used in the wedding have jewels that are mined in a way that doesn’t desecrate the land. 

Pretty exciting I know, but at least NBC has taken a small step. This is not going to be the solution, but it is nice to see that people are beginning to take an interest where it counts, companies with enough money to motivate change. The only problem is that going green is still a new concept for big companies and they are still a little rusty on the delivery. I will be holding my judgment until “Green Week” is completed, but until then, go ahead and check out the NBC site and write us with your thoughts. 

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NBC – Green 
Green is Universal

If you didn’t see this past week’s episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, you missed an episode dedicated to making a new “green” home for a Navajo family. This episode was full of innovative ways to conserve energy and help ensure that the family would never have to pay an electricity bill for this big, beautiful new home of theirs. They had solar panels outside that moved throughout the day to follow the sun across the sky. This way, they are always collecting the maximum amount of sunlight all day long. Also, they had a wind turbine on their property to produce even more electricity for them. After all was said and done, they were able to produce more energy than was needed to power the home and were even able to put the excess back into the power grid to help the rest of the community. They also gave the family all Energy Star appliances in their home and really pushed for viewers to follow their example and do the same in their own homes. They even had plants growing on the roof of the home, which I had never heard of before, but apparently it helps cool the home and keeps the roof last much longer. In addition to all of the environmentally friendly parts to the home, they also handed over the keys to a brand new Ford Escape Hybrid to the family (not to mention there were several Escape Hybrid commercials throughout the TV broadcast). They showed off the car to the family as well as the viewers and educated people about what the environmental advantages are of having a hybrid. The show itself was quite entertaining and educational, but most importantly, it was of great importance that a popular TV show made a point to put the word out there about ways that we can all help the environment and keep our energy costs down at the same time. This may prove to be of huge significance if other shows follow their lead and especially if people start to learn more about the techniques used in the show and want to do more of it to their own homes. 

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Extreme Makeover: Home Edition 
Ford Escape Hybrid

Drifting through the infinite darkness of space, you find that everything that you know, everything that you have ever touched, and millions of people you have not even met yet are combined, smaller than your thumb. Only 12 people in human existence, as we know it, have ever set foot on the moon. Some people have conspiracy theories, but the most important people, the astronauts themselves still have the memories.

The difficult thing is to capture this somehow. Well you are in luck “In The Shadow of the Moon” is a new movie that travels through the entirety of the missions to the moon through the eyes of the astronauts. This movie shows the difficulty and concern each of the astronauts faced while trying to accomplish the impossible. 

One of the biggest impacts the movie had on me was when each pilot bared their soul and explained what they saw from space. They said even today you can see how big cities have their own atmosphere of pollution and that we have to start thinking about saving our planet. One astronaut stated after his visit to the “beautiful desert” (the moon) that we live in the “Garden of Eden” (Earth) and that it is very delicate so we must be careful.

Another interesting note is that the movie claimed in its credits that it is carbon neutral. I am not really sure how I feel about being carbon neutral, but it definitely does not hurt. Plus the awareness that this could bring is huge; the only problem is that it does not seem to be at all of the big local theaters.

If you would like to hear the tales of great adventure and strife this should definitely be on your list of movies to see. An extremely well done movie that helps to disprove the conspiracy theory and gives you new insight into how difficult the moon missions really were. I will easily give this movie a 9 out of 10. 

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conspiracy theories 
“In The Shadow of the Moon”

We told you so!!! Oh sorry, I didn’t mean to say that out loud… Well here at Greener Thinking we try to make easy ways for people to help the environment (Greener Thinking) and also save you money (Greener Thinking). You see it is kind of a dual meaning. 

We are not the only people trying to accomplish this task. There is a group of people in California that are having some of the same ideas and they have come up with a single day solution. Well I guess it’s not a solution, but a way to raise awareness.LightsOutSF.org is trying to get everyone in San Francisco to turn their lights off for one hour and replace one light bulb in your house with a compact florescent one. With this one-hour they expect enough emissions to be saved that it would equate to more than 48,000 cars off of the road for one hour. That is a pretty big impact for not so much impact on each individual person.

The current date for the Lights Out San Francisco event is March 29th 2008. There is only one thing that I can see wrong with it, that it is only for San Francisco. Well I guess that is their intention. Maybe we could make the Lights Out Everyone Else event. Tell us what you think at greenerthinking@greenerthinking.com 

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LightsOutSF.org

The Barenaked Ladies are releasing a new DVD next month of a concert they held earlier this year, right here in Michigan. The DVD, entitled “Talk to the Hand: Live in Michigan” (named that way due to the shape of our great state), will also be a statement by the known environmental activist ‘Ladies’. The video will go on sale November 6th and will be packaged in recycled materials. Also, the tray the CD comes in is biodegradable and the ink on the packaging is made of vegetables. The Barenaked Ladies have long been known for their entertaining shows and their large, devoted fan base. They are also known for their environmental concerns and trying to do their part for the planet. The CD trays are made by a company called Paperfoam in the Netherlands and have also been used in CD’s for Universal Music Group. 

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Barenaked Ladies 
Google Map 
Paperfoam

Sometimes it is hard to think about hiking from your car in the back of the parking lot to the store. Well there really isn’t anything that you have not seen before really. But nature always surprises you. Even if you visit somewhere, it will change by the next time you visit. While traveling north in the lower peninsula of Michigan this weekend I thought it would be a great idea to bring you along again. This time in Fall. 

There is a trail that runs from New York through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan’s Lower and Upper Peninsula’s, Wisconsin and Minnesota to North Dakota. This trail is called theNorth Country Trail and from the looks of their web page hit counter currently at 14,474 it is relatively unknown. That would be bad in the current world of bigger better faster, but the cool thing about this trail is its beauty. I started my hike in Manistee, Michigan and trees, large hills, lakes and the Manistee River surrounded the trail. I highly recommend this trail for anyone who likes to view nature. 

If anyone has tried any of the other stretches of trail please e-mail us at GreenerThinking@GreenerThinking.com, we would love to hear your feedback with the other parts of the trail, and who knows maybe we will post your review. Below I have a video with a taste of the trail. For those of you who are GPS junkies, 
44° 21’ 56”
085° 50’ 20” 

Enjoy! 

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North Country Trail 

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Once upon a time there was a planet in a galaxy far far away. This planet had many residents through out its lifetime. Some of these residents were kind to the planet and it made the planet happy. These residents were called “birds” and “animals”. There were also some residents who had learned if you burned things it gave off energy. With this newly discovered power these residents expanded quickly and desecrated the forests with new “Civilizations.” These residents were called “humans” and the planet they called home was “Earth”… Wait, that’s us! Oh, wait, that’s us…

There has been quite a bit of new information coming out in the last couple of days about Greenland and its glaciers. Most of it does not look good. Some have even stated things that you really do not want to hear such as “It is too late already.” Not very promising when you are trying to fight a battle against pollution and at the same time trying to supply more energy to more and more people. Greenland’s glaciers have been receding at an increasing rate. Some of the predictions made by scientists for the next hundred or more years have already come about. 

But as always there is an opposite side of the story. In Britain a judge has taken it upon himself to judge fact from fiction with Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and predict the future. According to the British Times “This is distinctly alarmist and part of Mr Gore’s ”wake-up call“. It was common ground that if Greenland melted it would release this amount of water – “but only after, and over, millennia.”

So between these newfound facts New York and Florida will disappear in the next couple of years or a few millennia. Me personally I would rather try to stop it in the next couple of years and later find that it was unfounded instead of a few million people losing their homes. 

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Alternet
Times Online

“A mind is a terrible thing to waste”, says a famous quote from an ad campaign. But perhaps in Australia they say the wind is. Epuron, a renewable energy company, has announced their plans for one of the largest wind farms in the world in Broken Hill. The $2 billion project would supply up to 400,000 homes with power and generate 1000 megawatts of renewable energy. Australia’s government has recently set a target to make massive reductions in energy emissions by 2020, so this project comes at a perfect time to be a part of a solution to this major problem. They are beginning work on building the over 500 wind turbines and say that the station could be in partial production by late 2009. 

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Ad Council 
Epuron