tagged w/ Environmental Issues
-
TENS of thousands of Amazonians are suing Chevron, the American oil company, for poisoning their waterways in what is billed as one of the biggest environmental cases in history.
The Ecuadorean claimants said the company illegally dumped toxic waste from its oil production, which filtered into the lakes used by thousands of people for washing and drinking.TENS of thousands of Amazonians are suing Chevron, the American oil company, for... more
-
-
quanta
-
added this
-
4 days ago
- |
-
Vast new natural gas fields have opened up thanks to an advanced drilling technique. While natural gas is a cleaner burning fuel than coal or petroleum, extracting it is still hard, dirty work. Some people who live near the massive Barnett Shale gas deposit in north Texas, have compliants. Health and environmental concerns are prompting state regulators to take a closer look.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120043996Vast new natural gas fields have opened up thanks to an advanced drilling technique.... more
-
-
Beyond the Line is a DVD and web film program (www.beyond-the-line.org) that illustrates why and how businesses everywhere are turning the risks of climate & environmental change into compelling business opportunities. The film, produced by Serious Nature, explores how to move beyond the line of business-as-usual and become a winner in the face of the fundamental changes that are already affecting businesses around the world. It shows that there is an undeniable business case for proactive environmental strategies.
Companies moving beyond the line, and featured in the film, include General Electric, Marks & Spencer, Ikea, and Marriott International as well as SME’s like Ecoigo, Green Clean and Terracycle.
The film also features interviews with experts from Carbon Disclosure Project, Environmental Defense Fund, Forum for the Future, World Resources Institute and other organizations that have successfully partnered with companies to help them reduce their environmental impacts and increase their business performance.
Paul Dickinson, Chief Executive, Carbon Disclosure Project, says in his interview “Climate change is like the Internet for business - it arrives one day, it gets bigger every year, it never goes away, and you have to learn to make money from it, or you're going to get eaten for lunch.”
The 55 minute version of Beyond the Line is now available at www.beyond-the-line.org as a DVD, as streaming video or as a download.Beyond the Line is a DVD and web film program (www.beyond-the-line.org) that... more
-
-
Coed Hills is situated in the picturesque Vale of Glamorgan, just 8 miles west of Cardiff, Wales. At the heart of Coed Hills lies a core community of around 20 people that embrace the new and old in order to lead a more sustainable existence, both ecologically and socially.
The site is run on alternative energy, there is permaculuture garden, and residents and volunteers live a variety of structures such as Mongolian Yurts, tipis and straw bailed buildings.
The place is an inspiration for the budding and more experienced eco-conscious, and a chance to engage with the community engage and share in their knowledge and enthusiasm for sustainable living.
http://www.coedhills.co.uk/
01446 774084
info@coedhills.co.uk
This short film is part of "The Journey" an unique documentary project that delves into environmental, socio-culture and economic issues, with a questioning mind.
The focus of the project is to find and film inspiring ideas and projects over a wide spectrum of individuals and cultures, whilst examining our ability to reform our ideals, and our lifestyle in order to make positive changes for our planet and the human race.
The “Journeymen” (a person whom travels in order to gain experience, skills and knowledge) go in search of these stories - equipped only with minimal filming gear and personal possessions, they document their experience as they travel to global communities to observe, question and learn.
It is an organic process that grows, evolves and takes it’s own direction. With no planned route nor destination, the journeymen believe they will connect with the right people and places at the right time to film, aid and guide them on.
The project is currently filming and traveling through the UK. As the project travels short films are uploaded that can be viewed on this website. It is the long-term goal that this project will travel internationally to create a feature length film that will be released, to be viewed for free.
The projects aims to benefit individuals, projects and communities by sharing knowledge, offering solutions and connecting people through film.
It is the hope this project will touch and inspire people, by conveying the beauty within human nature and our world and resonating what is actually possible, when it comes it comes to our ability to change the world for the better.
know of an inspiring story? want to get involved?
info@the-journey.tv
follow “the journey” on facebook
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Journey/81206620786
www.the-journey.tvCoed Hills is situated in the picturesque Vale of Glamorgan, just 8 miles west of... more
-
-
The Royal Tour Office will not release Charles and Camilla's complete itinerary until next week (we will advise you as relevant), but it has advised of some appearances where the public will be able to meet and/or greet Their Royal Highnesses.
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 6
OFFICIAL WELCOME TO BRITISH COLUMBIA
4:00 om, provincial Parliament Buildings in Victoria
The Dominion Secretariat/Sécrétariat général
The Monarchist League of Canada/La ligue monarchiste du Canada
PO Box 1057
Oakville, ON L6J 5E9
(800) I'M LOYAL
(905) 855-7262
domsec@sympatico.caThe Royal Tour Office will not release Charles and Camilla's complete itinerary until... more
-
-
"changing one's diet can be as effective in reducing climate changing gases."
-
-
STOP DRINKING THIS SUGAR WATER
-
-
WHEN Nobel prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen coined the word Anthropocene around 10 years ago, he gave birth to a powerful idea: that human activity is now affecting the Earth so profoundly that we are entering a new geological epoch.
The Anthropocene has yet to be accepted as a geological time period, but if it is, it may turn out to be the shortest - and the last. It is not hard to imagine the epoch ending just a few hundred years after it started, in an orgy of global warming and overconsumption.
Let's suppose that happens. Humanity's ever-expanding footprint on the natural world leads, in two or three hundred years, to ecological collapse and a mass extinction. Without fossil fuels to support agriculture, humanity would be in trouble. "A lot of things have to die, and a lot of those things are going to be people," says Tony Barnosky, a palaeontologist at the University of California, Berkeley. In this most pessimistic of scenarios, society would collapse, leaving just a few hundred thousand eking out a meagre existence in a new Stone Age.
Whether our species would survive is hard to predict, but what of the fate of the Earth itself? It is often said that when we talk about "saving the planet" we are really talking about saving ourselves: the planet will be just fine without us. But would it? Or would an end-Anthropocene cataclysm damage it so badly that it becomes a sterile wasteland?
The only way to know is to look back into our planet's past. Neither abrupt global warming nor mass extinction are unique to the present day. The Earth has been here before. So what can we expect this time?
Take greenhouse warming. Climatologists' biggest worry is the possibility that global warming could push the Earth past two tipping points that would make things dramatically worse. The first would be the thawing of carbon-rich peat locked in permafrost. As the Arctic warms, the peat could decompose and release trillions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere - perhaps exceeding the 3 trillion tonnes that humans could conceivably emit from fossil fuels. The second is the release of methane stored as hydrate in cold, deep ocean sediments. As the oceans warm and the methane - itself a potent greenhouse gas - enters the atmosphere, it contributes to still more warming and thus accelerates the breakdown of hydrates in a vicious circle.
"If we were to blow all the fossil fuels into the atmosphere, temperatures would go up to the point where both of these reservoirs of carbon would be released," says oceanographer David Archer of the University of Chicago. No one knows how catastrophic the resulting warming might be.
That's why climatologists are looking with increasing interest at a time 55 million years ago called the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum, when temperatures rose by up to 9 °C in a few thousand years - roughly equivalent to the direst forecasts for present-day warming. "It's the most recent time when there was a really rapid warming," says Peter Wilf, a palaeobotanist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park. "And because it was fairly recent, there are a lot of rocks still around that record the event."
By measuring ocean sediments deposited during the thermal maximum, geochemist James Zachos of the University of California, Santa Cruz, has found that the warming coincided with a huge spike in atmospheric CO2. Between 5 and 9 trillion tonnes of carbon entered the atmosphere in no more than 20,000 years (Nature, vol 432, p 495). Where could such a huge amount have come from?
Volcanic activity cannot account for the carbon spike, Zachos says. Instead, he blames peat decomposition, which would have happened not from melting permafrost - it was too warm for permafrost - but through climatic drying. The fossil record of plants from this time testifies to just such a drying episode.
Continued at link . . .WHEN Nobel prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen coined the word Anthropocene... more
-
-
"I’ve gathered some interesting facts as it relates to the use of natural resources and the creation of waste. The base facts have been compiled from various sources including the Environmental Protection Agency, Earth911.com, and the National Recycling Coalition. Where necessary, I have scaled the data in such a way to make it representative of the impact that a single individual (you) has on the environment over the course of a lifetime. These facts are representative of a typical individual in the U.S. Unless you are a green-freak, it is very likely that the statistics here provide a direct representation of your personal impact on the environment. I, of course, welcome all polite corrections to this information. Let’s get started…""I’ve gathered some interesting facts as it relates to the use of natural resources... more
-
-
The Big Bad Wolves are knocking on the door, In an effort to distract from the forthcoming vote in the senate on the Waxman-Markey cap -and -trade bill, and might even impact on vital UN climate talks in Copenhagan this december.The Big Bad Wolves are knocking on the door, In an effort to distract from the... more
-
-
quanta
-
added this
-
1 month ago
- |
-
While not as small or quite as cute as Wall-E, this DustCart has one major thing going for it – It’s real. DustCart, part of the $3.9 million DustBot research program, roams the streets of Peccioli, Italy collecting trash while measuring the levels of atmosphereic pollutants such as sulfur oxide, benzene, ozone and nitrogen oxide. DustCart can be summoned to a location via cell phone and has the ability to go door to door to sort people’s trash as organic, recyclable, or waste.While not as small or quite as cute as Wall-E, this DustCart has one major thing going... more
-
-
Judge Jeffrey S White rejected the U.S. approval of gene-engineered sugar beets, saying the Agriculture Department should have done an environmental impact statement, assessing the consequences to other crops. Monsanto's engineering of the "Terminator Gene" , a self sterilizing gene could spread through natural occurance, cross pollination, and render other crops sterile forcing dependency on purchase of Monsanto's manipulated seeds. The center for Food Safety was joined by the Sierra Club, the Organic Seed Alliance and High Mowing Organic Seeds.Judge Jeffrey S White rejected the U.S. approval of gene-engineered sugar beets,... more
-
-
quanta
-
added this
-
2 months ago
- |
-
Researchers at MIT have shown the benefits of a new approach toward eliminating carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions at coal-burning power plants.
Their system, called pressurized oxy-fuel combustion, provides a way of separating all of the carbon-dioxide emissions produced by the burning of coal, in the form of a concentrated, pressurized liquid stream. This allows for carbon dioxide sequestration: the liquid CO2 stream can be injected into geological formations deep enough to prevent their escape into the atmosphere.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It might seem paradoxical to reduce the carbon footprint of a coal plant by making its emissions into a more concentrated stream of carbon dioxide. But Ahmed Ghoniem, the Ronald C. Crane (1972) Professor of Mechanical Engineering and leader of the MIT team analyzing this new technology, explains: "this is the first step. Before you sequester, you have to concentrate and pressurize" the greenhouse gases. "You have to redesign the power plant so that it produces a pure stream of pressurized liquid carbon dioxide, to make it sequestration ready."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ghoniem says even though this process uses more energy at the beginning of the combustion cycle because of the need to separate oxygen from air and pressurize it, the increased efficiency of the power cycle raises the net output of the plant and reduces the compression work needed to deliver CO2 at the requisite state for sequestration, as compared to the unpressurized carbon-capture systems; in other words, the overall energy penalty is reduced. "You have to deliver carbon dioxide at high pressure for sequestration," he points out. The system simply introduces some pressurization earlier in the process, so the output stream requires less compression at the end of the process while extracting more energy from the combustion gases.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ghoniem concedes that much more research is still needed for CCS technology. The three areas that need study most, he says, are systems' integration to determine the operating conditions at which the different components work together for highest efficiency; component-level research to optimize of the design of individual parts of the new system, especially the combustion chamber; and process analysis to examine the details of the physics and chemistry involved. His group has been concentrating on detailed computer simulations of the process to aid in the design of better systems.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This caught my eye! It seems like an effective way to address CO2 emissions, but what are the costs of injecting liquid CO2 into the planet?!Researchers at MIT have shown the benefits of a new approach toward eliminating... more
-
-
Canadian environmental activist Andrew Nikiforuk"s book highlights Canada role in ignoring threats to our water and the environmental repercussions that involve both nations.Canadian environmental activist Andrew Nikiforuk"s book highlights Canada role in... more
-
-
quanta
-
added this
-
2 months ago
- |
-
Earth Days , leading environmentalist contributes to this movie , a man who has been at the forefront of the movement for 4 decades.Earth Days , leading environmentalist contributes to this movie , a man who... more
-
-
quanta
-
added this
-
2 months ago
- |
-
Stephenie Mills contributes to the movie Earth Days
-
-
quanta
-
added this
-
2 months ago
- |
-
This fall the eco-art installation “Watershed" (http://mslk.com/reactions/watershed), made out of 1500 plastic water bottles, a number representing 1 second of US consumption will again be taking its message to the streets in order to sway the public to rethink their consumption of bottled water.
In the past decade, the bottled water industry has grown immensely and so have its repercussions. Mixed through out the installation are facts such as:
· Out of the 50 billion bottles of water being bought each year, 80% end up in a landfill.
· 17 million barrels of oil are used in producing bottled water each year.
· Bottled water costs 1,000 times more than tap water. Drinking 2 Liters of tap water a day only costs 50 cents per year.
· Plastic leaches toxins into the water, which have been linked to health problems such as reproductive issues and cancer.
· Most US tap water currently surpasses all federal and state health standards.
"When thinking of making a change to be more eco-friendly, abandoning plastic water bottles is a great place to start. Not only is good for the environment, it saves you money, and we have the best quality drinking water coming right out of taps." says Watershed designer Sheri L Koetting, principal of the NYC design firm MSLK (http://www.mslk.com)This fall the eco-art installation “Watershed"... more
-
-
Much of the cotton produced in the United States is exported to China and other countries with low labor costs, where the material is milled, woven into fabrics, cut, and assembled according to the fashion industry's specifications. China has emerged as the largest exporter of fast fashion, accounting for 30% of world apparel exports, according to the UN Commodity Trade Statistics database. In her 2005 book The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy, Pietra Rivoli, a professor of international business at the McDonough School of Business of Georgetown University, writes that each year Americans purchase approximately 1 billion garments made in China, the equivalent of four pieces of clothing for every U.S. citizen.
According to figures from the U.S. National Labor Committee, some Chinese workers make as little as 12–18 cents per hour working in poor conditions. And with the fierce global competition that demands ever lower production costs, many emerging economies are aiming to get their share of the world's apparel markets, even if it means lower wages and poor conditions for workers. Increasingly, clothing being imported to the United States comes from countries as diverse as Honduras and Bangladesh.
cotton field
Each step of the clothing production process carries the potential for an environmental impact. For example, conventionally grown cotton, one of the most popular clothing fibers, is also one of the most water- and pesticide-dependent crops (a view disputed by Cotton Incorporated, a U.S. cotton growers' group). At the factory stage, effluent may contain a number of toxics (below, waste products from a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, spill into a stagnant pond).
images (top to bottom): Mike Donenfeld/Shutterstock; Zed Nelson/Panos Pictures
waste products from garment factory spill into stagnant pond
Once bought, an estimated 21% of annual clothing purchases stay in the home, increasing the stocks of clothing and other textiles held by consumers, according to Recycling of Low Grade Clothing Waste, a September 2006 report by consultant Oakdene Hollins. The report calls this stockpiling an increase in the "national wardrobe," which is considered to represent a potentially large quantity of latent waste that will eventually enter the solid waste stream. According to the EPA Office of Solid Waste, Americans throw away more than 68 pounds of clothing and textiles per person per year, and clothing and other textiles represent about 4% of the municipal solid waste. But this figure is rapidly growing.
Everything Old Is New Again
In her book Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash, Susan Strasser, a professor of history at the University of Delaware, traces the "progressive obsolescence" of clothing and other consumer goods to the 1920s. Before then, and especially during World War I, most clothing was repaired, mended, or tailored to fit other family members, or recycled within the home as rags or quilts. During the war, clothing manufacturers reduced the varieties, sizes, and colors of their productions and even urged designers to create styles that would use less fabric and avoid needless decoration. The government's conservation campaign used slogans such as "Make economy fashionable lest it become obligatory" and resulted in an approximate 10% reduction in the production of trash.
However, the spirit of conservation did not last long; by the mid-1920s consumerism was back in style. Industrialization grew in the twentieth century, providing the means of increased production of all consumer goods. During World War II, consumption rose with increased employment as the United States mobilized for the war. The production and consumption of many household goods, including clothing, grew by 10–15% even in the middle of the war and continues to expand to this day.
for full article, please follow the link.Much of the cotton produced in the United States is exported to China and other... more
-
-
A lake in the middle of a city. Five minutes of relaxation.
-
-
This study took place in Lower Manhatten and the Bronx. Even though the science is in, there will be, I am sure, a plethora of naysayers.
Even though this is a small study, the oil companies will have to do something to counteract it.This study took place in Lower Manhatten and the Bronx. Even though the science is in,... more
-
