Category: Environment

Cross-posted from THE ENVIRONMENTALIST

Golf and the Environment

Golf courses can be breathtaking in their beauty.  Environmentally?  Not as much…  Includes an interesting survey of golf professionals about climate change and sustainable use.

NASA rolls out the ‘Green Carpet’ for Earth Day

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is commemorating Earth Day with a ‘Green Carpet’ campaign of press conferences, features on NASA TV, links and new photos of the earth taken from the latest shuttle missions.

U.S. Identifies Tainted Heparin in 11 Countries

Contamination in the blood thinner Heparin that was produced in China has been discovered in eleven countries, accounting for 81 deaths in the United States, so far.

More new articles at THE ENVIRONMENTALIST

In a few paragraphs, I’ll get to the promised interview, but first a few words of my own. (If you’re short on time, scroll to the interview box).

Every year, I greet Earth Day with mixed feelings because the first one came at a time of tremendous upheaval in another realm.

Although that first Earth Day in 1970 – which Denis Hayes coordinated – focused needed attention on the world’s environmental troubles, it was also a diversion. Just a week after Earth Day, on April 29, the U.S. sent troops into Cambodia and, within three weeks, six students had been killed during protests at Kent State and Jackson State universities. Then, too, while millions joined in Earth Day activities, the event was peppered with corporate sponsors, many of whom were more interested in making a public relations coup than anything substantively ecological.

Indeed, some corporate participants took a downright hostile tone when it was pointed out that something engaged in by them might be environmentally destructive.

Nonetheless, for a time, in part because Richard Nixon needed something positive to balance his administration’s disastrous continuation of the war in Southeast Asia and because he was pressured by Democrats like Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson and members of his own party, quite a number of successful environmental initiatives were undertaken, including the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and legislation on clean water and clean air.  

Several Louisiana newspapers carried the Associated Press version of the Baton Rouge Advocate article on the Loren Scott & Associates study on the economic importance of the Port Fourchon energy complex.

In the style that has become expected of studies for hire, the report lays out the case for which it was produced, namely that getting more money to raise the road to the the port is a very important project. However, in making the case, it ignores the reason that the road must be raised – a sinking coast and rising sea levels.

Here are the opening paragraphs of The Advocate article:

Port Fourchon services 90 percent of the deepwater rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, and even a brief interruption of services would cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs, a study released Thursday shows.

The Greater Lafourche Port Commission, which commissioned the study, hopes the information will help convince Congress to fund upgrades and repairs to the area’s levee system and the $250 million shortfall for an elevated highway and bridge from Golden Meadow to Port Fourchon, port director Ted Falgout said.

It’s understandable that the Port Fourchon study would not mention the reasons the road must be raised are due, at least in part, to the significant energy industry contributions to the destruction of coastal marsh lands and the climate change producing the rising seas.

This is Part 2 of an Earth Day-themed series on  environmental issues in the Gulf Region after Katrina and the federal flood.

In the first part of this Earth Day series, the environmental devastation experienced by New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Region was discussed. This installment will focus on Louisiana’s wetlands which are being washed away and the sinking of New Orleans and the rest of southern Louisiana.

This is the first part of a 2-part Earth Day-themed series on environmental issues in the Gulf Region.

Not only were Katrina, the federal flood, and Rita massive human tragedies, they were for reasons which will be detailed below easily this nation’s biggest environmental calamity.

And their potential impacts on human health and life in New Orleans and in the rest of the affected area are still being assessed over 2 1/2-years later. More below the fold…..  

We have been warned for years that global warming will happen at some distant time in the future.  Today, a report was released which concluded that human activities have already caused increased temperatures in the Western states. This follows on the heels of another report that decreased mountain snowpack is also due to global warming.  This presents a dilemma for California: Should the limited water supplies be used for people or endangered species?  Today, courts are correctly following the law by mandating that water projects maintain instream uses for species, which means less water available for people. In fact, last year, one judge issued an injunction to turn off the pumps that divert the water which supplies people in order to maintain instream uses of water.  Soon, the state or water purveyors will be lobbying Congress to change the Endangered Species Act so that protected species can die. Soon, the state or water agencies may be arguing that water infrastructure should be constructed without regard for environmental impacts.  Yet, Congress is not taking action to address global warming now.  

Biofuels are of increasing interest as an alternative to fossil fuels.  This pure image allows industry, politicians, the World Bank, the United Nations and even the International Panel on Climate Change to present fuels made from corn, sugarcane, soy and other crops as the next step in a smooth transition from oil to a not yet defined renewable fuel economy.  But, at what price?

From BBC News:

Agriculture minister Michel Barnier said Europe could not remain passive and leave the situation to the markets.

He said producing biofuels, a key part of the EU’s plans to tackle climate change, was a “crime against humanity”.

Amid the Chinese government stepping up claims that the Dalai Lama wants to foment a violent uprising in Tibet – including allegations today that they discovered an arms cache in a Tibetan monestary (link: http://www.reuters.com/article… ), the Dalai Lama gave a forceful reply last Friday.

He didn’t call them the Evil Empire. He didn’t say they were members of the Axis of Evil.

He said, “we are not anti-Chinese”.

The full interview can be found at MSNBC’s website here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21…

Last week, new Bushie rules were approved to authorize using streams, wetlands and waterways as waste dump sites as long as man-made streams are “created” to replace the streams killed by the waste.  This is a faith-based rule:  Even the government admits there is no evidence that people have the godly powers to create functional ecological stream systems.  That faith is based on the greed of appeasing special corporate interests that don’t want to spend money on responsible waste disposal methods.  

This rule is not limited to mining waste, but the destruction of streams and watersheds is prevalent in Appalachia.  MTR mining has already destroyed 1,208 miles of streams in just 10 years, but greedy profiteers have since added another 535 miles.  

Cross-posted from THE ENVIRONMENTALIST

The Bush Administration’s Interior Secretary, Dirk Kempthorne, was a no-show at last Wednesday’s Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee hearing, chaired by Barbara Boxer, on the listing of the polar bear as an endangered species.

“This listing is months overdue, in violation of the Endangered Species Act,” the California Democrat said at the hearing of the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee.

The deadline for a decision was Jan. 9. Conservation groups petitioned to list polar bears as threatened more than three years ago because their habitat, sea ice, is shrinking from global warming.

In a letter to Boxer, Kempthorne said he “respectfully” declined her invitation to appear at the hearing, since he is a named defendant in a lawsuit over the polar bear listing filed by an environmental group.

Cross-posted from THE ENVIRONMENTALIST

Scientists at the Carnegie Institution have just completed a study that has concluded the only way to stabilize the climate is to reduce carbon emissions to a near-zero level:

In the study, to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, climate scientists Ken Caldeira and Damon Matthews used an Earth system model at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology to simulate the response of the Earth’s climate to different levels of carbon dioxide emission over the next 500 years. ~snip~

The scientists investigated how much climate changes as a result of each individual emission of carbon dioxide, and found that each increment of emission leads to another increment of warming.[…] With emissions set to zero in the simulations, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere slowly fell as carbon “sinks” such as the oceans and land vegetation absorbed the gas. Surprisingly, however, the model predicted that global temperatures would remain high for at least 500 years after carbon dioxide emissions ceased.

More below the jump…

Latest articles from THE ENVIRONMENTALIST (see articles for video, links and resources):

Congress grills Big Oil on prices

The top five oil companies, testifying before Representative Edward Markey’s (D-MA) Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, insisted that their 125 billion dollar profit last was “in line with other industries.”

Representative Markey’s take on the profits:  “On April Fool’s Day, the biggest joke of all is being played on American families by Big Oil, while using every trick in the book to keep billions in federal tax subsidies even as they rake in record profits,” said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass.

April’s Protectors of Children

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, a time to show support for abused children (every month should be that) and to raise awareness about the groups working to save their lives…

Kyoto II climate meeting opens in Thailand

Talks by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to negotiate a replacement to the Kyoto Accord began in Bangkok today with a plea by the Secretary General for unity and a common purpose toward the remediation of climate change.

More at THE ENVIRONMENTALIST (we’ve been busy).

Ta!