Everyone is feeling the pinch of our dismal economy. One sector that will be severely impacted by the economic woes of most Americans is non-profit organizations.  Please consider a donation to one or some of those listed below. I’ve had the pleasure of working with them and have seen the successes of their courageous work. There are many more that aren’t included here; learn more about them and consider a donation to them as well.

1. More than 35 million Americans are “food insecure,” meaning they do not know where their next meal will come from. Your donation to Feeding America will help to bridge this gap. For every dollar you donate, you provide 16 bowls of food. With our serious economic decline, even more families are facing food shortages. Your critical support for this important program will help to close this gap and ensure that more people have meals this holiday season.

2. How does the gift of a goat, cow or natural resources management training translate into self-sufficiency for a family in Tanzania or a community in Nepal?  Heifer International is building sustainable communities worldwide by investing directly in them with long-term solutions.  Your gift will help the 60 year old organization continue its success in providing people with the tools for self-sufficiency, economic development and healthy well-being.

3. Give the gift of health. International Rescue Committee’s health basket contains medicine to prevent malaria and other diseases, materials for safe drinking water, baby delivery kits and training of local health workers.  IRC asks you to be part of their journey “from harm to home” by pledging a donation this holiday season to provide much-needed health supplies for communities around the world. If your donation is in someone’s honor, they will receive a card explaining the gift.

4. Give a monkey a home. No, you don’t need to have the monkey live with you but in a beautiful tract of rainforest in Costa Rica through the Natural Resources Defense Council’s “Revive a Rainforest” campaign. Your donation of $10 will plant a rainforest tree, thereby helping to revive the Turrialba region which previously had been rainforest but is now a barren, desolate area.

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Dubai, the land where everything is larger than life, has greenlighted plans to build the world’s largest solar panel manufacturing plant.  The photovoltaic production facility, Solar Technologies FZE, will be constructed at Dubai’s Technopark beginning next month and could begin producing cells as early as the last quarter of 2010.

Dilip Rahulan, the Chairman and CEO of Solar Technologies FZE said about solar energy, “The energy from sunlight striking the earth for 40 minutes is equivalent to the global energy consumption for a whole year.”  His company has plans to subsequently open plants in Mexico and Bulgaria after the Dubai facility is in operation.

It’s good to see Dubai hopping in full steam on renewable energy.  In addition to the abundant natural resources of fossil fuels throughout the Arabian peninsula, the area is also obviously one of the most sunny regions on the planet, making for a potentially easy transition from an economy based on the 20th Century power sources of oil & natural gas to 21st Century solar energy.

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Adding to the list of irreparable damages left for a legacy, President Bush and his cronies are now set to open 10,000 acres of public land in eastern Utah, to allow for drilling of natural gas and oil.  The Bureau of Land Management plans to auction off the tracts of land, which border three national parks, conveniently one month before Bush leaves office, making it difficult for the next administration to reverse the plan.  According to the New York Times:

National Park Service officials say that the decision to open lands close to Arches National Park and Dinosaur National Monument and within eyeshot of Canyonlands National Park was made without the kind of consultation that had previously been routine.

This is a lasting impression we can’t afford to let Bush leave behind.

takepart by supporting the National Parks Conservation Association and help protect these natural treasures.

Related:  Inconvenient Truth of the Day

Photo: Arches National Park, NYTimes

Diesel fuel, long regarded as the dirtier, noisier, lamer gasoline, has been reborn as a more environmentally friendly energy source, and is poised to be unleashed on the US car market.   The International Herald Tribune (the New York Times in disguise for non-Americans (don’t tell France)) reports that the new diesel emits 97 percent less sulfur than those old models, and can pass emission tests in all fifty states, even the really really hippie ones California and New York.

In the next couple years, automakers will once again attempt to turn Americans on to the diesel market.   Mercedes, Audi, VW, Nissan, Ford, GM, Jeep, and so forth and so on will be introducing new diesel vehicles to the market by 2010.

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Eight years of record droughts have left western states squabbling over who gets how much water from which rivers, but now California, Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico have signed a historic twenty-year plan to share their dwindling dams and rivers more or less equally.

The plan spells out how the states will cope with reductions during droughts, but it doesn’t go far enough for some conservationists, who question why there’s no effort to limit growth in a region where resources are already stretched so thin.

As John Weisheit, conservation director for Living Rivers, asked NPR’s Ted Robbins, “What’s wrong with saying, “I’m sorry, we ran out of water, you can’t live here?”

Learn more about how you can help conserve water here.