Today is Blog Action Day and the inaugural theme is the environment, which kinda makes every day blog action day on urban sprout!

The idea behind Blog Action Day is that every blogger writes a post about a single topic on a specific day and then donates any money made from their blog (huh, there's money to be made blogging?) to an environmental charity.

So far close to 16,000 blogs have signed up and you'll find plenty of blogs that don't usually deal with environmental topics joining in the fray for a day. Taking a look at amatomu there are quite a few south african bloggers rising to the occasion.

Here's a random selection of SA posts:
no bad days, sa rocks, notes from underground, anja merret, web addiCT, gottaQuirk, flint.za, Afrigadget, whijo.net, the empire collective, Jenty's photo-a-day

And our contribution to blog action day? A wrap of some green news:

Al Gore shares the the Nobel Peace Prize with the IPCC. Chosen from a field of 181 candidates, Gore and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will split the $1.5m prize.

"I will be doing everything I can to try to understand how to best use the honour and recognition of this award as a way of speeding up the change in awareness and the change in urgency," Mr Gore said.

"It truly is a planetary emergency: we have to respond quickly. I'm going back to work right now. This is just the beginning." [guardian]

SAPPI stands accused of polluting the Thukela River. Several local residents and fishermen are fuming about the foul chemical smells, poor fishing, dirty water, foam and paper fibre residues that sometimes make their fishing tackle look like "washing lines".

Rudy van der Elst, a fish expert and director of the Durban-based Oceanographic Research Institute, said there had been serious complaints about the condition of the river for several months and the department of water affairs needed to clarify what action it was taking. [iol]

Riebeek Kasteel farmer summonsed to court over pesticide spraying. Neighbours of a large commercial farm have complained of skin irritations, breathing problems and dizziness which they believe is caused by chemical pesticides drifting up to 3km from Johan Vlok's farm. [cape times]

The Central Energy Fund launches international carbon trading business. Global trade in carbon credits is estimated at R200bn last year and CEF Carbon has been launched to capture a share of the carbon trading revenue for South Africa. Projects already in the pipeline could earn SA revenue of about R900m through the UN's clean development mechanism (CDM) process. [all africa]

Green scorpions called to investigate condom mess. A member of the public tipped the Green Scorpions off about the illegal dumping of around 100 000 condoms in Inanda, KZN. The dumped consignment was part of Choice condoms batch 4308/ZLX recalled by the Health Department. [all africa]