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”

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

As you should already know, I am a big fan of nature. The way that nature can reestablish itself is amazing. On a recent trip to Rose City, Michigan I took some video at the State Park along an old railway that has since become overgrown with trees and is really beautiful. Also on this video I have a couple of pictures from the State Park. Please enjoy! 

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As always art imitates life… or is it the other way around? They come so close any more that it is hard to tell which came first. While watching the new “Simpson’s Movie” I realized that sometimes the best way to get a point across is to exaggerate it. Before you read any further, I would like disclose that this article may include spoilers if you have not seen the movie yet. 

In the movie there were many warnings of destroying the planet. With one family and humor they were able to capture different angles of the debate on global warming. Lisa as always is trying to make the world a better place and represents the activists. She spends her time trying to educate people on the failure of their ways and how it will affect future generations. But that analogy is easy. In the movie Lisa warns Springfield if they don’t change their ways that they will destroy the environment. To this the residents just scoffed as if it did not concern them until Lisa stated that the water they had been drinking through the night was from their very polluted lake near by. This got their attention and helped them understand the immediacy of the problem. This is the exaggeration that I was speaking of. You cannot show someone an issue and have them respect it unless you can show them how it will directly affect them. 

Homer is the ignorant (not stupid) everyday person that does not really have a preference as to what is right or wrong. He just does what is easiest. This category is probably the category that contains most of the population. These people do not really have any idea that things they do can affect the environment and as so destroy their environment without knowing it. Burning plastic cups in a bonfire, throwing garbage out the window while driving, and making 40 copies of a power point presentation instead of e-mailing it to the attendees. In “The Simpson’s Movie” Homer was sitting in line to have his hazardous waste to be taken care of properly, when he hears that there is a doughnut sale, instead of waiting he does the easy thing… well according to him it is easier… he drives through many pylons and a fence and throws his trash into the lake. This dumping is the final straw for the lake and starts the beginning of the end for Springfield. The government traps Springfield in a bubble because they are “the most polluted city in the world.” They are locked in the bubble so that they cannot spread their filth to the rest of the planet. 

Don’t let your town get trapped in a bubble, find your own analogies and see how humor can help make a point of a very real problem go see the movie. 

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Ignorant Definition

While listening to the radio, I heard an interesting commercial DTE Energy stated that there is a renewable energy option available NOW! This new project is called Green Currents. I am always interested in saving the environment so continued to listen until they gave me a website to check out on my own. 

Thinking I was going to find the mother load of cool I hit a new stage of euphoria, I went to their new site. It starts out by forwarding you from the green currents page to a DTE product page. I read on. “GreenCurrents is a voluntary green options program that makes being green easy and affordable,” they say.

Excited about the prospect I read the explanation of what renewable energy is and how it will help lessen the impact on the environment. The site even comes with its ownCarbon Emissions Calculator. Still not exactly sure what this new “Renewable Energy Option” was I stumbled across the press release explaining their Green Currents project.

They explained that they are working on creating a wind farm and you can “play a significant role in shaping the future of sustainable energy in Michigan,” and all you need to do is pay DTE more money. 

It is undoubtedly going to cost millions of dollars to switch from the fossil fuel to renewable energy, but it also seems like a great business opportunity for DTE. When you move to a renewable resource DTE will not have to spend money on fuel to keep the generators going and because of this there should be a cost advantage that the early adopters will probably not see any kickback on. If you are interested and live in Michigan you can check it out here. 

I have contacted DTE and when I get a response I will bring you more information on the project and see how DTE plans to make the world a better place without making your wallet too light. 

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Green Currents
Carbon Emissions Calculator
Green Currents Press Release
DTE Residential Green Currents

There is more and more evidence being discovered every day that the overall temperature of the planet is increasing. Along with this, there is also a lot of well documented evidence that humans are responsible for this climate change. Granted, there could be other factors playing their part, but the overwhelming factor seems to be human-related. There are so many changes taking place because of the worldwide climate change, that there are new things being revealed all the time. One such thing I recently read about that hits close to home is how much water levels have dropped in the Great Lakes in recent years. This may not cause immediate concern for some people, but if you think about the fact that the Great Lakes are the world’s largest supply of freshwater, you might realize how big of an issue it is. There was an excellent article in August’s issue of Popular Science with some very alarming statistics regarding Earth’s state of freshwater. Clean, safe drinking water is not really in abundance on our planet. In fact, there are more than one billion people on Earth that do not currently have easy access to clean drinking water and that figure is expected to at least double in the next 40 years. Also, every year 1.7 million people die from issues related to water shortage problems. I hope everyone realizes what a limited resource fresh water is and we are able to do something to correct this issue before it is too late. 

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NYTimes.com 
Great Lakes 
Popular Science

As promised we have started our first steps in our inaugural Greener Thinking “Project Appleseed”. For this project we will be planting trees around Michigan taking pictures and posting them on our page. Even though the name is Appleseed, we may or may not plant apple trees. 

There is only one problem we have run into so far. Currently our tree dealer only sells the trees, we will be using, during certain times of the year. As a result we have placed our order for the trees to come on September 15th so expect another update around then. 

We are currently looking at planting small Pines. We eventually plan on planting apple trees as stated in the name of the project, but we would like to get more fully developed trees for that purpose. As for now these trees are a bit expensive so we will be looking around for deals. 

If you have any information on low cost two to three foot tall apple trees please feel free to contact us at GreenerThinking@GreenerThinking.com. We are extremely excited to begin this project and know you will enjoy reading about it.