I’ve always been a big fan of making my own Halloween costumes, and I’m also a big procrastinator, so what better way to get your spooks on then cobbling together a last-minute eco-friendly costume?  Who needs all the plastic waste and boringness of store-bought costumes, when with a little ingenuity you can impress the  superhero skivvies off your Halloween date.  Gina also has some excellent costume ideas to dress for the New Depression.  So dig through your closet, your recycling bin, or a nearby thrift store, grab you canvas bag for candy and ring those doorbells!

1. Non-GMO Corn (pictured):  Borrow my idea from last year when I was an ear of corn!  Paint a strip of large-bubble wrap with non-toxic yellow paint, tape it around your torso, wear green pants and a green hoodie for the husk, and a blond wig for the silk.  Extra credit for keeping it organic with a non-GMO sign.

2. Christmas Tree:  I wish I had the pictures to share, but in college I borrowed my brother’s idea and went out as a Christmas Tree.  Real simple. Green shirt, brown pants, and a strand of energy-saving LED Christmas lights wrapped around your body.  Watch the crowd light up when you plug yourself in at the party!  I added a little extra flair and taped hand-drawn paper ornaments to my chest and a star to my forehead, but I leave the details up to you.

3. Planet Earth: 

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Oh, because one buzzkill wasn’t enough for you today, I figured that I’d go ahead and let you know that levels of methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide, rose sharply last year for the first time in a decade. And the best part, the absolute clincher, is that scientists have no idea why that happened.

There is considerably less methane than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Pre-industrial concentrations of methane were about 700 parts per billion — that is, for every billion molecules of air, there were only 700 of methane — but that level rose gradually to 1773 parts per billion by the late 20th century…The rise in 2007 was about 10 parts per billion over the course of a year, a real jump for such a short period of time.

Reuters reports that though methane levels have more than doubled since pre-industrial times (so let’s call that 125 years, give or take a decade), the levels had been pretty constant for some time. And they’re pretty well stumped about this new development.

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So we already know the dangers of Arctic ice melting due to global warming - more storms, higher water levels, polar bears sadly treading water. But yesterday a new study was released that gives us one more reason to worry. It turns out that underneath all that ice, Arctic soil contains extremely high levels of carbon dioxide that would be released into the environment if the ice melts, thus creating a cycle of more global warming, more ice melting, and so forth and so on. And it seems that this much carbon was not taken into account when doing studies and forecasting models of the effects of global warming.

The AFP reports “that the stock of organic carbon ‘is considerably higher than previously thought’ — 60 percent more than the previously estimated.” This accounts for approximately one sixth the entire amount of carbon in the atmosphere today. It’s not a stretch to imagine that if all that carbon were unloaded on the environment all at once, or even in a steady stream, the implications to the climate would be huge.

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A new government study has come out stating that Americans waste (are you ready for it?) twenty-seven percent of all food available for consumption, and ninety-eight percent of that gets put in our landfills. That math equates to a pound of food wasted every day for every American. It may not be biodiesel driving up the price of food around the world after all.

As the New York Times also makes note, “The study didn’t account for the explosion of ready-to-eat foods now available at supermarkets, from rotisserie chickens to sandwiches and soups,” which get thrown away if they’re not bought in a timely fashion. This information comes out as we plunge into a global food shortage which starting to be felt here at home.

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