In fact, this year the folks at Earthday.org are running a special initiative, inspired by all of those pledge and goal-tracking websites. They’re calling it ‘A Billion Acts of Green‘, and the idea is to get a billion people to pledge to doing something – anything – out of their normal daily routine that is good for the environment.

That could be going around and picking up trash, turning off the water when you’re brushing your teeth, or planting a tree.  Some companies have even gone so far as to pledge to plant a tree for every sale made on Earth Day, or to donate a portion of all sales made on Earth Day to a green charity.

So, they’ve haven’t quite made it.  They only have a little over 100 million pledges.  That’ll do for now, I guess.  You can either make your own pledge by clicking the button below, or you can browse the pledges made by others, and pledge the same thing – it’s the lazy man’s conservationism!

Whatever your motivation or energy levels, get involved this Earth Day.  The point of the Billion Acts of Green is not to get people changing the way they do things for one day – it’s to get people to pledge to change their behaviour slightly for the next year.  If 100 million people have already done it, then that will make quite a difference.

Well, here’s a little something you probably didn’t know about these gadgets:

Nearly all of them are manufactured using a substance called Coltan, or Columbite-tantalite.  It is used to make many small electronics components, most notably the batteries.  80% of the world’s Coltan comes from the war-torn region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), and I’m about to explain why you should do whatever you can to minimize your Coltan consumption.

Coltan – Just the Facts:

• Most of the world’s Coltan comes from the DRC, where the average wage is $10 a month, yet the price of Coltan can go as high as $650 a kilogram
• The Rwandan army, key instigators of the war in the Congo, made as much as $250 million selling Coltan in under 18 months, despite the fact that there is no Coltan in Rwanda
• Coltan and other minerals used in cell phone batteries are recyclable, yet tend to end up in landfills where they can poison groundwater, crops, livestock and local residents
• A recent UN report claimed that all parties involved in the war in the Congo have interests in Coltan mining, and derive a great deal of funding from its ‘systematic and extensive exploitation’ (source: http://www.cellular-news.com/coltan/)

In a nutshell, Coltan and other rare earth metals are the new blood diamonds.

There is a good chance that somebody was extorted, coerced or killed in order to get the minerals used to make your new iPhone. Profits from Coltan mining go directly to financing and equipping both sides in the conflict, extending it for years.  UN analysts have claimed that Coltan and oil exploitation are the main reasons that the war in the DRC continues to this day.

What’s worse is that the price of Coltan has recently slumped, leading to widespread unemployment, increased exploitation of local miners and a great deal less Coltan-derived money in circulation amongst the poorest people in the DRC. This means that miners have to work harder, for longer hours, in increasingly more dangerous war zones, to find enough Coltan to support their families.

The Alternative

It is very easy to recycle your old electronics. So easy, in fact, that there are a number of websites that will send you a free-post envelope for you to put your phone in, and then pay you cash directly into your bank account for your phone.  Unless it’s a relatively recent smart phone you won’t get much –$20 or so for a basic phone – but the point here isn’t really to make money.

What Happens to my Mobile?

• Most phones will be refurbished and re-sold.  This is the least carbon-intensive and inexpensive way to recycle phones and electronics, and reduces the amount of Coltan consumed worldwide
• If the phone is too old or damaged it can be dismantled and the rare earth metals used in its construction recycled, re-smelted and re-used.  This process is expensive, but carries a far lower cost in both carbon footprint and human suffering than mining and processing new Coltan.

Where Can I Send my Phone?

There are a number of companies who will send you a small amount of cash for your mobile, and recycle or re-use it.  Here are a few:

UK and Europe: http://www.envirofone.com

United States: http://www.recellular.com/

Canada: http://www.recyclemycell.ca/

If you’re interested in finding out more about Coltan exploitation, or find out how you can do your part to help alleviate the problem, here are some further reading resources:

• BBC News: Congo’s Coltan Rush
• Guns, Money and Cellphones
• Environmental and Social Impact of Cell Phone Batteries
• Coltan, Guerillas and Cellphones
• BBC News: Q&A on the Conflict in the DRC

In fact, with all the twists and turns on that track it’s actually quite a good simulation of real-world driving. You do more braking and turning than accelerating, and probably never reach the kinds of speeds you would on the average motorway.

The result? The Prius managed a respectable 17.2mpg – still far short of its advertised 50mpg. The BMW M3 (a high-performance racing car) did 19.4mpg.
Now, this isn’t the whole story by far.

An M3 is more carbon-intensive to produce than a Prius, but when you consider what goes into the making of a Prius battery alone, this difference is negligible considering that when you sell your M3 and buy a Prius, someone else just goes and buys your old M3.

More to the story

The message here is not that the Prius is inefficient. The message is that how you drive makes more difference than how much fuel your car uses as its baseline. If you are constantly accelerating and braking, instead of trying to keep as level a speed as possible, and you accelerate up hills, rev high when you take off, and drive in the wrong gear, you’re going to use more fuel regardless of what car you drive.

The sad truth is that most people have no idea how to drive economically, and so it doesn’t matter whether their car is powered by half-battery, half-fuel or a plutonium reactor.

Before we get onto which cars are really good for the environment, here are a few tips for driving more fuel efficiently:

• Always use the right gear.  If you have to put your foot down to slowly get the revs up, you’re using too much fuel.  Remember that the amount of fuel you’re using is directly proportional to how hard you’re pressing the accelerator.
• When approaching hills get your speed up as high as possible before the hill.  When you get to the hill keep your accelerator position constant.  You’ll lose a bit of speed, but use the minimum fuel.
• When going downhill put your car in gear (not in neutral) and take your foot off the accelerator.  Fuel consumption drops to zero. (Don’t do this with an automatic – you may damage the transmission)
• Keep a constant acceleration whenever possible.  If you’re one of those drivers who is constantly speeding up to close a gap in front, and then slowing down again creating one, you’re not only using as much as 30% more fuel, you’re contributing to ‘concertina effect’, which is the number one cause of traffic jams and there is surely a place already reserved for you in hell.

And if you Really Want to Save the Environment?

Buy diesel. Diesel cars are leaps and bounds more fuel efficient, and have far lower emissions, than their petrol counterparts.  The BMW Mini Cooper Diesel (blisteringly fast), the Smart Fortwo CDI (kind of cute) and the Volkswagen Polo Diesel (Car of the Year 2010) all have much greater fuel efficiency than the Prius, have lower emissions, are much less expensive, can be converted to biodiesel, have a far lower carbon footprint to manufacture – and are far nicer to look at and drive anyway.

The Verdict:

The Toyota Prius is a marketing gimmick and a guilt trip disguised as a green car (which some would say is an oxymoron anyway).  If you want your commute to have as little impact on the environment as possible, the Prius is one of the worst (and most expensive) ways to do it.

And the best way to save the environment?  Take the bus.

I’m not just talking about how much more it costs to buy recycled goods or more environmentally-friendly products. Companies that make use of ‘green marketing’ strategies know that we will pay a premium for anything in green packaging. That’s not the issue here, because that’s a choice we’ve all made already.

We know that our recycled toilet paper and our bio-degradable garbage bags are more expensive than their standard counterparts, but this is a small price to pay for negating the environmental impact usually associated with producing these types of products.

The question I want to ask is this: what is the cost of producing something like recycled toilet paper, and are we actually doing the environment some good by buying these kinds of goods? What are the costs involved, quantifiable or not, in producing recycled toilet paper? More importantly, what is the difference in carbon footprint between the two?

The costs of recycling paper can be summed up as follows:

• Collection costs
• Sorting costs
• Cleaning, pulping and processing costs (the recycling part)

It’s difficult to quantify these, but quickly hitting Wikipedia tells us that recycled paper is 40% more energy efficient than cutting down a tree and turning it into paper. We would imagine it costs slightly less than cutting down a tree and turning it into paper, but unfortunately there is very little data available on this because of the large variation in paper production processes.

Still, that sounds great. We’re saving 40% of the energy by buying recycled toilet paper, right?

Unfortunately it’s not that simple. Our recycled toilet paper was almost 150% more expensive – so we’re paying 150% more money to save 40% of the energy. That’s not really much of a trade off. Remember that earning that extra $1.50 comes with its own carbon footprint.

On closer inspection of the product I find even more bad news. It is made of recycled paper, but not all of it is. In fact, only about 30% of my particular toilet tissue was made of what is called ‘Post-Consumer Waste’, which is actual waste recovered from consumers. The rest? Well, that comes from trees.

I also learnt that the bleaching process is important, because chlorine bleaching by-products can be extremely harmful to the environment. Always look for Chlorine Free (TCF) or Processed Chlorine-Free (PCF) products.

Save the Trees

Of course, the main reason you’d buy recycled toilet paper is not because you’re saving energy. This is where the good news comes in. According to the NRDC (National Resources Defence Council) website, if every household in America replaced just one roll of toilet paper that is in their bathroom right now with recycled paper, America would have saved 423,900 trees.

The Verdict?

It’s not really difficult to see the rationale behind buying recycled toilet paper. The energy savings are minimal, and the price doesn’t really seem justified, until you factor in the massive environmental damage that using virgin paper causes. The number above – 423,900 trees – is a little bit abstract and hard to get your head around. What confuses the issue is that there are around 115 million households in the US.

To put it in simpler terms – if your household uses 5 toilet rolls per week, you’re looking at one whole tree saved by you alone, simply by changing to recycled toilet tissue. That will cost you around $75 extra a year, give or take a couple of bucks (or, a lot less than a tree costs).

Double that if you also replace your kitchen towels with recycled paper products, and you can save up to five trees a year by replacing napkins and facial tissues as well.

For your reference, here is a list of (American and International) recycled paper brands to look out for.

The implications may be much further reaching, however.  Radiation is dispersed easily by sea water, and there are risks that ocean currents may carry radiation particles around the world, affecting biospheres for thousands of miles in the direction of the currents.

The sample was taken only 300 metres out to sea from the Fukushima plant.  The plant’s reactor cooling system was irreversibly damaged by the massive earthquake that hit Japan on March 11, and since then radiation has been leaking into the surrounding environment in the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

Environmental Impact

Despite the high levels of radiation, the impact on the environment has been relatively minor up until now.  Workers are fighting to keep fresh water flowing into the reactors to prevent them from overheating.  However this means that the contaminated water must be pumped out, and this is slowly distributing radiation into the ocean and the local biosphere.

If the reactors are not brought under control, however, there are two major risks.  The first is that the reactors will catch fire, which will release huge quantities of airborne radiation into the atmosphere.  It is difficult to predict exactly what the outcome of this will be, but it is suspected that the radioactive fallout will extend over the Pacific Ocean and across most of East Asia and into Russia.  The world has never had to deal with radioactive fallout on this scale before, so it is unknown how local governments will deal with such a crisis, should it occur.

Alternatively a second danger is that the reactor rods will melt through the floor of the containment chamber, spilling radiation into the groundwater.  This could have severe environmental impact, damaging crops and hurting livestock for hundreds of years.  The effect would likely be limited to Japan and nearby waters, but it will undoubtedly spell the end of thousands of endangered species which live exclusively in the local biosphere.

Foreign Leaders Pledge Aid

US President Barack Obama reportedly telephoned Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, offering any and all possible aid in dealing with the nuclear crisis.  He has specialists and emergency workers on stand-by, should they be required and should Obama’s nuclear advisors consent to putting these workers in close range of the Fukushima plant.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy has also offered his aid, and the expertise of French nuclear experts – supposedly the most knowledgeable in the world at this point. Sarkozy is expected in Japan later this week to offer support, and his experts are standing by to offer advice on cooling and repairing the damaged reactors.

Is There Even More Damage to Containment Chambers?

In further news, there are also suspicions that there is damage to the containment chambers which prevent radiation from leaking from the reactors’ cores.  This was discovered on Tuesday when trace elements of Plutonium that matched the damage number-three reactor’s fuel rods were found in nearby soil.

As a precaution all human population has been evacuated from the area 20km around the damaged nuclear plant.  Foreign experts are divided over whether this is sufficient, and the Japanese nuclear agency has been accused of playing down the scope of the disaster at Fukushima and the immediate danger it poses.

Radiation exceeding legal limits has now been found in 11 different types of vegetables and milk in prefectures surrounding the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. This has caused a stoppage in the shipping of many different products.

Countries like the US have completely stopped the import of milk, milk products, fresh vegetables and fruit from four Japanese prefectures, though certain products could be allowed in if tests show them to be safe, according to a Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman.

If you have ever wondered just how the radiation gets into the food and water and what kinds of effects it can have keep reading:

Radiation particles from nuclear plant to food, water and milk

Radioactive particles escaping from the Fukushima Daiichi plant can bind to dust, then travel in the air for some time before landing on the ground. Once these particles, they could be cesium-137 and/or iodine-131, land on the farm produce or in the water they contaminate them. It’s as simple as that.

The problem with leafy vegetables is that they have big surface areas (think spinach and lettuce) meaning all the more space on which the radiation particles can land, according to Marko Moscovitch, professor at Georgetown’s Department of Radiation Medicine.

Now when it comes to milk, the particles aren’t getting into the milk itself per se, they are landing on the grass that is then eaten by the cows, thereby infecting them.

Is it dangerous to eat the food, milk and water?

According to experts there is not a lot known about how dangerous eating radiation-contaminated food really is. That said, the experts who have spoken with CNN have all said that the contamination levels reported so far appear to pose very little risk.

Dr. James Cox, an oncology professor at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said he thinks the radiation levels measured in the food and water in Japan pose a “nonexistent” immediate risk to humans, and “very low” long-term risk.

Spinach tested in a prefecture south of Fukushima showed radiation up to 27 times greater than the legal limit. Dr Sanjay Gupta, however, said a person “would have to eat the contaminated spinach from Japan every day for one year to get the same amount of radiation you would get from one chest CT (computed tomography) scan.”

A chest CT scan exposes the human body to about 7 millisieverts of radiation. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says that an average person gets about 3.1 millisieverts annually from natural sources, and an average American – thanks in part to medical diagnostic procedures and other man-made sources of radiation – gets about 6.2 millisieverts per year.

Even low radiation doses can damage or alter the DNA of irradiated cells, the NRC says. And the radiation protection community “conservatively assumes that any amount of radiation may pose some risk for causing cancer and hereditary effect, and that the risk is higher for higher radiation exposures,” the NRC says.

Still, Drs Gupta and Moscovitch say it’s very unlikely that the radiation reported at this time in Japanese food would pose a risk to the health of the people of Tokyo and other parts of Japan.

“(The radiation is) not negligible my any means. But impact on human health? Not likely,” Gupta said on the CNN program “In the Arena.”

The concern about infants and the contaminated water

On Tuesday night officials warned parents to not give their children tap water after tests shows there were 210 becquerels of radioactive iodine per kilogram of water – two times higher than the limit that the government considers safe for infants.

While that sounded dire for small children the amount of iodine detected was lower than the level considered safe for adults: 300 becquerels per kilogram. A liter of water weights 1 kilogram. A becquerel is a measurement of radioactive intensity by weight.

Experts say that the level set for infants is “very conservative,” but elevated radiation levels are considered a problem for small children, because their thyroid glands are more susceptible to radioactive iodine.

“Erring on the side of caution for the extreme degree for children makes good sense,” Cox said. For adults, “as far as the immediate health risk, something that would make people sick, I don’t think that would come close to it.”

Is there a way to get radiation out of water?

According to the World Health Organization it is possible that standard water treatment procedures – including coagulation, sedimentation and filtration – might remove “significant amounts of radioactive contaminants.”

It is also possible to mix the radiation contaminated water with clean water in an effort to dilute the radiation dangers.

Here are just a few things this energy meter will tell you:

1. Tell you the Voltage of your wires
2. The Current you’re drawing
3. The Wattage Power
4. How much money you are wasting

You can read the power in both Watts or Volt-Amps. The reason this is so important is very complicated and I wish I could explain it, but frankly it’s a little over my head and I don’t want to get it wrong. To learn more you can click on the Kill-a-Watt link here.

The Power Factor shows how out of skew the timing of your electrons are from where they should be. You have probably seen dozens of as seen on TV products claiming they can keep you from losing Reactive Power but those other ones don’t work nearly as well as this does.

For me, the selling point of the KAW is that you can simply plug in your TV or any other electrical appliance, turn it off and then click the little pink button. Now come back in an hour or two and you will be shocked at the readout you get. If nothing else does, this will get you thinking about how to save electricity in your home.

The Kill A Watt will show you exactly how much money, in dollars, you would have saved if you had unplugged your TV instead of just turning it off. For so long we have been hearing about how much energy is wasted from keeping appliances still plugged in even if turned off, but for the first time you are going to really see the dollars and cents and how quick they add up.

I heard someone use the analogy that it’s like a weight scale, it won’t lose the weight for you but it will show you where you are at so you can then take it from there. It’s basically simply a great way to start saving energy at home.

For those who are of the opinion that nature is the best place to be during those hot summer months, camping is their own personal slice of heaven. That is all fine and good but there are some pretty important tips for camping that should not been neglected, some of the most vital ones include cleaning up after yourself before you head home.

True vacationers should keep in mind that if we don’t tidy and take of everything before we leave the campground, it will soon be no longer good for that oh so special family trip. Camping safety is as important as anything else in life, so be sure to go prepared.

Here are some essential tips to clean up after your family trip to the woods:

• Recycle, recycle, recycle

Recycling is something that each and every one of us should be doing day to day. Whether it’s putting out your blue box (blue in Canada anyway) filled with your empty milk cartons, plastic containers, pop or beer bottles and newspapers, it’s a definite must when it comes to protecting the environment. If you are staying in a campground that doesn’t have recycling facilities or you plan to just pitch a tend in the middle of a forest, bring your empty recyclables with you to put out when you get home.

• Use biodegradable camp soaps

Chances are good that if you are going away for more than a night you will want to bathe and wash some of your pots and dishes. In this case, be sure that you choose biodegradable soaps and cleansers that will not harm the wilderness and the animals that call it home. Bathing in lakes and streams is something all people should experience, just make it an experience that is harmless to everyone and everything.

• Don’t leave any food on the ground

Leave no food behind. Or out in the open while you are there either for that matter. Many people, when camping in areas with bears and other wild animals who like to forage any food hoist the foodstuffs up into the trees. There is more than one reason for this.

1) Hungry animals will come calling and someone could get injured

2) People food is not healthy for animals and you don’t want to make any wildlife sick.

If they get fed once they will come back again and again, and when you have gone home and some other unsuspecting campers come by they could find themselves in a world of trouble with animals like bears, coyotes and even cougars.

• Leave no trace

Leave your campsite as clean, undisturbed and pristine as when you got there. Pick up everything you brought, even little food scraps that many tend to leave behind. Take everything!

• Proper campfire etiquette

MAKE SURE your campfire has been put out the right way. Just because it looks like it’s out doesn’t mean it is. Fire can live underground and pop out when least expected and start a forest fire. Oh, that reminds me, don’t smoke when camping unless you use a bowl or cup of water as an ashtray. Millions of fires have been caused by cigarettes.

(CNN) — Before I started working on the documentary “The Cove,” I assumed like many others that dolphins and orcas enjoyed living at Sea World and other marine parks. They always seemed to be smiling, jumping merrily around their tanks, eager to put on a show for human spectators.

However, when I met Ric O’Barry, my perspective changed. O’Barry was the man responsible for capturing Kathy — the original “Flipper” — from the wild and helping to create the language used to train dolphins to do tricks and flips. When Cathy died in his arms some years later, O’Barry realized the whole process of capturing and training dolphins was wrong.

He eventually co-wrote the book “Behind the Dolphin’s Smile,” where he explains that the smiles you see on these animals are not true reflections of happiness. In actuality, they hate to be enclosed in their holding tanks and are often not fed until it is time to perform their daily routines. During his time as a trainer, O’Barry learned dolphins had true feelings — they would get depressed, stressed out, even suicidal. In some parks, the trainers have to give the animals Maalox and Tagamet to treat the ulcers that develop from their stress.

The horrific tragedy that occurred last week at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida, has left me deeply shaken. My heart goes out to Dawn Brancheau and her family. Dawn lost her life doing the job that she loved, yet I — like O’Barry — believe that this job should no longer exist.

We know now that the whale involved in this accident has a well-documented history of violent behavior. SeaWorld knew of this history yet continued to exploit the animal and endanger the lives of its employees to put money in its pockets. If this isn’t a wake-up call, I don’t know what is.

At this very moment, a dozen boats in the town of Taiji, Japan, are heading out and rounding up hundreds of dolphins in a secluded cove. The fisherman will close off the cove with nets, and with the help of employees from various dolphinariums, they will try to find the next “Flipper” among their catch. The fishermen will snatch these beautiful creatures from their natural habitats, hoist them into nets, load them onto airplanes and drop them into a cement tank in the middle of Turkey, Korea or other nearby Asian countries.

In some ways, these animals are the lucky ones. These dolphins escaped the fate of many of their pod mates, who are brutally slaughtered with primitive harpoons — turning the cove into a scene straight from Melville’s “Moby Dick.” The water turns bright red with the blood of the slain. The fishermen then transport the meat — despite health concerns of mercury content in the dolphins’ systems — back to shore, where they sell it to local vendors.

It’s time for us to step up and make a difference in these animals’ lives. Until we make marine parks obsolete, dolphins and other sea mammals will continue to be senselessly captured and slaughtered.

We can no longer fall for the argument that SeaWorld shows “make us love the dolphins and want to understand and protect them” — this couldn’t be further from the truth. As I see it, we will only truly love and understand these animals when we can watch them running wild and genuinely smiling in their natural habitat.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Fisher Stevens (and me).

From CNN: The U.N.’s leading panel on climate change has apologized for misleading data published in a 2007 report that warned Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.

In a statement released Wednesday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said estimates relating to the rate of recession of the Himalayan glaciers in its Fourth Assessment Report were “poorly substantiated” adding that “well-established standards of evidence were not applied properly.”

Despite the admission, the IPCC reiterated its concern about the dangers melting glaciers present in a region that is home to more than one-sixth of the world’s population.

“Widespread mass losses from glaciers and reductions in snow cover over recent decades are projected to accelerate throughout the 21st century, reducing water availability, hydropower potential, and changing seasonality of flows in regions supplied by meltwater from major mountain ranges (e.g. Hindu-Kush, Himalaya, Andes)…”

“The chair, vice-chairs, and co-chairs of the IPCC,” the statement continued, “regrets the poor application of IPCC procedures…”

The apology follows a growing storm of controversy which initially forced the IPCC to concede that data relating to the Himalayan glacier melt included in the 2007 report was not backed up by sufficient scientific data.

Speaking at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi Wednesday, the IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri admitted errors had been made but said it was not an excuse to question the legitimacy of all global warming science.

“Theoretically, let’s say we slipped up on one number, I don’t think it takes anything away from the overwhelming scientific evidence of what’s happening with the climate of this earth,” he said, according to Agence France-Presse.

The controversy centers on a paragraph in Chapter 10 of the 2007 report which states: “Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world, and if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 square kilometers by the year 2035. ”

But is has recently emerged that the IPCC statement on Himalayan glaciers, which was based on information from a 2005 report by the World Wildlife Fund, was in turn gleaned from an article that appeared in the popular UK science journal, The New Scientist in June 1999.

In the article, “Flooded Out,” Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain speculates that the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming.

A glacier expert interviewed by CNN explained that the data published was flawed.

Michael Zemp from the World Glacier Monitoring Service said: “There are simply no observations available to make these sorts of statements.”

Zemp says that the figures quoted in the report are not possible because 500,000 square kilometers is estimated to be the total surface area of all mountain glaciers worldwide.

“The other thing is that the report says the glaciers are receding faster than anywhere else in the world. We simply do not have the glacier change measurements. The Himalayas are among those regions with the fewest available data,” Zemp said.

In defense of the IPCC, Zemp says “you can take any report and find a mistake in it but it’s up to the next IPCC report to correct it.”

Zemp also believes that the errors shouldn’t shake people’s belief in climate science.

“Glaciers are the best proof that climate change is happening. This is happening on a global scale. They can translate very small changes in the climate into a visible signal,” he said.