Do you have a little eco-activist or want to educate your child about the environment. The Free Range Team and SustainLane, associates of the Meatrix and StoreWars, bring you this fun kid-friendly film short, Gorilla in the Greenhouse http://www.greengorilla.com/. There are interactive links too. And stay tuned - more episodes will follow.

Are you interested in brushing up on your knowledge of global warming this summer. A fun was to do so is to hit the Chicago museums. Here’s a list:

Cool Globes, Field Museum Campus, 1400 S. Lake Shore Dr. at Roosevelt Rd. Through Sep. 1. Free. http://www.coolglobes.com/chicago.php

’Nergy solar electric car, Adler Planetarium, 1300 S. Lake Shore Dr. at Roosevelt Rd. (312-922-7827). Admission, $8/adult. http://www.fieldmuseum.org/exhibits/envision_tempexhib.htm

Melting Ice - A Hot Topic, Field Museum (312-665-7683). Through Sep. 1. Admission, $12/adult. http://www.fieldmuseum.org/exhibits/envision_tempexhib.htm

Smart Home: Green + Wired, Museum of Science and Industry, 57th St. at Lake Shore Dr. (773-684-1414). Through Jan. 4. Admission, with exhibit entry, $22/adult. http://www.msichicago.org/whats-here/exhibits/smart-home/

The Museum of Science and Industry recently built a three-story state of the art green home on their campus down in Hyde Park.  A free preview night complete with food, drinks and prizes will be sponsored by TimeOut Chicago magazine on Thursday, June 26th from 6:30 - 8:30 pm.  Make sure you preregister for this event at: timeoutchicago.com/smarthome. See you there!

I wanted to pass along this story, Chemicals in Our Food, from Bill Moyer’s Journal about the story of Bisphenol A in our food and how several reporters uncovered the lack of testing and regulation at the EPA. This story is a great example of good journalism. Here’s a quote from the Moyer’s site about this story:

In a watchdog series for the MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL, a trio of reporters focused on Bisphenol A, a chemical contained in many plastics that is also found in 93% of human beings. The problem at issue? Congress ordered the federal government in 1996 to begin testing and regulating certain chemicals suspected of causing cancer and a host of developmental problems. Eleven years later, not a single compound has been put to that test.

Want to wear green? I don’t necessarily mean the color, but the concept. You can now and economically at Target. Target has a new certified organic cotton line by a designer named Rogan. It is important to support the use of organic cotton because conventional cotton uses six pounds of pesticides to produce one cotton t-shirt. Just think how many pounds of pesticides go into the growing of all of the cotton to make a pair of jeans. Other designers sell organic jeans for a hundred to a couple hundred bucks, but they are $39.99 at Target. Check out the line now and bring your organic cotton cloth shopping back to carry home your new threads.

As is often the case with complex issues, the devil is often in the details. This New York Times article, Industries Allied to Cap Carbon Differ in the Details, discusses a group of major industry leaders working to be proactive, but struggling to agree on how to make changes. They all agree that climate change is a major issue and that Carbon caps need to work, but they are struggling to work out the economics. This article notes that the US Senate will be debating a new climate change bill this week (see this AP article, Costs Drives Senate Debate).