An American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) report found that bills pending in the House and Senate would reduce U.S. oil demand by 5.3 million barrels a day in 2030!

For more information on the specifics of these bills and their effects click here.

The Live Earth concerts were a series of music concerts held in major cities around the world on July 7th to raise awareness about global warming. They took place in New York, Washington D.C., London, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai, Tokyo, Hamburg, and Sydney and included such high-profile music acts as Madonna, Smashing Pumpkins, Kelly Clarkston, Bon Jovi, Kanye West, Dave Matthews, Fall Out Boy, and The Police.

The event was largely credited to Al Gore, former Vice President and current Chair of the Alliance for Climate Protection that helped to coordinate the Live Earth concerts. He was the political and popular face of the concert event and so also became the brunt of most of the criticism surrounding it.

The promised TXIPL Cool Cities page has been completed! Click on the "Cool Cities Campaign" link on the left Contents bar to see the new page or simply click here.

The page includes information on what exactly the Cool Cities Campaign is, how you can get involved, other Cool Cities across the nation, and up-dated environmental news to keep you in the know.

Also: Check out the information on the up-coming central Texas Cool Cities training session!  The session is designed to help volunteers get involved in making their city a member of the Cool Cities campaign. Click here for more information.

Check out this press release from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) for full, reliable information on how you can update your air conditioning unit. The release gives examples of the best models for your climate type and information on how to reduce the costs of a new unit by taking advantage of federal tax incentives.

For the website version click here.

Save Money this Summer by Taking Advantage of Efficiency Incentives

We may be committed to reversing the greenhouse effect, but do we really know what it is we are committed to reversing? How do overactive carbon emissions actually contribute to the warming of the earth? How do gases trap heat? What do the predictions look like for the next fifty years of global warming?

Check out this page on the British Broadcasting News site to see interactive models of how the greenhouse effect and the carbon cycle really work as well as scientist's predictions for the next fifty years.

Al Gore was published in the New York Times Sunday Opinion section on July 1st. Read what he has to say about global warming, post-Kyoto agreements, and the Live Earth concerts coming up this Saturday.

Op-Ed Contributor (read here or click on this link for the original format)

Pop Culture Goes Green!

This Saturday July 7th, 2007, Live Earth concerts will occur around the globe as various and multiple pop stars combine their powers of mass media to achieve global awareness. Live Earth is a 24-hour, 7-continent concert series that will bring together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis.

Live Earth marks the beginning of a multi-year campaign led by the Alliance for Climate Protection (with former Vice President Gore as the Chair), The Climate Group and other international organizations to drive individuals, corporations and governments to take action to solve global warming.

Intro: **This summer I participated in an ambassadorial trip of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary students to our sister seminary in Lusaka, Zambia. We went to learn and to demonstrate our commitment to a reciprocal relationship between our seminaries. Included in our three-week African journey was a trip to Victoria Falls and a safari park in Botswana. It was then that I developed a deep connection to the physical landscape of Africa. **

Hello all!

Please, please, please take a few moments out of your day to check out this guide to little improvements you can make to render your home more energy efficient! This is a great, easy way to help the environment and this document even arranges the steps in order of Things You Can Do Today, This Week, This Month, and This Year - bite-sized bits.

There is a page on the British Broadcasting (BBC) website called "The Green Room" that keeps an updated running tab of environmental news.

I'm putting it as one of my home pages for the internet so when I open a new window I see the latest environmental headlines.

If anyone else would like to do the same or just check it out, click here.