Skip to main content

Home/ Save The Planet/ Group items tagged to be

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Skeptical Debunker

Rough Water - 0 views

www.earthisland.org/...roughwater

Klamath River dams agreement negotiation controversy protest violence

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 03 Mar 10 - Cached
  • For most of the last 1,500 years, the river supported a sustainable salmon economy. Salmon were at the heart of all the Klamath’s tribal cultures, and Indians were careful not to over-harvest them. Each summer, the lower Klamath’s Yurok and Hoopa tribes blocked the upstream paths of spawning salmon with barriers; then, after ten days of fishing, they removed the barriers, allowing upstream tribes to take their share. As the salmon completed their lifecycle, dying in the waters where they’d been spawned, they enriched the watershed with nutrients ingested during years in the ocean. Among the beneficiaries were at least 22 species of mammals and birds that eat salmon. Even the salmon carcasses that bears left behind on the riverbanks fertilized trees that provided shade along the river’s banks, cooling its waters so that the next generation of vulnerable juvenile salmon could survive. “We tried to go to court, to go through the political process, but it didn’t work. …The big issues were still out there, and we still had to resolve them.” Salmon’s biological family may have started in the age of dinosaurs a hundred million years ago. They’ve survived through heat waves and droughts, in rivers of varying flow, temperature, and nutrient load – but they were as ill-prepared for Europeans’ arrival as the Indians themselves. Gold miners who showed up in the mid-nineteenth century washed entire hillsides into the river with high-pressure hoses and scoured the river’s bed with dredges. Loggers dragged trees down streambeds, causing massive erosion, and dumped sawdust into the river, smothering incubating salmon eggs. Cattle grazed at the river’s edge, causing soil erosion and destroying shade-giving vegetation. Farmers diverted water to feed their crops. The dams were the crowning blows. Between 1908 and 1962, six dams were built on the Klamath. The tallest, the 173-foot-high Iron Gate, is the farthest downstream, and definitively blocked salmon from the river’s upper quarter – after it was built, the river’s salmon population plummeted. In addition, the dams devastated water quality by promoting thick growths of toxic algae in the reservoirs. For Klamath basin farmers, however, the dams were deemed indispensable, as they generated hydropower that made pumping of their irrigation water possible.To the farmers, the potential loss of the dams’ hydropower was considered no less crippling than an end to Klamath-supplied irrigation.
  • For most of the last century, the farmers were oblivious to the damage that dams and water diversions caused downstream, while the tribes and commercial fishermen quietly seethed. The annual salmon run, once so abundant that people caught fish with their hands, was roughly pegged at more than a million fish at its peak; in recent years it has dropped to perhaps 200,000 in good years, and as low as 12,000 – below the minimum believed necessary to sustain the runs – in bad years. Spring Chinook, which once comprised the river’s dominant salmon run, entirely disappeared. Two fish species – the Lost River sucker and the shortnose sucker – that once supported a commercial fishery, were listed as endangered in 1988. Coho salmon were listed as threatened nine years later. All this has had a devastating impact on the tribes. Traditionally able to sustain themselves throughout the year on seasonal migrations of the river’s salmon, trout, and candlefish, tribal members suffered greatly as the runs declined or went extinct. For four decades beginning in 1933, the tribes were barred from fishing the river even as commercial fishermen went unrestricted. Members of the Karuk tribe once consumed an estimated average of 450 pounds of salmon a year; a 2004 survey found that the average had dropped to five pounds a year. The survey linked salmon’s absence to epidemics of diabetes and heart disease that now plague the Karuk. The 2001 cutoff left farmers without irrigated water for the first time in the Klamath Project’s history. Over the next four months, many farmers performed repeated acts of civil disobedience, most notably when a bucket brigade passed pails of banned water from its lake storage to an irrigation canal while thousands of onlookers cheered. The protests attracted Christian-fundamentalist, anti-government, and property rights advocates from throughout the West; former Idaho Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth-Hage likened the farmers’ struggle to the American Revolution.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • A year later, it was the tribes’ and fishermen’s turn to experience calamity. According to a Washington Post report, Vice President Dick Cheney ordered Interior Department officials to deliver Klamath water to Project farmers in 2002, even though federal law seemed to favor the fish. Interior Secretary Gale Norton herself opened the head gates launching the 2002 release of water to the Project, while approving farmers chanted, “Let the water flow!” Six months later, the carcasses of tens of thousands of Chinook and Coho salmon washed up on the riverbanks near the Klamath’s mouth, in what is considered the largest adult salmon die-off in the history of the American West. The immediate cause was a parasitic disease called ich, or “white spot disease,” commonly triggered when fish are overcrowded. Given the presence of an unusually large fall Chinook run in 2002 and a paucity of Klamath flow, the 2002 water diversion probably caused the die-off. Yurok representatives said that months earlier they begged government officials to release more water into the lower river to support the salmon, but were ignored. photo courtesy Earthjustice In 2002, low water levels on the Klamath led to the largest adult salmon die-off in the history of the American West. The die-off deprived many tribes-people of salmon and abruptly ended the river’s sport-fishing season, but its impact didn’t fully register until four years later, when the offspring of the prematurely deceased 2002 salmon would have made their spawning run. By then the Klamath stock was so depleted that the federal government placed 700 miles of Pacific Ocean coastline, from San Francisco to central Oregon, off limits to commercial salmon fishing for most of the 2006 fishing season. As a result, commercial ocean fishermen lost about $100 million in income, forcing many into bankruptcy. Even more devastating, a precipitous decline in Sacramento River salmon led to the cancellation of the entire Pacific salmon fishing season in both 2008 and 2009. The Klamath basin was in a permanent crisis. It turned out that desperation and frustration were perfect preconditions for negotiations. “Every one of us would have rolled the others if we could have,” Fletcher, the Yurok leader, says. “We all tried to go to court, to go through the political process, but it didn’t work – we might win one battle today and lose one tomorrow, so nothing was resolved. We spent millions of dollars on attorneys, plane tickets to Washington, political donations, but it didn’t make any of us sleep any better, because the big issues were still out there, and we still had to resolve them.”
  • In January 2008, the negotiators announced the first of two breakthrough Klamath pacts: the 255-page Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement. In it, most of the parties – farmers, three of the four tribes, a commercial fishermen’s group, seven federal and state agencies, and nine environmental groups – agreed to a basic plan. It includes measures to take down the four dams, divert some water from Project farmers to the river in return for guaranteeing the farmers’ right to a smaller amount, restore fisheries habitat, reintroduce salmon to the upper basin, develop renewable energy to make up for the loss of the dams, and support the Klamath Tribes of Oregon’s effort to regain some land lost when Congress “terminated” its reservation in 1962. This was a seminal moment, a genuine reconciliation among tribal and agricultural leaders who discovered that the hatred they’d nursed was unfounded. “Trust is the key,” says Kandra, the Project farmer who went from litigant to negotiator. “We took little baby steps, giving each other opportunities to build trust, and then we got to a place where we could have some really candid discussions, without screaming and yelling – it was like, ‘Here’s how I see the world.’ Pretty valuable stuff. The folks that developed those kinds of relationships got along pretty good.” Still, one crucial ingredient was missing: Unless PacifiCorp agreed to dismantle the dams, river restoration was impossible, and the pact was a well-intentioned, empty exercise. But PacifiCorp now had compelling reasons to consider dam removal. Not only was relicensing going to be expensive, but Klamath tribespeople were becoming an embarrassing irritant, in two consecutive years interrupting Berkshire Hathaway’s annual-meeting/Buffett-lovefests in Omaha with nonviolent protests that won media attention. Also, the Bush administration, customarily no friend of dam removal, signaled its support for a basin-wide agreement. Negotiations between PacifiCorp and mid-level government officials began in January 2008, but made little progress until a meeting in Shepherdstown, West Virginia four months later, when for the first time Senior Interior Department Counselor Michael Bogert presided. As Bogert recently explained, President Bush himself took an interest in the Klamath “because it was early on in his watch that the Klamath became almost a symbol” of river basin dysfunction. To Bush, the decision to support dam removal was a business decision, not an environmental one: The “game-changer,” Bogert said, was the realization that because of the high cost of relicensing, dam removal made good fiscal sense for PacifiCorp. That fact distinguished the Klamath from other dam removal controversies such as the battle over four dams on Idaho’s Snake River, whose removal the Bush administration continued to oppose.
  • In November 2008, when then-Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced a detailed agreement in principle with PacifiCorp to take down the dams, he acknowledged that he customarily opposed dam removal, but that the Klamath had taught him “to evaluate each situation on a case-by-case basis.” In September 2009, Kempthorne’s successor, Ken Salazar, announced that PacifiCorp and government officials had reached a final agreement. PacifiCorp and the many signers of the earlier Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement then ironed out inconsistencies between the two pacts in a final negotiation that ended with a final deal in January 2010.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 03 Mar 10
     
    Maybe the Klamath River basin would have turned itself around without Jeff Mitchell. Back in 2001, at the pinnacle of the conflict over the river's fate, when the Klamath earned its reputation as the most contentious river basin in the country, Mitchell planted a seed. Thanks to a drought and a resulting Interior Department decision to protect the river's endangered fish stocks, delivery of Klamath water to California and Oregon farmers was cut off mid-season, and they were livid. They blamed the Endangered Species Act, the federal government that enforced it, and the basin's salmon-centric Indians who considered irrigation a death sentence for their cultures. The basin divided up, farmers and ranchers on one side, Indians and commercial fishermen on the other. They sued one another, denounced one another in the press, and hired lobbyists to pass legislation undermining one another. Drunken goose-hunters discharged shotguns over the heads of Indians and shot up storefronts in the largely tribal town of Chiloquin, Oregon. An alcohol-fueled argument over water there prompted a white boy to kick in the head of a young Indian, killing him.
Skeptical Debunker

Belief In Climate Change Hinges On Worldview : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...story.php

social science individuals communitarians climate change disagreement

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 25 Feb 10 - Cached
  • "People tend to conform their factual beliefs to ones that are consistent with their cultural outlook, their world view," Braman says. The Cultural Cognition Project has conducted several experiments to back that up. Participants in these experiments are asked to describe their cultural beliefs. Some embrace new technology, authority and free enterprise. They are labeled the "individualistic" group. Others are suspicious of authority or of commerce and industry. Braman calls them "communitarians." In one experiment, Braman queried these subjects about something unfamiliar to them: nanotechnology — new research into tiny, molecule-sized objects that could lead to novel products. "These two groups start to polarize as soon as you start to describe some of the potential benefits and harms," Braman says. The individualists tended to like nanotechnology. The communitarians generally viewed it as dangerous. Both groups made their decisions based on the same information. "It doesn't matter whether you show them negative or positive information, they reject the information that is contrary to what they would like to believe, and they glom onto the positive information," Braman says.
  • "Basically the reason that people react in a close-minded way to information is that the implications of it threaten their values," says Dan Kahan, a law professor at Yale University and a member of The Cultural Cognition Project. Kahan says people test new information against their preexisting view of how the world should work. "If the implication, the outcome, can affirm your values, you think about it in a much more open-minded way," he says. And if the information doesn't, you tend to reject it. In another experiment, people read a United Nations study about the dangers of global warming. Then the researchers told the participants that the solution to global warming is to regulate industrial pollution. Many in the individualistic group then rejected the climate science. But when more nuclear power was offered as the solution, says Braman, "they said, you know, it turns out global warming is a serious problem."And for the communitarians, climate danger seemed less serious if the only solution was more nuclear power.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Then there's the "messenger" effect. In an experiment dealing with the dangers versus benefits of a vaccine, the scientific information came from several people. They ranged from a rumpled and bearded expert to a crisply business-like one. The participants tended to believe the message that came from the person they considered to be more like them. In relation to the climate change debate, this suggests that some people may not listen to those whom they view as hard-core environmentalists. "If you have people who are skeptical of the data on climate change," Braman says, "you can bet that Al Gore is not going to convince them at this point." So, should climate scientists hire, say, Newt Gingrich as their spokesman? Kahan says no. "The goal can't be to create a kind of psychological house of mirrors so that people end up seeing exactly what you want," he argues. "The goal has to be to create an environment that allows them to be open-minded."And Kahan says you can't do that just by publishing more scientific data.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 25 Feb 10
     
    "It's a hoax," said coal company CEO Don Blankenship, "because clearly anyone that says that they know what the temperature of the Earth is going to be in 2020 or 2030 needs to be put in an asylum because they don't." On the other side of the debate was environmentalist Robert Kennedy, Jr. "Ninety-eight percent of the research climatologists in the world say that global warming is real, that its impacts are going to be catastrophic," he argued. "There are 2 percent who disagree with that. I have a choice of believing the 98 percent or the 2 percent." To social scientist and lawyer Don Braman, it's not surprising that two people can disagree so strongly over science. Braman is on the faculty at George Washington University and part of The Cultural Cognition Project, a group of scholars who study how cultural values shape public perceptions and policy
Skeptical Debunker

NYT: Many polluters escape prosecution - The New York Times- msnbc.com - 0 views

www.msnbc.msn.com/...us_news-the_new_york_times

Supreme Court EPA Clean Water Act

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 01 Mar 10 - No Cached
  • Thousands of the nation’s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act’s reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators. As a result, some businesses are declaring that the law no longer applies to them. And pollution rates are rising. Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted, according to Environmental Protection Agency regulators working on those cases, who estimate that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have been discontinued or shelved in the last four years. Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad heredap('&PG=NBCMSN&AP=1089','300','250');The Clean Water Act was intended to end dangerous water pollution by regulating every major polluter. But today, regulators may be unable to prosecute as many as half of the nation’s largest known polluters because officials lack jurisdiction or because proving jurisdiction would be overwhelmingly difficult or time consuming, according to midlevel officials.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 01 Mar 10
     
    The best "justice" money can buy via packing the Supreme Court with "conservatives" is bearing smelly, polluted fruit. Specifically, those "conservatives" are showing themselves to be "activist judges" in "watering down" conservation and public safety laws passed by Congress. Polluting "business" entities are apparently NOT to be considered to be within the oft-quoted and loved "conservative" limitation of the purview of the federal government to merely protect the populace from "enemies foreign and domestic". That this pollution kills and injures thousands (and poisons the environment for the countless of the "unborn") apparently doesn't matter (but if Al Qaeda was doing it, then complete suspension of all domestic rights would be justified to "fight" that!). Pictured: In 2007, a pipe maker was fined millions of dollars for dumping oil, lead and zinc into Avondale Creek in Alabama. A court ruled the waterway was exempt from the Clean Water Act. The firm eventually settled by agreeing to pay a smaller amount and submit to probation.
Skeptical Debunker

Italian oil slick reaches key farm center of Parma - Yahoo! News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/...jb2tlBHNlYwN5bl9oZWFkbGluZV9sa

oil spill Itally Po River impacts

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 25 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Authorities say the spill began Tuesday, when someone opened the cisterns at an oil refinery turned depot near Monza, letting tens of thousands of liters (thousands of gallons)of oil pour unimpeded into the Lambro River, a tributary of the Po. Prosecutors have launched an investigation into the spill. Authorities say it's certain someone intentionally opened the cisterns. By Wednesday, despite efforts to contain the slick with absorbent pads and the closure of hydroelectric locks, the oil seeped from the Lambro into the Po, Italy's longest river, which flows west-to-east across the country. And Thursday, the country's disaster relief chief, Guido Bertolaso, said he expects most of the slick to be cleaned up over the next day. "I believe this is not an irreparable situation," Bertolaso said after meeting with regional officials amid criticism from environmental groups and opposition lawmakers that the government had been slow to respond. "I believe that in the next 24 hours most of this oily mass will be recovered and then, following the course of the river, before it reaches Ferrara and obviously before it reaches the delta, we will be able to recover all the rest," said Bertolaso, head of the civil protection agency. The World Wildlife Fund for Nature says thousands of birds — ducks, herons and others — are nesting and reproducing in the area, which it called one of the most important in Europe. In addition, several fish species — eel, shad and mullet — reproduce in the waters. "The entire ecological and economic system is at risk," WWF warned in a statement. Officials have said water in the area is safe to drink, but provinces have issued fishing and boating bans for affected parts of the Po. Coldiretti said food was safe since farm production is low anyway at this time of the year, and heavy rains have meant that the Po won't be needed for irrigation for some time. "There are no risks for food on the table or damage to cultivation," Coldiretti said in a statement, adding that the rain forecast in coming days means that the oil will be further diluted and the residue dispersed. But those same rains are worrying environmental groups, which have warned that high water levels in the Po mean the oil will spread to the Po's other tributaries and streams, causing broader environmental degradation. And the Confagricultura farm group said the repercussions of the spill will be felt in small tributary farm communities, particularly as water demands increase with the spring planting of rice.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 25 Feb 10
     
    Sludge from an oil spill snaked down the Po River on Thursday to reach the province of Parma, raising fears that the home of Italy's famed prosciutto, parmesan cheese and other agricultural staples might be at risk of water contamination. Italian farm lobby Coldiretti insisted Italy's food chain was safe since the Po is not being used for irrigation these days. But another group of farm owners, Confagricultura, warned that the spring planting season - particularly for water-intensive rice crops - might be at risk unless clean water is ensured. The Po River valley, which extends 71,000 square kilometers (27,400 square miles) across several northern regions, produces a third of Italy's agricultural output and represents 40 percent of the country's GDP. Because of its economic importance, officials are warning that farm output might be affected, in addition to the already extensive damage the slick has caused to the area's wildlife.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - 'The real enemy is humanity itself' - 2 views

pambazuka.org/...82402

sustainability environment energy climate change environmentalism food green

shared by Arabica Robusta on 26 May 12 - No Cached
nehasharma786 liked it
  • the first “Earth Summit,” was held in Rio, leading to the Agenda 21 “blueprint for a sustainable planet,” UN conventions on climate change and biodiversity, and the creation of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (UNSCD). Since then, an entire ecosystem of global, national, governmental and non-governmental organisations has emerged to advocate and implement the closer integration of human productive life with knowledge about the environment: to observe the “limits to growth.” The most notable of these is the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), under which a global agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions is being sought.
  • There is vast disparity between what the advocates of political environmentalism have claimed and reality. So why are world leaders set to meet next month in Rio at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development?
  • The 1972 Stockholm meeting discussed the “need for new concepts of sovereignty, based not on the surrender of national sovereignties but on better means of exercising them collectively, and with a greater sense of responsibility for the common good.” In other words, the world can be fed, clothed and housed at the cost of autonomy. This surrendering of autonomy is a price worth paying, according to its advocates, whose argument has been reduced to a neat little slogan: global problems need global solutions.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • For instance, while trying to understand why scepticism of climate-change policies seems to correspond to a conservative persuasion, the Guardian’s Damian Carrington recently opined: “The problem is that global environmental problems require global action, which means cooperation if there are to be no free-riders. That implies international treaties and regulations, which to some on the right equate with communism.”
  • James Lovelock, has distanced himself from the more extreme implications of his hypothesis. Where Lovelock once predicted “Gaia’s revenge,” he has reflected in a short interview for MSNBC.com on his alarmist tome, and criticised others such as Al Gore for their over-emphasis on catastrophic narratives. This is a remarkable volte face in itself, but reflects a broader phenomenon: the coming to fruition of environmentalism’s incoherence.
  • The idea that there are too many people, or that the natural world is so fragile that these things are too difficult for normal, democratic politics to deliver, flies in the face of facts.
  • The truth of “sustainability,” and the meeting at Rio next month, is that it is not our relationship with the natural world that it wishes to control, but human desires, autonomy and sovereignty. That is why, in 1993, the Club of Rome published its report, The First Global Revolution, written by the club’s founder and president, Alexander King and Bertrand Schneider. The authors determined that, in order to overcome political failures, it was necessary to locate “a common enemy against whom we can unite.”
  • Arabica Robusta on 26 May 12
     
    On one level, the critique of the "managerial ethos" is commendable.  On another level, the author seems content with presenting arguments that range perilously close to the James Inhofe "climate change is a hoax" camp.  This is fine, but it is not enough to claim that sustainability is all about politics.  One should offer good arguments in support of this, and in response to strong arguments from opposing perspectives.
  • rextag on 17 Mar 17
     
    If humanity don't act in time it could be the end of our lifetime soon natural gas report.
Traveller Spice

Offshore Wind Farms - 0 views

www.carbontrust.co.uk/...offshore-wind.aspx

wind farms wind power alernative energy wind offshore

shared by Traveller Spice on 18 May 10 - Cached
  • Traveller Spice on 18 May 10
     
    The Carbon Trust believes that offshore wind power has the potential to supply 25% of the UK's electricity by 2020. To help make this happen, the Carbon Trust launched the Offshore Wind Accelerator, a ground-breaking research and development initiative. From 2003 to 2009 some 350 offshore wind turbines have been built at the rate of one every 11 days. They currently deliver about 1GW, whereas about 29GW will be required to hit the EU's renewable target for 2020. To achieve this, a further 6,000 turbines must be built at the rate of one a day from 2010 to 2016, rising to 2.5 a day from 2017 to 2020. They will be bigger and more complicated to install, standing in up to 60m of water, in some cases more than 200km from shore.
Irwan S

tobeGoodPeople.com - Commitment to be Good People Site - 0 views

www.tobegoodpeople.com/home.php

to be Good People Good Person Good Life Good Picture Good Photo

shared by Irwan S on 08 May 09 - Cached
  • Irwan S on 08 May 09
     
    the first site which established the idea of be good people all over the world. This site is made to ask as many people as possible to make such a commitment to be good people by showing their profile. The main difference compare to the other "social-purposed sites", is that this site is more likely to push the people to be "good people" with the better consequence effects in their real life - not only online.\nWe hope by joining this site, people are expected to postpone their 'evil side' at least 5min, an hour, a day, even more as long as they can. So, if you think you're good enough, prove it here.
Joelle Nebbe-Mornod

BEarthright - Spiritual Economics - 0 views

www.geocities.ws/3046

economics spiritual

shared by Joelle Nebbe-Mornod on 25 Jun 16 - Cached
  • Joelle Nebbe-Mornod on 25 Jun 16
     
    "If you own no land to support yourself, you must rent, hire or buy it from those that do, so that you may both live and make a living If you cannot use the planet to feed, clothe and provide for yourself then to stay alive, you must choose to either work for those who own your planet, to become a thief or a beggar, or to die. This servitude has taken on many forms throughout history: slavery, serfdom, day-labour, employment. The only variation being the share of the wealth produced left to the planet borrowers by the planet owners This simple reality underlies much of today's poverty, inequality, lack of freedom, unemployment and powerlessness, experienced as the sheer struggle to get by that looms so large in so many peoples' lives These latter day pharaohs, the planet owners, the richest 5% - allow the rest of us to pay day after day for the right to live on their planet. And as we make them richer, they buy yet more of the planet for themselves, and use their wealth and power to fight amongst themselves over what each posesses ~ though of course it's actually us who have to fight and die in their wars"
firozcosmolance

Jakarta Will No Longer be the Capital of Indonesia - Gossip Ki Galliyan - 0 views

gossipkigalliyan.com/er-be-the-capital-of-indonesia

Jakarta

shared by firozcosmolance on 04 May 19 - No Cached
  • firozcosmolance on 04 May 19
     
    As per Bambang Brodjonegoro, the Minister of National Development Planning of Indonesia, Jakarta is no longer going to be the capital of the country. President Joko Widodo has decided on relocating the capital of Indonesia on an "important decision". It is yet not known which location is going to be the new capital but if media reports are to be believed, it is probably going to be Palangkaraya, situated on Borneo's island.
firozcosmolance

Super Pupper Party -Time to unleash your pet dogs! - Gossip Ki Galliyan - 0 views

gossipkigalliyan.com/-time-to-unleash-your-pet-dogs

dog

shared by firozcosmolance on 02 Jun 19 - No Cached
  • firozcosmolance on 02 Jun 19
     
    Ugghhh!! Summers are not just here but dreadfully taking a toll on all of us. We humans can at least choose to decide on our recreations to drive away our summer blues. But, what about your darling pet dogs? They too might be longing for some entertaining activities but can't express. I am sure you all must be deeply in love with your fur pals and already be doing anything and everything to keep them happy and healthy. But, just imagine those glaring eyes in your locality when you take your dog for a stroll. I am sure you must have come across such people because of whom you don't feel comfortable taking your dogs to public places. Also, if you do take your dog out, the poor thing must wear a leash. Can you imagine putting your pet in the community pool? Your pet might be clean and disciplined. But other people are not so considerate.
Skeptical Debunker

Drivers find electric cars have enough range - Autos- msnbc.com - 0 views

www.msnbc.msn.com/...business-autos

EV Electric Vehicle charging miles range

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 11 Mar 10 - No Cached
  • “I would expect the market for electrics does not depend at all on the development of a [charging] network, given the way in which these vehicles are used,” said Tom Turrentine, director of the Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle Center at the University of California, Davis. Through his survey of 150 people leasing the BMW MiniE battery electric prototype last year, Turrentine discovered that its maximum range of 100 miles per charge was enough to satisfy their normal driving habits. Turrentine found that most MiniE drivers were able to drive between 80 and 100 miles per charge, which they found to be sufficient. “The vehicle meets their needs in this range,” he noted.Market research firm Frost & Sullivan also queried more than 2,000 drivers of all kinds of car nationwide and found that most feel the recharging time for an electric car's battery is acceptable. This satisfaction with the battery's range meant that drivers were able to charge conveniently at home, rather than dealing with the hassle of plugging in at work or in other public parking locations. The relative lack of these recharging locations could prove less of a deterrent to electric car acceptance than was expected, Turrentine said.
  • When Berlin, Germany, installed a public charging network, the chargers went largely unused by the city’s electric car drivers, he added. Still, electric drivers don't like the notion of getting stranded and sympathized with one another’s plight. MiniE drivers posted their locations on a Web site they shared, so if one of them found themselves far from home with a low battery, they could head to another MiniE driver’s home for some electrons to get home. The home-charging units provided with the cars can juice up a battery more quickly than just plugging into an available 120-volt outlet, getting the driver back on the road in less time. This self-organized grass-roots support network that sprung up through the use of social media is an example of how electric car test drivers have communicated with one another and with carmakers even without organized surveys like Turrentine’s. “Our customers will give us feedback anyway, whether we like it or not,” said Ulrich Kranz, head of BMW’s Project i. Even if drivers infrequently need public charging, knowing it is available provides considerable peace of mind to prospective EV buyers, according to Frost & Sullivan’s director of automotive and transportation research, Veerender Kaul.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 11 Mar 10
     
    To all those cities worrying about how they are going to get wired for electric vehicles: Fret not. "Range anxiety" may not be as acute as you think. Studies of drivers who already have electric cars are finding that they prefer the convenience of charging at home, and despite their vehicles' limited range, most are able to avoid public charging. That's good news as tightfisted states and cities prepare to deal with the transition by some drivers to battery-powered vehicles. And it's also good news for automakers who were worried that acceptance of the vehicles would depend on creating a network of charging stations, much as there are now gas stations dotting every neighborhood.
Mark Kabbbash

Combine a payment system retailers phone company the Cloud consumers - 0 views

www.equitygroups.com/...e-company-the-Cloud--consumers

coupons OTCBB Mobile stocks VGTL Investing iPhone EquityGroups

shared by Mark Kabbbash on 18 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Technological Convergence In the Digital Marketplace provides windows of opportunity.  The socialization of data with sufficient bandwidth for the mobile handheld devices enables video to enhance the users experience to a personal level like never before.  Constantly fueling an expanding, user base with disruptive technologies and solutions right to the local environments, while monetizing that traffic flow, is the goal.
  • Mr. Harris added, "As the market enters a new era that will be driven by audience connections with each other and with brands, we will be focused on personal technology and personal media. To that end, we have also entered into negotiations to strengthen our global capabilities in social media, video and global e-commerce." VGTel anticipates that the deals under discussion will be closed before the end of the second quarter.
  • In addition to purchasing MeCoupons, VGTel is continuing to look for opportunities to strengthen its mobile and social capabilities. The power of mobile to actively engage consumers via data, voice and sound is driving innovation industry-wide and creating opportunities for companies like VGTel to develop new and compelling offers that enhance connections between consumers, content and brands. Mr. Harris added, “Mobile, along with social, video and commerce will continue to be key areas of focus as we move forward. We will look to build, buy or grow these capabilities rapidly.” VGTel noted that the deal should be completed before the end of the second quarter.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Advertisement
  • Mark Kabbbash on 18 Mar 11
     
    I am so sorry I did not want to put this here. I can not figure out how to delete it!
Benno Hansen

Big business goes to Rio -- New Internationalist - 0 views

www.newint.org/...ility-big-business-corporation

business green economy sustainability environment

shared by Benno Hansen on 18 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Harmless-sounding phrases like ‘green economy’ and ‘sustainable development’ have become grounds for bitter dispute, as different governments and business interests attempt to redefine these terms to meet their own agenda.
  • This row of well-meaning policy sandcastles have spent the past 20 years being eaten away by a rising tide of fundamentalist free-market economics, unfettered financial speculation, and consolidated corporate power.
  • any environmental and social gains from the first Rio summit look small next to the destruction wrought by a voracious corporate sector and by governments obsessed with growth in GDP before all else.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • A shift to a genuinely sustainable society will require us to challenge these negative forces, rein in the excesses of corporations and markets, and build an entirely different economy based on wellbeing for the many rather than profits for the few.
  • Silvia Ribeiro from the campaign group ETC Mexico points out: ‘Collapsing financial markets in Northern countries mean that banks and other investors are now looking desperately for new areas of expansion and speculation. We can see these desires leaving their mark on the Rio+20 process. The “Green Economy” now under discussion would unleash a wave of risky but lucrative new technologies such as synthetic biology, nanotechnology and climate technofixes. This isn’t about finding the best environmental solutions: it’s about creating profitable new investments.’
  • we cannot afford to live in a world where ecosystems are protected if, and only if, there is more profit to be made by protecting them than by trashing them.
  • Large polluting industries, business lobby groups and financial institutions are welcomed in as well-meaning ‘stakeholders’ – like mafia bosses invited to a meeting on reducing gang violence.
  • The businesses with the most wealth and power are those that have flourished in an economy based on the unrestricted use of natural resources and the exploitation of many of the world’s people. Those with the most to lose from a shift to true sustainability are therefore those with the most power to block that change.
  • the Stockholm Environment Institute calculated that the economic value of the oceans could be reduced by up to $2 trillion per year if climate change is left unchecked
  • Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of IEN, said: ‘Systems such as “payment for ecological services” and using forests in carbon offset markets do nothing but make Mother Earth into the World Trade Organization of nature.’
  • According to Lucia Ortiz of Friends of the Earth Brazil: ‘Trades Unions are getting very concerned about the “green economy” agenda, because it represents a deepening of neoliberal policies, and threatens to undermine the social rights already secured by past struggles. They are working in solidarity with environmentalists, indigenous peoples, farmers and women’s rights activists, calling instead for a transition to a sustainable and just society free from the exploitation of workers and of nature.’
Jack Travis

Use Lithium-ion battery storage to stabilize the power grid - 0 views

www.nextekpower.com/...-storage-to-stabilize-the-grid

alternative energy dc direct coupling solar energy solar solar panel renewable energy power solutions lighting system lamps ballasts

shared by Jack Travis on 31 May 13 - No Cached
  • Jack Travis on 31 May 13
     
    For many, using lithium-ion batteries to store energy has proven to be too expensive to be worth-while. This happens to not be the case for Chris Shelton of AES Energy Storage.
plantoraapp

10 Desert Plants You Can Grow At Home - Plantora - 0 views

plantora.app/desert-plants

desert plants pollinator plant edible care app free identifier best identification

shared by plantoraapp on 26 Jun 23 - No Cached
  • plantoraapp on 26 Jun 23
     
    There are several desert plants that you can grow at home, even if you don't live in a desert like climate. These plants are known for their ability to tolerate arid conditions and require less water as compared to other types of plants.Check out these desert plants that can be grown in any garden if provided in some desert-like conditions with minimal maintenance. Growing a desert plant at home can be a rewarding experience. While many desert plants are adapted to arid environments, some can be successfully cultivated indoors or in containers. To grow desert plants at home use plant care and free plant identifier app to grow plants and will also helps you in identify plant disease.
Benno Hansen

British coal industry flack pushes geo-engineering "ploy" to give politicians... - 0 views

climateprogress.org/...h-a-smoke-and-mirrors-approach

geoengineering spin climate change Bjørn Lomborg

shared by Benno Hansen on 13 Aug 09 - No Cached
  • The geo-engineering option provides the needed viable reason to do nothing about AGW now….
  • “The ‘geo-engineering’ approaches considered so far appear to be afflicted with some combination of high costs, low leverage, and a high likelihood of serious side effects.“
  • they simply omit the costs of many of the potential negative aspects of producing a stratospheric cloud to block out sunlight or cloud brightening
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • That the second author works for the American Enterprise Institute, a lobbying group that has been a leading global warming denier, is not surprising, except that now they are in favor of a solution to a problem they have claimed for years does not exist.
  • The American Meteorological Society (AMS) has just issued a policy statement on geoengineering, which urges cautious consideration, more research, and appropriate restrictions.
  • ignore the effects of ocean acidification from continued CO2 emissions
  • do not even mention several potential negative effects of SRM, including getting rid of blue skies, huge reductions in solar power from systems using direct solar radiation, or ruining terrestrial optical astronomy
  • cloud brightening would mainly cool the oceans and not affect land temperature much
  • cloud brightening over the South Atlantic would produce severe drought over the Amazon, destroying the tropical forest
  • Whose hand would be on the global thermostat? Who would trust military aircraft or a multi-national geoengineering company to have the interests of the people of the planet foremost?
  • threat to the water supply for agriculture and other human uses
  • benefits from SRM, including increased plant productivity and an enhanced CO2 sink from vegetation that grows more when subject to diffuse radiation
  • The real consensus, as expressed at the National Academy conference and in the AMS statement, is that mitigation needs to be our first and overwhelming response to global warming, and that whether geoengineering can even be considered as an emergency measure in the future should climate change become too dangerous is not now known.
Benno Hansen

How the 1% Pillage the Environment | AlterNet - 1 views

www.alternet.org/..._the_1_pillage_the_environment

environmentalism sustainability climate change OWS economy

shared by Benno Hansen on 02 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • when there’s money to be made, both workers and the environment are expendable
  • If you are a CEO who skims millions of dollars off other people’s labor, it’s called a “bonus.”  If you are a flood victim who breaks into a sporting goods store to grab a lifejacket, it’s called looting.  If you lose your job and fall behind on your mortgage, you get evicted.  If you are a banker-broker who designed flawed mortgages that caused a million people to lose their homes, you get a second-home vacation-mansion near a golf course.
  • The 1% are willing to spend billions impeding democratic initiatives, which is why every so-called environmental issue is also about building a democratic culture.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • If you drag heavy fishnets across the ocean floor and pulverize an entire ecosystem, ending thousands of years of dynamic evolution and depriving future generations of a healthy ocean, it’s called free enterprise.  But if, like Tim DeChristopher, you disrupt an auction of public land to oil and gas companies, it’s called a crime and you get two years in jail.   
  • Tearing apart wildlife habitat to make a profit and doing the same at a workplace are just considered the price of doing business. Clearcutting a forest and clearcutting a labor force are two sides of the same coin. 
  • The desperate effort to grow the economy to solve our economic woes is what keeps Timothy Geithner at the helm of the Treasury and is what stalls the regulation of greenhouse gasses.  It’s why we are told we must sacrifice environmental quality for pipelines and why young men and women are sacrificed to protect access to oil, the lubricant for an acquisitive economic engine.
  • we have built an all-encompassing economic engine that requires unending growth.  A contraction of even a percent or two is a crisis, and yet we are embedded in ecosystems that are reaching or have reached their limits.
  • Like so much else these days, the crash, as it happens, will not be suffered in equal measure by all of us.  The one percenters will be atop the hill, while the 99% will be in the flood lands below swimming for their lives, clinging to debris, or drowning.
  • Degrading the planet’s operating systems to bolster the bottom line is foolish and reckless.  It hurts us all.  No less important, it’s unfair.  The 1% profit, while the rest of us cough and cope. After Occupy Wall Street, isn’t it time for Occupy Earth?
Benno Hansen

FT.com / Columnists / Lunch with the FT - Lunch with the FT: Jared Diamond - 0 views

www.ft.com/...e2-11de-ab4a-00144feabdc0.html

jared diamond sustainability

shared by Benno Hansen on 12 Aug 09 - Cached
  • “If I was Japan’s worst enemy trying to figure out a strategy to drive it into a crisis in 10 years’ time, my strategy would be to get the Japanese to do exactly what they are doing, which is to over-harvest their main source of protein.”
  • “There is a parallel based on the same fundamental mechanisms of the economic collapse that we’re seeing now and the collapse of past civilisations such as the Maya,”
  • only those societies able to stamp out unsustainable habits – over-logging, overspending, over-extension – have the ability to survive
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • “When people talk about the greater efficiency of dictatorships, they are forgetting that a dictatorship is no more likely than a democracy to make a wise decision,”
  • “If we continue to operate non-sustainably, then in 50 or 60 years, the US and Japan and Europe will be in bad shape. But my friends in the highlands of New Guinea will be fine. Some of my friends made stone tools when they were children and they could just go back to what their ancestors were doing for 46,000 years. New Guinea highlanders are not doomed,”
  • “The first world lifestyle will be doomed if we don’t learn to operate sustainably.”
firozcosmolance

This School in Assam Takes Plastic Waste as the Fees! - Gossip Ki Galliyan - 0 views

gossipkigalliyan.com/akes-plastic-waste-as-the-fees

School in Assam Takes Plastic Waste

shared by firozcosmolance on 09 May 19 - No Cached
  • firozcosmolance on 09 May 19
     
    Located in the breathtaking Pamohi area of Guwahati, Akshar is a very unique school which takes just plastic waste when it comes to its fees! Yes, you read that right. This eco-friendly school lets the little kids connect with the Mother Nature in a thoughtful and amazing way. Parmita Sarma, the co-founder of the school stated "We wanted to start a free school for all, but stumbled upon this idea after we realized a larger social and ecological problem brewing in this area. I still remember how our classrooms would be filled with toxic fumes every time someone in the nearby areas would burn plastics. Here it was a norm to burn waste plastic to keep warm. We wanted to change that and so started to encourage our students to bring their plastic waste as school fees". The school is a brainchild of Parmita and Mazin Mukhtar and they together founded the school in the month of June 2016.
Benno Hansen

Reuters AlertNet - CLIMATE CHANGE BLOG: Does poverty equal vulnerability? - 0 views

www.alertnet.org/...27-133355-1.htm

climate change economics development colonialism

shared by Benno Hansen on 28 Oct 08 - Cached
  • 'poor people are the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change'
  • But is it the state of being poor that makes people vulnerable to climate change, or the processes that lead to their impoverishment?
  • if you have access to a clean and healthy environment that provides for your needs - meaning you don't need two dollars a day (or perhaps even one) - then you aren't living in poverty!
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • most of those who are poor and face the biggest threat from climate change are descended from people who had indigenous adaptation strategies to climatic and other environmental hazards which would - if they hadn't been colonised - have made them far less vulnerable than the 'rich' to the impacts of climate change.
  • If some of the worst-case climate change scenarios do come to pass, then the rich are also going to be extremely vulnerable and, if push comes to shove, I'd prefer to have knowledge of my land and how to grow food in inhospitable environments
  • the very wisdom that could help make us all less vulnerable to climate change is being lost as more and more people are sucked into a global economy that values only certain types of knowledge and beliefs.
1 - 20 of 135 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page