A Million Trees A Million Dreams

Dear Parent,

Have you ever thought about how the earth is going to look in your childrens' generation? If you think about it, we are using the earth's natural resources at a much faster rate than they can handle, and it is only getting worse - here is an excerpt of what is happening according to the film The Eleventh Hour.

The film posits that in many ways, humanity has detached itself from nature, and grown accustomed to using without thinking to manage the earth's resources.

"The big rupture came in the 1800s, with the steam engine, the fossil fuel age, the industrial revolution," says Nathan Gardels, author, editor and Media Fellow of the World Economic Forum. "This was a great rupture from earlier forms and rhythms of life, which were generally regenerative. What happened after the industrial revolution was that nature was converted to a resource and that resource was seen as, essentially, eternally abundant. This led to the idea, and the conception behind progress which is: limitless growth, limitless expansion."

"Finding coal here, and little bit of oil there, and between that and the agricultural revolution, slowly our population crept up until we hit our fist one billion people," says Thom Hartmann, a best-selling author and progressive radio talk show host. "It didn't take us a hundred thousand years to go from one billion to two billion. Our second billion only took us a hundred and thirty years. We hit two billion people in 1930. Our third billion took only 30 years, 1960. It's amazing when you think about it. When John Kennedy was inaugurated, there were half as many people on the planet as there are today."

http://wip.warnerbros.com/11thhour/

Watch this and then Enter Site - it is fascinating and telling. There is a LOT of information on what is happening to the planet on a daily basis due to our overconsumption and disregard for the earth and its natural resources....but there is also great HOPE that we can turn this around and give back our time and resources to make the earth a better, cleaner, greener place to live.

How do I do this in my own little world? By sharing awareness with everyone I can, and by using natural, organic, biodegradable products in my home, through Shaklee, founded in 1956.

Shaklee is the first company in the world to obtain Climate Neutral certification and totally offset its C02 emissions, resulting in a net zero impact on the environment.

Look at their environmental milestones here -
http://www.shaklee.com/causes_achievements.shtml

and our connection with Wangari Maathai, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 2004.
http://www.shaklee.com/causes_miltrees.shtml

Dr. Wangari Maathai is one of the speakers in this film and she is an advocate for a greener earth. As it says on that site, "Inspired by the visionary works of 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Wangari Maathai and her Green Belt Movement, Shaklee began a tree-planting campaign across the United States and Canada in April 2006, encouraging the company's 750,000 Members and Distributors to organize tree-planting events at the grass roots level in their respective communities."

Try out the Carbon Calculator on the site to calculate your impact on the planet, and then check out her site - http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/a.php?id=148

One example of what Shaklee does is that every time someone buys a Global Ambassador pak from Shaklee, the company will plant 5 trees in that person's name, just to offset the carbon emissions of shipping your pak!

If you are interested in learning more, comment here or email me at laurelea2006@yahoo.com.

Thanks for caring! :)