Sierra Club has created a petition urging the United States Forest Service to stop the building of The Mountain Valley Pipeline, which is set to carry high-pressure fracked gas across the Appalachian Trail, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the Jefferson National Forest.

"From explosions to landslides, to slashing through our wild forests and ruining back country hikes, this pipeline could bring unprecedented changes to our Appalachian wildlands."

The pipeline developer has failed to show that the proposed pipeline cannot be built on non-Forest Service lands.

"A private company cannot exploit our public lands just because it is cheaper or easier than another pipeline route."



Sierra Club is an environmental preservation organization founded in 1892. Their mission is a successful transition to a resource-efficient clean energy economy that better serves people and nature, promoting healthy ecosystems and communities, fighting for clean air and water etc.

Join their fight to stop this pipeline by signing and sharing the petition: Protect the Appalachian Trail from the Mountain Valley Pipeline

There is also a petition on Care2: Save The Iconic Appalachian Trail. Stop the Mountain Valley Pipeline!

Please sign and share.


"These lands allow people to enjoy the great outdoors and sustain our way of life. They are a haven for wildlife and people and provide us with clean drinking water, healthy air, and endless recreation opportunities."

For more information on Sierra Club and their work you can visit their official website and follow them on social media:

Ecosia is a social business that was founded by Christian Kroll, Ecosia's CEO. Christian studied business administration in Nuremberg and decided to travel the world for some inspiration on a business model with a positive social impact. While staying in Argentina he learned a lot about reforestation projects in the Atlantic Rainforest in Argentina and Brazil and also read Thomas L. Friedman’s book “Hot, Flat and Crowded”. That has taught him about the connection between globalization and climate change and how planting new trees could actually neutralize CO2 emissions. That is how he came up with the idea of a search engine that helped finance planting and restoration projects. Ecosia.org was born in 2009 and the search engine that helps plant trees has launched in December of that year.

"We want to create a world where the environment no longer needs protecting."


"We invest in efforts that will pay off, grow and self­sustain in the long­term – both in the company, and in the world. We want to play a part in humanity’s ability to happily coexist with the earth, and we consider this in everything we do."

So, what can we do to help?

1. Set Ecosia as your default search engine.

2. Spread the word about this search engine to family, friends and colleagues.

3. You can visit this page or contact them directly if you are interested in using offline informational materials.

Here is one PDF file you can use: http://documents.ecosia.org/369423/8948583

4. Also, you can present it at your school, university, work place, choir, environmental group, gym etc and ask if people might be interested in setting it up as the company's or organization's default search engine.

"Let's say you search with Ecosia three times a day for a year. That would mean 1095 search requests a year. Since we plant a new tree for every 56 searches on average, you alone could finance 19.5 real trees every year. Now imagine that you persuade 500 people, for example in your office, to start using Ecosia and contributing to the tree planting effort. That would mean we could plant 9750 actual trees in a year. What if you could convince an organization of 5000 members to install Ecosia as their default search engine? That would be 97,500 trees planted in a year. All totally financed by searches. And now imagine a university with 15,000 students. If they were to all the switch to Ecosia you could finance the planting of 292,500 trees in just one year!"

Ecosia releases financial reports every month and tree planting receipts. You can check it out here:

Financial Reports & Tree Planting Receipts

What about CO2 emission?

By planting trees with its revenue from search ads, Ecosia automatically neutralizes its CO2 emissions. The industry standard for search engines is estimated to be about 0.2 grams of CO2 emission per search. One grown acacia planted in Burkina Faso can take up to 50 kilograms of CO2 out of the atmosphere in a lifetime. Ecosia earns an average of 0.5 cents per search at the moment. The average cost of planting a new tree is 28 cents, so roughly 56 searches plant a new tree.

Besides that, they offset their emissions with a Gold-Standard project in Madagascar run by their partner myclimate.

On the 22nd April was the annual Earth Day, an event created to promote environmental protection. Earth Day started in 1970. This year, an important agreement called "Paris Agreement" was up for signing and 171 countries signed it. The Paris Agreement is an important step towards helping the whole world deal with the issues that we face because of climate change.

What can we do in our everyday lives that can help our planet?

I think when you start changing something, it's best to start small and work your way up to bigger things. I have read about some tips we all can start implementing in our lives that will in the long run affect the environment in a better way.

1. Save Water

Using unnecessary amount of water is one of the main things that affect our environment. Simplest thing where you can start saving water is when brushing your teeth or washing the dishes. The water shouldn't run all the time. Make that everyday routine work with the water turned off as much as possible. Another thing to have in mind is to check if there are any water leaks in the house, which can be a source of water waste. It's more economical to use the washing machine when you have a full load of clothes than less. Turning off the water supply of the washing machine when not in use is also a good thing that saves water. When watering your lawn, don't use more water than it's necessary. Also, installing water-saving devices on the faucets and toilets is a good way to save water.

2. Use Less Electricity

Changing light bulbs from standard ones to the fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) will use 2/3 less energy. Look out for the ENERGY STAR products when buying appliances. They meet EPA and U.S. Department of Energy guidelines for energy efficiency. Turn off lights, TV's, computers when you are not in the room and when you are not using them.

3. Use Paper Wisely

When buying notebooks/printing paper/toilet paper look out for the ones that have the eco stamp. Like the FSC stamp. Check them out: Forest Stewardship Council

4. Plant Trees 

We all know that without trees there would be no life on the planet. Trees also help filter pollution from the air. A good thing to do is research what trees would be most beneficial to plant in the area where you live.

5. Don't Use Plastic Bags

You can use a cloth bag when shopping. Plastic is non-degradable and in many cases when it gets out there it can be fatal for various animal species. They can choke on them or get tangled in them.



There are many more tips and ways to help the environment, but i think this is a good starting point. Fact is the climate is changing in what seems a fast paste and we should really start doing our part to help protect our planet, cause you know, it's the only one we have and can live on.

Do you have any other advice? What do you do to protect the environment? Feel free to share, the more we learn and start doing the better. :)


A Beautiful Lie 2.0 (subtitulado) 30 SECONDS TO MARS from Producciones Matt on Vimeo.

Greenpeace launched 2012 a campaign called "Save The Arctic" with the goal to spread awareness of the problems the Arctic and its habitants are facing. The Arctic faces threats from oil drilling, seismic blasting, industrial fishing and climate change. It is warming up at twice the rate of the rest of the planet. Experts warn that polar bears could disappear completely from the Arctic in the next 100 years. Luckily, we can prevent this. With the help of over 3 million people the campaign helped force one of the world’s most powerful oil companies to leave the Arctic and moved the Obama Administration to close the door to Arctic oil drilling for the next two years. The next step is banning oil drilling forever.