tagged w/ Environmentalism
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The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full
stop.
Deeper than oil, steel or bullets, a civilisation is built on stories:
on the myths that shape it and the tales told of its origins and
destiny. We have herded ourselves to the edge of a precipice with the
stories we have told ourselves about who ...we are: the stories of
‘progress’, of the conquest of ‘nature’, of the centrality and supremacy
of the human species.
It is time for new stories.
1. We live in a time of social, economic and ecological unravelling. All around us are signs that our whole way of living is already passing into history. We will face this reality honestly and learn how to live with it.
2. We reject the faith which holds that the converging crises of our times can be reduced to a set of‘problems’ in need of technological or political ‘solutions’.
3. We believe that the roots of these crises lie in the stories we have been telling ourselves. We intend to challenge the stories which underpin our civilisation: the myth of progress, the myth of human centrality, and the myth of our separation from ‘nature’. These myths are more dangerous for the fact that we have forgotten they are myths.
4. We will reassert the role of story-telling as more than mere entertainment. It is through stories that we weave reality.
5. Humans are not the point and purpose of the planet. Our art will begin with the attempt to step outside the human bubble. By careful attention, we will reengage with the non-human world.
6. We will celebrate writing and art which is grounded in a sense of place and of time. Our literature has been dominated for too long by those who inhabit the cosmopolitan citadels.
7. We will not lose ourselves in the elaboration of theories or ideologies. Our words will be elemental. We write with dirt under our fingernails.
8. The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop. Together, we will find the hope beyond hope, the paths which lead to the unknown world ahead of us.
http://www.dark-mountain.net/about-2/the-project/
The Dark Mountain Festival will hold it's first festival in May 2010.The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full
stop.
Deeper... more
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With plans for expanded offshore drilling in dispute, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are backing away from a compromise on the climate change bill.
May 10, 2010, at 10:15 AM
The oil slick has reached the Louisiana coast, where dozens of dead sea turtles are washing ashore.
Everyone agrees the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is an environmental disaster. But the fall-out doesn't stop there. The devastating spill could also wreck Obama's plans for comprehensive climate change legislation this year. Democrats had previously been willing to accept expanded offshore drilling in exchange for a big push for solar, wind, and other forms of green energy. But now leading Senate Democrats are demanding "tough new regulations for offshore drilling", with green lobbyists pressing for a complete ban. Republicans counter that any curtailment of offshore drilling would be a deal-breaker. Has the BP spill dashed the chances of finding a compromise?
This climate change bill is washed up: How's this for irony, says Steve Benen in Washington Monthly.
A disaster that should have made reforming our energy policies "a no-brainer" has actually killed a potential bill off. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is not close to having enough votes to push it through, and the parties are further away from consensus than ever. This bill is dead in the water.
"The spill, the Congress, and the climate bill"
It's the environmentalists' fault: The spill was a tragic accident, says Thomas J. Pyle in National Journal, but environmentalists are exploiting it to unravel a deal that would have boosted our domestic oil production. "Oil is a spectacular resource that we are blessed with," and any deal must recognise that. The green lobby's "political witch hunting" is what is killing this bill.
See Pyle's article: "Focus on cleanup, not politics"
Obama can resurrect this bill: "This oil spill is to the environment what the subprime mortgage mess was to the markets," says Thomas Friedman at the New York Times. "A wake up call and an opportunity." The time for compromise is over. If Obama "gets behind [the bill] with all his power, mobilizes the public and rounds up the votes," then the bill can still pass. But it's still unsure how much he wants to "rise to this occasion."
See Friedman's article: "No fooling Mother Nature"With plans for expanded offshore drilling in dispute, lawmakers on both sides of the... more
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Two decades after the worst (to date) oil spill in the U.S., Exxon has escaped many costly payments. The fish, birds and the people who rely on natural resources are still suffering.
With the BP Gulf oil spill posing a potentially unprecedented risk to the Gulf Coast, it's useful to look back at the greatest spill in U.S. history, to see how well that cleanup went. It's been 21 years since the Exxon Valdez produced the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. The dirty little secret (or, one of them) about the spill is that it was never cleaned up -- not completely.
Here are four little recognized facts about the Exxon Valdez oil spill:
1. The Oil Spill Was Never "Cleaned Up"
More than 21,000 gallons of crude oil remain, according to a 2007 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report. Just scratch the surface of many beaches, and the thick crude oil is evident beneath. True, that's less than 1% of the original 11-million-gallon spill -- but it's enough that the pollution remains toxic to wildlife, even hundreds of miles away from the site of the disaster.
Waterbirds, like Kittlitz's Murrelet, have suffered the most, and are most likely to continue to suffer, according to the American Bird Conservancy. Kittlitz's Murrelet, the population of which has declined 99% since 1972, saw its rate of decline nearly double since the oil spill.
2. Vulnerable Oil Tankers Are Still in Use
The 1989 spill prompted Congress to tighten restrictions on the ocean transport of oil, in part by ordering the phasing out of single-hulled tankers like the Valdez. But that rule had an extraordinarily big loophole that allows single-hulled tankers to remain in service through 2015. And worldwide, many nations will continue using these more easily punctured ships long after the U.S. bans them.
3. Local Residents and Fishermen Have Not Been Compensated
True, roughly $2 billion has been spent on the cleanup effort and Exxon has paid approximately $1 billion in damages. But Exxon hasn't delivered on $92 million claimed by federal and state governments for damages to wildlife, fishermen and others. And in 2008, the Supreme Court struck down a punitive damages case that would have paid out $2.5 billion to fishermen and others whose livelihoods and lives were irrevocably damaged by the spill. The award was reduced by about 20% on a 5-3 vote that came after the recusal of Justice Samuel Alito, a Bush appointee who owns an estimated $100,000-$250,000 in Exxon stock. Worse, many of the victims seeking compensation have died since filing claims after the spill. As a corporation, Exxon can run out the clock against individuals with shorter life spans, and continue to rake in massive profits while it does; in 2008, Exxon recorded a record $45.2 billion profit.
4. Offshore Oil Drilling Reproduces a Valdez-Scale Spill Every Six years
Every year since 1993, U.S. offshore oil drilling has spilled an average of 47,800 barrels of oil into the water. At that rate, it takes about 5.5 years* to spill as much as was spilled during the Exxon Valdez disaster. Offshore oil drilling, seen that way, is just a slow-moving spill. (Hurricanes Katrina and Rita together caused spills approximately 80% the size of the Valdez spill.) That estimate, obviously, does not account for the 5,000 barrels or so spilling daily from the remnants of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig leased by BP.Two decades after the worst (to date) oil spill in the U.S., Exxon has escaped many... more
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“Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.”
-Leonardo da Vinci.
Nature is no longer of our concern, as humans - at least for a majority of humans that participate in todays environmental meltdown, which has been burning (like the fuel in a combustion engine) for the past 100+ years. The modern citizen in today's world has completely lost touch with the natural world which has groomed us, through evolution, for the past 100,000+ years. With the advent of the automobile, our current culture's already corrupt relationship with nature reached a new level of ignorance. As a result of the ever expanding reach of personal automobiles, the environmental health of our planet has been irreversibly altered, along with the social, financial, and political attitude of our culture.
For Americans born within the past several decades, its almost impossible to believe that cars, highways, and wars for oil have truly been around for only the last century or so. Roadkill is an everyday site and we are now completely desensitized by the death and destruction of wildlife, plants, and natural scenery that was once prevalent throughout the world. In fact, any remote city or town without proper roads, traffic signals and gas stations, by todays standards, may be termed 'developing.' Developing into what? What is it that we have developed into? Does economic development correlate with environmental degradation?
Horseless carriages, or 'cars' for short, have completely taken over our everyday lives. What was once a commodity is now looked at as a necessity. Everyone, it seems, has a car; or if not, they are working towards getting a car. It is virtually impossible to avoid the implications of personal car ownership; sounds, sights, smells, finances, attitudes, employment, and personal relationships are all adversely affected by the car. As an 'advanced society' compared to those without the technology that we currently posses, we have not advanced much from the original inception of a gas fed, steel bodied personal transport vehicle. In fact, our advancements are really more like the opposite - we are digressing from what should be our primary goal; to use technology to continually make life better, to make transport easier, to create more free time, to save money, to preserve the environment, etc.
To make room for everyones car, we have converted acres upon acres of what was once wilderness into parking lots, countless numbers of which have already long since been abandoned as weeds grow through the cracks in the concrete. We have streets that are too narrow for cars to drive on but are lined with parked cars. Car owners have been known to stress over parking spot availability when they come home from work. Parking spots in some congested cities can cost thousands of dollars a month; the price of which could easily pay for food/shelter for impoverished individuals around the world that most likely have never driven a car in the first place. We have multi million dollar parking garages. We have specialized public servants that enforce parking regulations, being sure to financially punish anyone who has violated parking policy; not to mention the police officers that pull you over while driving. We take them everywhere with us: to work, to the grocery store, to the doctor, and even to the movies sometimes. There is, however, a group of people, who have realized the extent of which we have lost control of the metaphorical car that we call life and, who would like to drive out current policies and collectively try going down a different road.
Monetarily, the cost associated with owning a car (compared with emotional cost) is astronomical when compared with other monthly expenses. Besides mortgages or rent payments, a car can easily be the most costly monthly expense in a budget. Without getting into specifics, it is universally understood there are certain financial responsibilities associated with car ownership: payments, insurance, gas, repairs, licences, registration, inspection, and routine maintenance are all variables in the equation that is car budgeting. Psychologically, there are other ways that cars can affect us; 'will my car start in the morning? will I be able to safely drive in the snow? how much traffic will there be? whats that rattling noise? I hope I don't get pulled over? and other similar thoughts can overtly change a persons mood considerably on a day to day basis.
There is no point in trying to accurately pinpoint exactly when our ancestors truly stopped caring for nature, it has happened. The current generational cycle that has been gradually sucking us farther into the oil black hole that is 2010, and beyond, started in the not-so-distant past, but it will end in the near future. I'm sure there are those who would be silly enough to argue that it was Henry Ford who started the car craze of the early 1900's - 1950's. There are others who could say that it started with the horse and buggy; after all, horses gave an enormous freedom and advantage over those who could not attain horse ownership. And horses, like cars, have emissions in that they shit, which pollutes the environment - why do you think a car today is still measured in horsepower? When animal's power was harnessed by man, maybe thats when this fiasco all began? Either way, lets just imagine that the problem started yesterday - and that today, or more importantly tomorrow, will not get any better. Traffic, smog, gas prices, accidents, and the environment will only get worse as more people denounce their relationship with nature and support the car industry. So many people feel the need to buy, and drive, vehicles that ingest increasingly limited resources, to the point where all countries are environmentally affected. But I hope that a proportionate amount of people also think about how much better our world could be if we decide to change now.
"Be the change that you want to see in the world"
--- Mahatma Gandhi
http://writtenwithwit.blogspot.com/2010/05/why-cars-are-very-bad.html“Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or... more
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Photo Caption: A humpback whale in Malaga Bay, on Colombia's Pacific coast. The whales mate and calve at the bay as they migrate northward from the Antarctic. The bay was about to be declared a national park when a consortium presented the deep-water port proposal. (Yubarta Foundation)
Malaga Bay, a migratory stop for humpback whales, was about to be declared a national park when businesses floated a plan for a deep-water port they say will give Colombia a competitive edge.
By Chris Kraul, Special to the Los Angeles Times
April 25, 2010
Reporting from Cali, Colombia
A proposal to build a container port in a pristine bay on Colombia's coast frequented by humpback whales has raised an outcry among environmentalists who say the project would put the giant mammals at risk.
Malaga Bay is one of the whales' primary northern stops on their long migratory journey from the Antarctic to as far as Costa Rica. The bay's relative isolation and natural conditions make it an appealing place for the animals to mate and give birth. As many as 1,000 humpbacks are believed to arrive there from June to August.
But the bay is also appealing for business interests in nearby Cali, a bustling city known for sugar, coffee and, more recently, ethanol. A newly formed consortium has proposed building a deep-water port in Malaga Bay for bulk cargo and so-called post-Panamax ships capable of carrying 10,000 or more containers. Cali would benefit because cargo would have to pass through the city.
According to Rodrigo Velasco, regional chief of Colombia's largest business organization, known as ANDI, the port, which would be the closest in the hemisphere to Asia and the Panama Canal, would give Colombia a leg up on other Latin American countries in becoming an Asian trade hub.
"We don't want to destroy Malaga's ecology, far from it. We are proposing a project that would serve the environment, meaning human beings as well, and allow for economic development, something this region urgently needs," Velasco said.
The port proposal puzzles some because the Colombian government is investing tens of millions of dollars in the expansion, just 20 miles east of Malaga Bay, of the Buenaventura port, the country's largest on the Pacific coast. The investment there has a social objective: Buenaventura is a drug-trafficking hub, and President Alvaro Uribe aims to boost trade and create jobs for poor youths there with few prospects.
But business leaders in Cali say Buenaventura will never be a major port because of a silting problem that makes it unsuitable for the giant, deep-draught container ships. Dredging to accommodate them would cost tens of millions of dollars a year. Malaga, on the other hand, has no major rivers or sediment problems and is naturally deep, Velasco said.
The port proposal surfaced last fall, just as the government was about to decree Malaga Bay a national park. It is surrounded by rain forest and is home to deep-water corals and a diverse array of birds and animals, including dolphins and sea otters. The designation would have kept it free of development in perpetuity.
But Uribe acceded to a last-minute appeal from the Cali consortium to allow a feasibility and environmental impact study to be performed on the "compatibility of environmental management and port activity," in the consortium's wording. The University of Cadiz in Spain was hired to do the study, which it will deliver in June.
Environmental groups were disappointed because they saw national park status as the culmination of a two-decade-long campaign to conserve Malaga Bay, a process the government has generally supported. Proposals in the 1990s to build a timber and pulp mill, as well as an oil pipeline and tanker depot, were both nixed.
Now environmentalists are fearful that the port project could take on a momentum of its own. The port would almost certainly scare the whales away, said Mary Lou Higgins, director of World Wildlife Fund's regional office in Cali.
"It's the most important breeding site for humpback whales, the area that has the highest rate of birthing," Higgins said. A key to the high birth rate is low ship traffic and industrial contamination.
In recent years, a small but growing ecotourism industry has emerged around whale-watching trips, much like Scammon's Lagoon in Baja California, that benefit poor, indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities along the bay.
"We're not opposed to development. We say conserve Malaga Bay and offer a different kind of development based on nature tourism and responsibly managed forestry and fisheries," Higgins saidPhoto Caption: A humpback whale in Malaga Bay, on Colombia's Pacific coast. The... more
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by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Environmental advocates from around the world gathered in Cochabamba, Bolivia, this week and resolved that, a year from now, they would hold a world’s people referendum on climate change to marshal support for the rights of the planet.
“Although it is hoped that some states will cooperate, the participation of governments will not be essential to the referendum, as civil society organizations are to plan it according to their own lights and the traditions and customs of each local area,” reports Franz Chavez for Inter Press Service.
The conference’s democratic, citizen-oriented format starkly contrasted with March’s United Nations-led summit in Copenhagen. The conference at Cochabamba emphasized inclusion and a diversity of voices, providing an antidote to processes like the U.N. climate negotiations, where smaller countries were excluded from key discussions.
No official United States delegation attended the conference, but this week, the country held its own celebration of the environment: the 40th annual Earth Day. On Thursday, arguments over climate change were put on pause, as environmental leaders recognized both accomplishments and the unfinished business of cleaning up the air, land, and water.
“Environmentalism isn’t such a mysterious thing anymore. People are looking more at environmental values as being things that are tangible and relate to how we live our lives,” Pete Carrels of the South Dakota Sierra Club told Public News Service.
The mystery, now, lies in finding a way to shore up defenses against old environmental hazards—dirty water, dirty air, diminishing resources—and to agree on a path towards a low-carbon future that avoids the worst calamities of climate change.
At Cochabamba
“Bolivian music, indigenous ceremonies and the Bolivian army’s honor guard were on hand to greet the first indigenous president of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Evo Morales,” Democracy Now! reported from Tiquipaya, the town just outside Cochabamba where the actual conference is being held.
In a stadium crowded with fifteen thousand people, President Morales opened the event Tuesday morning with exhortations to choose life for the planet. Franz Chavez of Inter Press Service reports:
“The stadium, ablaze with the multi-coloured traditional garments of different Andean and Amazonian native communities and the flags of people from different countries around the world that contrasted with the cold formality of presidential summits, served as the stage for Morales, of Aymara descent, to call for an “inter-continental movement” in defence of Mother Earth.”
You can get a sense of the atmosphere in this GRITtv report or the below video from Yes! Magazine.
Too many cooks?
One of the main goals of the summit was to draft a “universal declaration of rights of Mother Earth,” envisioned as a complement to the United Nations declaration on human rights. There were also 17 working groups that dealt with issues like climate migrants, the Kyoto protocol, and technology transfer. Any conference participant could participate in up to five working groups.
The open format was, at times, chaotic. Cormac Cullinan, an environmental lawyer from South Africa who provide the baseline text for the declaration of rights, told Democracy Now! that on one day of the conference four hundred people were contributing revisions to the text. Another day, that number jumped to one thousand.
“The challenge is to make sure we integrated all the different comments and point of view,” he said. “We’re essentially expressing an entirely new world view from an indigenous perspective in legal language.”
Many voices, but what are the solutions?
Elizabeth Cooper affirms this emphasis on a diversity of voices in a report for Yes! Magazine. “This issue of valuing the knowledge and abilities of indigenous peoples and those from the South was an undercurrent to the rest of the afternoon as it is to the Summit as a whole,” she writes.
But this scale of participation also meant that conversations could veer from essential topics. Also at Yes! Magazine, Jim Shultz asks, “If forcing rich countries to pay a climate debt is a dead end, what is the plan to move “climate debt” from a catchy idea to a real proposal with a chance of delivering some results?”
“At a workshop today on that topic, there was an abundance of declarations about why climate debt is important, but few ideas of how to make it real,” he reports.
The need
There’s a need, though, for people to participate in these discussions, even if the conversations don’t take a smooth and tidy course. At The Nation, Naomi Klein writes that “Bolivia’s climate summit has had moments of joy, levity and absurdity. Yet underneath it all, you can feel the emotion that provoked this gathering: rage against helplessness.”
At a conference like Copenhagen, the worries and priorities of smaller countries were ultimately excluded from the debate. In Bolivia, Klein explains, glaciers—the water source for two major cities—are melting. Yet that problem did not earn the country a place in the Copenhagen discussions that could determine its fate. Cochabamba’s goals were, in part, to reestablish a more democratic system for decision-making about climate reform.
As Regina Cornwell documents at the Women’s Media Center, left to its own devices, international bodies like the United Nations easily exclude interested groups from the conversation.
“In early March, just as the entire area of Manhattan around the UN was crawling with women wearing their blue Conference for the Status of Women tags, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced a “High-level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing” composed exclusively of men,” she writes.
Earth Day 2010
The conferees at Cochabamba traveled to Bolivia because they saw a gap in leadership after UN climate talks at Copenhagen crumbled. The ideas developed this week could prompt the world’s leaders towards brave action on climate change. Strong leadership can make the difference between real change and status quo.
At The Nation, John Nichols reflects on the leadership of Sen. Gaylord Nelson, who helped create Earth Day. Nelson, was “a bold progressive who recognized the need to make the health and welfare of human beings, in the United States and abroad, a priority over the profits of multinational corporations,” he writes. Nelson’s vision for Earth Day was to produce an outpouring of empathy for the environment “so large that it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy.”
It worked. The first Earth Day is credited with driving action on the environmental institutions that still protect Americans today: the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency.
Today’s leaders
Today, other leaders are fighting the same fight as Nelson did. At Cochabamba, these climate leaders, profiled by Colorlines, are marshaling their communities to push back against global warming, as are these conference-goers. They lack official titles but are leading nonetheless. Young people, like those honored by the Brower Youth Award, are coming up with amazing ideas to ensure a healthy future for the planet, reports LinkTV. At The Progressive, Winona LaDuke explains how native communities are working to produce a new energy economy.
And all over the world, individuals are working to minimize their impact and the impact of their societies on the environment. AlterNet suggests “five ways you can help save life on earth,” and Care2 has two other suggestions: eat less meat and reduce use of water bottles.by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Environmental advocates from around the... more
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Recycling old car windshields seems to be the hot new thing amongst members of the Green community. It’s not hard to do and it’s good for the environment, so why not!? You’d be surprised by the number of consumer and industrial goods that are already produced from recycled windshields. These recycled greenhouses are catching on in French gardens and even urban areas.
Read more: http://www.whitespace.bz/ws/web/forms/pulse/PulseMainArticle.aspx?id=423Recycling old car windshields seems to be the hot new thing amongst members of the... more
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What makes Vapur so special is pretty obvious. The BPA-free bottle can be folded or rolled up when empty for easy storage in your pocket or bag. When filled with water the bottle stands upright all on its own. The first flexible water bottle of its kind, Vapur is also reusable which means it’s a great way to help fight the global water and environmental crisis.
Read more: http://www.whitespace.bz/ws/web/forms/pulse/PulseMainArticle.aspx?id=422What makes Vapur so special is pretty obvious. The BPA-free bottle can be folded or... more
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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a jumble of plastic trash that spans hundreds of miles northwest of Hawaii, has gotten lots of attention ever since billionaire adventurer and environmentalist David de Rothschild announced his plans to visit the trash mass on the Plastiki, a boat constructed from recycled waste and webs of plastic. Now the Plastiki has launched, and a group of architects from Rotterdam have already come up with another way to draw attention to the plastic gyre: a Hawaii-sized island made entirely out of recycled plastic.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1614864/architects-want-to-build-a-habitable-recycled-plastic-islandThe Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a jumble of plastic trash that spans hundreds of... more
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A sailboat made of 12thousands plastic bottles left San Francisco 19 days ago and now is travelling in the Pacific Ocean in the direction of Sydney. David de Rothschild organized this adventurous trip to show how recycling is important.
http://www.inaltreparole.net/en/nature/plastikitraversata070410.htmlA sailboat made of 12thousands plastic bottles left San Francisco 19 days ago and now... more
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For all those curious on how they can save the Amazon forest and its people, a visit to Kapawi Lodge can make all the difference. Home to the Achuar, an Ecuadorian Tribe that has successfully fought off logging and oil companies, this once in a lifetime experience provides guests an experience to learn and to return to nature's roots! Please read this article and support the Amazon and its people today!
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-43552-Indigenous-Travel-Examiner~y2010m4d6-Save-the-Amazon-Forest-todayFor all those curious on how they can save the Amazon forest and its people, a visit... more
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Salvagers were struggling to prevent the Shen Neng I breaking up in pristine waters off the country's northeastern coast, potentially spilling hundreds of tons of oil over the reef, which is one of Australia's top tourist attractions.
The ship slammed into Douglas Shoal on Saturday traveling at full speed and significantly away from normal shipping lanes.
"I think the book should be thrown at this organization," Queensland state Premier Anna Bligh told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
"This is a very delicate part of one of the most precious marine environments on earth and there are safe, authorized shipping channels and that's where this ship should have been."
A government said the vessel was owned by The Shenzhen Energy Group, part of the group of the China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company, better known by its acronym COSCO.
More-
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63302920100405?feedType=RSSSalvagers were struggling to prevent the Shen Neng I breaking up in pristine waters... more
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It's time, once again, for another Current blogs round-up. Sit back, let the tea steep, and let's dig in, shall we?
Current News
According to bansheewail's post earlier this week, prescription drug related deaths have actually overtaken traffic fatalities in 16 states. Andrew took a closer look on the Current News blog, and according to the CDC, that number has been on the rise lately. The question is, why? The AP points to changes in the way doctors prescribe painkillers, and this actually coincides with the season premiere of Vanguard on October 14th. In "The Oxycontin Express," Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller travels to Florida, "the epicenter of the prescription drug boom." Be sure to check it out.
Mariana van Zeller travels to Florida to investigate the prescription drug boom in Vanguard's premiere, "The Oxycontin Express"
Some of biggest news this week came out of the South Pacific, where a pair of earthquakes and a tsunami ravaged the Samoa Islands and Indonesia. Andrew pulled together raw video intel and followed the story closely. Take a look.
Current Music
The Current Music team is racing to the finish line in preparation for the premiere of Embedded, immediately following the season premiere of Vanguard on October 14th. Shana took a minute to share progress on the six-part special on the Current Music blog: apparently the team is knee-deep in post-production on the six episodes, as well as preparation for online distribution.
Also, Alex posted photos from The Dodo's show at the El Rey. Alex always takes amazing photos at shows, so head over to the blog and check them out. If you have a few extra minutes to spare, give this a look as well.
Current Movies
John has continued to make due on his festival coverage with dispatches from the New York Film Festival. A couple of excellent posts this week, one covering some of the influences and inspirations behind Harmony Korine's latest, Trash Humpers.
Additionally, John finally screens Lars Von Trier's Antichrist, the film that compelled Cannes audiences to collectively question, "Why?" Additionally, Von Trier went on record with this film, proclaim that "I am the best filmmaker in the world." Check out John's review here.
Current Tech
Over on Current Tech, Sarah Lane shed a little light on her shopping addiction with her exploration of your best online shopping options and deals. As community member aaronights pointed out, "No wonder you're always low on cash!"
In a far less costly post, Sarah takes a look at another obsession that is apparently taking over the world: Twitter Apps. More specifically, OneForty -- the Twitter App store that Twitter forgot to build. Seriously, take a look.
Current Green
Leah spent some time chatting with Colin Beavan (you may know him as No Impact Man from his Twitter account, blog, and the trailer of his new movie), and discusses the dedication it takes for someone like No Impact Man to commit to a lifestyle change of this extreme magnitude. All in the name of "green." It's quite remarkable.
Keeping in theme with environmental heroism, Leah caught up with photographer Ian Shive -- the man dedicated to saving our National Parks one photo at a time. If you haven't checked out "Photos Across America" yet, be sure to give this post a read.
Current Comedy
Thursday nights mean a new episode of infoMania. In case you missed it, you have Josh to thank because Fridays are "Hey check out what happened on infoMania" days on the Current Comedy blog.
Josh likes to combat claims of failure. In fact, you might even call him a FAIL adjuster. In the FAILspace, he is what an auditor is to accounting. Once again he's worked up another account of why some supposed FAILS are, in fact, not FAILS. Peep them here.
Vanguard
An added bonus this week, our friends in Vanguard are ramping up their blogging efforts, and to kick things off they've posted a couple gems for you to take a look at. First up, Vanguard correspondent Laura Ling shared her thoughts on Vanguard's mission during a live event in Italy. As an added treat, the full broadcast of the Italy event is embedded on the post, so if you've ever wanted to hear Mariana van Zeller speak Italian, make sure to watch beyond the intro.
Speaking of Mariana, her piece "The Oxycontin Express" is going to be our season premiere for Vanguard on October 14th, and as an added bonus the team was invited to tape an episode of Dr. Phil and discuss both her documentary and the prevalence of prescription drugs. Darren posted some photos from the visit to Dr. Phil, so go check it out. The Dr. Phil episode with Mariana will air on the same day as our Vanguard season premiere, October 14th.It's time, once again, for another Current blogs round-up. Sit back, let the tea... more
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It's happened again.
We've convinced yet another perfectly intelligent person to come into our studios and chat with us. Tomorrow we will interview Graham Hill, founder of TreeHugger.com. Graham will introduce his new talk called, "Brace for Impact" and will discuss the changes that need to be made that aren't on the tip of everyone's tongue.
At the Gel 2009 conference, Graham had this to say:
Brace for impact, Hill says, we need to start thinking bigger. Who cares if we create a product that can be recycled but we lack the facilities to recycle that product? And if we really look at the impact of one small step, we'd realize we're not really doing anything - we need a big step times a lot of people to actually have meaningful impact. But, if the average american produces roughly 20 tons CO2 per year and scientists say the goal is to be at 3-4 tons CO2 per year, just how exactly are we going to do that?
You know the drill, we looooove participatory interviewing. So if you want to join in the conversation, leave your question below by Thursday, October 15th, 12PM PST and we will be in business.It's happened again.
We've convinced yet another perfectly intelligent... more
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I kept stumbling across No Impact Man (aka as Colin Beavan) over the past few months. He was on Twitter, via his blog, and then there was the trailer to his movie. Each time as I skimmed the stories or posts at high speed I thought to myself, “Cool stunt, I should interview him sometime soon," and moved on.
Then my dear friend Amy Wilson called me up and told me she was working with Collin Beavan while he was on book tour in the Bay Area, and said that he was “the real deal.” Amy eluded to something that his critics have spoken to, which is that now that the main stream sees there is money to made in the world of green (aka people learning how to live a more sustainably), that there are a lot of people out there figuring out to make a buck on green.
With that said, I have yet to come across someone who makes an extreme "green" life style change who isn't truly dedicated to the issue of raising mass awareness about the state of the environment.
And with that said, there is a place where the rubber meets the road, and there is a difference between people who preach green for their living, and those who actually live a sustainable lifestyle. Colin is a refreshing breath of air and embodies both.
I found Collin’s social experiment of unplugging from the grid fascinating. Mostly because all the people I know who made the choice to live off the grid live in Alaska or Northern Idaho or Northern California…you know…out in the boondocks. Colin chose to unplug, and stay right in the center of it all: New York City. And I agree with Amy, he is the real deal. Colin and his family invested a year of their life to showing the world there is another way, and confronts the most famous story of our time: that you need to buy more, do more, and work more in order to be happy. And he manages to tell the story in a charming, accessible informative manner absent of self righteousness.
What makes me stop in my tracks: he managed to stay in the heart of the city, but create a new pace of life that most of us are only capable of tapping when we leave the city.
Enjoy the interview (special thanks to our studio crew who wasn’t planning a drop in guest that day). You can follow Colin on Twitter @noimpactman, his blog, and on his impressive project website: NoImpactProject.org. Or just go crazy and read his book.
Meanwhile, I am posting this one week after meeting Colin, and the issues we discussed aren't leaving. So I was thinking, what the heck, I'm going to take on just 1 of the things Colin did for a year: for 1 week. Starting tomorrow: I'm going to eat locally for 1 week. What the hell. Anyone want to join me?I kept stumbling across No Impact Man (aka as Colin Beavan) over the past few... more
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Click on picture to see the video.
(CNN) -- Conservationists have welcomed the decision to reject a bid from Tanzania and Zambia to temporarily suspend a worldwide ban on trading in African elephant ivory so they can offload legal stockpiles in a one-off sale.
The 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), meeting in Doha, Qatar, on Monday, voted to reject the proposal amid concerns about elephant poaching.
A petition from the two African countries to remove elephants from a list of animals "threatened with extinction" to allow trade in other parts of the animal was also thrown out.
"Poaching and illegal ivory markets in central and western Africa must be effectively suppressed before any further ivory sales take place," said Elisabeth McLellan, of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
"It's welcome news, but my anxieties remain about the increased levels of poaching in Africa," Save the Elephant's Dr. Ian Douglas-Hamilton told CNN.
He said burgeoning ivory markets in countries such as China and Japan would be key battlegrounds in the fight against the illegal trade in future.
"There are huge problems ahead for the elephants," he said. "I do see this huge demand which is emanating mainly from the prosperity of China. We have to win their hearts and minds for conservation and for the elephant so that they have more of an idea of sustainable use and not over-taxing populations."
CITES banned the international commercial ivory trade in 1989 after elephant populations dropped dramatically across the world due to widespread poaching.
But in 1997 and 2002 it permitted Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe to sell limited stocks of ivory to Japan, in recognition of the fact that some southern African elephant populations were healthy and well managed.
Five years later at a CITES meeting at The Hague further sales of stockpiled ivory were permitted in return for a nine-year moratorium on further sales.
Both Zambia and Tanzania claimed elephant numbers in their territories were on the rise after years of decline. They also said the proceeds from the sale of government stockpiles would be put back into conservation and enforcement projects.
Tanzania had asked to sell almost 90,000 kilograms of ivory that would have generated as much as $20 million, according to the CITES Web site, while Zambia looked to offload more than 21,000 kilograms.
But wildlife experts in Kenya, part of a coalition of 23 African elephant range countries calling for an outright ban, say poaching has increased since the announcement of the last sale.
Kenya orphanage takes elephant babies
Video: Kenya's orphaned elephants
"There is no justification for downgrading the elephants from the endangered list.
--Ian Douglas-Hamilton
They argued the illegal trade in ivory has been turned into a lucrative business since poachers can launder their illegal ivory with the legal stockpiles.
"Though Zambia's anti-poaching enforcement measures are better than those of Tanzania, there is no justification for downgrading the elephants from the endangered list," said Douglas-Hamilton, an expert on Kenya's elephant population.
"Tanzania has increased poaching and increased illegal markets. Their main elephant population has decreased by some 30,000 in the last three years.
"In Zambia there were huge declines in the elephant population in the 1970s and 1980s. Whereas other elephant populations across Africa have recovered slightly since the introduction of the ivory trade ban, Zambia's never have. They remain the same.
"In the mid-1970s the population was something like 160,000. It is currently estimated to sit at around 26,000."
He added that the situation was particularly desperate in central Africa where there are estimated to be just 20,000 elephants left from a population numbering 1 million 30 years ago.
Last week, CITES members voted against adding Atlantic bluefin tuna to a list of banned exports.
The popular sushi staple has been the focus of international attention as East Atlantic and Mediterranean populations of the fish have decreased by an estimated nearly 61 percent in the last decade, according to International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT).
CNN's David McKenzie contributed to this report.Click on picture to see the video.
(CNN) -- Conservationists have welcomed the... more
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There are options besides throwing away that tattered sweater, wine-soaked blouse or out-of-fashion leisure suit. Charities, resale shops and even retailers can help.
By Susan Carpenter, Los Angeles Times
March 21, 2010
Call it the Forever 21 effect, or fast fashion. Americans are buying, and discarding, clothes more quickly than ever. The average American throws 54 pounds of clothes and shoes into the trash each year. That adds up to about 9 million tons of wearables that are sent into the waste stream, according to the Environmental Protection Agency — a 27% increase in a mere eight years.
Although resale shops are a good option for clothes that still have some fashion value, and charities will take items that are well past their prime, there are still an awful lot of ink-stained dress shirts and moth-eaten sweaters that find their way to the dump.
What to do with that favorite old shirt you ruined by inadvertently spilling a glass of red wine down its front, or that well-worn pair of slacks that finally split at the seams, or that dress you loved last year but now wouldn't wear to save your life?
There are a wide variety of options that are better than the trash bag, including charities (such as Goodwill and the Salvation Army), resale shops (Buffalo Exchange, Give + Take) and the retailers that first sold them to you.
Goodwill and the Salvation Army will not sell defective clothes or shoes, but they do offload them to textile recyclers, who either ship them to Third World countries where they may have a chance of a second life, or sort and resell them to textile "de-manufacturers" who can turn them into materials that can be worked into new materials, whether it's cleaning rags, carpet padding or rubberized playgrounds.
Forty-five percent of recycled clothes are sold to other countries, 30% are turned into cleaning rags and 25% are turned into fibers for stuffing or insulation, according to the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textile Assn.
Recycling awareness among clothing manufacturers seems to be on the rise. Goodwill, which in Southern California alone sold 14.6 million pounds of textiles to recyclers last year, recently joined with San Francisco-based Levi Strauss & Co. to educate jeans owners in how to care for their pants so they stand a better chance of reuse through the charity.
The partnership evolved out of a Levi's study of the environmental effect of a pair of 501s, which found that the amount of water used to grow the cotton was rivaled by the amount owners used to wash their jeans. That finding led to Care Tag for Our Planet, which started showing up on Levi's late last year, instructing owners to wash their jeans in cold water, to wash them less often, to air dry them rather than use a clothes dryer and, when they no longer want them, to donate them instead of throwing them away.
The Gap, which last weekend concluded a 10-day blue jean recycling event, collected about a quarter-million jeans that will be turned into insulation.
Patagonia, a pioneer in using recycled materials in its active wear since the '90s, has been running a garment recycling program since 1995 called Common Threads. The program has collected 13,000 pounds of clothes, which are shipped off to Japan, broken down and turned in to new Patagonia items such as rain parkas. Despite their long journey, Patagonia spokeswoman Jen Rapp says that recycling clothes, rather than making them from raw material, saves 72% in energy costs and 76% in CO2 emissions.
Recycling plastic that is used in textiles saves 57% of the energy used to make them from virgin materials, or about 1 ton of CO2 emissions for every ton that is recycled, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Patagonia's goal: that 100% of its clothing either be made from recycled material or be recyclable. Right now, the company says 70% of its offerings are recyclable.
Customers who want to recycle their Patagonia gear can do so by returning items to Patagonia retailers and dealers such as REI, or by mailing items to the company's Nevada-based service center.
Dora Copperthite is doing her own form of clothing recycling. Her Give + Take Boutique in Playa del Rey is like a large public clothing swap that lets people trade their clothes for others. For a $20 monthly membership fee, women who've tired of their Prada handbag or H&M romper can have them valued for points that are then traded for other items.
Open since November, Give + Take has about 124 members and 1,000 items, the latter of which are divided into three categories: designer, cheapies and free.
"For me, it's an environmental cause. We have so much excess," said Copperthite, who donates whatever isn't swapped to Goodwill. "The green movement is big on shopping in your own closet. What I'm doing, you're not only shopping in your own closet but the closets of hundreds of ladies."There are options besides throwing away that tattered sweater, wine-soaked blouse or... more
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Would you vote for this lot? In this second episode of WORLDbytes’ Royal Society of Arts award winning series, election campaigners and parliamentary candidates from lesser-known political parties get a grilling at a local café in London’s East End. On the menu are unemployment, education, housing, free speech and voter apathy. The Green candidate advocates building on the green belt, the Respect rep says free speech should be qualified and the English Democrat chap says they’re not for profit. The arguments dished up suggest there is no right or left anymore. Watch it and let us know your thoughts.Would you vote for this lot? In this second episode of WORLDbytes’ Royal... more
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