. It won’t be a pleasant world she lives in. Cities and countries will be locked in an expensive battle with rapidly rising seas; but after spending trillions of dollars, most of the world’s ports will have been abandoned anyway. Up to seventy percent of the planet’s species will be wiped out. Gone. Vanished. Kaput. [...]
Growing up, Falling in Love Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 The AP story on military maneuvers in the Arctic reads like the gleeful report of a mugging. “To the world’s military leaders, the debate over climate change is long over. They are preparing for a new kind of Cold War [...]
(photo: Birmingham Friends of the Earth) Published on Sunday, April 22, 2012 by Informed Comment Earth Day Means Nothing If We Don’t Limit Carbon Emissions by Juan Cole The first observance of Earth Day was March 21, 1970. I was 17, and along with other students at Broad Run High School, went out with garbage bags [...]
Daybreak over Gasherbrum IV on the Baltoro glacier in the Karakoram range of the Himalayas. Photograph: Ed Darack/Corbis The glaciers are still shrinking – and rapidly A couple of glaciers shrinking more slowly than expected does not change the irrefutable fact that most are melting rapidly Jonathan Bamber guardian.co.uk, Sunday 15 April 2012 18.00 BST Article [...]
Would You Stop a Friend from Destroying the Earth? By David Swanson http://warisacrime.org/content/would-you-stop-friend-destroying-earth What would you do if someone had a button that could destroy the earth and they were walking across the room to push it? Would you stand in the way? Would you talk them out of it? Would you sit by and [...]
Global Dimming This is a film that demands action. It reveals that we may have grossly underestimated the speed at which our climate is changing. At its heart is a deadly new phenomenon. One that until very recently scientists refused to believe even existed. But it may already have led [...]
Strong solar storm heading for Earth Three-stage disturbance could last for days and affect power grids, air routes, satellites and GPS devices. A strong geomagnetic storm is racing from the Sun toward Earth. Its expected arrival on Thursday could affect power grids, airplane routes and space-based satellite navigation systems, US space [...]
• A home destroyed by erosion caused by permafrost thaw in the Alaskan village of Shishmaref. Temperatures there have risen 4.4C over the past 30 years. Photograph: Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images Permafrost is soil that has remained below 0C (32F) for more than two years. It occurs in regions where the summer warmth fails to penetrate [...]
Poor America Must Watch P a n o r a m a [B B C] – Video Documentary With one and a half million (1.5 million) American children now homeless, reporter Hilary Andersson meets the school pupils who go hungry in the richest country on Earth. From those living in the storm [...]
A Milestone Birthday for Planet Earth by Peter Bosshard Milestone birthdays are opportunities to take stock of our family, health and financial situation. So how is Planet Earth doing 20 years after the Earth Summit, the historic UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro? The planet’s economic output has more than doubled [...]
This article highlights the need for major changes in attitude and foresight when dealing with the planet and environmental issues. There is a need to be careful that the root cause of the stripping of the plant, the madness of perpetual growth [...]
The Delusional Assumptions of Capitalism by Doug Harvey One of the more delusional aspects of capitalism is the idea that if one pursues the acquisition of private wealth with abandon, that this is somehow automatically “good” for human society. The laissez-faire advocate and novelist Ayn Rand wrote that if one does not support this notion [...]
Predicted percentage of ecological landscape being driven toward biome-level changes in plant species as a result of projected human-induced climate change by 2100. Biomes are major ecological community types. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)Climate change will also drive the conversion of nearly 40% of land-based ecosystems from one major ecological community type – [...]
Scientsts confirm Kepler-22b and is about 2.4 times the radius of earth and orbits a star similar to the earth’s sun [AFP] The most Earth-like planet ever discovered is circling a star 600 light years away, a key finding in an ongoing quest to learn if life exists beyond Earth, scientists have said. The [...]
Mapping exercise will help scientists predict how frozen continent’s melting affects global sea levels. A NASA airborne laboratory, flying out of Punta Arenasin southern Chile, is conducting the largest airborne survey of Earth’s polar ice caps. NASA maps Earth’s polar ice caps View the video at http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2011/12/20111257042748832.html G Ikners ikners.com With plans to map three-dimensional views of the [...]
Farm workers in Yinchuan, China. Most of the world’s available land is already being farmed, the UN report said. Photograph: Feng Li/Getty Images UN: farmers must produce 70% more food by 2050 to feed population A quarter of farmland is highly degraded, according to the first report into the state of the world’s land resources [...]
Coal-fired power stations are death factories. Close them The government is expected to give the go-ahead to the coal-burning Kingsnorth power plant. Here, one of the world’s foremost climate experts launches an excoriating attack on Britain’s long love affair with the most polluting fossil fuel of all reddit this Comments (622) James Hansen The [...]
Photo Credit: AFP/Frederic J. Brown This, finally, is The Big One — the coming together of all of us who care about the future and do not want to gamble it away. November 2, 2011 | LIKE THIS ARTICLE ? Join our mailing list: Sign up to stay up to date on the [...]
There has been a large number of new posts added to this site. Some with a preface written by me and an article written by me that looks at the question of consent. On one hand these are exciting times when you look at what is a new level of appreciation of how the rampant [...]
Evolve A case for modernization as the road to salvation Illustration: Thom Lang / Corbis BY MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER AND TED NORDHAUS Published in the September/October 2011 issue of Orion magazine SOMETIME AROUND 2014, Italy will complete construction of seventy-eight mobile floodgates aimed at protecting Venice’s three inlets from the rising tides of the Adriatic Sea. The [...]
War on the Earth: Atomic Appalachia and the Militarized Southeast By davidswanson - Posted on 25 September 2011 MIC50.org MIC at 50 – Charlottesville, VA, September 16-18, 2011 Coleman Smith and Clare Hanrahan of New South Network of War Resisters Militarism is killing us. It is waging a war on the Earth and the devastation wrought [...]
CLIMATE CHANGE AND AMERICA’S DEADLY NATIONAL PARKS Flickr / Koshyk Eighteen people have died this year at Yosemite National Park. After learning that tourist deaths in Yosemite National Park increased this season compared with a typical year, Mother Jones reporter Kiera Butler asks whether the events that are rearranging the Earth’s climate might be the culprit. [...]
EARTH-LIKE PLANET MAY EXIST M. Kornmesser/Eso An illustration of what the “Goldilocks” planet HD 85512b, which is about 36 light-years away, might look like. European astronomers said Monday that they may have found a celestial body with the right characteristics to host life: a “Goldilocks” planet circling a star at a distance that is not [...]
We’ve Entered the Age of Mass Extinction: Goodbye Fish and a Whole Lot More LIKE THIS ARTICLE ? Join our mailing list: Sign up to stay up to date on the latest headlines via email. Paleontologist Peter Ward talks about the threats from global warming, rising population and our own plain stupidity. August 8, 2011 [...]
Protecting bits of nature here and there will not prevent humanity from losing our life support system. Even if areas dedicated to conserving plants, animals, and other species that provide Earth’s life support system increased tenfold, it would not be enough without dealing with the big issues of the 21st century: population, overconsumption and inefficient [...]
Flickr / Tina Hsu Sardines, mackerel and anchovies lie dead in a California marina. Dr. Jeremy Jackson‘s comment that “sustainable fishing is an oxymoron” is starting to haunt us all. George Ikners ikners.com An extinction event “unprecedented in human history” is probably under way in the world’s oceans, according to a report recently released [...]
Holy Land clerics launch interfaith Earth forum Published yesterday (updated) 25/07/2011 15:46 Rabbi David Rosen speaks during a press conference in Rome, 2010. Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders in the Holy Land joined forces to launch a multi-faith environmental campaign, citing religious injunctions to protect the Earth across their three faiths. [AFP/Vincenzo Pinto, File] [...]
This is an interesting article in what seems a never ending stream of dutifully concerned material about the world’s population. However, all the talk about population growth misses the same point and sometimes completely. The actual number of paople on the planet does not really measure the level or any level of environmental damage. Nor [...]
An Underground National Park Posted: 19 Jul 2011 12:13 AM PDT To prevent climate breakdown, we need to declare most of the fossil fuels in the earth’s crust off-limits. By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 19th July 2011 Rejoice, the boom is back! After a drought of investment, last week BP announced that it [...]
Rush hour in Shangai – China’s 1.34bn people are having an increasingly large environmental impact. Photograph: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images Demographers aren’t known for their sense of humor, but the ones who work for the United Nations recently announced that the world’s humanpopulation will hit 7 billion on Halloween this year. Since censuses and other [...]
Will North America Be the New Middle East? It’s Yes or No For a Climate-Killing Oil Pipeline — and Obama Gets to Make the Call By Bill McKibben The climate problem has moved from the abstract to the very real in the last 18 months. Instead of charts and graphs about what will happen someday, [...]
Children of the revolution … water bottles are brought on to a housing complex in Beijing, China. Photograph: Diego Azubel/EPA Find water and you find life. This simple maxim guides scientists searching distant planets for aliens. But if the astrobiologists were to reverse their telescopes and look at our own globe, they would find a [...]
2010 Sydney Peace Prize to Dr. Vandana Shiva, Indian Scientist and Environmental Campaigner The distinguished Indian physicist and environmentalist Dr. Vandana Shiva is the recipient of the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize. The citation for Dr. Shiva’s selection reads, “For courageous leadership of movements for social justice – the empowerment of women in developing countries, advocacy [...]
Michael Klare, The Energy Landscape of 2041 Posted by Michael Klare at 5:55pm, June 26, 2011. Let’s see: today, it’s a story about rising sea levels. Now, close your eyes, take a few seconds, and try to imagine what word or words could possibly go with such a story. Time’s up, and if “faster,” “far faster,” “fastest,” [...]
Flooding in China is currently affecting approximately five million people [GALLO/GETTY] The rate of ice loss in two of Greenland’s largest glaciers has increased so much in the last 10 years that the amount of melted water would be enough to completely fill Lake Erie, one of the five Great Lakes in North America. West [...]
We Need to Change Course: Ocean Life Is at Risk of Unprecedented Extinction Destructive fishing practices, pollution, biodiversity loss, spreading low-oxygen “dead zones” and ocean acidification are having synergistic effects across the board. June 23, 2011 | LIKE THIS ARTICLE ? Join our mailing list: Sign up to stay up to date on the latest [...]
A steward for our oceans If we are to save the seas, we must first reform 17th century ideas of marine exploitation A pair-trawled catch of cod and haddock being lowered into the hold of a Scottish ship. Photograph: Maurice Mcdonald/PA When you stand on a beach looking out across an ocean, the effect can [...]
The great land grab: India’s war on farmers Land is a powerful commodity that should be used for the betterment of humanity through farming and ecology. In India, the state forcibly acquires land from farmers and hands it over to private speculators, real estate corporations, mining companies and leisure industries [EPA] “The Earth upon which [...]
AMY GOODMAN: As the world celebrates Earth Day, Bolivia is about to pass the world’s first law that grants nature equal rights with humans. The Bolivian delegation to the United Nations urged the global body to adopt a similar law during this week’s Harmony with Nature conference. DAVID CHOQUEHUANCA: [translated] The United Nations is revolutionizing [...]
Interestingly what some scientists are calling the Anthropocene David Suzuki dealt with as humans becoming a force of nature. Whichever term you prefer there is no doubt that the habitation of the planet by such large numbers of a destructive species is part of an overall effect. George Ikners ikners.com a WordPress site Geologists press [...]
Albert Einstein was right, say scientists, 100 years on The theory of general relativity is as relevant to us today as it was when it was formulated, as a discovery about space-time reveals Comments (18) Robin McKie guardian.co.uk, Saturday 7 May 2011 20.33 BST Article history Albert Einstein at the California Institute of Technology. [...]
Zen and the art of protecting the planet In a rare interview, zen buddhist master Thich Nhat Hahn warns of the threat to civilisation from climate change and the spiritual revival that is needed to avert catastrophe • Satish Kumar on Slow Sunday, the simple solution to global warming • Thich Nhat Hanh on the risks to [...]
Bolivia enshrines natural world’s rights with equal status for Mother Earth Law of Mother Earth expected to prompt radical new conservation and social measures in South American nation Share425 Comments (30) John Vidal in La Paz guardian.co.uk, Sunday 10 April 2011 18.17 BST Article history John Vidal reports from La Paz where Bolivians are living [...]
