It is so good to be back at Ataraxia after the hectic pace of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps training with Al Gore in Chicago. 

Today is Sunday and I just returned from the Coventry Farmer's Market. "Wooo hooo…we’ve been cited as New England’s BEST farmers’ market byYankeee Magazine AND selected as one of USA Today’s “Top 10 great places to shop at a farmers market!” reads their home page.

It is my favorite week, "Dog days" where I get to pet every breed of dog imaginable, big and small, old and young and visit with my friends at Sadie Mae Foundation. I have already posted pictures on Facebook. Some of my friends in the climate change movement have already seen them, and if you look back in the archives you will see that I have written about it before.

After doing the rounds at least twice, I was getting hungry. While walking between the many booths selling local, organic food masterpieces I noticed a glaring oversight. Trash bins filled with mixed trash and NO recycling receptacles. I headed straight to the market's administrative/souvenir table to suggest a change, and was given the impression that the Nathan Hale Homestead, on who's ground the event is held, was the problem. Well, I know the administration and staff of the homestead well so I marched up to their office and spoke with the site administrator, Bev York. Apparently, they have been trying to get the farmer's market people to do the right thing for years. This season, they started to do what they could themselves. "The Hale Homestead Youth program called The Young Friends of Hale are recycling cans and bottles starting the season of 2013" said Bev.

OK, I'm getting a bit angry now. Those who know me also know how far I will go to find the truth and make things right. I march back to the market's table. Apparently I got the wrong impression, they say. I pointed out their responsibility to do what is right. They blamed the company that handles their trash at the event. I pointed out that they could change trash companies. By now they were becoming angry at me? I walked away steaming and here I am with my metaphysical brick. I looked up Connecticut's recycling laws (apparently they didn't, and I am giving them the benefit of the doubt here). Not only are they not "doing the right thing", they are breaking the law in order to "not do the right thing. Here is the link: Recycling...It's the Law!

I still support my local farmers and craftspeople. I will continue to return to the market every Sunday. Next week I expect to see recycling receptacles provided by the market, not the homestead. If you generate the trash, it is your responsibility!!! If there are none, put your cans and bottles in the homestead's recepticles and hand over every other recyclable, but non-returnable, item to someone at the market's table. Tell them I sent you.

The planet is undergoing one of the largest changes in climate since the dinosaurs went extinct.

Climate change on pace to occur 10 times faster than any change recorded in past 65 million years, Stanford scientists say

Not only is the planet undergoing one of the largest climate changes in the past 65 million years, Stanford climate scientists Noah Diffenbaugh and Chris Field report that it's on pace to occur at a rate 10 times faster than any change in that period. Without intervention, this extreme pace could lead to a 5-6 degree Celsius spike in annual temperatures by the end of the century"

Carbon has a price.

Put a price on carbon pollution and make the polluters pay for the damage they are doing to our environment.

"We need to put a price on carbon to sharply diminish the amount of carbon pollution in our atmosphere and encourage innovation in sustainability. Carbon dioxide is one of several heat-trapping greenhouse gases emitted by humans. The scientific consensus is that human-induced greenhouse gas emissions are the primary cause of global warming, and that carbon dioxide is the most important of these gases. A carbon tax would be a cost effective way to hold the biggest polluters accountable for their actions, and we could use this tax to help the people impacted by the pollution the most - the poor. A number of countries have already implemented carbon taxes or energy taxes that are related to carbon content."

Climate Change with Bill Maher

Hilarious but not.

To the voters in Florida

You can use this website to tweet every denier in congress:

Call Out the Climate Change Deniers

My modified tweet was "Get with the program or get out of the way! Stop denying the science of #climate change. You are killing children!"

I was proud to see that New England, with the exception of NH, has NO climate deniers.

Implement Deepwater Horizon Lessons Learned

Tell Interior Secretary Jewell to Make Offshore Drilling Safety Her Top Priority

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, 47 million women will have access to birth control, well-woman exams, and other preventive health services without co-pays.

Take The Pledge: Obamacare Works

Raising Kids for a Resilient Future Part 1 of 3: Navigating the path ahead by Amanda Witman

Raising Kids for a Resilient Future Part 1 of 3: Navigating the path ahead by Amanda Witman

Hurl yourself into the abyss

This is an incredible story of Maha -- a youth social activist from Pakistan who, in her very young age, has achieved remarkable success by transforming her community's practices towards sustainability and collective thinking!

The Story of Young Girl Maha for Making Her Community Environment-Friendly!

A good article to show the severity of the problem but too pessimistic

Sustainability is destroying the Earth

He is not thinking local enough. Rain barrels, community power, neighborhood geothermal and solar, local trash to energy fuel-cell plants with multiple energy outputs and zero pollution, recycled cans replaced by local glass and pottery, cloth not paper, resource sharing, co-housing. I could go on and on. I am going to build one such community right here in Coventry. There will be a lot of pain involved but as a species we have suffered it before. There is no alternative.

To all the skeptics out there. Do we need to hit you with a brick?

The Difference Between Global Warming Skeptics And Normal People

Where is the burden of proof in the climate change issue? Well, let's ask every reputable group of scientists in the world AND my favorite British know-it-all.

“The ultimate result will be to take the raw data and spread it as wide as we can,” said Allyson Sosa, who moved to the UAE in January. “I find a lot of people who are in disbelief. They cannot believe it has come to this and no one has done enough about it.”

UAE ambassadors for the environment

For Mr Paul, one of the strongest indicators of the need for action is the melting of the Arctic ice cap, which has shrunk in size from six million square kilometres in 1979 to 3.5 million square kilometres in 2012.

The Inexplicable Universe: Unsolved Mysteries

The Inexplicable Universe: Unsolved Mysteries Course No. 1816 Neil deGrasse Tyson Professor Neil deGrasse Tyson Hayden PlanetariumPh.D., Columbia University

Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition

Conservative's mental functions illustrate why the world is still flat

Analyzing political conservatism as motivated social cognition integrates theories of personality (authoritarianism, dogmatism–intolerance of ambiguity), epistemic and existential needs (for closure,

regulatory focus, terror management), and ideological rationalization (social dominance, system justification). A meta-analysis (88 samples, 12 countries, 22,818 cases) confirms that several psychological

variables predict political conservatism: death anxiety (weighted mean r .50); system instability (.47);

dogmatism–intolerance of ambiguity (.34); openness to experience (–.32); uncertainty tolerance (–.27);

needs for order, structure, and closure (.26); integrative complexity (–.20); fear of threat and loss (.18);

and self-esteem (–.09). The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and justification

of inequality and is motivated by needs that vary situationally and dispositionally to manage uncertainty

and threat

The anti-GMO movement in the U.S. has achieved some preliminary victories in GMO food labeling but that's not all that needs to be done.

How Monsanto Can Be Defeated

It is no exaggeration to say that Monsanto has now become the most hated corporation in the world.

The United States Is Awash in Public Stupidity, and Critical Thought Is Under Assault

From celebrity culture to phony public intellectuals to shallow politicians -- there's an assault on rational thinking in this country.

The United States has degenerated into a social order that is awash in public stupidity and views critical thought as both a liability and a threat.

Riding the coattails of the fiscal cliff bargain, the 2008 Farm Bill—three months past its “renew by” date—got a nine-month extension shortly after New Year’s Day. The extension could have included funds to preserve programs that help rural America and rebuild a food and farming system around the challenges of the 21st century. Instead, the policy—concocted in backdoor fashion without any public input—might as well have been written by lobbyists from the crop insurance, finance and agrochemical industries.

Clueless about Food and Agriculture? Why Everyone has a Stake in the Farm Bill Fight

If this sounds disgusting to you then you have no idea how important water is to much of the world.

UNICEF wants to draw attention to the fact that 780 million people around the world don’t have access to clean drinking water. Around 125 million of them are children under the age of five.

Extracting drinking water from sweaty shirts