by Sarah at ProgressiveKid

I live with two other people and five animals in a 1,400 square-foot house that includes my workplace. I know that compared to most of the world I live like a queen. I’m aware of this fact every day and I’m constantly grateful (except on really cranky days).

When children return to school this fall they will be exposed to the topic of climate change much more than ever before.

by Sarah at ProgressiveKid

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be
judged by the way its animals are treated.”

—Mahatma Gandhi

Most bugs in our homes are not harmful. Why kill them? Here are some good reasons not to:

1. If you want an empathetic kid, model empathy. Empathy is not selective. It is being able to see the life connection in all living things, not just the ones you think are cute.
2. If something is not harming you, then there is no reason to defend yourself against it.
3. Spiders are our friends—they catch many insects, including disease-carrying ones. An average spider will kill 2,000 insects per year. In fact, spiders are being used for pest control in some agriculture, such as organic cotton farming. David Richman, of the Department of Entomology at New Mexico State University, writes, “Spiders are numerous enough in agricultural fields (sometimes literally thousands or millions to the acre) that they serve to dampen insect numbers, often including pest species, because these are often the most common insects.” He estimates the global benefits of spiders and predatory insects at more than $100 billion per year. Most spiders—there are 50,000 species—are not poisonous or venomous to humans, and yet they get a bad rap and get blamed for bites they had nothing to do with, such as flea and bedbug bites. (Click this link to identify venomous and poisonous spiders.) At PK, we use the Spider Relocator to move venomous spiders safely to a better place.
4. We need bees. They are the primary pollinators in one-third of the world’s crops. The recent colony collapse disorder affecting European honeybees has raised human awareness of the need to protect bees, especially from pesticides. They don’t want to be in our homes any more than we want them to. (The Spider Relocator easily traps them so you can release them outdoors where they can do their important work.)
5. There are plenty of effective ways to keep many unwanted insects and spiders from annoying you and endangering you or your home that don’t involve killing them:
   • Install window and door screens.
   • Plug up access points.
   • Mosquitoes don’t like certain scents. Badger Balm Anti-Bug Balm smells good to us, but the little stingers don’t like it. Fresh mint also works.
   • Disrupt the scent trail for ants. Simply rub away the trail they’re following for about a yard’s length. Make sure to remove the source of their interest or they’ll be back.
   • If you have moths in your closet, once a year take all your clothes out and hang them in the sun for a day.
   • Remove sources of moisture in your walls that can attract termites. Without the moisture, they’re not interested.
   • Use a Spider Relocator to move trapped bees, flies, and the spiders you’d rather not have in your home to the outside.

Most important, don’t use chemical pesticides. Chemical pesticides cause widespread health problems. Many agrochemicals devastate human and animal populations, causing birth defects, cancer, brain and organ damage, and reproductive and immune disorders. They are perhaps at least partly responsible for the recent decline of bee populations.

by Sarah at ProgressiveKid

A woman I know lives with her family in a house that backs up against a forest. The forest is being clear cut, a not so infrequent occurrence in this part of the country. One day, while the woman was on a business call in the house, her nine-year-old son rounded up his two younger brothers, and the three of them marched out onto the logging road and stood in front of an oncoming logging truck. The truck driver managed to stop in time. At the children’s request, the driver wrote down on a piece of paper the name of the logging company.

Parenting in the Time of Climate Change

by Julie at ProgressiveKid

After decades of capitalist indoctrination by the pervasive persuasions of our modern media, we Americans have almost come to believe that we are what they say we are—consumers. We slog through the workweek and then seek community at the mall or superstore, where, instead of communing with others or with nature, we are confronted with only one option: to spend. So we spend the weekend spending, hoping to appease that hollow feeling with more stuff. Buying, our modern substitute for the gathering our ancestors did, provides a rush that resembles satisfaction. Yet that near-good feeling often drains away later, at home, away from the marketplace and unfulfilled promise of community—the connection to others that we were actually, if unconsciously, looking for.