What the [BLEEP] Are We Doing?

Black Balloons

2007-09-10T09:25:00.000+05:30

I told you so...

2007-08-10T14:07:00.001+05:30

Hate to say it, but I told you so. Global ecological collapse is
upon us and the human family is entering a Hobbesian struggle
for survival of the Earth and all her species including humans.
Even mainstream leaders tell us we have a decade to act before
utter ecological ruin and despair is assured. If things are
really so bad, where is the urgency? Will you fight for being?

Many mega-consumers in the over-developed world, until now
responsible for most environmental destruction, live in a world
of entertainment, abundance and great comfort. We sit stupefied
in front of our home entertainment systems, addicted to
vicariously watching the lives of glamorous stars, as the Earth
dies. Movies and TV are the modern day bread and circuses meant
to control and keep blind consumers blindly consuming.

A lifetime of global change and ecology research leads me to
conclude humans are on the brink of global ecological collapse
and only dramatic, even revolutionary, global policy responses
can save us now. The Earth system has been cut deeply, hurt in
so many ways, that barring major social and personal
transformation, it is not inconceivable that complex life is
finished. There has been enough awareness building. It is time
to act bravely and with resolve.

These are dangerous times. And those concerned with the fate of
the planet and her species are faced with a dilemma. They can
follow a failing, star-studded, corporate driven reformist
agenda which seeks to greenwash business as usual environmental
policy responses. Or you can concern yourself with what is truly
required to maintain the biosphere, ecological patterns and
processes, relatively civilized human society; and yourself,
family and friends.

Human populations have increased six fold in just over 125
years, who has a plan to reduce global population? Billions live
on a dollar or two a day while a handful of billionaires enjoy
more wealth than entire nations. The whole world increasingly
embraces as the meaning of life ostentatiously living like
celebrities. Meanwhile climate, forests, oceans and water are
failing worldwide. The sky is falling.

Humanity is facing global ecological Armageddon within a decade
or generation at most. Responses to date have been half-hearted,
and do little or nothing to strike at over-population and over-
consumption as the underlying causes of a failing biosphere.

There is little hope when Greenpeace promotes ancient forest
logging, when Al Gore states climate change can be addressed
without economic sacrifice, when Leonardo DiCaprio assures us at
the 11th Hour he only uses private jets when absolutely
necessary. These are our leaders? Their vision lacks concrete
actions adequate to achieve equitable and just ecological
sustainability.

Academically, at what point if ever will armed struggle on
behalf of Gaia be justified? I ask not to encourage violence,
but to ascertain what we are willing to sacrifice to save the
Earth and her humanity. Given the failure of large environmental
groups and well-known environmental activists to present a
coherent and adequate vision to save the Earth, what are we left
with? Changing light bulbs? Renewable energy? Simultaneous
global rock concerts? Will these get us there?

Is the very ecological fabric of being worthy of fighting for at
all costs? I do not know. But if indeed there is only a decade
to save the planet, our being, and very existence; are we not
justified in imagining more robust responses? I speak not of
token arson or mild larceny, but of a global eco-insurgency
adequate to topple the whole disgusting planet eating industrial
growth machine and replace it globally with decentralized
ecologically sustainable agrarian democracy. The vision is of
people living peacefully with the land, air, water, oceans and
all life; and within their ecological and bioregional limits.

A hypothetical Earth revolution must know when and how to
strike. As global ecological mayhem intensifies, it will become
increasingly evident when to begin wholeheartedly targeting
SUVs, coal power plants, ancient forest loggers and their
apologists. The goal must be prompting swift industrial collapse
and lead to a continued insurgency adequate to stop its
regeneration, even as people's needs are met by returning to the
land in relocalized communities practicing true egalitarian
democracy and sustainable permaculture. It is crucial that the
first strike not result in the entire Earth insurgency being
arrested, suppressed and dismantled.

War in defense of the Earth and our habitat is not mere
tokenism; it is a fight for all life and continued being. Given
the failure of the environmental movement and existing political
and economic structures to enunciate and implement policies
adequate to stop ecosystem destruction and meet all basic human
needs, it is time to ask yourself whether you will simply lie
down and die without fighting for mother Earth and your
children's children? My best advice is to educate yourself, band
together in landed communities, organize and protest; and begin
to stealthily prepare yourself for an Earth Revolution should we
fail. Gaia will say when.

By Glen Barry

Dr. Glen Barry is the President and Founder of Ecological Internet (EI). Dr. Barry is a conservation biologist and political ecologist, a writer of essays and blogs, and a computer specialist and technology researcher

Source: Earth Meanders

2006 Wind Installations Offset More Than 40 Million Tons of CO2

2007-08-10T11:54:00.000+05:30

The 15,200 megawatts of new wind turbines installed worldwide last year will generate enough clean electricity annually to offset the carbon dioxide emissions of 23 average-sized U.S. coal-fired power plants, according to a new Vital Signs Update from the Worldwatch Institute. The 43 million tons of carbon dioxide displaced in 2006 is equivalent to the emissions of 7,200 megawatts of coal-fired power plants, or nearly 8 million passenger cars.

Global wind power capacity increased almost 26 percent in 2006, exceeding 74,200 megawatts by year’s end. Global investment in wind power was roughly $22 billion in 2006, and in Europe and North America, the power industry added more capacity in wind than it did in coal and nuclear combined. The global market for wind equipment has risen 74 percent in the past two years, leading to long backorders for wind turbine equipment in much of the world.

"Wind power is on track to soon play a major role in reducing fossil fuel dependence and slowing the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," according to Worldwatch Senior Researcher Janet Sawin.

Planet Protectors

2007-08-09T16:23:00.001+05:30

This may come as less of a shock to others, but it’s my own recent discovery: we live on a planet.

Read on...

From the publication of his first book, The End of Nature, twenty years ago to the nationwide rallies he led in spring 2007, Bill McKibben has been working to raise awareness about climate change and to step up the response.

Planet Gets a Lemon as Global Car Industry Revs Up

2007-07-19T18:22:00.000+05:30

The world’s auto manufacturers produced a record 67 million vehicles in 2006, putting more cars on the road than ever before, according to a new Vital Signs Update from the Worldwatch Institute. While global production grew 4 percent last year, China increased its production by nearly 30 percent, overtaking Germany to become the third largest producer.

"America’s car addiction is becoming a global phenomenon with no sign of reversing,” says Worldwatch Senior Researcher Michael Renner, who authored the update. “This trend begs immediate and innovative transportation solutions to address the consumption of fossil fuels that is harming our climate.”

Reasons not to glow

2007-07-13T15:45:00.000+05:30

Chances are good, gentle reader, that you are going to have to sit next to someone in the coming year who will assert that nuclear power is the solution to climate change. What will you tell them? There’s so much to say. You could be sitting next to someone who hasn’t really considered the evidence yet. Or you could be sitting next to scientist and Gaia theorist James Lovelock, a supporter of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy™, which quotes him saying, “We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilisation is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear—the one safe, available, energy source—now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet.”

Read on...

The Model G: Google's Plug-in Hybrid Program

2007-07-08T15:40:00.001+05:30

When Henry Ford’s neighbors watched the young inventor roll his first gas-powered contraption out of a backyard shed, they had no way of knowing how the rickety four-wheeled carriage would revolutionize human transportation.

More than 100 years later, the billionaire founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, backed out of a parking space in a Toyota Prius converted to run almost exclusively on energy from solar panels. This demonstration of the capabilities of plug-in hybrids, and the two-way flow of electricity between car and electric grid, could have a profound impact on transportation in the 21st century.

“Symbolically, this event is very important” said Stephen Schneider, PhD, one of the authors of the recent United Nations report on climate change. Dr. Schneider, a professor of environmental studies at nearby Stanford University, was at Google's headquarters to observe. “We have to get people to stop thinking big is cool, and start thinking efficiency is cool,” he said.

The Google founders’ two-minute journey was part of the company’s celebration, on June 18, announcing the switching on of the largest solar installation to date on any corporate campus in the United States. Google has installed over 90% of the 9,212 solar panels that comprise the 1,600 kilowatt project. This installation is projected to produce enough electricity for approximately 1,000 California homes. The installation will help the company reduce its environmental footprint and power its new fleet of plug-in cars with clean solar electricity. The dashboard display of the converted Prius driven by Mr. Brin and Mr. Page showed a fuel economy reading of 99.9 miles-per-gallon, the highest number that the Toyota hybrid is capable of showing.

One highlight of the event occurred when Mr. Brin tapped a key on a laptop computer to launch the so-called “vehicle-to-grid” capabilities of the “ReChargeIt” project. With the keystroke, a nearby energy meter paused and then spun backwards, showing the flow of energy out of the plug-in car’s batteries and back into the electric grid. The crowd cheered when the meter, projected on a large flat-screen monitor, reversed directions.

When Mr. Page was asked if his family roots in Detroit had an effect on his support of advanced car technology, he declined to answer. One attendee associated with the project was more forthcoming. “This project tells General Motors and Ford and the American political establishment that it’s time for a change, and we’re not going to wait any longer,” said the gentleman, who asked not to be identified. “If Detroit doesn’t lead, California will.”

Learn more and watch Google’s video about www.ReChargeIt.org.

Transition Towns

2007-07-08T15:27:00.000+05:30

This website is a WIKI for use by all the communities that have adopted the Transition Towns model for responding to the twin challenges of Peak Oil and Climate Change.

This site provides a focal point for all towns, villages, cities and localities around the world as they implement their own Transition Initiative.

The Point of Return

2007-07-08T12:08:00.001+05:30

It is ‘cool’ to be an optimist.

PESSIMISM IS IN fashion. Scientists, environmentalists and climatologists are claiming that collapse is around the corner and civilisation is coming to an end. Book after book tells us that we have passed the tipping point and have reached the point of no return. The skies are saturated with CO2 and the atmosphere is filled with greenhouse gases. We are told over and over that whatever we do, we cannot reverse the rise in temperature or prevent the sea from flooding London! What happened to New Orleans will happen to New York. Global warming is here to stay. The scenario of doom and gloom is expounded by experts and activists alike.

We do not underestimate the severity of the climate crisis. We respect the scientists who are predicting a catastrophic future for humanity. We agree that our present way of life, so dependent on the use of fossil fuel, is hanging on a cliff edge. If we go any further we will fall into the abyss. So the only thing we can do now is to take a step back; let’s call it “the point of return”. We need to return to a way of life that is free from damaging dependence on fossil fuel.

At present we burn billions of barrels of petroleum every day for our food, clothes, homes, heating, lighting, transport and entertainment. This way of life is not only wasteful and unsustainable, but also very dangerous. As Sir Crispin Tickell writes in his article, it took nature 200 million years to create the vast store of fossil energy that we have almost spent in 200 years. The speed with which we are exhausting fossil energy is incredible. Sir Crispin suggests a fundamental shift in values and a radical return to a holistic worldview.

There is a word in Sanskrit for the point of return: it is pratikraman. Its opposite is atikraman, which means stepping outside our natural limits. Atikraman happens when we break the universal law. Returning to the centre of one’s being or to the source of inner wisdom is pratikraman. These two Sanskrit words provide a useful approach to understanding the current human predicament and a possible way out. A profound introspection is needed to examine the state of our psyche; we need to ask, are we meeting our need or indulging our greed? Are we healing or wounding the Earth?

In the context of climate change and global warming, addiction to oil is atikraman and a return to the energy derived from air, water and sun is pratikraman. One way to begin our pratikraman is to stop and put a cap on consumerism. We need a moratorium on motorways and runways. No new homes without insulation. We need to put an immediate freeze on industrialised agriculture everywhere in the world. Once we have put such a complete freeze on the use of fossil fuel, we can start the reduction process and the return journey to renewable resources. If we plan and manage our return journey carefully we should be able to escape the projected meltdown. We were able to repair the hole in the ozone layer by reducing the use of CFCs; we should be able to mitigate the extreme consequences of global warming if we can put an immediate cap on the use of fossil fuel and prepare to make the return journey instantly.

To meet the challenge of global warming, we need to change from being consumers to being artists; we have to take refuge in the arts and crafts. As William Morris advocated long ago, arts and crafts ignite our imagination, stimulate our creativity and bring us a sense of fulfilment. Poetry, painting, pottery, music, meditation, gardening, sculpting and umpteen other forms of arts and crafts can meet all basic human needs; produce beautiful objects to use, which need not require the use of fossil fuel. Human happiness, true prosperity and joyful living can only emerge from a life of elegant simplicity.

We are at the point of return from gross to subtle, from glamorous to gracious, from hedonism to healing, from conquest of the Earth to conservation of Nature, and from quantities of possessions to quality of life. It is ‘cool’ to be an optimist.

Satish Kumar

Satish Kumar is President of Schumacher UK, Editor of Resurgence and Director of Programmes at Schumacher College.

Youth Bring Low-Cost Solar Panels to Kenyan Slum

2007-07-07T10:16:00.000+05:30

The World Clean Energy Awards, announced in Basel, Switzerland, on June 15, recognize innovative, practical projects that move renewable energy and energy efficiency solutions into the mainstream. Developed by the independent transatlantic21 Association, the awards are intended to create benchmarks for clean energy in seven categories: construction; transport and mobility; products; services, trade, and marketing; finance and investment; policy and lawmaking; and NGOs and initiatives. The Worldwatch Institute was one of eight organizations invited to participate in the nomination and jury process. Eye on Earth will run a weekly feature on each of the nine winners.

KCYP project members cutting panels.

Nairobi’s Kibera slum, one of the largest informal settlements in sub-Saharan Africa, is home to an innovative new solar panel assembly program. The Kibera Community Youth Program (KCYP) trains local youth to construct simple, low-cost photovoltaic panels and to sell them to other residents for use in charging radios and mobile phones. The initiative, which recently won a World Clean Energy Award (WCEA) in the “product” category, has brought low-cost, environmentally sound energy to people around Kenya as well as beyond the country’s borders.

Read more:
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5172

ZeroFootprint

2007-07-07T09:44:00.000+05:30

1,000,000

people pledging to reduce their environmental footprint by

10% in 1 year

http://www.zerofootprint.net

Sign the Pledge

2007-07-01T17:33:00.000+05:30

I PLEDGE:

1.To demand that my country join an international treaty within the next 2 years that cuts global warming pollution by 90% in developed countries and by more than half worldwide in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy earth;

2.To take personal action to help solve the climate crisis by reducing my own CO2 pollution as much as I can and offsetting the rest to become "carbon neutral;"

3.To fight for a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store the CO2;

4.To work for a dramatic increase in the energy efficiency of my home, workplace, school, place of worship, and means of transportation;

5.To fight for laws and policies that expand the use of renewable energy sources and reduce dependence on oil and coal;

6.To plant new trees and to join with others in preserving and protecting forests; and,

7.To buy from businesses and support leaders who share my commitment to solving the climate crisis and building a sustainable, just, and prosperous world for the 21st century.

Click here to continue

Desertification Is the End of Being

2007-06-30T15:11:00.000+05:30

June 27, 2007
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet

A new study by United Nations University suggests climate change is making desertification [more] "the greatest environmental challenge of our times". They report that some 50 million people may be displaced within the next 10 years as a result of desertification [search], and that ultimately some one-third of
the Planet's population is threatened by expanding deserts.
The process of desertification is the ultimate end result of all poor environmental stewardship, a synthesis of climate change and land clearing, that quite literally makes the Earth a burning hell. They are not making much new land, so just exactly where will the natural resources, food and water come from to care for an increasingly urban world. Hello?! Is anyone home? Is there anybody in there? How many more reports on looming environmental catastrophe can be ignored without major loss of life and a severe decline in the complexity and habitability of the Earth? Are we so into our ipods and Paris Hilton that we can not see the Earth is dying? Climate change, water scarcity, over-fished oceans and desertification; to say nothing of AIDs, terrorism, militarism and poverty; threaten our very being. Yours. Your childrens. It is essential that policy and strategy to fight global threats are integrative, and willing to propose and implement actions that are up to the task of reversing monumental adverse trends. Fifty million people, driven from their land, because we refuse to stop wantonly procreating and consuming. I am stunned, shocked, dismayed (and yes deeply hurt) to read dispassionate accounts of the ecological foundation of being dismantled tree by tree, SUV by SUV. We shall learn to live differently with the Earth or we shall not live at all.
Please forgive the emotions as I mourn the looming end of being, Eden turned to dust, by ignorance and vanity.

To comment:
http://www.climateark.org/blog/2007/06/desertification_warning.asp

Ecology Is the Radical Science

2007-06-30T11:42:00.000+05:30

Ecology is the study of how organisms interact with each other and their physical environment. Sounds deceptively simple and non-threatening to the status quo, but I contend that growing ecological knowledge and re-understanding of humanity's place within the web of life is one of the most radical and potentially transformative notions ever. Awareness of humanity's utter dependence upon ecosystems and the biosphere, found in the relatively new discipline of modern ecology, has coincided with a period of unprecedented ecological destruction. Ecology may provide the only truthful answers regarding how to save the Earth and ourselves.

Read on...

STERN REVIEW: The Economics of Climate Change

2007-06-30T09:58:00.000+05:30

The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change presents very serious
global risks, and it demands an urgent global response.
This independent Review was commissioned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
reporting to both the Chancellor and to the Prime Minister, as a contribution to
assessing the evidence and building understanding of the economics of climate
change.

The Review first examines the evidence on the economic impacts of climate change
itself, and explores the economics of stabilising greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere. The second half of the Review considers the complex policy challenges
involved in managing the transition to a low-carbon economy and in ensuring that
societies can adapt to the consequences of climate change that can no longer be
avoided.

The Review takes an international perspective. Climate change is global in its
causes and consequences, and international collective action will be critical in driving
an effective, efficient and equitable response on the scale required. This response
will require deeper international co-operation in many areas - most notably in creating
price signals and markets for carbon, spurring technology research, development
and deployment, and promoting adaptation, particularly for developing countries.
Climate change presents a unique challenge for economics: it is the greatest and
widest-ranging market failure ever seen. The economic analysis must therefore be
global, deal with long time horizons, have the economics of risk and uncertainty at
centre stage, and examine the possibility of major, non-marginal change. To meet
these requirements, the Review draws on ideas and techniques from most of the
important areas of economics, including many recent advances.

Live Earth - 7/7/07

2007-06-24T08:39:00.000+05:30

Live Earth is a 24-hour, 7-continent concert series taking place on 7/7/07 that will bring together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis.

Live Earth will reach this worldwide audience through an unprecedented global media architecture covering all media platforms - TV, radio, Internet and wireless channels.

Live Earth marks the beginning of a multi-year campaign led by the Alliance for Climate Protection, The Climate Group and other international organizations to drive individuals, corporations and governments to take action to solve global warming. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore is the Chair of the Alliance and Partner of Live Earth.

Live Earth was founded by Kevin Wall, the Worldwide Executive Producer of Live 8, an event that brought together one of the largest audiences in history to combat poverty. Wall formed a partnership with Al Gore and the Alliance for Climate Protection to ensure that Live Earth inspires behavioral changes long after 7/7/07.

Live Earth will stage official concerts at Giants Stadium in New York; Wembley Stadium in London; Aussie Stadium in Sydney; Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro; Maropeng at the Cradle of Humankind in Johannesburg; Makuhari Messe in Tokyo; the Steps of the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai; and HSH Nordbank Arena in Hamburg.

Live Earth concerts will be broadcast to a live worldwide audience by MSN at www.LiveEarth.MSN.com.

7steps towards an energy saving [r]evolution

2007-06-24T07:31:00.001+05:30

Signup today, and for seven weeks you'll get a weekly email with instructions how to campaign effectively for energy efficiency. "How many people... to change a lightbulb?" Try changing the law!

The inconvenient truth about the carbon offset industry

2007-06-20T14:55:00.000+05:30

In the concluding part of a major investigation, Nick Davies shows how greenhouse gas credits do little or nothing to combat global warming

Saturday June 16, 2007
The Guardian

The Power of Community

2007-06-10T12:18:00.000+05:30

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba's economy went into a tailspin. With imports of oil cut by more than half – and food by 80 percent – people were desperate. This film tells of the hardships and struggles as well as the community and creativity of the Cuban people during this difficult time. Cubans share how they transitioned from a highly mechanized, industrial agricultural system to one using organic methods of farming and local, urban gardens. It is an unusual look into the Cuban culture during this economic crisis, which they call "The Special Period." The film opens with a short history of Peak Oil, a term for the time in our history when world oil production will reach its all-time peak and begin to decline forever. Cuba, the only country that has faced such a crisis – the massive reduction of fossil fuels – is an example of options and hope.

See the trailer

THE INTERNATIONAL FORUM ON GLOBALIZATION

2007-06-10T12:14:00.000+05:30

The International Forum on Globalization (IFG) is an alliance of sixty leading activists, scholars, economists, researchers and writers formed to stimulate new thinking, joint activity, and public education in response to economic globalization.

Representing over 60 organizations in 25 countries, the International Forum on Globalization associates come together out of a shared concern that the world's corporate and political leadership is undertaking a restructuring of global politics and economics that may prove as historically significant as any event since the Industrial Revolution. This restructuring is happening at tremendous speed, with little public disclosure of the profound consequences affecting democracy, human welfare, local economies, and the natural world.

Our Finite World

2007-06-10T12:12:00.000+05:30

We all know the world is finite. There number of atoms is finite, and these atoms combine to form a finite number of molecules. The mix of molecules may change over time, but in total, the number of molecules is also finite.

We also know that growth is central to our way of life. Businesses are expected to grow. Every day new businesses are formed and new products are developed. The world population is also growing, so all this adds up to a huge utilization of resources.

At some point, growth in resource utilization must collide with the fact that the world is finite. We have grown up thinking that the world is so large that limits will never be an issue. But now, we are starting to bump up against limits.

Read on....

Corn-based ethanol: Is this a solution?

2007-06-10T12:06:00.000+05:30

Many people have high hopes for ethanol made from corn–that it will prevent future gasoline shortages, prevent global warming, be a wonderful investment, and improve the income of farmers, among other things. Other observers raise a whole host of concerns including scalability, impact on the environment, and impact on food prices. Why is there such a huge disparity in views? What is the real promise for corn ethanol?

What If The Oil Runs Out?

2007-06-10T12:01:00.000+05:30

Though the government is planning a massive expansion of transport networks, it has never considered this question.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 30^th May 2007.

The rise of slime

2007-06-06T19:41:00.000+05:30

The run-off from modern life is feeding an explosion of primitive organisms. Kenneth R Weiss finds evolution running in reverse.

In Moreton Bay, Australia, the fireweed began each spring as tufts of hairy growth and spread across the seafloor fast enough to cover a football field in an hour. When fishers touched it, their skin broke out in searing welts. Their lips blistered and peeled. Their eyes burned and swelled shut. Water that splashed from their nets spread the inflammation to their legs and torsos.
‘It comes up like little boils,’ said Randolph Van Dyk, a fisher whose powerful legs are pocked with scars. ‘At night-time you can feel them burning. I tried everything to get rid of them. Nothing worked.’

As the weed blanketed miles of the bay over the past decade, it stained fishing nets a dark purple and left them coated with a powdery residue. When fishers tried to shake it off the webbing, their throats constricted and they gasped for air.

Others made an even more painful mistake, neglecting to wash the residue from their hands before relieving themselves over the sides of their boats. For a time, embarrassment kept them from talking publicly about their condition. When they finally did speak up, authorities dismissed their complaints – until a bucket of the hairy weed made it to the University of Queensland’s marine botany lab.

Read on...

World's Spotlight Misses the True Cost of Disasters

2007-06-06T15:52:00.001+05:30

Don't look to economic losses alone for the scope of devastation wrought by weather-related disasters, as these figures fail to capture the true extent of post-disaster suffering, according to a new Vital Signs Update from the Worldwatch Institute. Weather-related disasters include those caused by heat waves or cold snaps, floods, landslides, avalanches, wildfires, hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons, and winter storms. While these events are often perceived as natural, many human actions, including climate change, can have a hand in their creation.

In 2006, the planet experienced more weather-related disasters than in any of the previous three years, but the economic losses associated with them fell sharply, from $219.6 billion in 2005 to $44.5 billion in 2006, thanks in part to a relatively quiet 2006 Atlantic hurricane season. With only 1 to 3 percent of households and businesses in low-and middle-income countries insured against disasters, compared with 30 percent in high-income countries, the full economic toll from disasters is often difficult to calculate, says Worldwatch Research Associate Zoe Chafe.

"For many victims, the true disaster begins when the storm, earthquake, or flood ends," says Chafe. "Injuries, homelessness, and job losses are rarely included in estimates of what a disaster costs."

When floods recede or storm clouds dissipate, the real suffering begins for survivors. Nearly 5.4 million people became homeless as a result of a disaster last year, and other "secondary" disasters often follow: sexual harassment in camps, domestic violence, child labor and trafficking, poor resettlement plans, and ongoing disabilities.

While economic losses decreased, human deaths from disasters were up 24 percent in 2006. Floods, which affected 87 countries, were responsible for more deaths than any other weather-related disaster. The Horn of Africa was particularly hard hit by flooding, while Typhoon Saomai became the strongest storm to make landfall over China in 50 years, destroying 50,000 homes and forcing more than a million people to evacuate.

"The media spotlight shines on disaster," writes Chafe. "But that spotlight often fades before we understand the true extent of post-disaster suffering."

Several new initiatives aim to provide quick relief to countries hit by disasters. The United Nations has set up a Central Emergency Response Fund, which pledges to dispatch money and supplies within 72 hours of a disaster, and the World Food Programme recently issued an innovative drought-insurance policy to Ethiopia aimed at decreasing reliance on post-disaster aid.

The Idols of Environmentalism

2007-06-06T06:18:00.000+05:30

ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION proceeds apace in spite of all the warnings, the good science, the 501(c)3 organizations with their memberships in the millions, the poll results, and the martyrs perched high in the branches of sequoias or shot dead in the Amazon. This is so not because of a power, a strength out there that we must resist. It is because we are weak and fearful. Only a weak and fearful society could invest so much desperate energy in protecting activities that are the equivalent of suicide.

For instance, trading carbon emission credits and creating markets in greenhouse gases as a means of controlling global warming is not a way of saying we’re so confident in the strength of the free market system that we can even trust it to fix the problems it creates. No, it’s a way of saying that we are so frightened by the prospect of stepping outside of the market system on which we depend for our national wealth, our jobs, and our sense of normalcy that we will let the logic of that system try to correct its own excesses even when we know we’re just kidding ourselves. This delusional strategy is embedded in the Kyoto agreement, which is little more than a complex scheme to create a giant international market in pollution. Even Kyoto, of which we speak longingly—“Oh, if only we would join it!”—is not an answer to our problem but a capitulation to it, so concerned is it to protect what it calls “economic growth and development.” Kyoto is just a form of whistling past the graveyard. And it is not just international corporations who do this whistling; we all have our own little stake in the world capitalism has made and so we all do the whistling.

Read on..

Carbon-labelling

2007-06-06T06:15:00.001+05:30

Organic fruit from Chile, grass-fed lamb from New Zealand, spring water from Fiji, and plastic toys from China all have one thing in common: they require a lot of fuel to make and to move from source to market. Food travels an average of fifteen hundred miles before it reaches an American plate. That ecological footprint is usually hidden from the consumer, who may only think about fuel consumption when standing at the gas pump. Tesco, the largest supermarket chain in Britain and one of the top five retailers in the world, aims to change that.

Read on...

Three cheers for crazy ideas

2007-05-31T13:04:00.000+05:30

This world really does need more of these wonderful hereticsEvery real change, every revolutionary idea, every heartfelt gesture, whether it transforms one life or a thousand, was once seen as eccentric. Leaders are few and followers many for a reason: Change requires bucking the status quo, and bucking the status quo requires a willingness to be perceived as crazy, dangerous or ridiculous. Revolutionaries, activists and change-makers of every stripe—just like entrepreneurs—lead because they cannot follow something with which they do not agree or which limits their imaginations. They change the world because their passion and conviction won't allow them not to.

Not all revolutionaries set out to change the world per se; some set out to change their own worlds. And in so doing, they often change the way one person, or a few people, or whole communities, or entire nations or the world thinks and operates in some significant way. “The world” doesn’t have to be literal; real change can be small-scale and still be powerful. All it takes is an ability to see other possibilities and the willingness to help others see them too. As someone once said, “We are only limited by our imaginations.” I for one didn’t set out to change the way business operates when I founded The Body Shop. I just wanted a means to support myself and my two daughters. When I applied for a loan to start a small shop in Brighton, England, in 1976, the man behind the desk looked as if I’d asked him to shave his head. A woman? Running a business? How preposterous, he obviously thought. Weeks later, I went back to the same bank with my husband in tow. We had the loan in minutes. That banker could not see beyond his own nose. My company went on to show how business can be done differently worldwide, proving that women can indeed run successful companies, and that these companies can have compassion—and just plain passion—at heart instead of pure profit motive. Many people had said it was not possible. Time and again I was told it couldn’t be done, that it would not work, that I was insane. But I refused to limit my thinking to financial matters; I felt business was about bringing your heart to the workplace.

In my travels over the past 30 years, I have met thousands of activists, entertainers, theologians, women’s groups, business people, anti-globalization campaigners, native tribes and vagabonds. I have met the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela. I have spent days deep in the Amazonian rainforest and on the streets of London among the homeless. After all of this, I can spot a revolutionary from 100 paces. First clue: Everyone else thinks they’re crazy, dangerous or ridiculous.

I understand now that some of my personal heroes fit this description: Jesus Christ, Joan of Arc, Gandhi … the list goes on. They were tenacious and driven in the extreme. They refused to say, “This is how it’s done; this is how it is” or especially “I can’t.”

Not everyone who changes the world is an iconic figure, much less a martyr, but they too can and do change the world. I think of 12-year-old Craig Kielburger in Canada who read an article in his local newspaper about child labour used in rug manufacturing in Pakistan, and started Kids Can Free the Children. As a result, the Canadian government changed its policy on child labour. I think of Charlie Kernaghan of the National Labor Committee who has focused international attention on the issue of sweatshop labour and kept it there.

I think of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the rest of the Ogoni people in Nicaragua who stood up to Shell Oil, which was occupying and polluting their native tribal lands. Their bravery cost many of them, including Ken, their lives. But it focused international outrage on exploitation of poor people by multinational corporations, especially those that are backed by corrupt military regimes. I think of the Zapatistas in Chiapas who refused to accept the status quo in Mexico with its corrupt government, its abuse of native communities and lands. I think of their language of revolution, which does not include the word “proletariat” or “bourgeoisie” or any of the words associated with Marx and Lenin. Instead of appealing to the “workers’ to rise up, they called for a rebirth of “civil society” and democracy. They delivered their manifestos not in books or long-winded speeches, but in poetry; they told stories and riddles and described the corrupt system of government in Chiapas as “an object of shame dressed in the colour of money.”

I think of the Angola Three, African-American activists who stood up against corruption and abuse inside in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, and who were then framed for crimes they didn’t commit and thrown in solitary confinement for 31 years (See “Seeking truth in Louisiana,” Ode, April 2007). Two of them are still there, but their hope and determination does not fade with time.

I think about spiritual activists like Daniel and Philip Berrigan, American priests who burned draft files with homemade napalm in 1967 to protest the Vietnam War and the Catholic Church’s complicity in it. Or Kevin Buzzacott, an aboriginal elder in Australia who rallied his tribe to reoccupy its homeland and resist the presence of a massive mine poisoning a sacred lake. Closer to home, I think of the 20 employees of The Body Shop who went to Romania to help repair and re-equip the orphanages there, especially the two who ended up staying to launch Children on the Edge, a non-profit organization that is systematically finding homes for the institutionalized children of Romania and helping youth at risk in many other nations. You feel the impact of thousands more every day, of course, even if you have never heard their names. You’ll know them by that slightly crazy gleam in their eyes. And then you will see that this world really does need more of these wonderful heretics.

Anita Roddick, an author and long-time activist, is co-founder of The Body Shop.
More information: www.anitaroddick.com

A revolution in design

2007-05-31T12:52:00.000+05:30

“The majority of the world’s designers focus all their efforts on developing products and services exclusively for the richest 10% of the world’s customers. Nothing less than a revolution in design is needed to reach the other 90%.” —Dr. Paul Polak, International Development Enterprises

Designers, engineers, students and professors, architects, and social entrepreneurs from all over the globe are devising cost-effective ways to increase access to food and water, energy, education, healthcare, revenue-generating activities, and affordable transportation for those who most need them. And an increasing number of initiatives are providing solutions for underserved populations in developed countries such as the United States.

Encompassing a broad set of modern social and economic concerns, these design innovations often support responsible, sustainable economic policy. They help, rather than exploit, poorer economies; minimize environmental impact; increase social inclusion; improve healthcare at all levels; and advance the quality and accessibility of education. These designers’ voices are passionate, and their points of view range widely on how best to address these important issues. Each object on display tells a story, and provides a window through which we can observe this expanding field. Design for the Other 90% demonstrates how design can be a dynamic force in saving and transforming lives, at home and around the world.

Solar Power Set to Shine Brightly

2007-05-24T20:41:00.000+05:30

The solar industry is poised for a rapid decline in costs that will make it a mainstream power option in the next few years,according to a new assessment by the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C., and the Prometheus Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Global production of solar photovoltaic (PV) cells, which turn sunlight directly into electricity, has risen sixfold since 2000 and grew 41 percent in 2006 alone. Although grid-connected solar capacity still provides less than 1 percent of the world's electricity, it increased nearly 50 percent in 2006, to 5,000 megawatts, propelled by booming markets in Germany and Japan. Spain is likely to join the big leagues in 2007, and the United States soon thereafter.

Having large families ‘is an eco-crime’

2007-05-24T19:57:00.000+05:30

A radical form of “offsetting” carbon dioxide emissions to prevent climate change is proposed today – having fewer children.

Each new UK citizen less means a lifetime carbon dioxide saving of nearly 750 tonnes, a climate impact equivalent to 620 return flights between London and New York*, the Optimum Population Trust says in a new report.

Based on a “social cost” of carbon dioxide of $85 a tonne**, the report estimates the climate cost of each new Briton over their lifetime at roughly £30,000. The lifetime emission costs of the extra 10 million people projected for the UK by 2074 would therefore be over £300 billion. ***

A 35-pence condom, which could avert that £30,000 cost from a single use, thus represents a “spectacular” potential return on investment – around nine million per cent.

Optimum Population Trust (OPT)

Global warming: Four possible scenarios

2007-05-20T06:50:00.000+05:30

I REFER to the article, 'Why I am not a climate change sceptic' by Warren Fernandez (Stait Times, May 12, 2007).

For sceptics, is it possible to not believe in global warming but still take action? What if we do not presume that global warming is happening? Can we look at different scenarios and choose what to do?

Let us imagine four simple scenarios.
Scenario One is called 'Happily Ever After', where there is no global warming and no early action taken. The sceptics were right. No money was spent to implement useless plans to tackle climate change. Everyone lived happily ever after.

Scenario Two is called 'Pat On The Back', where there is global warming and early action was taken. Global warming is happening but with less impact because we took preventive actions. Money was spent but it turned out to be a good investment. We gave ourselves a pat on the back for doing what was necessary and right.

Scenario Three is called 'No Regrets' where there is no global warming and early action was taken. The scientists were wrong and money was wasted. Sceptics lambasted that the money could have been used instead to help developing countries.

But the scientists retorted that the sceptics were right with hindsight. The money spent was not wasted, it was used to make buildings and transport energy-efficient; develop alternative energy and reduce reliance on oil; and conserve trees and natural habitats.

We are not short of money, we are short of political will power and foresight. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that stabilising greenhouse gases at 535 to 590 parts per million will reduce the global economy in 2050 by 1.3 per cent. In 2005, global advertising expenditure alone was 1.3 per cent of world GDP and is sufficient to help developing countries meet United Nations millennium development goals.

Scenario Four is called 'Reap And Sow', where there is global warming and no action was taken. We see the impact of climate change, and now everyone believes. But it is too late. We reap what we sow.

Which scenario will happen?
If we take action, we either have no regrets or can pat ourselves on the back in the future. Nothing much to lose and everything to gain.

If we do not take action, we either live happily ever after or reap what we sow. Everything to gain or everything to lose.

What is your choice?

Eugene Tay Tse Chuan

The more we take, the less we become...

2007-05-17T21:29:00.000+05:30

World On Fire - Sarah McLachlan

Giving Up On Two Degrees

2007-05-11T10:34:00.000+05:30

Have we already abandoned our attempts to prevent dangerous climate change?

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian, 1st May 2007

The rich nations seeking to cut climate change have this in common: they lie. You won’t find this statement in the draft of the new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was leaked to the Guardian last week. But as soon as you understand the numbers, the words form before your eyes. The governments making genuine efforts to tackle global warming are using figures they know to be false.

The British government, the European Union and the United Nations all claim to be trying to prevent “dangerous” climate change. Any level of climate change is dangerous for someone, but there is a broad consensus about what this word means: two degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels. It is dangerous because of its direct impacts on people and places (it could, for example, trigger the irreversible melting of the Greenland ice sheet(1)and the collapse of the Amazon rainforest(2)) and because it is likely to stimulate further warming, as it encourages the world’s natural systems to start releasing greenhouse gases.

SURVIVING THE CENTURY

2007-05-10T13:06:00.000+05:30

Moving beyond the ‘age of fire’.

MAY 2007 sees the launch of the World Future Council, and our first major book, Surviving the Century: Facing Climate Chaos and Other Global Challenges. The book outlines a road map to a sustainable future in an age increasingly threatened by climate chaos. The eight chapters deal with the politics of climate change, renewable energy, agriculture, rainforests, cities, industrial production systems, trade and democracy. Each chapter offers an impressive vision of a sustainable future. But all of the authors make it clear that we need to make profound, systemic changes to the very basis of our culture, and to the very relationship between humans and nature, if we are to survive this and future centuries.

Click on title to continue reading...

Daring to dream

2007-05-10T08:51:00.000+05:30

Dinyar Godrej finds dreamers hard at work, living the change they want to see.

The Challenge of Peak Oil - Richard Heinberg

2007-05-10T08:45:00.000+05:30

Richard Heinberg is a core faculty member of New College of California, and the author of eight books, including The Oil Depletion Protocol, The Party's Over, and Powerdown.

The world is entering a period of change unlike any in history. This will be an inherently perilous time, because it will involve a forced and rapid transformation in the energy system on which our societies, and our very lives, depend. The transformation will involve the invention of new technologies and the exploitation of new resources — as was the case with earlier great economic watersheds. But this time change will be propelled not merely by new opportunities. Instead, it will be thrust upon us as a result of the depletion of the energy resources that enabled the creation of industrial economies throughout the past two centuries: namely coal, oil, and natural gas — though first and foremost, oil.

Click on title to read more...

BAN THE BULB

2007-05-10T08:05:00.000+05:30

Worldwide Shift from Incandescents to Compact Fluorescents Could Close 270 Coal-Fired Power Plants.

Lester R. Brown

On February 20, 2007, Australia announced it would phase out the sale of inefficient incandescent light bulbs by 2010, replacing them with highly efficient compact fluorescent bulbs that use one fourth as much electricity. If the rest of the world joins Australia in this simple step to sharply cut carbon emissions, the worldwide drop in electricity use would permit the closing of more than 270 coal-fired (500 megawatt) power plants. For the United States, this bulb switch would facilitate shutting down 80 coal-fired plants.

Polymers Are Forever

2007-05-08T10:39:00.000+05:30

Plastic barely existed prior to 1945, but it may now be the most ubiquitous man-made substance on Earth.

"EXCEPT FOR A SMALL AMOUNT that's been incinerated," says Tony Andrady the oracle, "every bit of plastic manufactured in the world for the last fifty years or so still remains. It's somewhere in the environment."

A very inconvenient truth

2007-05-08T10:20:00.000+05:30

Commentary by Captain Paul Watson

The meat industry is one of the most destructive ecological industries on the planet. The raising and slaughtering of pigs, cows, sheep, turkeys and chickens not only utilizes vast areas of land and vast quantities of water, but it is a greater contributor to greenhouse gas emissions than the automobile industry.

The seafood industry is literally plundering the ocean of life and some fifty percent of fish caught from the oceans is fed to cows, pigs, sheep, chickens etc in the form of fish meal. It also takes about fifty fish caught from the sea to raise one farm raised salmon.

We have turned the domestic cow into the largest marine predator on the planet. The hundreds of millions of cows grazing the land and farting methane consume more tonnage of fish than all the world’s sharks, dolphins and seals combined. Domestic housecats consume more fish, especially tuna, than all the world’s seals.

So why is it that all the world’s large environmental and conservation groups are not campaigning against the meat industry? Why did Al Gore’s film Inconvenient Truth not mention the inconvenient truth that the slaughter industry creates more greenhouse gases than the automobile industry?

Read more...

Security Council Discussion of Climate Change Raises Concerns About "Securitization" of Environment

2007-05-04T11:08:00.000+05:30

Once the focus of considerable skepticism, both climate change and the concept of environmental security have moved squarely into the mainstream. Not only has public awareness of climate change seemingly reached a tipping point, but the likely security repercussions of the unsettling changes to our planet’s climate are now increasingly acknowledged and analyzed. Recent reports such as the latest assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and last November’s Stern Review report on the economics of climate change have quickened the pace of the debate, as have events like the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and the ongoing conflict in Darfur, Sudan, made worse by drought and desertification.

There is perhaps no better sign of this new realization than the recent decision of the United Nations Security Council to discuss, for the first time, the impacts of climate change on peace and security. Though a number of governments—including China and Russia—raised doubts whether the Council was the right forum to take up this issue, the meeting, held on April 17, represented a major milestone, with representatives of 55 nations in attendance.

The End of Poverty - Jeffrey Sachs

2007-05-04T11:03:00.000+05:30

News Release - March 1, 2005:
"Extreme poverty can be ended, not in the time of our grandchildren, but our time." Thus forecasts Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, whose twenty-five years of experience observing the world from many vantage points has helped him shed light on the most vital issues facing our planet: the causes of poverty, the role of rich-country policies, and the very real possibilities for a poverty-free future. Deemed "the most important economist in the world" by The New York Times Magazine and "the world's best-known economist" by Time magazine, Sachs brings his considerable expertise to bear in the landmark The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, his highly anticipated blueprint for world-wide economic success — a goal, he argues, we can reach in a mere twenty years. more...

Eating Sustainable Seafood - Three Tips to Steer Clear of Fisheries Collapse

2007-05-03T10:58:00.000+05:30

The world’s fish populations are increasingly endangered from overfishing, pollution, and overconsumption. A study late last year reported that major fish species, including tuna, scallops, lobster, and flounder, could be effectively extinct by the middle of the century. But fishery collapses are not inevitable, says Brian Halweil, senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute.

Here are Brian’s tips on how to continue enjoying the health benefits of seafood while avoiding fishery depletions and the toxins present in many fish:

Eat less of the big fish such as salmon, tuna, swordfish and sharks. These are among the most vulnerable populations, and also the fish that live the longest, have the most fat, and accumulate the most toxins over their lifespan.

Eat lower on the marine food chain, including smaller species such as clams, oysters, mollusks, anchovies, and sardines. Smaller species are less endangered because they are more abundant, reproduce faster, and feed lower on the food chain (so they don’t consume other fish themselves.) They also have less fat and don’t accumulate as many toxins as the larger, longer-lived fish species.

Keep in mind how fish are caught. Some trawling nets are so large they could pull a 747 jet off the ocean floor. Instead, choose fish caught by line, pot, or net (or other artisanal methods) and avoid trawl-caught fish.

World Governments Adopting Bright Idea

2007-05-03T10:55:00.000+05:30

From Australia to Russia, energy-efficient light bulbs are gaining political traction around the globe. Introduced decades ago, compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) are now being promoted and even mandated by governments concerned about rising energy costs and climate change. According to a 2006 International Energy Agency (IEA) report, lighting absorbs nearly one-fifth of global electricity generation, more than is produced by hydro or nuclear stations and about the same amount produced from natural gas.

Australia will be the first country to ban the inefficient incandescent bulbs, with a complete phase out planned by 2009. “By that stage you simply won’t be able to buy incandescent lightbulbs, because they won’t meet the energy standard,” said environment minister Malcolm Turnbull. Australians are among the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters per capita, and the country has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol. But severe drought in the country has led to rising environmental concern. According to Turnbull, the new law will reduce Australia’s current emissions by 800,000 tons by 2012 and will simultaneously cut household lighting costs 66 percent.

It's Not Just Climate Change

2007-05-03T10:49:00.000+05:30

That is killing the Earth and your children's future

Climate change is the collapse of the global atmospheric system's processes and patterns and represents a massive environmental challenge to maintaining a habitable Earth. Yet climate is but one of several planetary scale ecological crises that threaten existence and are occurring now concurrently.

While climate change is so omnipresent that it interacts with and exacerbates virtually every other environmental crisis, it remains but one symptom of a much more malignant systematic breakdown in the global ecological system. Global heating could stop being a major issue tomorrow (it will not) and there are at least half a dozen ongoing ecological catastrophes that could still destroy the Earth and civilization such as it is.

Low Life

2007-05-01T15:09:00.000+05:30

For the past five years, the tiny South Pacific nation of Tuvalu, which at no point on its nine atolls is higher than thirteen feet above sea level, has openly discussed plans to file a lawsuit against the United States and Australia at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Tuvalu has also tried to recruit other island nations to sue for damages from climate change, arguing that while these small countries contribute only 0.6 percent to global warming, they disproportionately suffer its effects.

Earth Day Cometh and Earth Day Goeth

2007-05-01T14:19:00.000+05:30

And Where have all the Bees Gone?

Earth Day Report by Captain Paul Watson

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

- Albert Einstein

(1879 - 1955)

Earth Day is almost here. I don't believe in Earth Day myself. I think it's a little silly to devote one single day of the year to being concerned about the environment, but I suppose one day is better than no day at all.

Having been an environmental activist since 1968, I have seen the movement go up and down like a roller coaster in popularity. It was big in 1972 with the Environmental Conference in Stockholm which I attended and it became big again in 1992 with the U.N. Environmental Conference in Rio De Janeiro that I also attended. I remember that the priority issue in 1972 was the danger of escalating human populations but by 1992, that concern was not even on the agenda.

Well we are approaching the end of another 20 year period and it looks like ecology is in vogue again thanks to global warming and a few other scary things. Green is once again popular.

I can always tell when the environment is getting to be faddish again. My indicator is the number of lectures I am booked for around this time of year. It reached its peak in 1992, practically disappeared for awhile and now it's coming around again.

What worries me is that the movement is constantly being sidetracked by the issue of the day.

It's global warming now. When we were trying to warn people about global warming and climate change twenty years ago, no one was interested. Now it's become the "in" issue and the big organizations are tapping the public for donations to address the problem although no one has come up with anything that makes much sense. But global warming is good for business if you're one of the big bureaucratic organizations whose primary concern is really corporate self preservation.

Greenpeace is even telling people that they can slow down global warming by (and I kid you not) "singing in the shower". Yep, you see all you have to do is run the water, then get wet, shut the water off, and sing in the shower as you lather up and then open up the faucet and rinse off. Ah, so simple to save the world.

The problem is that these big organizations are too politically correct to address the ecologically correct solutions.

Instead they are baffling everyone with abstract concepts like carbon trading and carbon storage or trying to sell us a new hydrid Japanese car.

Even Al Gore with his Inconvenient Truth totally ignored the most inconvenient truth of all. I'll get to that in a moment.

But let's look at the number one cause of global greenhouse gas emissions.

First and foremost it is human over-population, the very same issue that was the priority concern at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Environment in Stockholm.

It's 6.5 billion people folks.

Remember in 1950, the world population was 3 billion. It's now more than doubled.

6.5 billion people produce one hell of an annual output of waste and utilize an unbelievable amount of resources and energy.

And this number is rising minute by minute, day, by day, year by year.

And most of the people having children have no idea why they are even having children other than that's what you do. Most of them don't really love their children because if they did they would be very much involved in trying to ensure that their children have a world to survive in.

Unless over-population is addressed, there is absolutely no way of slowing down global greenhouse gas emissions.

But how do you do that within the context of economic systems that require larger and larger numbers to perform the essential task of consuming products?

Corporations need workers and buyers. Governments need tax-payers, bureaucrats and soldiers. More people means more money.

I've said for decades that the solution to all of our problems is simple. We just need to live in accordance with the three basic laws of ecology.

First is the Law of Diversity. The strength of an eco-system lies in diversity of species within it. Weaken diversity and the entire system will be weakened and will ultimately collapse.

Second is the Law of Interdependence. All of the species within an eco-system are interdependent. We need each other.

And the third law of Ecology is the Law of Finite Resources. There is a limit to growth because there is a limit to carrying capacity.

Human populations are exceeding ecological carrying capacity.

Exceeding ecological carrying capacity is diminishing both resources and diversity of species.

The diminishment of diversity is causing serious problems with interdependence.

Albert Einstein once wrote that "if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."

That is the Law of Interdependence.

Forget global warming folks. The disappearance of the honeybee could end our existence as human beings on this planet far sooner than we think.

And the honey bee is in fact now disappearing. Why? We don't know why. It could be genetically modified crops, I could be pesticides or it could be that our cell phones are interfering with their ability to navigate.

Whatever the cause the fact is that they are disappearing. All around the world bees are disappearing in a crisis called Colony Collapse Disorder.

And bees pollinate our plants. Everywhere on the planet, bees are hard at work making it possible for you to live and enjoy life.

We hold on to our place on this planet by only a toehold. If anything happens to the grass family, we are screwed. If the earthworms disappear, we are in big trouble. If the bees disappear, well according to Albert Einstein who was considered somewhat smarter than most of us, we will have only four years. Just enough time to get a college degree to discover that everything you learned is relatively useless when sitting on the doorstep of global ecological annihilation.

We are cutting down the forest and plundering the oceans of life. We are polluting the soil, the air and the water and we are rapidly running out of fresh water to drink.

Only corporations like Coke and Pepsi have figured out that water is more valuable than gold. That is why they are bottling it in plastic bottles and selling it. This week I saw a bottle of water in my hotel room that I could have drunk for only $4.

Unbelievable. That means that water is now being sold for more than the equivalent amount of gasoline. I hope that I'm not the only one who thinks this is insanity.

Now for Al Gore's really inconvenient truth. In his film he does not mention once that the meat and dairy industry that produces the bacon, the steaks, the chicken wings and the milk is a larger contributor to greenhouse gas emissions than the automobile industry. You see, Al may drive a Prius but he likes his burgers.

This is why the big organizations like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club will not say a thing about the meat industry. Last year I saw Greenpeacers sitting down for a baked fish meal onboard the Greenpeace ship Esperanza while engaged in a campaign to oppose over-fishing.

When we pointed out that our Sea Shepherd ships serve only vegan meals, the
Greenpeace cook replied, "that's just silly."

We see what we want to see and we rationalize everything else.

The oceans have been plundered to the point that 90% of the fish have been removed from their eco-systems and at this very moment there is over 65,000 miles of long lines set in the Pacific Ocean alone and there are tens of thousands of fishing vessels scouring the seas in a rapacious quest to scoop up everything that swims or crawls.

This is ecological insanity.

The largest marine predator on the planet right now is the cow. More than half the fish taken from the sea is rendered into fish meal and fed to domestic livestock. Puffins are starving in the North sea to feed sand eels to chickens in Denmark. Sheep and pigs have replaced the shark and the sea lion as the dominant predators in the ocean and domestic house cats are eating more fish than all the world's seals combined. We are extracting some fifty to sixty fish from the sea to raise one farm raised salmon.

This is ecological insanity.

Yet the demand for shark fin is rising in China. Ignorant people still want to wear fur coats. In America, we order fries, a cheeseburger and a "diet" coke.

Ecological insanity folks.

Last week a reporter called to ask me if I had really said that earth worms are more important than people. I answered that yes I had. He then asked how I could justify such a statement.

"Simple," I answered. "Earthworms can live on the planet without people. We cannot live on the planet without earthworms thus from an ecological point of view, earthworms are more important than people."

He said that I was insane for suggesting such a ridiculous idea when people were made in the image of God, and earthworms were not.

What we have here of course is a failure to communicate between two radically different world views. His which is anthropocentric and sees reality as human centred and mine which is biocentric and sees reality as including all species equally working in interdependence. He sees us as divine and better than all the other species and I see us as a bunch of arrogant primates out of control.

But that's my two cents worth for Earth Day 2007.

Consider the humble honey bee and remember that the little black and yellow insect you see flitting busily from flower to flower is all that stands between us and our demise as a species on this planet.

We better see to it that they don't disappear.

May be freely published and distributed.

Captain Paul Watson Founder and President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society (1977- Co-Founder - The Greenpeace Foundation (1972) Co-Founder -
Greenpeace International (1979) Director of the Sierra Club USA (2003-2006)
Director - The Farley Mowat Institute Director - http://www.harpseals.org/

"Sail forth - steer for the deep waters only, Reckless O soul, exploring, I
with thee and thou with me, For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared
to go, And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all." - Walt Whitman

http://www.seashepherd.org/ Tel: 360-370-5650 Fax: 360-370-5651
Address: P.O. Box 2616 Friday Harbor, Wa 98250 USA

AL GORE: Global Warming Testimony @ Congress 3.21.07

2007-04-24T16:08:00.000+05:30

The Smart Jitney: Rapid, Realistic Transport

2007-04-24T16:07:00.000+05:30

For many decades, the problems of transportation have revolved around the issue of private versus public. After World War II the country made transportation via the private car the top priority at the expense of public transportation. This choice is not sustainable. The private car, regardless of its convenience, can no longer serve as the principle mode of people transport. Its high cost, the depleting of fossil fuels, and climate deterioration – along with high rates of deaths and injuries – make it unacceptable. Our choice today is to determine what kind of strategy should be adopted to move the basis of transportation away from the private automobile.

Since Peak Oil could arrive sooner than expected and the depletion rate could be faster than predicted, prudence requires a backup plan other than merely changing car technology. A “Smart Jitney” system could be developed rapidly, and provide for a very sizable (50-75%) reduction of gasoline consumed and greenhouse gases generated by transportation. It could also be the model for a new and more efficient approach to personal mobility. Ultimately, it could be vital in keeping our economy going by giving people a way to get to and from work if there suddenly was not have enough fuel for private cars.

PLAN B BUDGET FOR SAVING CIVILIZATION

2007-04-24T15:59:00.000+05:30

Lester R. Brown

Mobilizing to save civilization means restructuring the economy, restoring the economy’s natural support systems, eradicating poverty, and stabilizing population. We have the technologies, economic instruments, and financial resources to do this. The United States has the resources to lead this effort. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University’s Earth Institute sums it up well: “The tragic irony of this moment is that the rich countries are so rich and the poor so poor that a few added tenths of one percent of GNP from the rich ones ramped up over the coming decades could do what was never before possible in human history: ensure that the basic needs of health and education are met for all impoverished children in this world. How many more tragedies will we suffer in this country before we wake up to our capacity to help make the world a safer and more prosperous place not only through military might, but through the gift of life itself?”

It is not possible to put a precise price tag on the changes needed to move our twenty-first century civilization off the overshoot-and-collapse path and onto a path that will sustain economic progress. What we can do, however, is provide some rough estimates of the scale of effort needed.

To fund the needed restructuring of the energy economy, we rely on shifting subsidies from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy. For meeting our social goals, the additional external funding needed to achieve universal primary education in the more than 80 developing countries that require help is conservatively estimated by the World Bank at $12 billion per year. Funding for an adult literacy program based largely on volunteers will take an estimated additional $4 billion annually. Providing for the most basic health care in developing countries is estimated at $33 billion by the World Health Organization. The additional funding needed to provide reproductive health care and family planning services to all women in developing countries is less than $7 billion a year.

Closing the condom gap by providing the additional 9.5 billion condoms needed to control the spread of HIV in the developing world and Eastern Europe requires $2 billion—$285 million for condoms and $1.7 billion for AIDS prevention education and condom distribution. The cost of extending school lunch programs to the 44 poorest countries is $6 billion. An estimated $4 billion per year would cover the cost of assistance to preschool children and pregnant women in these countries. Altogether, the cost of reaching basic social goals comes to $68 billion a year.

A poverty eradication effort that is not accompanied by an earth restoration effort is doomed to fail. Reforesting the earth will cost $6 billion annually. Protecting and restoring rangeland will require $9 billion, restoring fisheries will cost $13 billion, and stabilizing water tables will require $10 billion annually. The most costly activities, protecting biological diversity at $31 billion and conserving soil on cropland at $24 billion, account for over half of the earth restoration annual outlay. All told, these efforts will cost an estimated $93 billion of additional expenditures per year.

Combining social goals and earth restoration components into a Plan B budget yields an additional annual expenditure of $161 billion, roughly one third of the current U.S. military budget or one sixth of the global military budget.

Unfortunately, the United States continues to focus on building an ever-stronger military, largely ignoring the threats posed by continuing environmental deterioration, poverty, and population growth. Its proposed defense budget for 2006, including $50 billion for the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, brings the U.S. projected military expenditure to $492 billion. Other North Atlantic Treaty Organization members spend $209 billion a year on the military. Russia spends about $65 billion, and China, $56 billion. U.S. military spending is now roughly equal to that of all other countries combined. As the late Eugene Carroll, Jr., a retired admiral, astutely observed, “For forty-five years of the Cold War we were in an arms race with the Soviet Union. Now it appears we are in an arms race with ourselves.”

It is decision time. Like earlier civilizations that got into environmental trouble, we can decide to stay with business as usual and watch our modern economy decline and eventually collapse, or we can consciously move onto a new path, one that will sustain economic progress. In this situation, no action is actually a decision to stay on the decline-and-collapse path.

It is hard to find the words to convey the gravity of our situation and the momentous nature of the decision we are about to make. How can we convey the urgency of this moment in history? Will tomorrow be too late? Do enough of us care deeply enough to turn the tide now?

Will someone somewhere one day erect a tombstone for our civilization? If so, how will it read? It cannot say we did not understand. We do understand. It cannot say we did not have the resources. We do have the resources. It can only say we were too slow to respond to the forces undermining our civilization. Time ran out.

No one can argue today that we do not have the resources to eradicate poverty, stabilize population, and protect the earth’s natural resource base. We can get rid of hunger, illiteracy, disease, and poverty, and we can restore the earth’s soils, forests, and fisheries. Shifting one sixth of the world military budget to the Plan B budget would be more than adequate to move the world onto a path that would sustain progress. We can build a global community where the basic needs of all the earth’s people are satisfied—a world that will allow us to think of ourselves as civilized.

This economic restructuring depends on tax restructuring, on getting the market to be ecologically honest. The benchmark of political leadership in all countries will be whether or not leaders succeed in restructuring the tax system as, for example, Germany and Sweden have are doing. This is the key to restructuring the energy economy—both to stabilize climate and to make the transition to the post-petroleum world.

As we look at the environmentally destructive trends that are undermining our future, the world is desperately in need of visible evidence that we can indeed turn things around at the global level. Fortunately, the steps to reverse destructive trends or to initiate constructive new trends are often mutually reinforcing or win-win solutions. For example, efficiency gains that reduce oil use also reduce carbon emissions and air pollution. Steps to eradicate poverty simultaneously help eradicate hunger and stabilize population. Reforestation fixes carbon, increases aquifer recharge, and reduces soil erosion. Once we get enough trends headed in the right direction, they will often reinforce each other.

It is easy to spend hundreds of billions in response to terrorist threats, but the reality is that the resources needed to disrupt a modern economy are small, and a U.S. Department of Homeland Security, however heavily funded, provides only minimal protection from suicidal terrorists. The challenge is not to provide a high-tech military response to terrorism, but to build a global society that is environmentally sustainable and equitable—one that restores hope for everyone. Such an effort would more effectively undermine the support for terrorism than any increase in military expenditures, than any new weapons systems, however advanced.

MASSIVE DIVERSION OF U.S. GRAIN TO FUEL CARS IS RAISING WORLD FOOD PRICES

2007-03-31T16:20:00.001+05:30

Lester R. Brown

If you think you are spending more each week at the supermarket, you may be right. The escalating share of the U.S. grain harvest going to ethanol distilleries is driving up food prices worldwide.

Corn prices have doubled over the last year, wheat futures are trading at their highest level in 10 years, and rice prices are rising too. In addition, soybean futures have risen by half. A Bloomberg analysis notes that the soaring use of corn as the feedstock for fuel ethanol “is creating unintended consequences throughout the global food chain.”

The Climate Change Swindle

2007-03-14T11:44:00.000+05:30

Don't expect a balanced report.
Here is some background information on the director of that documentary:

http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=39
http://www.gmwatch.org/p2temp2.asp?aid=38&page=1&op=2
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007...ies-of-denial/

There is a very clear point-by-point description of how the film misled people at
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/07/0313pure_propaganda_the.php
It is worth reading, because there’s a need to counter the arguments used to suggest that the global warming scare has been disproved.

Learning to respect water

2007-03-13T11:42:00.000+05:30

BOTTLED WATER COSTS more than petrol and yet most of us flush around 50 litres of drinking water down the loo every day. Fifty litres is a tank of petrol. The water in our lavatory cisterns is as clean as that in the heavily marketed and transported bottles that line our supermarket shelves, but we are as careless of tap water as of fresh air. How can we be so inconsistent? On one level we venerate water with Evian and sacred wells; on another we treat it as a national nuisance that falls unbidden from the sky, spoiling our shoes and holidays.

Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning

2007-03-13T11:40:00.000+05:30

Oliver Tickell analyses some sound solutions to global warming.

Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning
George Monbiot
Allen Lane, UK, 2006, £17.99

FIRST LET ME declare an interest: my name listed on the acknowledgements page of this book. I am also grateful to George Monbiot for publicising in Heat an idea of mine about ‘smart’ domestic electricity meters, which would charge us according to the instantaneous marginal cost of electricity on the network. This, in a nutshell, is what Heat is about – solutions to global warming. And in particular, how the rich nations that emit most of the world’s carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases can cut those emissions by a whopping 90% – essential, in Monbiot’s view, if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change within this century.

Intolerable beauty

2007-03-13T11:34:00.000+05:30

This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics tend to feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or $12.5 million spent every hour on the Iraq war. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.

Read on...

Water prices rising worldwide

2007-03-08T11:25:00.000+05:30

The price of water is increasing-—sometimes dramatically—-throughout the world. Over the past five years, municipal water rates have increased by an average of 27 percent in the United States, 32 percent in the United Kingdom, 45 percent in Australia, 50 percent in South Africa, and 58 percent in Canada. In Tunisia, the price of irrigation water increased fourfold over a decade.

A recent survey of 14 countries indicates that average municipal water prices range from 66¢ per cubic meter in the United States up to $2.25 in Denmark and Germany. Yet consumers rarely pay the actual cost of water. In fact, many governments practically (and sometimes literally) give water away for nothing.

The average American household consumes about 480 cubic meters (127,400 gallons) of water during a year. Homeowners in Washington, DC, pay about $350 (72¢ per cubic meter) for that amount. Buying that same amount of water from a vendor in the slums of Guatemala City would cost more than $1,700.

The price people pay for water is largely determined by three factors: the cost of transport from its source to the user, total demand for the water, and price subsidies. Treatment to remove contaminants also can add to the cost.

Read on...

Climate Policy Solutions that Save the Planet

2007-03-01T09:56:00.000+05:30

Responses must be sufficient, scientifically based, rapidly pursued, address underlying causes, and go beyond seeking to maintain conspicuous excessive consumption by the rich.

Earth Meanders, http://earthmeanders.blogspot.com/
By Dr. Glen Barry
February 28, 2006OK,

Climate Change Is Real, So Should We All Consume Like MovieStars?

It has been said that Oscar wins for "An Inconvenient Truth"could spur climate action. This begs the question what type of action? Not all actions would be equally effective, nor prove cumulatively adequate to eventually stop global heating. As the efforts to find climate solutions mount, prepare yourself forever greater levels of corporate, political and celebrity greenwashing - false claims of environmental sensitivity and climate concerns for the purpose of public relations.

I love you Al. It was me that said "Climate, Forests, Save the Planet Al" on the 2000 election rope line in Madison; as we shook hands, to which you replied "We'll do it together". I think we have both been holding up our part of the bargain. While Mr. Gore has done a great service raising awareness regarding climate change, I am far from convinced that he and his Hollywood friends, with their energy hungry multiple mansions and jet-set life-styles (carbon offsetting or not), have diagnosed planetary climate change solutions, nor are they leading by example. There are serious questions being asked regarding celebrity environmentalist's rich, excessive lifestyles that cannot be pawned off on "I'm offsetting the carbon" of living in opulent luxury.
This simply shifts the necessity of actually reducing emissions to others that are less well off.

Hollywood greenies are not enunciating a message of personal and societal sacrifice for the Planet and our children, or leading by example by showing a willingness to live in smaller homes, drive less, fly rarely or appreciably cut their own energy use and emissions; nor raising the politically and religiously complex issues such as population control, carbon rationing, carbon taxes and other fundamentals that are crucial for global ecological sustainability. It is not just about protecting the climate. How are we going to feed, house and clothe the world while shrinking its population, repairing the climate and other planetary ecosystems and learning to live sustainably? The answer is a series of fundamental social changes, not reformist greenwashing where we all aspire to live as movie stars.

Crafting Climate Policy Solutions Adequate to Save the Planet

There is still plenty of climate change debate to come. Now that virtually every sensible scientist and citizen understands climate change, which is an important part of broader global ecological change, is a reality. We are now entering the period of identification and implementation of long-term sufficient policy solutions. There is still plenty of room for humanity to go wrong - moving too slowly, too incrementally, or even wrongly with chimerical techno-fixes, and/or refusing to think outside of the box about profound social, political, economic and ecological change adequate to address the collapse of the global atmosphere and other ecosystems. We can be 100% aware, and yet through poorly conceived and implemented solutions continue our trajectory of greatly overshooting the global ecological system's carrying capacity.

Beyond Organic

2007-02-27T14:57:00.000+05:30

The next ecological and social revolution is being plotted right now in the rainforests of South America.

Our small boat bobs along the unimaginably wide Amazon River, then heads up a fast-flowing tributary the colour of tea with cream, and finally turns onto a stream leading into the heart of the rainforest. Monkeys scamper in the trees above us as the motorboat chugs more and more slowly until the stream becomes too narrow to travel. This is where José Luiz de Oliveira and his 17-year-old son Alex live on a small farmstead alive with bird calls. Piglets frolic in the cool mud below their dock while ducks march in formation.In many ways this boat ride feels like a trip into the past. The forest is largely untouched here except for the sunny clearing around the house (although we did spot an illegal lumber operation downriver). The de Oliveiras live as people have for centuries—drawing their daily meals and livelihood from the land, the river and the livestock. It’s an enchanting place if you can get used to the mosquitoes. Yet beauty and peace do not translate into prosperity. The tiny house has no electricity, no telephone, no fans, no screens in the windows.

The great debates about sustainable development being waged in government assemblies and at environmental institutes, corporate headquarters and street protests around the world are really about this place. Is it possible to bring the de Oliveiras some of the advantages of modern life—like high school and shoes for Alex—without destroying other valuable things in the process? Valuable things like the Amazon rainforest itself, which is crucial to everyone on the planet as a source of ecological balance and potential new medicines. José invites us to sit under the thatched palm shelter at the end of their dock and we pass the time telling stories and spouting opinions. For them it’s a welcome break from working in the heat as well as an opportunity to show off baskets of freshly picked açaí, which they gathered from the tops of palm trees surrounding their home.

Açaí—a fruit slightly larger than a blueberry with a similar colour—is the reason we have come up the river. It has recently been discovered outside the rainforest as a “superfood”—a nutritious bundle of amino acids, fibre, essential fatty acids and more of the highly coveted antioxidants than either red wine or blueberries. People often report feeling a surge of energy after eating it—I certainly did when gobbling some after a long day on the river without lunch. Now that açaí (pronounced ah-sigh-EE) products are beginning to appear in health-food stores around the world, this berry offers new hope that development in the Amazon can become something more than a sad choice between environmental ruin and continuing poverty. My boat mate, Travis Baumgardner, a 31-year-old Texan who came to Rio to study environmental geography and now runs Brazilian operations for the U.S. company Sambazon, believes açaí will prove to the people of the Amazon, in cold cash, that it’s more lucrative to leave the rainforest standing than to chop it down to raise cattle or soybeans. That’s why this boat ride is more than a trip into the past—it’s a journey toward a sustainable future.

Read the full story

New Meat Byproducts: Avian Flu and Global Climate Change

2007-02-27T14:51:00.000+05:30

The growth of factory farms, their proximity to congested cities in the developing world, and the globalized poultry trade are all culprits behind the spread of avian flu, while livestock wastes damage the climate at a rate that surpasses emissions from cars and SUVs, noted Worldwatch Institute research associate Danielle Nierenberg at the AAAS conference on Monday in San Francisco.

In 2006, global meat production increased 2.5 percent to an estimated 276 million tons. Sixty percent of this production occurred in the developing world, where half of all meat is now consumed thanks to rising incomes and exploding urbanization.

“Many of the world’s estimated 800 million urban farmers, who raise crops and animals for food, transportation, and income in back yards and on rooftops, have been targeted unfairly by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization,” she told participants at the AAAS event. “The socioeconomic importance of livestock to the world’s poor cannot be overstated.” Read full story.

Fahrenheit 59 - What a child's fever might tell us about climate change

2007-02-14T10:14:00.000+05:30

"It turns out that our bodies’ homeostasis can provide an analogy with which to understand the complexities of climate change—and the human response to it. Over geological time, the biosphere uses negative feedbacks in a way that maintains a stable global average temperature. When the Earth’s oceans heat up past a certain point..."

Urgent: Climate Wake Up Call!

2007-02-09T19:10:00.000+05:30

Climate change is happening and we need to take urgent action now.The leaders of the world's most polluting countries will be meeting in Germany this June. The priorities for this summit are being decided right now.

We will be airing this TV ad in key world capitals to send them a wake up call.We need your help to make them hear us, sign our petition to tell world leaders that we need bold action NOW.

Film on Carbon Offsetting - MyClimate

2007-02-09T18:50:00.000+05:30

From “Inconvenient” to Incontrovertible - Worldwatch Institute

2007-02-09T18:31:00.000+05:30

Last year, the world was captivated by academy award and Nobel Prize nominee Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Now, the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows the science is not only inconvenient—it’s incontrovertible.

Some 2,500 scientists from more than 130 countries agree that there is at least a 90 percent probability that warming observed during the past 50 years is the result of human activity (up from 66 percent chance stated in the last IPCC report released in 2001).

IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri has said the report’s greatest contribution to the debate was in achieving consensus about the threat. The question now is: What can we do about global warming and how can we prepare our world for worsening storms, droughts, floods and other impacts?

See how…

The United States (the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter and whose action is necessary to encourage China and India to reduce their emissions) can displace a large portion of its fossil fuels by looking to the American Energy vision.

Cities—which cover only 0.4 percent of the Earth’s surface yet generate the bulk of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions—can make significant reductions in emissions by sourcing power locally and investing in energy efficiency.

Communities can plan for disasters due to the likely increase in sea-level rise, floods, heat waves, droughts, and hurricane intensity.

Grassroots Global Earth Activism v 1.0

2007-02-07T08:53:00.000+05:30

Last week Ecological Internet (EI) launched a new environment social network entitled "My.EcoEarth.Info". This site is the latest addition to EI's leading climate environmental portals - Climate Ark and EcoEarth.Info - and the new social networking capabilities are going to be an important element in fostering "Grassroots Global Earth Activism".

The intent is to broaden EI's unprecedented global environmental advocacy network to allow more communication, sharing of information and collaboration between Earth Action network participants and EI itself. On the new site you can share your environmental concerns in an on-line diary, and even launch campaigns with petitions; all while networking with people from around the world that share your concerns and are working as you are to Save the Earth.

Please, at your earliest convenience stop by and take the 5-10 minutes it takes to setup your free profile as either an individual or organization. And then start adding content and networking with others. We look forward to feature requests as we continue to work on a version 2.0. Together we can will global ecological sustainability into being.

IPCC adopts major assessment of climate change science

2007-02-03T16:16:00.000+05:30

Paris, 2 February 2007 – Late last night, Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) adopted the Summary for Policymakers of the first volume of “Climate Change 2007”, also known as the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).

“Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis”, assesses the current scientific knowledge of the natural and human drivers of climate change, observed changes in climate, the ability of science to attribute changes to different causes, and projections for future climate change.

The report was produced by some 600 authors from 40 countries. Over 620 expert reviewers and a large number of government reviewers also participated. Representatives from 113 governments reviewed and revised the Summary line-by-line during the course of this week before adopting it and accepting the underlying report.

The Summary can be downloaded in English from www.ipcc.ch and http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu. A webcast of the final press conference has also been posted. The Summary will be available in Arabic, Chinese French, Russian and Spanish at a later date. The full underlying report will be published in English by Cambridge University Press.

BBC: Climate paper prompts call to act

Subsidizing Climate Change

2007-02-02T13:59:00.000+05:30

Lester Brown - Earth Policy Institute

Each year the worlds taxpayers provide an estimated $700 billion of subsidies for environmentally destructive activities, such as fossil fuel burning, overpumping aquifers, clearcutting forests, and overfishing. An Earth Council study, Subsidizing Unsustainable Development, observes that there is something unbelievable about the world spending hundreds of billions of dollars annually to subsidize its own destruction.

Iran provides a classic example of extreme subsidies when it prices oil for internal use at one tenth the world price, strongly encouraging car ownership and gas consumption. The World Bank reports that if this $3.6-billion annual subsidy were phased out, it would reduce Irans carbon emissions by a staggering 49 percent. It would also strengthen the economy by freeing up public revenues for investment in the countrys economic development. Iran is not alone. The Bank reports that removing energy subsidies would reduce carbon emissions in Venezuela by 26 percent, in Russia by 17 percent, in India by 14 percent, and in Indonesia by 11 percent.

Changing the Social Climate - Redefining Progress

2007-02-01T11:55:00.000+05:30

Two things have happened since we began working on this publication in August of 2006.
First, California passed the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, the nation’s very first piece of climate change legislation. Second, the White House announced a national plan to address global warming.

The California law is truly a landmark piece of legislation. And while the merits of the White House plan are debatable, together these news items convey one simple fact: The public debate about whether or not global warming is real is officially over.

The pressing need to do something about dramatic climate change has reached a critical mass across the globe and across the country. And it is an issue that has also reached into every aspect of our lives.

Global warming is not simply an environmental issue. It is an economic issue, a social justice issue, a lifestyle issue. It’s about race, class, and democratic participation. It’s about globalization and global democracy. It’s about national security and global security.

So how do we effectively organize around this growing crisis?

Tides Foundation invited Redefining Progress Executive Director Michel Gelobter to discuss that question—and many more—with our Senior Philanthropic Advisor Catherine Lerza at our offices in the San Francisco Presidio, on August 25, 2006.

Read the full report

Clean Coal, Forest Biofuel and Other Fairy Tales

2007-01-24T18:49:00.000+05:30

The history of global heating has largely been written by coal and forest loss, now wrongly hailed as climate change solutions

Earth Meanders by Dr. Glen Barry
January 21, 2006

Two of the biggest, most dangerous lies being promoted in response to global warming are that clean coal exists and the world's forests are adequate to provide biofuel. Dirty coal and industrial forest harvest for energy only accelerates the root causes of looming Doomsday for the Earth - that is destruction of the biosphere's atmospheric and terrestrial ecosystems.

Read on....

The Environmental Revolution

2007-01-24T18:44:00.000+05:30

Lester R. Brown

Restructuring the global economy according to the principles of ecology represents the greatest investment opportunity in history. In scale, the Environmental Revolution is comparable to the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions that preceded it.

The Agricultural Revolution involved restructuring the food economy, shifting from a nomadic life-style based on hunting and gathering to a settled life-style based on tilling the soil. Although agriculture started as a supplement to hunting and gathering, it eventually replaced it almost entirely. The Agricultural Revolution eventually cleared one tenth of the earth’s land surface of either grass or trees so it could be plowed and planted to crops. Unlike the hunter-gatherer culture that had little effect on the earth, this new farming culture literally transformed the earth’s surface.

The Industrial Revolution has been under way for two centuries, although in some countries it is still in its early stages. At its foundation was a shift from wood to fossil fuels, a shift that set the stage for a massive expansion in economic activity. Indeed, its distinguishing feature is the harnessing of vast amounts of solar energy stored beneath the earth’s surface as fossil fuels. While the Agricultural Revolution transformed the earth’s surface, the Industrial Revolution is transforming the earth’s atmosphere.

The additional productivity that the Industrial Revolution made possible unleashed enormous creative energies. It also gave birth to new life-styles and to the most environmentally destructive era in human history, setting the world firmly on a course of eventual economic decline.

The Environmental Revolution resembles the Industrial Revolution in that each is dependent on the shift to a new energy source. And like both earlier revolutions, the Environmental Revolution will affect the entire world.

There are differences in scale, timing, and origin among the three revolutions. Unlike the first two, the Environmental Revolution must be compressed into a matter of decades. The other revolutions were driven by new discoveries, by advances in technology, whereas this revolution, while it will be facilitated by new technologies, is being driven by our need to make peace with nature.

There has not been an investment situation like this before. The $1.7 trillion that the world spends now each year on oil, the leading source of energy, provides some insight into how much it could spend on energy in the eco-economy. One difference between the investments in fossil fuels and those in wind power, solar cells, and geothermal energy is that the latter are not depletable.

For developing countries dependent on imported oil, the new energy sources promise to free up capital for investment in domestic energy sources. Not many countries have their own oil fields, but all have wind and solar energy waiting to be harnessed. In terms of economic expansion and job generation, these new energy technologies are a godsend. Investments in energy efficiency will grow rapidly simply because they are profitable. In virtually all countries, saved energy is the cheapest source of new energy.

No sector of the global economy will be untouched by the Environmental Revolution. In this new economy, some companies will be winners and some will be losers. Those who participate in building the new economy will be the winners. Those who cling to the past risk becoming part of it.

A New Middle Stance Emerges in Debate over Climate

2007-01-23T10:36:00.000+05:30

Amid the shouting lately about whether global warming is a human-caused catastrophe or a hoax, some usually staid climate scientists in the usually invisible middle are speaking up.

by Andrew Revkin

Read the full article...

And an interesting reaction on this article by David Roberts:

"Andy Revkin produced a truly bizarre piece over the weekend: "Middle Stance Emerging in Debate Over Climate." Frankly, I'm surprised it got past the NYT's news editors."

High Broderism reaches the global warming debate

Also worth reading is this article by Mike Hulme, Director, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research:

"As activists organised by the group Stop Climate Chaos gather in London to demand action, one of Britain's top climate scientists says the language of chaos and catastrophe has got out of hand."

Chaotic world of climate truth

Green Rage

2007-01-19T12:20:00.000+05:30

PEOPLE LIKE TO THINK of the courtroom as a crucible of justice, but to me it's always seemed a diluter of passions. The atmosphere is restrained, so respectful and genteel it's easy to forget that people's lives hang in the balance. The system has a way of straining out emotion. It is designed to objectify, to control the soaring passions that created the need for the courtroom in the first place. The perpetrators and the victims pour their passions into the settling ponds of the attorneys, and the attorneys, in turn, pour the diluted stuff into the deep vessel of the judge, and, by extension, into the even deeper water of The System.

Read on...

Death to the Incandescent

2007-01-19T11:53:00.000+05:30

How many of us have even done the first thing on the list, change our light bulbs?

According to the Rocky Mountain Institute, lighting is responsible for about a fourth of the electricity consumed in the United States, of which 20 percent goes to extra air conditioning to remove unwanted heat given off by light bulbs. More than 90 percent of the energy consumed by a standard incandescent bulb is given off as heat, while only 10 percent is converted into light. That's a 10 percent efficiency of converting electricity to light.

By contrast, a compact fluorescent (CF) light bulb is from 35 percent to 66 percent efficient, depending on the design. The new LED lights are even more efficient. By one estimate, if every American household changed just three incandescent light bulbs to CF bulbs, we could eliminate 11 fossil-fuel-fired power plants.

If we can stop even a fraction of those new coal plants being built just by changing our light bulbs, shouldn't we do it already? And why haven't we banned the incandescent bulb yet? When we learned that leaded gas was poisoning kids' brains, we phased it out. Those bulbs are poisoning our kids' future.

But as long as the old-fashioned filament bulb sits there on the store shelves, clear or frosted, white or colored, cheap and abundant, there will always be some of us who will take them home and screw them in.

Read the full article

2006 Top Green Tech Ideas

2007-01-19T11:48:00.000+05:30

In 2005, Americans woke up to the reality of peak oil, the predicament first described by geologist M.K. Hubbert in which world oil production would reach a peak, followed by an inevitable decline. Three things worked together to set off the alarm.

First was a steep rise in gas prices. Although gas prices had risen before, they had always been followed by a drop as production rose to meet demand. 2005 was different, because respected oil analysts such as Kenneth Deffeyes and Matt Simmons spoke up to tell us that not only were the super giant oil fields of the Middle East slowly petering out, but the pace of new oil discoveries was down as well.

What finally opened many eyes to the likelihood of peak oil was the growing realization that the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with WMDs or the war on terrorism. And if it wasn't about those two things, then why else would oilmen Bush and Cheney have conned us into the Iraq adventure? It had to be because they were desperate to control one of the last places in the world where cheap oil could be had.

With the rise in peak oil awareness came a desperate search for a silver-bullet solution - proponents of nuclear power, ethanol, coal, tar sands and oil shale all argued that these energy sources would fill the gap left by declining oil reserves and keep the American way of life intact. Too many people, deep down, agreed with Dick Cheney's assertion that the American way of life was "not negotiable."

But there is no negotiating with a hurricane, either. Hurricane Katrina, whipped into ferocious strength by a warming ocean, convinced many that the warnings about global climate change were to be taken seriously. And taking climate change seriously means that tar sands, oil shale and coal are off the table as solutions to the energy crisis, because these fuels are all far more carbon-heavy than the crude oil we currently rely on.

So in 2006, we started seeing more attention to the two paths that can lead us forward: energy efficiency and renewable energy. As Democrats take over Congress in 2007, promising action on energy and climate change, it is important to look critically at the available options. The news about climate change looks grimmer every day, alerting us to the fact that we have no time to waste and we can't afford to invest precious resources in false technology promises and energy dead-ends.

Fortunately, a lot of brilliant minds are at work on these problems, and a number of good ideas have surfaced in 2006 that are worth further investigation. Below I list five technologies that seem especially promising. I'll be keeping an eye on these technologies to see where they go in 2007.

Read on...

THE ‘CARBON-NEUTRAL’ MYTH

2007-01-13T12:35:00.000+05:30

We cannot rest on our laurels, or indeed our yews or oaks.

OVER THE PAST few years, the idea of carbon ‘offset’ or ‘carbon-neutral’ projects has found a large following. Show-biz celebrities, aid agencies and even financial institutions like the World Bank hail tree-planting and similar projects as a win-win-win approach to global warming. But can climate damage caused by fossil-fuel emissions really be ‘neutralised’ or ‘offset’?

The idea is simple enough: we pay someone else, somewhere else, to cover their land with trees, and they will soak up the carbon dioxide released through the emissions from our bargain flight to the sun or that flashy CD release or that big corporate conference. We can go on using fossil fuels without affecting the climate as long as we plant enough trees.

So what’s wrong with using trees to soak up greenhouse gases?

What ‘offset’ forestry does is confuse fossil carbon with biological carbon. It claims that emissions from burning oil, gas or coal can be considered equal, in climatic terms, to the biological carbon stored in a tree. One UK-based ‘carbon-neutral’ service says that it can calculate exactly how many trees someone will need to plant and tend for ninety-nine years in order to soak up the emissions generated by air travel to, say, Brussels.

The problem in reality is that carbon emissions from burned oil, gas or coal cannot be considered as equal to the same amount of biological carbon in a tree. Why not? Because there exists naturally an active carbon pool with carbon freely moving between forests, oceans and air. The fossil carbon pool, in contrast, is inert. But once out of the ground, fossil carbon joins the active carbon pool and will not go back into the fossil carbon pool for millennia. Releasing fossil carbon increases the active carbon pool, and this is the crucial difference between fossil and biological carbon.

Of course, trees can also die, at which point they release most of the carbon that they keep locked away from the atmosphere. In relation to ‘offset’ forestry, proponents assure us that they can calculate the odds and take this into consideration. Yet within scientific circles intense debate continues about whether one can actually predict over the next century, or even the next decade, the carbon fluxes of complex ecosystems.

CAN ANYONE REALLY calculate the carbon performance of a tree? Can we really guarantee how much carbon planted forests can mop up? Cambridge University landscape historian Oliver Rackham suggests that “For its practical effect, telling people to plant trees to reduce global warming is like telling them to drink more water to keep rising sea levels down.”

Even if we could accurately predict the carbon performance of a tree, just dealing with the increased carbon dioxide emissions we will generate worldwide over the next half century would require completely covering Europe – from the Atlantic to the Ural mountains – with trees. Soaking up the UK’s annual greenhouse-gas emissions would require planting an area of forest the size of Devon and Cornwall every single year – and maintaining it forever.

But carbon ‘offset’ troubles don’t end there. The Norwegian organisation The Future In Our Hands has described tree-planting projects in Uganda and Tanzania as a new form of colonialism, under which Northern companies and affluent citizens claim lands in the South to ‘compensate’ for damage caused by burning fossil fuel elsewhere. Already, monoculture plantations aimed at soaking up carbon dioxide released in the North are damaging lands essential to many peoples’ survival in Brazil, Ecuador, Uganda and Tanzania. Reports released by the World Rainforest Movement and the Forest Peoples Programme show that local and indigenous communities in Ecuador and India are paying a high price for carbon ‘offset’ projects they signed up to on the promise of jobs and development. In reality, these projects simply entrench social inequality, demand unpaid labour to fulfil communities’ contractual obligations, and further weaken traditional land rights.

Closer to home, tree planting charities are also getting the short end of the stick. They receive only a small fraction (around 2%) of the fee paid to carbon ‘offset’ services for planting a tree. According to The Observer, this amounts to approximately twelve pence out of the six pounds charged for planting the tree – certainly not enough to plant and preserve a tree for ninety-nine years.

SADLY, MUCH AS we’d all like a way to combat the ever–worsening problem of climate change, and wonderful though trees are, they do not provide a magic solution that will allow us to go on mining and burning fossil fuels. Carbon ‘offset’ projects may salve our conscience, but they won’t solve the problem of global warming. On the contrary, by creating the illusion that all is well as long as we pay a little extra, they may further delay global agreement on decisive action to avert climate change.

Jutta Kill is Climate Change Campaign Co-ordinator for FERN.
www.fern.org

We're in this together - Annie Lennox

2007-01-13T12:20:00.000+05:30

If we view the world as an interdependent global village, then we avoid taking action at our own peril.

WE LIVE IN complicated times. We seek, but we don’t necessarily find, the ultimate things we long to experience – contentment, joy, love, inner peace. Our lives are too often overloaded with demands: that we should be successful, rich, beautiful and famous; but this just adds to our inner stress and turmoil. The media constantly bombard us with images reminding us of our ‘lack’ … and we so often feel like failures.

Life’s condition means that at any given moment the things we value most can be swiftly taken away from us. Our health, our safety and security, both emotionally and physically, cannot be guaranteed, so we carry our anxiety and fear of loss within and around us, unwittingly. We strive for a ‘better moment’ than the one we are currently in, while dragging the burdens of our past into every present situation, so that we are rarely, if ever, ‘here and now’.

How do we find meaning, value and connection in a society that is dislocated and in many ways dysfunctional? We have lost our sense of community or belonging to anything much beyond our own individual circumstance. We have become voyeurs, vacuously gazing at reality TV shows and sitcoms while exhibitionists and ever-new ‘celebrities’ grab their shot at fifteen minutes of fame.

Read on...

2007 Warmest year..?

2007-01-13T12:17:00.000+05:30

LONDON -- A resurgent El Nino and persistently high levels of greenhouse gases are likely to make 2007 the world's hottest year ever recorded, British climate scientists said Thursday.

Britain's Meteorological Office said there was a 60 percent probability that 2007 would break the record set by 1998, which was 1.20 degrees over the long-term average.

"This new information represents another warning that climate change is happening around the world," the office said.

The reason for the forecast is mostly due to El Nino, a cyclical warming trend now under way in the Pacific Ocean. The event occurs irregularly -- the last one happened in 2002 -- and typically leads to increased temperatures worldwide.

While this year's El Nino is not as strong as it was in 1997 and 1998, its combination with the steady increase of temperatures due to global warming from human activity may be enough to break the Earth's temperature record, said Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research unit at the University of East Anglia.

"Because of the warming due to greenhouse gases, even a moderate warming event is enough to push the global temperatures over the top," he said.

"El Nino is an independent variable," he said. "But the underlying trends in the warming of the Earth is almost certainly due to the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."

Climate Change denial

2007-01-13T12:13:00.000+05:30

"Wacky Weather" is Deadly Global Heating

As of 2007 the Earth System has already undergone profound global change of which global heating is the most immediately evident profound impact. It is getting hot, and it is happening fast. Many leading scientists tell us we have 10 years at most given current trends before climate change becomes irreversible and dangerous, beyond the generally accepted rise of 2 degrees Celsius considered adaptable (we are about 1/3 the way there).

Yet the chortling television weather people tell us the unprecedented wave of global mild weather - really a lack of winter in many parts - is not climate change. We are encouraged to take advantage of our good fortune and get out there and play golf. At what point will abrupt climate change and deterioration of the Earth System's life giving biosphere be recognized as a global ecological emergency, and responded to as such? And will it then be too late to limit damages, or even to survive?

Global warming is not a slow, gentle, pleasant rise in temperatures to be savored. It is an abrupt fundamental break down in the Earth System's climate sub-system that threatens the Earth's, humanity's and your family's ability to live. It is not enough to blame the weather on El Nino, which itself can be and is exacerbated by climate change. As climate change continues unabated by systematic policy responses, and "wacky weather" more prevalent, we can expect immediately budding trees to die from later frosts, agriculture to struggle to define growing seasons, pest insects to multiply, and ecosystems to deteriorate and die.

Read on...

BBC WORLD Climate Watch

2007-01-12T19:25:00.000+05:30

Hello, I'm David Shukman, environment and science correspondent on BBC World. For four weeks we'll be showing a series of programmes about climate change, ahead of a special Climate Watch season beginning in April.

I made the long journey to Antarctica, travelled to the heart of the Amazon and ventured deep into the Russian Arctic Circle. And, for the last of BBC World's climate documentaries, my colleague Roger Harrabin visited a country that may suffer more than most from the effects of global warming ?Bangladesh.

In April BBC World is launching Climate Watch and YOU have the chance to be involved. Climate Watch will look at the changing face of our planet and if you have photos or video clips with examples or personal images that capture the changing world around us we like to see them. It could be images from the past, maybe of your parents in the same area, or even your grandparents - how has the environment changed since their day? Or maybe pictures of a tree blossoming unusually early, or a river running dry or some other unexpected change in the world around you.

The Great Turning - Joanna Macy

2007-01-12T19:18:00.000+05:30

Joanna Macy is an internationally honored eco-philosopher and scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology.

The Great Turning is a name for the essential adventure of our time: the shift from the Industrial Growth Society to a life-sustaining civilization.

The ecological and social crises we face are caused by an economic system dependent on accelerating growth. This self-destructing political economy sets its goals and measures its performance in terms of ever-increasing corporate profits—in other words by how fast materials can be extracted from Earth and turned into consumer products, weapons, and waste.

A revolution is underway because people are realizing that our needs can be met without destroying our world. We have the technical knowledge, the communication tools, and material resources to grow enough food, ensure clean air and water, and meet rational energy needs. Future generations, if there is a livable world for them, will look back at the epochal transition we are making to a life-sustaining society. And they may well call this the time of the Great Turning. It is happening now.

Whether or not it is recognized by corporate-controlled media, the Great Turning is a reality. Although we cannot know yet if it will take hold in time for humans and other complex life forms to survive, we can know that it is under way. And it is gaining momentum, through the actions of countless individuals and groups around the world. To see this as the larger context of our lives clears our vision and summons our courage.

Read on...

Making Other Arrangements - James Kunstler

2006-12-24T19:31:00.000+05:30

AS THE AMERICAN PUBLIC CONTINUES sleepwalking into a future of energy scarcity, climate change, and geopolitical turmoil, we have also continued dreaming. Our collective dream is one of those super-vivid ones people have just before awakening. It is a particularly American dream on a particularly American theme: how to keep all the cars running by some other means than gasoline. We'll run them on ethanol! We'll run them on biodiesel, on synthesized coal liquids, on hydrogen, on methane gas, on electricity, on used French-fry oil . . . !

Read on...

State of the World 2007

2006-12-21T13:41:00.000+05:30

Santa Claus is Chinese

2006-12-19T18:08:00.000+05:30

- OR -WHY CHINA IS RISING AND THE UNITED STATES IS DECLINING

Lester R. Brown

I know Santa Claus is Chinese because each Christmas morning after all the gifts are unwrapped and things settle down I systematically go through the presents to see where they are made. The results are almost always the same: roughly 70 percent are from China. After some research, it seems that my one-family survey is representative of the country as a whole.

Read on...

Indian roads...

2006-12-06T13:52:00.000+05:30

A NEW MATERIALS ECONOMY

2006-12-06T13:33:00.000+05:30

In nature, one-way linear flows do not long survive. Nor, by extension, can they long survive in the expanding economy that is a part of the earth’s ecosystem. The challenge is to redesign the materials economy so that it is compatible with nature. The throwaway economy that has been evolving over the last half-century is an aberration, now itself headed for the junk heap of history.

Read on...

and also: THROWAWAY ECONOMY IN TROUBLE

ZeroFootprint

2006-11-25T18:48:00.000+05:30

Zerofootprint’s goal is to connect people who care about the environment for the purpose of reducing ecological footprint.

We aim to be the world’s foremost content hub for green, linking millions of people from across the globe engaged in sustainable commerce, and helping to inform people, who want to strive toward a more sustainable lifestyle.

See also ZeroFootprint Energy

2005 Another Record Year for Global Carbon Emissions

2006-11-25T18:47:00.000+05:30

In 2005, carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels climbed to a record high of 7.9 billion tons, an increase of some 3 percent from the previous year. Annual global emissions have been increasing since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century, when humans first began burning fossil fuels on a large scale to produce energy. Since the early 1900s, emissions have been rising at an increasingly rapid pace. Annual emissions have grown by a factor of fifteen since 1900, advancing nearly 3 percent a year over that time.

Friendly Fire

2006-11-14T08:37:00.000+05:30

Most of those advocating the new energy technologies are not suggesting any reduction in overall energy consumption.

THERE IS A critical issue in the energy debate which has not received the attention it deserves: the problem of ‘friendly fire’. Friendly fire is the euphemism our military and press use to sugar-coat the presumably accidental killing of soldiers in battle by their own comrades.

The first time I saw the term ‘friendly fire’ used in a non-military context was in the book The Argumentative Indian, by the brilliant Nobel laureate economist, philosopher and historian Amartya Sen. In Sen’s words: “Sometimes the very institutions that were created to overcome disparities and barriers have tended to act as reactionary influences in reinforcing inequity.” One example he gives is the contrast between the immense government stockpiles of food in India alongside the largest undernourished population in the world. He states: “The positive hopes of equity through high support prices of food and payment of subsidies have ... tended to produce exactly the opposite effect.” This is friendly fire.

What does the idea of friendly fire have to do with the problems, especially the environmental problems, related to the energy crisis in the US? This becomes clear if we look at possible solutions to the energy crisis.

Read on...

The climate crisis is actually a crisis of consumerism.

2006-11-14T08:33:00.000+05:30

CHRISTMAS FUELS consumerism. Production lines and shopping centres are waiting for Christmas to arrive. They are seeking greater sales and greater profits this Christmas than last. Christmas fuels consumerism and consumerism fuels global warming. Global warming fuels fear, guilt, doom and gloom. All these acts and feelings are a far cry from Christmas.

Whatever we consume – food, clothes, housing, agriculture, transportation, technology and holidays – is dependent on the continuous use of fossil fuels. Higher living standards, higher economic growth and higher consumption levels have been and still continue to be the unchallenged aspiration of all nations, all governments and all industrial societies.

But the challenge of global warming is slowly bringing about a certain shift in the consciousness of politicians, policy-makers and captains of industry. More and more people are realising that we cannot go on as before: that business as usual is no longer an option. It is clear that while the ice caps of Antarctica are melting and other intricate patterns of nature are being destroyed current energy systems are not sustainable. Even the mainstream media and conservative think tanks are beginning to talk about economy as a subsidiary of ecology.

However, this shift in consciousness is only skin-deep. It is limited to finding alternatives to carbon emissions (which are merely a symptom of the problem rather than the root cause). To treat the symptom policy-makers are looking at bio-fuels instead of fossil fuels. They are looking at technological solutions to find new sources of energy such as solar power, wind power and nuclear power. Their deep desire is to go on consuming as much as we have been, perhaps even more at Christmas time and at all times, but preferably through so-called sustainable sources. David Ehrenfeld in his article is exploding this myth. Ehrenfeld, a US professor of ecology, calls this technological fix “death by friendly fire”. In his view global warming is not an unfortunate occurrence but the inevitable outcome of consumerist culture.

Read more...

How Climate Change is Revolutionizing Economics

2006-11-03T21:03:00.000+05:30

"The benefits of strong, early action on climate change outweigh the costs."

The sentence appears as a paragraph by itself, in bold, in the Executive Summary of the now-released, much-anticipated Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.

The numbers underscore the point: addressing the problem now will cost about 1% of GDP per year. Doing nothing, say the economic models, will cost the world the loss of 5% GDP per year -- "now and forever" says the report, evoking an almost religious tone. That 5% figure is actually the best case scenario for doing nothing: if all the risk factors are taken into account, and they all hit home (an appropriate phrase in this case, since our homes are what they will hit), then the figure could be as high as 20%.
This conclusion, and these figures, are what will be most remembered about this report -- that, and the media/policy splash it's making. We'll get into the details (there are 700 pages of them, so we certainly won't get into too many) later in this article. Let's first consider the frame and context.

Breathing Earth

2006-11-03T20:57:00.000+05:30

Trash Vortex off Hawaii

2006-11-03T07:24:00.000+05:30

After 11 months traveling around the world, the Esperanza pulled into port last week in Honolulu. Its crew and I will be celebrating the recent creation of the world's largest marine protected area - right here in the Hawaiian Islands.

Unfortunately, the world's largest marine protected area ALSO sits next to one of the world's largest floating garbage dumps. This garbage dump is the size of Texas, where ocean trash, particularly plastic trash, is brought by currents from around the world and gathers in what we call "the Trash Vortex". Because plastic doesn't break down it chokes and tangles marine wildlife like turtles and feeding birds such as Albatrosses, while impacting on every level of the food chain. To learn more about this garbage dump or "trash vortex", http://www.email.greenpeace.org/lwzdws_hdwpjss.html click here.

An Invonvenient Truth

2006-11-01T12:02:00.000+05:30

Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced.

U.K. fears disaster in climate change

2006-11-01T07:44:00.000+05:30

LONDON Britain warned Monday that failure to act swiftly on global warming will have a cataclysmic effect on the global economy, and said it was stepping up efforts to get other nations involved.

A long-awaited report predicted apocalyptic effects from climate change, including droughts, flooding, famine, skyrocketing malaria rates and the extinction of many animal species. These will happen during the current generation if changes are not made soon, the report said.
It said the costs related to climate change, if it is allowed to continue unmitigated, could devour as much as 20 percent of the world's gross domestic product, or GDP.

"The consequences for our planet are literally disastrous," Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain said in a speech discussing the report, which is one of the most comprehensive attempts yet to predict the economic impact of global warming.

Read more...

"This disaster is not set to happen in some science-fiction future, many years ahead, but in our lifetime," Blair said. "What is more, unless we act now, not some time distant but now, these consequences, disastrous as they are, will be irreversible."

Collapse of ecosystems likely if plunder continues

2006-10-29T20:00:00.000+05:30

John Vidal,
environment editor
Wednesday October 25, 2006

The Guardian

Humans are living well beyond their ecological means and are now exhausting natural resources at an unprecedented rate. In so doing, says WWF's bi-annual report, we are threatening ourselves and all other species with extinction.

New calculations on the decline in the planet's capacity to provide food, fibre and timber, and absorb carbon dioxide, suggest we are using 25% more resources than are renewed naturally in a year.

This ecological "overshoot", which has been growing steadily for nearly 40 years, will on present trends be 100% by 2050, making the likelihood of large-scale ecosystem collapse likely, and conflict and political tension certain, says the environmental group's report.

Proposing Plan C: Report on the Third U.S. Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions

2006-10-26T20:00:00.000+05:30

By Megan Quinn

Yellow Springs, Ohio – Participants at the Third U.S. Conference on "Peak Oil" and Community Solutions learned how they must use less energy, save and share resources and grow food in their communities.

This response to the coming peak and permanent decline of global oil production, dubbed "Plan C: Curtailment, Cooperation, and Community," was a major theme at the conference last month in this small southwestern Ohio town, the epicenter for a growing national movement.

Fundamentalist Paganism and Green Libertarianism

2006-10-22T14:39:00.000+05:30

Earth Meanders by Dr. Glen Barry

October 20, 2006

Humanity desperately needs different ecologically based
spiritual and political systems to maximize the possibility of
the Earth and humanity surviving the torrent of industrial
pollutants emanating from humans breeding like bunnies. Dramatic
social, political and spiritual change centered upon green
principles will be required if humankind and our brother and
sister species with whom we share the Earth are to have any
prospect of a desirable and sustainable future.

These "Earth Meander" essays - meant to be read as a series -
examine issues like war and religion in relation to
environmental policy, because the old political and spiritual
frameworks threaten our ability to give the global ecological
crisis the attention, resources and focus it requires. As a
political ecologist I am delving into ecological, political and
spiritual responses adequate to save our species and our Earthly
habitat.

Nothing is sacred but the Earth and truth. Current belief and
political systems are inadequate to address converging climate,
water and extinction crises. We need to draw upon the world's
great but antiquated political and religious systems, as well as
recent advances in ecological, evolutionary and other sciences,
to develop new means to organize society and its demands upon
natural capital. Our very existence depends upon this new human
evolution.

There is nothing more fundamental than humanity's reliance upon
the Earth, and nothing as valuable or fragile as liberty to
rejoice in Gaia's bounteous opportunities. This essay is a call
to worship the Earth and embrace an ecologically informed
political vision of freedom, justice and sustainability.

Fundamentalist Paganism

I despise christian, islamic and judaic fundamentalists because
they blindly follow belief systems for another time and place,
inadequate to address contemporary ecological disintegration.
The endless feuding and warring between various blind faiths,
that view the Earth as being disposable and humans as supreme,
has caused much of the environmental damage and social problems
that now threaten to destroy us all.

A modern, secular world depends upon a minimum level of
acceptance of freedom, scientific truth, openness and diversity.
In our eagerness to be tolerant and politically correct, we must
not sanction militant fundamentalists of any stripe based upon
unknowable faith and opaque books. Clearly the route to divinity
and salvation for the Earth and her inhabitants was not pre-
ordained by prophet's millennia ago. We know so much more now
than they did then.

I began worshipping the Earth and her multitudes of Gods as I
saw my first clearcut in Papua New Guinea's rainforests. Never
have I seen something as obscene as mowing ancient rainforests
to make cardboard boxes. The cry of the then homeless birds of
paradise haunts me still to this day. I was devastated and have
never really recovered from the mental anguish and substance
abuse this caused. Here was evil incarnate. I came to realize
that because God is truth in the Ghandian tradition, and Earth
is truth in the ecological science perspective; then given
transitivity, the Earth must be, and is, God.

I have been hard in these writings upon organized religion. But
what could be more self-evident than our utter dependence upon
mother Earth and father Sun? Is there anything more awesome and
God like than the nurturing sun rays and water mixed with soil
growing our every need while consuming our waste? Contemporary
social and environmental ills are a result of alienation from
the Gods to be found in mountains, trees, rivers and all
species' life.

Pagans have been killed by all the major religions throughout
history. With the loss of Earth based polytheism has also gone
humanity's connection with the Earth, and recognition that we
exist upon her whims. Where does your food come from? Where does
your poop go? And what is the source of your drinking water? If
you do not know you are spiritually and ecologically lost.

There are many habits found in the faithful that follow ancient
prophets (but false messiahs) that are commendable. Worship of
Gaia, and living for her and all the human family's well-being,
needs to take the best of Islamic devotion, Christian love and
Jewish ambition and meld them with ecological science. Let us
bring forth a new Earth based faith that listens to many
prophets while recognizing creation in all its wondrous
biological, cultural and geographic beauty is the messiah.

Fundamentalism is dangerous when based upon unknowable faith.
But we know beyond scientific doubt that ecosystems sustain our
existence; and that healthy water, air, land and oceans free
from industrial pollutants are required to live and continue
our, and many other, species. To ignore the truthfulness of
fundamentalist paganism - that the Earth is God - is to be
superstitious and to follow false gods.

Green Libertarianism

As ecological systems begin to fail, inevitably there will be a
dramatic human response to try to fix the global ecological
system. An "Age of Ecological Restoration" will come, and the
sooner the more likely it will be successful. Humanity achieving
a state of just and equitable ecological sustainability will
require a mix of the best of both the conservative and liberal
political traditions.

Traditionally there have been very good reasons to be
conservative - change your agriculture too much or radically and
you starve, lose your morals and any number of tragedies can
befall. But conservatism has been ill suited to make dramatic
changes when they are needed. It has taken liberals to get equal
rights for women, laborers their just wage, and to end slavery.
And the state of the world's climate, water, oceans and land are
going to require similar liberal change.

Nonetheless, the most clear, truthful thinking coming out of
otherwise bereft political circles is being done by conservative
libertarians that recognize that government cannot save us.
Responses to terrorism, militarism, ecological collapse and
human injustice that depend overly upon taxing workers and
building government are repressive and will inevitably fail.
Government is already too big and has no right to dictate how to
live other than that we not undermine the potential for all to
continue living in ecological sustainability, liberty and
justice.

A prime libertarian failing has been an unwillingness to
acknowledge that there are ecological truths that require
enforced limits upon human activities to maintain ecosystems and
thus life. To understand we would not dump nuclear waste in Lake
Michigan is only different, in a matter of degree of ecological
insight, from knowing all species have rights and should be
maintained.

As a progressive, free thinker I am drawn to the liberal Green
platform of grassroots democracy, social justice and ecological
wisdom. Yet in my dealings with the Green political movement I
have observed a small group of self-absorbed, marginalized,
ineffective and often old hippies that are divorced from reality
and human aspirations to be free. Their policies seem by many to
be a return to communist policies that have largely failed. They
have identified many of the problems and solutions, but not how
they are to be sold and implemented.

Given the strengths and failures of Greens and Libertarians, I
would suggest that it is only a synthesis between these
traditions that holds the best chance of formulating a political
philosophy adequate to maintain free thinking human
civilizations and the natural world. There will be no existence
without green policies, and no opportunity to enjoy its bounty
without liberty.

Given that conservation is deeply conservative and liberty
profoundly liberal, I call upon all independent and free
thinkers to embrace a politics of Green Libertarianism.

In Closing

I have held an ambivalent yet keen interest in violence all my
life. This means I have gone back and forth between extremes -
excelling as an enlisted soldier, to considering being a
conscientious objector; despising war, yet drawn to war movies;
and have been both abused and an abuser. All while loving the
Earth with every ounce of my being, even as I failed miserably
to handle anger and depression over her and humanity's death.

If I were a young man again I would take the hills to wage war
in defense of Gaia. Instead I am working on a novel called
"Earth Revolution" (which may never be completed) imagining what
must be done. And though I am generally leery of "isms", I would
suggest Political Ecologism, Green Libertarianism and
Fundamentalist Paganism are keys to a fulfilling and sustained
future for the Earth and all her inhabitants. It is time for a
political and spiritual agenda that harmonizes and updates the
great traditions in these realms and is adequate to adjust to
the dire conditions in which humanity and the Earth find
themselves.

###

Curtailment & Community - Community Solution NS10

2006-09-18T17:33:00.000+05:30

The Heat Is On - The Economist

2006-09-15T21:45:00.000+05:30

THE world's climate has barely changed since the industrial revolution. The temperature was stable in the 19th century, rose very slightly during the first half of the 20th, fell back in the 1950s-70s, then started rising again. Over the past 100 years, it has gone up by about 0.6°C (1.1°F).…

The Ecology of Cities - Earth Policy Institute

2006-09-13T18:04:00.000+05:30

Double Green Design - KMD

2006-09-13T14:42:00.000+05:30

Great hopes are being placed on the possibility of Green Architecture for reducing the environmental impacts of products and building systems, in terms both of energy consumption and conservation. However, green design alone is likely to be inadequate to realize the desired goals of most corporations. The corporation, for the most part wants to be environmentally responsible and cognizant of social issues, while maximizing productivity.
For almost all of us, the concept of energy efficiency and conservation has become increasingly important in our every day lives. The groundswell of support for the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification continues to increase as the world recognizes its benefits. However, the thing about buildings is that they are, by their very nature, plunderers.