Dear readers,

The copy below from a fellow blogger makes for cold reading. I thought it best to copy and past with his blog address and take the time to thank him, and you, for taking time to read my ramblings…still no pictures but I am working on that! You know me…steam, pen and paper whilst getting into the computer age.

Great to see a plug for the remarkable charity CoolEarth.org, but the rate of removal of the rainforest is enormously faster than you say. . .

It’s going at the rate of a football pitch a second.

In the five seconds it takes you to read this sentence, an area of rainforest the size of five football pitches has been burned or cut down – that’s 5000 square metres every second. Put another way, an area of tropical rainforest the size of Greater London (1500 km2) is lost from South America, Africa and Asia every three days. That’s equivalent to one small country – say Wales (20,000 km2) – every six weeks.

Even more reason to support CoolEarth.org.

Keep up the admirable blog, Green Ghost
Richard, http:theroughguidetowestafrica.blogspot.com

As our thoughts turn to a holiday break, be it at home or abroad, travelling by car, bus, train or aeroplane you may worry about your carbon footprint, well look no further. Visit www.travelcare.co.uk where you, the traveller, can make a contribution to the renewable energy and reforestation projects around the world. Go to the picture on the left hand side of the screen with caption carbon offset to see how much to donate to the co-operative banks charity that invests in overseas projects such as reforestation of areas in Uganda. There is another way of help and that is by using the Co-operative Bank Think credit card and the bank with contribute to the purchase of a piece of Brazilian rainforest under the watchful eye of Cool Earth. What is frightening is that every 24hours 100 acres of rainforest is cleared for Soya or palm oil plantations as these are quick profit cash crops. The soil is so thin that the plantations are only productive for five years after which the area is abandoned as scrubland. By donating an extra £35GBP half an acre can be saved from deforestation. Put another way, for every 100 acres of rain forest cut down there is enough CO2 released equal to eight million people travelling from London to New York. So get those cheque books out and visit www.coolearth.org

The other day I was asked about natural condoms which took me back a few years…no don’t be rude. My thoughts went to an archaeological dig I was on in Wales as a teenager when we came across a submerged jar containing animal skins stitched in the shape of a long straight sock. Little did we know at the time we had found a jar of natural condoms. So my mind rambling I started to research if this product was still available and, guess what, it is. The lambskin condom called ‘Fourex’ and another Kling-tite both use the thin intestine of the animals to provide the sheath. Whilst the natural skin condom does prevent the larger sized sperm escaping, it will not protect against the smaller HIV/AIDS cells so one may like to use the condoms the Vegan society approves, made by a company going by the name of Condomi who use natural latex and no plastic. Even the government in Brazil are getting into the production of natural latex condoms as a way of protecting their rain forests. The idea is that trees are tapped for the natural latex in the Chico Mendes reserve as a cash crop rather than allowing trees to be cut down for the ever increasing need for hard wood. The government estimate that Brazil imports 100 million condoms into the country so the latex will provide a good income for the farmers and locally produced condoms. This, in turn, will cut down on air or sea miles thus reducing the countries carbon footprint. Unfortunately, there is no natural product based female condoms I have been able to find. However, the Femidom is a product made from polyurethane that is safe to use and if disposed of in a tissue and then the bin it is a suitable alternative.