Welcome to ECOLIFE FOUNDATION
Bridging the divide between conservation and humanitarian aid.
PHOTO: Conservation biologist and ECOLIFE FOUNDATION Executive Director Bill Toone with two very pleased stove recipients.
2008 FOCUS OUTREACH: FUEL EFFICIENT STOVES
Our mission is to implement sound conservation programs by addressing the root problem. That problem is the growing demand for Natural resources from a rapidly growing human population. It is our most basic drive, to provide for our children. For their health and safety and their dreams for the future.
Each month we will feature a current program and a small financial goal for that project. This will allow us to share with you more information about our work and to provide tools to you so that if you are so inspired, you will the ability to provide assistance to us. The World is not a loss for important projects – but rather looking for ways to accomplish them.
These are trying economic times – awful for those of us with something to lose and crushing for those with little more than dreams. Your gifts, no matter how small when matched with others can accomplish amazing things. To demonstrate this we are implementing some new technology – the chipin.
This month we would like to plant two hundred trees in Mexico and build ten fuel-efficient Patsari Stoves. This will cost us $1,500 . . . but all we need from you is $20 and a favor. You can copy the Sprout Widget below and use it on your own website – Facebook, Myspace or any other website where you are authorized to post your own material . . . then tell your friends you want to buy a stove. Every donation will refresh all the chipins no matter where they are posted.
Of course our big goal is to build thousands of stoves- so contribute what you can, but this month lets watch teamwork build healthier lives, safer homes, reduce carbon emissions and protect valuable forests and critical watersheds. . . and do it with a team of friends.
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November 13, 2008
From climate change and science education to energy and the space program, President Obama will be faced with a host of pressing issues in science, medicine and technology when he takes office in January. The choices he makes – and the actions he takes – will affect all of us, immediately and far into the future, in ways both obvious and unforeseen.
Which problems should he tackle first? What is the top priority? What is most important? We asked local scientists, doctors, teachers and thinkers for their ideas and insights. Here's what they said:
– Scott LaFee
Ask first: Can we afford it?
Barack Obama has received the message loud and clear from the electorate: “It's the economy, stupid.”
Yes, underlying each and every issue facing the new administration are science and technology, but one layer deeper lies the issue of “How will we afford it?”
If there is one aspect of the current economic crisis that we all seem to understand, it is the peril of credit, the problem associated with consumption of resources borrowed against the future.
We need to live within our means. We need a true assessment of our accounts, proper distribution of wealth, and the debts we establish now for our children to pay later. We often hear that doing the correct thing, the environmentally sustainable thing simply “does not pencil out” or “we cannot afford to do it that way.”
In fact, they are correct. If it does not pencil out, we most likely cannot afford to do it at all.
The new president should immediately replace the Office of Environmental Quality with the Office of Sustainability as an entity within the executive branch. This new office should have representatives from the Council of Economic Advisers, Office of Management and Budget, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Office of the United States Trade Representatives.
The current occupant of the White House developed a Cabinet-level position, the Secretary of Homeland Security, in answer to new realities recognized after the attacks of 9/11.
Our prodigal approach to resources has revealed a similar and even more substantial threat.
The clear mandate from the Oval Office through this “sustainability czar” to all other executive branch entities must be that we need to operate within our resources, natural and financial. Commerce, energy, transportation, treasury, agriculture, defense – they all focus on functions which derive value from natural resources that we are plundering without replenishment.
The new chief executive needs to bring into the room somebody who asks: “And how are we going to pay for that?”
The new president's policies (and ultimately those of the United Nations) must address basic human needs. The first three levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs provides an excellent model for setting priorities that will allow us to live in a richer, healthier and safer world.
Physiological needs like breathing clean air and access to clean water and healthy food lie at the very foundation of our global demands. Issues of our climate and air and water are fundamental to all people and must be apolitical.
There are those who would prefer not to accept our responsibility for climate change. I would remind them of only one thing: Take the conservative route.
If we are not a pivotal player in climate change, but take steps to be sure we are not, the only penalty will be a cleaner environment.
If we are a pivotal cause and choose to do nothing, the consequences of our denial could be catastrophic.
More offshore drilling is the pacifier that blocks our route to energy independence. The single greatest source of energy is not petroleum, coal or natural gas, it is the sun, one of very few resources that is not likely to disappear because we make use of it.
The words conservation and conservative share the same roots. The conservative – safe – approach is to protect ourselves from harm. This ultimately is not a choice. It must pencil out.
Our space program has taught the world a lesson we too often ignore. John F. Kennedy said we would put a man in space. He set a deadline. He was told it was impossible. This amazing program has shown us that nothing is impossible.
We must learn to live more sustainably on this planet. We need only the leadership and the will to get there. We have to turn the focus, the power, the intellect and the resources of the science of space exploration on solving the issues of living on this spaceship, the planet Earth.
Security of body, family and health can best be achieved in a healthy environment. Focusing research on disease prevention and treatment is essential and not a resource to be limited to a privileged few. Science must be given the freedom to dream and pursue answers in a fact-based world. Stem cell research is becoming less and less of an issue as we discover the ability of other cell lines to serve much the same purpose.
While it is important for this cutting edge science to continue, it is in our own enlightened self-interest to raise the level of basic health among all people to reduce the global health burden as well as some of the tensions brought on by our lifestyle when so much of the globe lives in abject poverty.
Love and a sense of belonging and a sound fact-based education system form the basis of a civilized society. It is only from here that we can begin to care for others, to think in terms of society and friends in addition to self.
By addressing the above areas effectively we will reduce tension among ourselves and other countries. It will reduce the ultimate sources of the anger that leads to unreasoned and unforgivable violence and terrorism.
Bill Toone
Director, ECOLIFE Foundation
PHILOSOPHY
Through outreach and education we help communities restore sustainable balance with local natural resources, increasing quality of life for people depending on those ecosystems. LEARN MORE >>
"Conservation requires more than saving endangered habitats and species — it requires improving human lives.
The challenge ahead of us is to save a future for ourselves, and for our children."
Bill Toone
Conservation Biologist
