Eco News Roundup

England is getting ready for a huge sell-off of national forests to private firms. If you want to have your voice heard on this topic here’s your chance.

China’s New Super-City will merge nine urban centers into a single 16,000 square-mile megatropolis

Scottish-based Cairn Energy has announced the discovery of gas in Artic waters off the coast of Greenland. The Greenpeace ship Esperanza is at the site in a stand off with Cairn and Danish Navy warships just west of Disko Island in Baffin Bay.

Did Vikings navigate by polarized light? A Viking legend tells of a glowing 'sunstone' that, when held up to the sky, revealed the position of the Sun even on a cloudy day.

It sounds like magic, but scientists measuring the properties of light in the sky say that polarizing crystals — which function in the same way as the mythical sunstone — could have helped ancient sailors to cross the northern Atlantic.

Road schooling: Nomadic education with a side of ecology.

“Encased in my cozy down blanket, I slowly wake to the sights and sounds around me; today it is birds and the occasional car whizzing by. This week we are staying at a rodeo fairground in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a far cry from our home in a Portland, Oregon, suburb. I smile thinking about the day ahead of me and make a cup of hot jasmine green.”

Round up of Ecological Interest

New Green Blog Counters “Eco Snobbery” with Humor and Inclusiveness

Jeffrey Davis has written for several years at Mother nature network has started a new blog called Eco Snobbery Sucks.

According to Jeffrey, the reason he founded Eco-Snobbery Sucks is to bring attention to the oft-forgotten truth that every step taken towards green matters, big or small. According to the site's faq, eco-snobbery could also play out when:

• People look down their noses at others for not doing “as much” as they do.
• Businesses make their operations or products seem more eco-friendly than they really are.
• Manufacturers charge an unfair “eco-premium” for products that don’t warrant it.

Another new blog

Mother Craft Collective is a collective of Cape Town crafters. They aren’t all from Cape Town originally, but live there now. Here is their story:

In mid 2010 Tracy (the only born Capetownian in the collective so far) moved house, and consequently met two Zimbabwean crafters selling their wares at a busy set of traffic lights nearby in Newlands, Cape Town. These two Zimbabweans are Cuthbert and Alex.

“Cuthbert and Alex spent their days making crafts and selling at the traffic lights. This would have been a good system for them as the traffic lights are on a main route with lots of potential customers passing by every day. BUT there is a problem! It’s not legal to sell at traffic lights (you may be fooled into thinking that this is not the case if you drive around Cape Town, because almost every set of traffic lights has someone trying to sell you something). So these two Zimbabweans became adept at running very fast from the police, and hiding their wares at a moment’s notice.”

In Wake of Four Loko Ban, Recycler Turns Caffeine-spiked Booze into Biofuel

Four Loko—that high-octane alcohol- and caffeine-fueled malt beverage that drew the ire of federal authorities late last year—has found a new and appropriate role in the energy cycle: automotive fuel. A Virginia ethanol recycler is taking shipments of the product, which has been pulled from store shelves in several states, and recycling it into ethanol for use in gasoline.

Earth’s Hot Past: Prologue to Future Climate?

   

The magnitude of climate change during Earth’s deep past suggests that future temperatures may eventually rise far more than projected if society continues its pace of emitting greenhouse gases, a new analysis concludes.

The study, by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Jeffrey Kiehl, will appear as a “Perspectives” article in this week’s issue of the journal Science.

Danger in the Nursery

Just found this article in Bird Life International and thought it would be interesting to pass along.

The author informs us about strip-mining for tar sands in Canada’s boreal forest. Canada is a part of the northern boreal ecoregion which accounts for about one third of this planet's total forest area. It is comprised of a broad circumpolar band which runs through most of Canada, Russia, Scandinavia and parts of Northern Scotland. Compared to much of the world, this ecoregion enjoys a sparse population and thus one would think, few threats to its immense and majestic beauty. However the reality is quite different.

The search for new oil reserves in tar-sand, a source of low-grade oil, is damaging forest and wetland habitats to the extent that over the next 30 to 50 years up to 300,000 hectares of forest and wetland could be directly affected, while habitat fragmentation, pollution and hydrological changes would affect a much larger area.

The area of north eastern Alberta supports at least 292 species of breeding birds. The only wild, migratory population of Whooping Crane Grus americana (Endangered) nests at Wood Buffalo National Park to the north, and migrates over the tar sands region, occasionally stopping over at boreal wetlands.

Many of the most abundant songbirds and waterbirds of the Americas also breed in the "bird nursery" of the boreal forest, and are already suffering declines because of logging, and degradation of their migration staging sites.

"Canada's boreal forest is an incredibly important area for many breeding neotropical migrant birds, and contains numerous Important Bird Areas", said John Cecil, national IBA program director for Audubon (BirdLife in the USA). "The report details impacts to at least five IBAs, among numerous other impacts".

Site preparation for strip mining requires draining lakes and wetlands, diverting streams and rivers, clear-cutting forests, and removing all vegetation. Hydraulic shovels and trucks are used to dig as deep as 100 meters into the earth. Despite commitments by the oil and mining companies, there is no evidence that lost ecosystems can be restored.

And even they are restored, how long will it take, and will it be in time to halt a devastating loss of wildlife?

How many links in the food chain can we live without? Birds are more than just something to look at and listen to. They eat insects whose numbers could devastate food crops if not kept in check.

Loss of habitat reduces a number of various mammals, reptiles, fish, etc, and each loss brings us closer to our own demise.

But, hey, as long as oil companies keep making money, as long as governments keep making tax money on it and we get to ride around in our personal vehicles, who cares right?

Being green means more than just using alternative energy sources, it also means protecting the planet and all of its inhabitants.

Living a green lifestyle means we don’t destroy any part of our environment to improve our lifestyle, because it does not improve our lifestyle.

Every time one more species is obliterated from this planet, we get one step closer to our own destruction.

Not all of us may not give a hang for birds, or spiders, or ants, or elephants, but without each and every one of them everyone's quality of life is diminished.

Government Regulation versus Biodiversity

Just what does George Bush have against science? Now he wants to overhaul the Endangered Species Act in favor of any and all agencies that a federal agency would fund, build or authorize that might harm endangered wildlife and their habitat.

Let’s look at the possible reasons that he (or the highest bidding lobbyist) might have for overhauling an environmental strategy that worked so well for over 30 years.

1 He is utterly naïve in believing that civil and construction engineers know enough, and care enough, about wildlife and their habitat, that they alone can make responsible decisions affecting environmental safety and survival, even if it leads to increased costs for their projects.

2 Biodiversity is over rated and environmental protection is just a scheme to place a higher value on dumb animals than on mankind.

3 Mankind’s place in this world is to rule over all we survey. Wildlife is here to serve mankind and if they can’t survive along side us on their own then it just proves their lowly, subservient status beneath human kind.

4 Any money spent on protecting wildlife that does not directly lead to making more money for this administration’s supporters is a waste of time and effort because, well, see #2 and #3.

5 Environmentalist are using the plight of endangered species to hamper attempts by resource-profiteers to extract fossil fuel resources from the planet that will further pollute the land, air and water.

The Fish and Wildlife Service and National Fisheries Service are the experts in determining whether a project is likely to jeopardize any endangered species or habitat. And they have been doing a great job at it for roughly 35 years. Perhaps too good of a job, according to Bush and his gang of profiteers.

Conservative Republicans have tried unsuccessfully in congress to eliminate what they consider unnecessary laws to protect wildlife that only cause delays and cost increases on many infrastructure projects. The Department of Interior proposal, which does not require congressional approval, is aimed at ‘correcting’ the habit of federal action agencies have of ‘erring on the side of caution’ concerning wildlife habitat protection. In other words, civil engineers and project managers are tired of tip toeing around possible biodiversity destruction and want to get on with their projects without deferring to the edict of environmental policy.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said “We believe federal action agencies will err on the side of caution in making these determinations". This places immense faith in project managers to put the welfare of the environment over getting their project done and getting paid quickly so they can get on to the next project. this faith is obviously misplaced.

At stake here is nothing less than the continued health of biodiversity, struggling against an administration that places far more importance on making profit for its financial benefactors than on the healthy existence of this planet. The incessant need for humans to control the environment rather than to live with it is bringing us all closer to the point of strangulation.

The importance of biodiversity cannot be overstated. Diversity is the basic building block of a healthy, flourishing environment. Without it mankind will cease to exist.

The weakening of U.S. environmental policy is nothing more than a transparent attempt to allow oil companies to determine if their exploration and oil drilling practices will be harmful to wildlife. We know far too well what decision would be made if choosing between drilling to extract oil or saving the life of some animal that they couldn’t care less about.

A New Environmentalism

We are constantly reminded by environmentalist that we all need to kick in and do our part to make this world a better place in which to live.

We see it in the blogs and websites we visit. We hear about it on radio and television, mainly on the Public Broadcasting stations. There are pockets of environmental activism groups sprouting up here an there but it just seems that there are still so many people who don’t believe their small part can make any real difference.

The underlying inhibiting factor to seeing more local activism is that people feel impotent with regard to politics and public affairs. The feel they have been pushed out of public life and that getting involved makes little difference in their community.

If people could be convinced that what they do would make a difference then they would do more. It is difficult to develop stewardship if it cannot be connected with personal responsibility. Without a clear connection between our actions and individual responsibility to the environment then all of the scenes of marine wildlife choking to death from ingesting our plastic throwaways or the many urgent calls from scientists to lessen our carbon footprint will go unheeded.

Throughout history, society has placed the power of caring for us and the environment in the hands of politicians and we have adopted the idea that it is their problem and therefore it is out of our hands, and with this attitude we have effectively taken ourselves out of the picture. Government models consequently take up the policy of ‘command and control’ through which laws and lawsuits are meant to shape our behavior.

While we cannot legislate responsibility or good judgment, individuals are beginning to recognize a common interest and a common purpose in becoming a more active and responsible citizen through recycling, water conservation, and fuel economy.

People and companies have made great strides in becoming more environmentally responsible. However, these efforts still fall short of what is needed for the long term health of this planet. While the ecosystem has some abilities to correct or heal itself, the limitations on the damage it can sustain are quickly approaching. It is vital that even more people begin to recognize the seriousness of these issues and start taking personal responsibility for what they are doing to the environment.

We can find plenty of sources to tell us what we need to do, and we need to herald the activities of the countless citizen groups and individuals that are participating in the environmental movement in hopes of igniting a more participatory spirit. We don’t need free-market environmentalism that depends entirely on the whims of the individual and the economy, we do need a participatory environmentalism that emphasizes community partnerships between local businesses, local governments, local individuals and stewards who are closest to the resources.

The old environmentalism has developed a loss of local control for citizens and local governments that often find themselves at odds with the Environmental Protection Agency and mired in politics instead of science. This has led to contradictions between what individual property owners believe is best for their own interests vs. what is in the best interest of the community.

Shortly after the creation of the EPA it soon became apparent that a centralized form of ecosystem management was flawed. Only when locals have a say in their own community and environmental civics can we see great strides in protection of our unique ecosystems.

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), the great American architect, practiced his own brand of environmental civics by insisting that homes conform with their natural settings.

Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), the great Wisconsin conservationist and author of A Sand County Almanac, believed that conservation is too important to be left to government alone; it is a realm for individual responsibility, good science and economic reality.

Like Leopold, I believe that if we don’t have committed, responsible citizenry then all the efforts in the public sphere will go for naught.

We cannot give up control of our local environments to the ‘one-rule-fits-all’ mentality of the federal or even state governments. Forming constructive partnerships is difficult and sometimes frustrating work but the effort to do so is essential.

To paraphrase Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem In Memoriam 27 ’Tis better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all’.

As always, comments are welcomed and encouraged.