Our world cannot continue to live off of fossil fuels. Whatever your political stance, we all agree that there’s a limit to how much Mother Earth can provide. The United Kingdom recognizes this very real fact and has big plans; plans to convert every home to wind-power by 2020.

Even wind-industry proponents seem skeptical but the government is determined. It’s plan detail that every home will be powered by off-shore wind farms in a little more than a decade. Currently, the UK powers only about 2% of the country’s electricity via wind power.

So how can they pick up the pace…and pretty quickly? Buy purchasing more wind turbines. The “big picture” plan is to procure more turbines, likely American made, since favorable exchange rates should work to their advantage.

This is positive news for an entire country who realizes drastic plans need to be prioritized to change our reliance on fossil fuels and make our lands cleaner.

The banning of smoking worldwide is quite an interesting story. It started off small but spread like the cancer it creates. At first, it may have appeared as an infringement on our civil rights. Say what you will about smoking, but it is ultimately your choice. But as the world became a cleaner place to live in, where second hand smoke didn’t jeopardize others lives, we began to breathe a collective, clean sigh of relief.

Croatia was one the most recent places to ban smoking in public areas. The law also restricts any smoking-related media campaigns. 13,000 people die of smoking-related deaths in Croatia each year. These political steps may prevent unneeded deaths and increase overall health.

Look at Italy: a ban enforced in Italy in 2005 has led to a sharp fall in heart attack rates, by 11 percent, researchers said.

Of course, encouraging an entire nation to quit smoking - or at least cut down - is no easy task. These countries have embedded views on smoking and old habits die hard, literally.

Mate Vrkic, 49, owner of a small cafe in an open air market in Zagreb, is concerned:

“Business is already pretty thin. At least half of my guests smoke and if I lose another 20 regulars, I’ll stop making any profit. I have never smoked so when everyone lights up in here, the smoke is killing me. But for business, it will be a disaster.”

So just as an individual struggles to quit smoking, we as a world nation have our struggles with it as well. But its positive news to see a healthy choice being enacted around the world, in obvious and more challenging locations such as Croatia. It shows that we can all be on the “same page,” at least as far as the dangers of smoking.

“It’s the magic of dogs,” says Karen Shirk, who runs a nonprofit called 4 Paws for Ability which has placed 319 service dogs with people with disabilities since 1998.

One group receiving considerable help and love from our canine companions are children who suffer from autism.

“I’m sure there’s some sort of scientific explanation,” she says. “But I call it magic.”

Shirk started the organization when her own handicap left her bound to a wheelchair. When she went looking for a dog that could contribute to her life in both a practical and psychological way, she was met with resistance. Trained dogs would be of no service to her, she was told.

That’s when she began her own plan, where people like her could reap the many, many benefits of man’s (and woman’s!) best friend.

“We don’t discriminate against anyone who has a need,” she says.

Many agencies often have age restrictions, so Shirk specializes in providing dogs to children with a variety of issues, including autism.

“I knew autistic children connected to animals,” she remembers. “I knew that service dogs would be able to help.”

Of the 300+ dogs that Shirk has placed, nearly 70 percent have been partnered with autistic children.

“The biggest problem that’s faced by families that have children with autism is isolation. They actually quit going out because they can’t keep their child safe,” says Shirk. “For our children with autism, their dog might be the only friend that they have.”

People help out in all sorts of ways, some of which are distinctly original. JR Hildebrandt is one of those out of the box thinkers, that’s for sure. Mr. Hildenbrandt took carving pumpkins to a whole new level when he made his into a boat. That’s right, a 760-pound pumpkin boat, with a chair, a small heater and room for himself.

He is making an 8-day trek to raise money for a charity that provides special needs children with memorable trips. What better way to raise money for this cause than having a memorable trip oneself?

“We’ve sent children to Disney Land or Disney World. We’ve sent them to NASCAR races, we’ve even sent one little girl to Jamaica on a cruise and I wanted to take it a step further,” he said.

Believe it or not, Mr. Hildenbrandt has an extended history of pumpkin mobility. He won Wisconsin’s Nekoosa Great Pumpkin Race where he took around 10 minutes to paddle a 300-yard course.

He does admit the smell can be a troublesome element to his longer treks.

Lesson learned? We often think of charity in very linear ways. What’s something unusual you can do today to help your fellow human? Or animal? Or environment?

Not your average Cinderella!

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Anne Jennings of Libertyville High School ’s is a Queen, both inside and out. And her schoolmates feel the same way. She dances down the halls and hugs her friends excitedly. Her school voted her Homecoming Queen and since then, she has been dancing on air.

“Once you mess around with nature – if you remove something from the food chain – that space isn’t reserved for it to come back,” says Mr. Mark Kurlansky, author of “The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell. “It’s very difficult to reverse these things because the absence has had all sorts of repercussions in nature.”

James Cervino, a professor of marine biology at Pace University in New York City, recognizes this fact as well. In College Point, Queens, in New York City, Professor Cervino displays his idea to help reverse the trend of damage we’re doing and have done to the waters of New York City.

He calls it “the electric oyster reef project.” He’s installed a series of spiral-shaped bands of metal in the shallow water. At low tide, they jut from the water like giant strands of DNA. The end result will be water that is habitable for oysters, at least for a certain proximity.

Oysters filter the water. That’s their job. When they are removed from an ecosystem because of pollution or over harvesting, the water becomes polluted and dangerous. Cervino’s idea is a way to reintroduce nature’s natural janitors into damaged water systems. So far, it’s proven to be a success but there’s a long, long way to go.

“If we recreated oyster reefs, we’d clear the water.” say Cervino.

It’s good news for all of us when ingenious people like Professor Cervino dream up ways to clear up our waters.

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Gillian Howell is involved in the entire whisky-making process

Some other noted names to appear on Management Today’s “35 women under 35″ list include well-known designer Stella McCartney.

She has the right sort of personality, and she takes on a lot of responsibility for someone who is only 26 Stephen Davies, Managing Director

Interestingly, Gillian had never planned on the life of a whisky distiller but liked the size of the company. She wanted to genuinely feel connected to a smaller company and not feel like another “cog in the wheel.”

“This is a lot more hands on,” she explained. “There are loads of different aspects to the job, it’s really varied.”

Does she have to drink the stuff in order to keep her job? Luckily not! At her level, a simple smell of the stuff is enough to tell her what’s needed.

Whenever women enter a predominantly male arena, its always positive news…especially when she may be considered one of the best distillers in the last century!

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As our financial structure continues to meltdown on a global scale, one local sheriff tries to make a difference in his county. Cook County, Illinois, Sheriff Thomas J. Dart has made it public - he refuses to boot innocent renters from foreclosed homes. He has explained his point in detail to the media: innocent people shouldn’t have to pay the price for landlords’ and mortgage companies’ problems.

He has gone so far as to state he is suspending foreclosure evictions in Cook County, which includes the city of Chicago.

“Many good tenants are suffering because building owners have fallen behind on their mortgage payments, he told CNN’s American Morning. “These poor people are seeing everything they own put out on the street. They’ve paid their bills, paid them on time. Here we are with a battering ram at the front door going to throw them out. It’s gotten insane.”

“When you’re blindly sending me out to houses where I’m coming across innocent tenant after innocent tenant, I can’t keep doing this and have a good conscience about it.”

To demonstrate the enormity of the foreclosure problem, look at these facts:

In 1999, Cook County had 12,935 mortgage foreclosure cases; in 2006, 18,916 cases were filed, and last year, 32,269 were filed. This year’s total is expected to exceed 43,000.

The financial straits we’re in often seem overwhelming, as if there is nothing the average person can do to fight these financial giants, desperate to escape a crisis they seem to have created. When our civil servants are looking out for innocent people during trying financial times, this is positive news amidst a worrisome time.

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Anytime we learn about our ancestry, our history, it’s positive news. As we see more and more young adults unaware of some of the most basic facts involving their history, we see a culture growing away from itself, not truly understanding its own roots.

The cavemen were a little different…okay, a lot. Recent evidence suggests that cavemen…cavepeople actually, took tens of thousands of years to complete the artwork in their caves. Neanderthals tend to elicit a sense of being slow…but this gives a whole new meaning to their overall speed.

According to research done by a group of archaeologists who have been studying cave paintings in Europe, many of these paintings apparently were done in a long-term, collaborative fashion, with generation upon generation adding their signature piece. The length of time for some of these collaborative pieces? 20,000 years. That’s right. 20,000 years. It stretches the mind to imagine this kind of artistic long-term connectivity, especially when people today may become frustrated when a website doesn’t load quickly enough!