Tag Archives | Environment

Green Fatigue: Who Cares About Global Warming?

By on February 28, 2013 in News 27

Dry river bed in CaliforniaApparently people are fed up with the challenges of stopping or at least slowing the global warming trend. Sam Masters reports that worldwide concerns about climate change have dropped dramatically since 2009, in the Independent:

Public concern about environmental issues including climate change has slumped to a 20-year low since the financial crisis, a global study reveals.

Fewer people now consider issues such as CO2 emissions, air and water pollution, animal species loss, and water shortages to be “very serious” than at any time in the last two decades, according to the poll of 22,812 people in 22 countries including Britain and the US.

Despite years of studies showing the impact of global warming on the planet, only 49 per cent of people now consider climate change a very serious issue – far fewer than at the beginning of the worldwide financial crisis in 2009.

Worries about climate change first dropped in industrialised nations but they have now also fallen in developing economies including Brazil and China, according to the survey by GlobeScan Radar.

… Read the rest

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Study Suggests Psychiatric Drugs In Water Supply Are Altering Fish Behavior

By on February 23, 2013 in News 6

Anxiety medications flushed down toilets in our pee causing heightened appetite and boldness in fish. Soon the global water supply will be a giant soup of antidepressants. Via the Los Angeles Times:

Pharmaceuticals may be affecting the behavior of wild fish as [the drugs] filters out of our bodies, through our toilets and into treated wastewater that is released into natural water sources, according to a new study.

The findings, which examined the effect of trace levels of the anti-anxiety medication oxazepam on wild European perch, have implications for the survival rates of fish and the delicate food web in aquatic ecosystems.

Scientists have known for years that such “micropollutants” end up in natural waterways like streams and rivers after being flushed through human systems into wastewater. But current research hasn’t really looked at whether psychotherapeutic drugs can affect the behavior of aquatic creatures.

The researchers’ findings could well reflect reality in waters worldwide: Their low concentrations in the lab were roughly equivalent to levels found in wild fish in the River Fyris in Sweden.

… Read the rest

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The Principles Of Uncivilisation

By on February 4, 2013 in News 40

From the writers and activists network Dark Mountain Project, the manifesto of Uncivilisation, a response to the alleged coming unraveling of modern society:

We reject the faith which holds that the converging crises of our times can be reduced to a set of ‘problems’ in need of technological or political ‘solutions’.

We believe that the roots of these crises lie in the stories we have been telling ourselves. We intend to challenge the stories which underpin our civilisation: the myth of progress, the myth of human centrality, and the myth of our separation from ‘nature’. These myths are more dangerous for the fact that we have forgotten they are myths.

We will reassert the role of storytelling as more than mere entertainment. It is through stories that we weave reality.

Humans are not the point and purpose of the planet. Our art will begin with the attempt to step outside the human bubble.

… Read the rest

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Selling Fresh Air In Cans

By on February 3, 2013 in News 4

The smog in China is now so bad that an entrepreneur is successfully selling cans of fresh air. He says he’s not doing it to make a profit, but just wait until he’s created an insatiable demand. For those of you who thing it’s ridiculous, what would your grandparents have thought about your regularly buying small bottles of water for $5? Maureen Chowdhury reports for NPR:

In response to the growing concern over China’s air pollution, a theatrical Chinese entrepreneur is selling cans of fresh air.

Chen Guangbiao, a multimillionaire, philanthropist and environmentalist, is selling each can for 5 yuan (80 cents) according to…

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Atmospheric Oxygen Levels Are Dropping Faster Than Atmospheric Carbon Levels Are Rising

By on January 27, 2013 in News 32

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c7/Earth6391.jpg/128px-Earth6391.jpgForget rising temperatures and bigger storms, this is the big problem that neither side of the mainstream debate over environmental destruction is talking about.  Peter Tatchell reported for the Guardian back in 2008:

The rise in carbon dioxide emissions is big news. It is prompting action to reverse global warming. But little or no attention is being paid to the long-term fall in oxygen concentrations and its knock-on effects.

Compared to prehistoric times, the level of oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere has declined by over a third and in polluted cities the decline may be more than 50%. This change in the makeup of the air we breathe has potentially serious implications for our health. Indeed, it could ultimately threaten the survival of human life on earth, according to Roddy Newman, who is drafting a new book, The Oxygen Crisis.

I am not a scientist, but this seems a reasonable concern.

… Read the rest

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Don’t Panic, But The Shoreline Is Moving Inland

By on November 29, 2012 in News 6

For the first time in 6,000 years sea level is rising, causing the shoreline to move inland. The move will continue for at least 1,000 years. Unless we change the trend of the planet’s heat balance the pace of this movement will accelerate, with disastrous results. We are totally unprepared for this situation.

A week before superstorm Sandy hit New York City my new book High Tide On Main Street: Rising Sea Level and the Coming Coastal Crisis was released. In the book, I describe exactly such a storm hitting that location. The point of my description was to examine the factors that made New York City and the surrounding area particularly vulnerable.

With Sandy there were four things that combined to increase the impact. First there was incredible size of the storm with the unusual track of southeast to northwest. Second, it came at lunar high tide, which is about a foot higher than average;  third, sea level has risen about a foot in height over the last century;  fourth, the underwater topography off New York harbor amplified the storm surge.… Read the rest

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Four Lectures on Climate Change: Kevin Anderson, Andrew Simms, Gwynne Dyer, and Daniel Nocera

By on November 28, 2012 in News 24

via chycho

We have treated the world as a garbage dump. The damage we have done has been devastating and the repercussions unimaginable.

From the disappearing bees to plastic waste vortex’s in the oceans, from the commodification of water to increasing CO2 emissions for cheap gasoline, from deforestation (pdf) to the melting ice caps, from fracking to the oil sands, our politics, our economics, and our way of life are devastating ecosystems across the globe.

The simple fact is that even though it is our technological evolution that is bringing about an economic metamorphosis that we see manifesting itself as a global financial crisis, it will be the environmental revolution forcing our civilization to implement the concept of sustainability that will finally transform our society. In essence, we need to seriously rethink our current economic system.

There are positive changes taking place on the political front, and then some, but we are losing the battle:

“Humans must immediately implement a series of radical measures to halt carbon emissions or prepare for the collapse of entire ecosystems and the displacement, suffering and death of hundreds of millions of the globe’s inhabitants, according to a report commissioned by the World Bank.

… Read the rest

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Tiny Pacific Island Becomes The First Completely Solar-Powered Nation

By on November 17, 2012 in News 8

Think a completely renewable-energy-based society is a pipe dream? Tiny Tokelau will no longer rely on imported diesel, instead switching over to solar panels and coconut-based biofuel. Fiji, the Cook Islands, Samoa, and Tuvalu plan to follow suit in the next decade. Voice Of America reports:

The remote islands of Tokelau have become the first territory in the world to be powered by the sun, officials say. The move is expected to save money and ease the environmental burden of relying on imported fossil fuels.

“The Tokelau Renewable Energy Project is a world first. Tokelau’s three main atolls now have enough solar capacity, on average, to meet electricity needs,” said New Zealand’s foreign affairs minister Murray McCully in a statement. “Until now, Tokelau has been 100 percent dependent upon diesel for electricity generation, with heavy economic and environmental costs.”

The island nations of Samoa and Tuvalu are aiming to get all of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

… Read the rest

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Prometheus: The Story of a 5,000 Year-Old Tree

By on November 15, 2012 in News 2

Picture Credit: Collectors Weekly

Collectors Weekly offers the tragic but educational tale of the accidental felling of a an almost 5,000 year old Great Basin bristlecone tree dubbed “Prometheus”:

Currey downplayed the discovery in a dry essay for Ecology magazine in 1965, in which he stated, “Allowing for the likelihood of missing rings and for the 100-inch height of the innermost counted ring, it may be tentatively concluded that WPN-114 began growing about 4,900 years ago.” Though its exact age is still debated, the Prometheus tree was certainly the oldest single tree scientists had ever encountered.

The Prometheus tree’s felling made it doubly symbolic, as the myth of its namesake captures both the human hunger for knowledge and the unintended negative consequences that often result from this desire. Though members of the scientific community and press were outraged that the tree was killed, Currey’s mistake ultimately provided the impetus to establish Great Basin National Park to protect the bristlecones.

… Read the rest

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Commodification of Water, the Quintessential Issue of Our Time

By on November 2, 2012 in News 15

via chycho

Commoditization of the commons is the most important issue of our time, the most vital aspect of which is the commodification of water, usable water (pdf) to be more precise. As Global Water Corporation, a Canadian water privatization company has stated (pdf):

“Water has moved from being an endless commodity that may be taken for granted to a rationed necessity that may be taken by force.”

Strong words indeed for an important issue. Gavin Power, the deputy director of the United Nations Global Compact, reiterated this message when he made the following statement after receiving support from some of the largest corporations in the world in an effort “to help [sic] solve the global water crisis”:

“The scale of the water problem is so big that governments can’t solve it alone. They need the help of the private sector.”

Privatization of water, however, has some serious adversaries.… Read the rest

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