There are a lot of reasons why boating in Florida is a very unique experience and some of those reasons are hard to explain to someone who has never experienced it. With almost year round good weather and some of the most diverse communities you will find anywhere there really is something for everyone when it comes to Florida boating trips.

If you enjoy boating in general and camping occasionally then Florida certainly has a great deal to offer you. Having access to a boat means that you can fairly easily get to some of the best camping spots that the state has to offer, spots that other people might find it rather hard to reach with their land bound vehicles.

If you are going “boat camping” you have several distinct advantages over “regular campers” in that you do not have to lug tons of equipment around or get completely soaked to the skin in the event of a sudden downpour. You probably do not have to just rely on fire pits to cook your food (although food cooked over fire pits tastes delicious done right) and you do have better facilities than just a very undignified hole in the ground! In other words boat camping is simply a little more civilized than a traditional camping trip.

That fact does not mean however that you should simply stay on board your boat the whole time. There are so many great places to explore all over the state to do so would actually be a real shame in fact. From the beauty of some of the remoter parts of the Florida Keys, such as Indian Keys, to the beauty of the everglades with a little careful planning a boat camping trip in Florida may end up being one of the best boat trips you ever take.

The propose homeporting of additional naval vessels at Naval Station Mayport will be an economic boom for the local community.  It will add to the number of Navy employees permanently stationed in the area, and also increase the number of sailors rotating through between tours of duty.

As well as the benefits to be had from these military personnel spending their pay in the local community, it also offers additional opportunities for small businesses in the area.  Personnel who are permanently stationed in Mayport will be setting up households and needing contractor to service them.

Everyone from restaurant owners, to carpet cleaners to plumbers will all have a new pool of potential customers to draw from.  Each new customer is additional money in the pockets of all these service providers.

Local department an appliance stores will be consulted by people seeking to purchase new kit for their homes. Refrigerator reviews, dishwasher reviews and various other appliance stores will be sought out as sailors look to set up their families with quality kitchen appliances before deploying to sea.

Some people are concerned about possible environmental impact.  They should rest assured that any negatives will be minimal.  While an increased population – and accompanying development – will always change the natural habit slightly, these will be changes for the better.

Changes due to accidents or poor procedures are very unlikely.  The Navy is very aware of the risks introduced by the handling or large quantities of fuel oil and personnel are very well trained to ensure that is it handled correctly.  The Department of the Navy has been refueling ships for centuries, and has the experience and expertise to ensure it is done right.

Put aside any concerns you may have and welcome your new navy neighbors to town.  Take advantage of the financial opportunities they offer to your HVAC/refrigeration, plumbing or other local business.

When it comes to shopping for food we are all used to knowing exactly what is in the food, where it has come from and what the packaging is made from. This information is expected and we wouldn’t buy a food product without it but when it comes to clothing we are much more lax sometimes choosing to ignore where those shoes were made and by who.

Well, that could soon be a thing of the past if well known footwear brand Timberland have anything to do with it. They have been making steps for a number of years to calculate the enviromental cost of making a pair of boots starting from the cow the leather comes from right upto the delivery to the retailers. They plan to place a label in their shoes that will give information on the materials used, whether they are renewable, recycled or organic may be part of the details made available.

This is a breath of fresh air in the designer shoes world and a concept many hope will catch on. Only time will tell though if other design houses will take responsibility for the impact they have on the enviroment.

Most people wouldn’t expect that wine shipments would have any type of environmental impact.

Judging by the Occupy protests of late 2011, they do though because on the Occupy Oakland list of complaints was the use of the Oakland port to ship wine to China.  As it turns out, according to a friend who owns a wine of the month club, wine shipments to China aren’t measured in terms of cases or palates, but container ships, starting at around 35,000 bottles.

I wonder if that type of impact, including trucking the wine in from the growing wine regions in New York state and Virginia has been thought of at all?

Stan Cox’s latest essay takes on the ubiquity of air conditioning and its effects on the environment. Cox argues that the benefits of A.C. may not outweigh the long-term economic and environmental costs of keeping, say, North Carolinians chilled to an even 72 or 74 degrees during a sticky August afternoon. At the same time, I don’t know many people living in the south (or even up north in urban and semi-urban areas) who would be willing to sweat it out like Americans did circa 1865.

Cox argues that “stepping from a torrid parking lot into a 72-degree, air-conditioned lobby can provide a degree of instantaneous relief and physical pleasure experienced through few other legal means. But if the effect of air-conditioning on a hot human being can be compared to that of a pain-relieving drug, its economic impact is more like that of an anabolic steroid. And withdrawal, when it comes, will be painful, as some would have experienced from statins. We’re as committed to air-conditioning as we are to cars and computer chips. And a device lucky enough to become indispensable can demand and get whatever it needs to keep running. For the air-conditioner, that’s a lot.”

Perhaps a better alternative would be to find ways of creating and sustaining alternative energy sources to keep folks cool. If you look at the recent growth figures/Census data and look at the geographic shifts that are taking place in the US, people are moving from the northeastern US to the southeastern and southwestern US in record numbers.

These are places (like Tucson, Mesa, El Paso, Baton Rouge, Jackson, Atlanta, Tampa) that, dare I say, are somewhat inhospitable for several months out of the year due to their extreme heat and/or humidity. The policy questions that emerge from a debate about the future of air conditioning and the extent to which folks should/should not use it (or use it as frequently as they do) are quite complex, and definitely deserve our critical attention.

If we need a large navy (and we do), then the ships have to be parked somewhere, and there has to be facilities to repair and maintain the fleet. So the question is where should the fleet be based? Of course any suggestion will produce the NIMBYs (not in my back yard) out of the woodwork, and at the end of the day a decision has to be taken that will not please everybody.

In this day and age the environment is a popular cause and there are many groups who will fight against any development if it results in pollution of any sort. Perhaps the Navy Department would be advised to offset the inevitable pollution by doing work elsewhere to help the environment.

We recently celebrated 50 years of marriage and our children bought us a small area of woodland as one of our golden wedding anniversary gifts. Before you think I have gone off on a tangent, that area of woodland will in a small way offset some of the damage to the environment we as a couple have inadvertently done to the environment in our 50 years. If you like it our way of offsetting the damage we have caused. When I learnt of our anniversary gift I must admit to being rather surprised, but when you consider that a couple married for 50 years have probably fulfilled all their material needs, an area of trees was an inspired gift. 50 years is a golden wedding anniversary, not sure if there is a ‘wooden’ anniversary, but if there is consider woodland as a gift for someone you know.