Saturday, July 11, 2009

Buying Out Namibia's Seal Industry

When it comes to seal hunting, the tides seem to be turning. But in Namibia, 90,000 seals await their fate

In March, Russia banned the killing of seals under one year old, after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called it a "bloody industry." In April, the European Union parliament voted to ban products made from seals killed in Canada's seal hunt. In May, the United States Senate unanimously passed Resolution 84, calling for an immediate end to Canada's annual commercial slaughter.

And now, the Namibian seal hunt may come to an end.

The Namibian Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources announced the new seal harvesting season, which officially began on July 1 and ends on November 15, with a quota of 90,000 seals.

But so far, no seals have been killed.

According to the African Conservation Foundation, the seal cull has been put on hold for two as negotiations begin to potentially sell off a major stake in Namibian sealing industry to the seal conservation group Seal Alert-SA, which is in a race to raise the $14 million to buy out the Australian owner of two Namibian seal processing plants.

Namibia is one of only five countries where commercial seal hunting is practiced. The other countries are Canada, Russia, Norway and Greenland.

According to a June 18 BBC story, Canada's seal hunt is "collapsing," with seal hunters blaming "plummeting prices for seal pelts and an impending European Union ban on seal products, which is expected to come into effect in October. Some local fishermen are wondering if this could be the beginning of the end for the centuries-old practice."

The market price of a single seal pelt has plummeted to $12. If the inhumanity of killing baby seals won't stop the industry, perhaps thinning profit margins will.

GET INVOLVED

  • Sign a Care 2 petition boycotting tourism in Namibia until the country bans their seal hunt
  • Sign a Seal Alert-SA petition to un-ban seals from a UNESCO World Heritage Island in South Africa to provide them with a safe location to breed and live away from the clubbing in Namibia
  • Sign a Humane Society pledge to boycott Canadian seafood until the seal hunt is stopped for good
  • Sign a Humane Society of the United States letter urging your Senator to co-sponsor Resolution 84 (U.S. citizens only)
RELATED POSTS
image: seal mother and pup, Cape Cross Seal Sanctuary in Namibia (credit: inceywincey)

Friday, July 10, 2009

Orbiting Saturn, Five Years Later

The first spacecraft ever to orbit Saturn has delivered some incredible images of this mysterious giant

It is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet after Jupiter. It is Saturn, known for its ring of ice particles, dust and rock debris.

As of June 30, 2009, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft has been orbiting this gas giant for five Earth years -- or about one sixth of a Saturnian year.

The orbiter was named after 17th-century Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini, the first person to observe four of Saturn's moons, and Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, who discovered the first of Saturn's moons, Titan, and in 1655 proposed that Saturn was surrounded by a ring.

In this panoramic image created by images taken by Cassini-Huygens, six moons appear: Titan, Janus, Mimas, Pandora, Epimetheus and Enceladus.

But these are just a few of Saturn's natural satellites. There are 61 known moons orbiting the planet, which was named after the Roman god Saturnus (where the name "Saturday" comes from).

Saturnus was the god of agriculture and harvest. But he likely would not be able to grow anything on his namesake planet: Saturn has a surface temperature around -300 degrees Fahrenheit and winds of up to 1,100 miles per hour.

GET INVOLVED

  • Sign a petition to add the option for US taxpayers to contribute to NASA on the IRS 1040 tax form
  • See what's in the sky tonight
  • Download Google Earth 5.0, which has an interactive map of the entire surface of Mars
  • Buy a beginner telescope from the Discovery Channel store ($99.00)
RELATED POSTS
image: This captivating natural color view was created from images collected shortly after Cassini began its extended Equinox Mission in July 2008. The mosaic combines 30 images--10 each of red, green and blue light -- taken over the course of approximately two hours as Cassini panned its wide-angle camera across the entire planet and ring system on July 23, 2008, from a southerly elevation of 6 degrees. (image and image description credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

Thursday, July 9, 2009

A Sisyphean Climate Challenge for the G8

When it comes to a treaty on climate change, a climate of failure surrounds the world's biggest emitters

In March, President Barack Obama announced the launch of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, which includes the participation of Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. Together, they emit 80% of the world's total emissions of global warming gases.

"The purpose of the forum is twofold," said Michael Froman, Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economic Affairs and chief G8 negotiator at a U.S State Department special briefing in April. "One is to build political momentum among the 17 of the world’s largest developing and developed economies that’s needed to reach a positive outcome in the international climate change negotiations in Copenhagen; and the other is build political support for the development of key transformation technologies to help address the climate change issues."

Mr. Obama and the other G8 leaders may have been shooting too high, too soon. At this week's G8 Summit in L'Aquila, Italy, a proposal to halve global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 was blocked by China and India. In 2007, China overtook the United States as the world's biggest emitter. India ranks 4th, but is on target to overtake third place, currently held by Russia.

In a July 7 statement, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said that the summit "will be a major test of leadership and commitment, and will show whether the wealthy world is willing to take responsibility for a common fight against rising temperatures and devastating climate change."

It appears that for now, absent significant agreements from the developing nations, this test wasn't passed. The G8 nations, for their part, have agreed to reduce their emissions 80% by 2050. But without China and India on board, those reductions will not nearly be enough. The WWF has called for the G8 nations to reduce emissions 95% by 2050.

"The failure to establish specific targets on climate change underscored the difficulty in bridging longstanding divisions between the most developed countries like the United States and developing nations like China and India," according to Peter Baker writing in the New York Times. "The emerging powers refused to agree to the specific emissions limits because they wanted industrial countries to commit to midterm goals in 2020, and to follow through on promises of financial and technological help."

Blocked by the Apennine Mountains, L'Aquila avoids the humid air from the Mediterranean and enjoys a generally mild climate in comparison to the rest of central Italy. But if the leaders of the G8 and the developing countries do not climb the global warming mountain and sign a comprehensive climate change treaty at December's U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, L'Aquila's cool days may soon be over.

GET INVOLVED

  • See Greenpeace's live feed of updates from the G-8 summit
  • Sign a letter urging President Barack Obama of the United States of America, President Hu Jintao of the People’s Republic of China, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, to take personal responsibility to tackle climate change and personally attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen
  • Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe
  • Sign the "We Can Solve It" petition for a global treaty on climate change
RELATED POSTS
image: L'Aquila, Italy (credit: elparainbow)

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

If Fish Could Talk: Get Off of Our Lawn

Seagrass is disappearing fast. That's bad news for coastal ecosystems

It grows in underwater meadows and provides important ecosystems for hundreds of species, including fish, molluscs and algae. It is seagrass -- and it is quickly dying off.

According to a June 29 press release issued by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, the first comprehensive global study of the world's seagrass has found that 58% of it is declining rapidly -- at a rate of 42 square miles (110 square-kilometers) each year -- due to human coastal development, coastal dredging, overfishing and indirect impacts of declining water quality.

A flowering marine plant belonging to either the Posidoniaceae, Zosteraceae, Hydrocharitaceae, or Cymodoceaceae plant familiers, seagrass beds can include many different species of the plant, especially in tropical environments. In the Philippines, for example, up to 13 individual species have been recorded in a single meadow.

Seagrass has been called an "ecosystem engineer" because its roots and rhizomes help to stabilize the seabed.

"A recurring case of 'coastal syndrome' is causing the loss of seagrasses worldwide," said study co-author Dr. William Dennison. "The combination of growing urban centers, artificially hardened shorelines and declining natural resources has pushed coastal ecosystems out of balance. Globally, we lose a seagrass meadow the size of a soccer field every thirty minutes."

Study co-author Dr. Tim Carruthers said, "As more and more people move to coastal areas, conditions only get tougher for seagrass meadows that remain."

GET INVOLVED

  • Sign the International Declaration of Reef Rights
  • Sign an Oceana petition urging Congress to reinstate the pre-existing moratorium on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf (U.S. citizens)
RELATED POSTS
image: Yellow stingray (Urobatis jamaicensis) among seagrass in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (credit: Bill Keogh, NOAA's Sanctuaries Collection)

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Seeds in Space

Seeds that spent six months in space are no worse for wear. That's a good sign in case we ever need to live off-planet

On May 31, 2008, the Space Shuttle Discovery left for the International Space Station as part of STS-124, a 13-day mission to deliver components to complete the Japanese laboratory known as "Kibo" (hope).

But though Dr. Gregory Chamitoff, one of the astronauts on board, was certainly hoping for something, had something else up his sleeve -- seeds.

The New South Wales Seedbank of the New South Wales Botanic Gardens Trust in Australia asked him to carry the package of seeds from Earth as part of a research project that will help plan future human space colonies. The NSW Seedbank is partially funded by the Millennium Seed Bank Project, largest ex situ conservation project ever undertaken.

Dr. Chamitoff brought seeds of Flannel Flowers, a daisy-like flowering plant common to the bushland outside Sydney; Waratah, a large shrub native to NSW and Tasmania; Wollemi Pine, one of the world's rarest and oldest plants, going back to the time of the dinosaurs; and Golden Wattle, Australia's national flower. He and the seeds returned to Earth in November.

According to a June 29 Botanic Garden Trust press release, Dr. Chamitoff announced "that the first Australian seeds to go into space have survived six months in space and more than 2,800 orbits of the Earth with no signs of space fatigue or damage."

"The news that the seeds have not been affected by the space travels is fantastic," said Botanic Gardens Trust executive director Dr. Tim Entwisle. "With habitats under increasing threat, seedbanking on earth, and perhaps in space one day, will be part of an integrated conservation program for species threatened by extinction due to global warming or other sudden changes to their habitat."

The seeds are currently undergoing a "fast-track aging" process by which scientists will be able to determine if their time in zero gravity has affected their natural lifespan. As of now, they still know which way is "up."

"Hopes for self-sustaining human colonies in space have been renewed," wrote Catarina Fraga Matos in the Sydney Morning Herald.

"The Earth is big, it's the biggest thing you've even seen in your life, but it's alone," Dr. Chamitoff said. "You sense how vulnerable it is, and how important it is that -- as the one species capable of destroying it -- we protect it."

GET INVOLVED

  • Donate to the Millennium Seed Bank
  • Sign a petition to add the option for US taxpayers to contribute to NASA on the IRS 1040 tax form
  • Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe
  • Sign the "We Can Solve It" petition for a global treaty on climate change
RELATED POSTS
image: Acacia pycnantha (Golden Wattle), Burnley Gardens, Victoria, Australia (credit: Melburnian)

Monday, July 6, 2009

Protecting America's Public Land

Almost 20% of America's land mass is wilderness. The passage of a new bill would help sustain the plants and animals that live there

The United States Forest Service manages America's 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands, a total area of 193 million acres.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administers the country's public lands, which amounts to 264 million acres.

Together, they watch over the over 450 million acres of beautiful and important wild ecosystems that make up almost 20% of the country's total land area. But these lands have been intensely challenged by oil and gas exploration, population growth and man-induced climate change, factors that have threatened healthy wildlife populations across the nation.

But there is a bill working its way through the United States Congress that aims to protect the country's remarkably diverse wild plant and animal life.

Sponsored by Representatives Ron Kind (D-WI) and Walter Jones (R-NC), the stated goal of America's Wildlife Heritage Act (H.R. 2807) is to "sustain fish, plants and wildlife on America's public lands."

Some hunting groups have opposed the legislation. The Pennsylvania-based Ruffed Grouse Society -- whose members are mainly hunters of grouse (pictured) and woodcock -- "cannot, in good conscience, support this bill as written," asserting that the bill's requirement for the agencies to count species is an impossible task, according to Outdoor Wire.

"It is simply not possible to meet the species-by-species monitoring requirement imposed by this legislation," said Dan Dessecker, the director of conservation policy at the Ruffed Grouse Society, as quoted in the Outdoor Wire article. "The federal agencies affected have neither the expertise nor the funds to do so."

Many of the leading conservation organizations disagree. In a joint June 10 statement, Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice, National Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society all gave their support of the bill.

"The America’s Wildlife Heritage Act is a commonsense bill that will bring the management of our federal public lands into the 21st century," said Michael Francis, the national forest program director at the Wilderness Society, in the statement.

"For too long, our national forests and public lands have been managed without adequately considering the health of the fish, wildlife and plants found on those lands or the people whose livelihoods and traditions depend on them."

GET INVOLVED

  • Sign a Defenders of Wildlife letter urging your representative to support H.R. 2807 (US citizens only)
  • Download a summary of America's Wildlife Heritage Act
  • Join the Wilderness Society and your gift will be matched x3 (tripled) for a limited time
  • Sign the Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare
RELATED POSTS
image: Male Greater Sage-grouse Centrocercus urophasianus (credit: Gary Kramer, US Fish & Wildlife Service)

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone Is A Time Bomb

Fertilizer runoff ends up in the Gulf of Mexico, killing animal life and threatening the fishing industry

During the spring and summer months of every year, the oxygen levels in the the waters off the coast of Louisiana and Texas get so low that animal life suffocates and dies.

The oxygen is depleted by the decomposition of algae that feed on the nitrogen brought to the Gulf as agricultural sewage from the Mississippi River.

Now scientists at the University of Michigan forecast that this year, the Gulf of Mexico "dead zone" could be the largest ever, according to a recent press release. It may swell to area covering almost 8,500 square miles -- about the size of New Jersey.

Not only bad for the ecosystem, the dead zone threatens a fishing industry worth $500 million.

"Recent studies by the U.S. Geological Survey have concluded that of all states draining into the Gulf of Mexico, Illinois contributes the most nitrogen and phosphorus pollution," asserts the non-profit Prairie Rivers Network. "Some of this pollution comes from municipal water treatment plants, but most of it comes from crop and livestock production."

The dramatic increase in the size of the dead zone is attributed to higher than normal water flows as well as "triple the nitrogen concentrations in these rivers over the past 50 years from human activities," according to Gene Turner from Louisiana State University as quoted in the release.

"The mechanisms that create the dead zone are entirely natural -- algae feeding and dying -- but there is nothing natural about the zone itself," states a New York Times editorial. "It is almost entirely an artifact of modern agriculture, accompanied by treated and untreated sewage and industrial runoff."

Aquatic ecologist Donald Scavia, whose team produced the forecast, said "The growth of these dead zones is an ecological time bomb."

GET INVOLVED

  • Watch a National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration visualization of the Gulf of Mexico dead zone
  • Declare your food independence from big agribusiness by sourcing ingredients as locally and sustainably as possible
  • Find out how green your diet is with the Eating Green Calculator
  • Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe
RELATED POSTS
image: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

Saturday, July 4, 2009

July 4th, 955 Years Ago

Long before the American colonies declared independence from Great Britain, there was a July 4th that had fireworks of a different sort

The year was 1054. Henry III was the Holy Roman Emperor. The Byzantine Empire was reconquering Syria, Mesopotamia and Palestine. Led by Leif Ericson, the Vikings established settlements in North America. China's population was swelling to 100 million.

And on July 4th of that year, a supernova -- the massive explosion of a star -- in the Taurus constellation was witnessed around the world. People were likely mesmerized by the strange light that remained in the sky for months, so bright that it could be seen in daylight. Chinese and Arab astronomers recorded the event.

The remnants of that moment can be seen today. Those remnants make up the famous Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant and pulsar wind nebula that is 6,500 light-years away. Eleven light-years across, the Crab Nebula is the strongest regular source of X-ray and gamma ray energy in the Earth's sky.

Now that's a serious fireworks display.

GET INVOLVED

  • Sign a petition to add the option for US taxpayers to contribute to NASA on the IRS 1040 tax form
  • See what's in the sky tonight
  • Download Google Earth 5.0, which has an interactive map of the entire surface of Mars
  • Buy a beginner telescope from the Discovery Channel store ($99.00)
RELATED POSTS
image: This is a mosaic image, one of the largest ever taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of the Crab Nebula, a six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star's supernova explosion. The newly composed image was assembled from 24 individual Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 exposures taken in October 1999, January 2000, and December 2000. The colors in the image indicate the different elements that were expelled during the explosion. Blue in the filaments in the outer part of the nebula represents neutral oxygen, green is singly-ionized sulfur, and red indicates doubly-ionized oxygen. (credit: NASA)

Friday, July 3, 2009

Happy Co-Dependence Day

As Americans head to the grill to celebrate July 4th, it's a perfect time to ponder another kind of freedom -- the gastronomic kind

On Saturday, barbecues across the United States will be fired up to celebrate Independence Day, a national holiday during which Americans will eat 150 million hot dogs, according to the National Hot Dog & Sausage Council, which notes that's "enough to stretch from D.C. to L.A. over five times."

Iowans in particular have a big appetite for pork. On March 1, 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Hawkeye State had 17.6 million market hogs and pigs -- more than one-fourth the nation's total. Most of those piggies stayed home: About a quarter of Iowa's citizens ate hot dogs and pork sausages last July 4th.

But there is another celebration lurking, just outside the plates of over-antibioticized, factory-processed meat and GMO corn on the cob. It's Food Independence Day.

Coordinated by the nonprofit group Kitchen Gardeners International in partnership with the IATP Food and Society Fellows program and the Mother Nature Network, the sustainable, eco-friendly holiday calls upon Americans to declare their "food independence...by sourcing the ingredients for our holiday meals as locally, sustainably and deliciously as possible and let's ask our elected officials to do the same," according to their Web site.

"For too many in the US, the 'choices' will be Bud or Miller or an industrially-produced hotdog or an industrially-produced hamburger," writes Food Independence organizer Roger Doiron in a Kitchen Gardeners International article.

The Food Independence Day campaign comes on the heels of the June 12 U.S. theatrical release of Food, Inc., a new documentary by Robert Kenner that, according to the film's Web site, asks the question: "How much do we really know about the food we buy at our local supermarkets and serve to our families?"

The film exposes the harsh realities of the American food industry, such as widespread obesity, the development of new strains of harmful E. coli bacteria, cows living in their own waste before being led to slaughter, chickens that can't walk because their breasts have been artificially plumped and companies that value profit over consumer health and environmental protection.

The New York Times called it "one of the scariest movies of the year...an informative, often infuriating activist documentary about the big business of feeding or, more to the political point, force-feeding, Americans all the junk that multinational corporate money can buy. You’ll shudder, shake and just possibly lose your genetically modified lunch."

Big agribusiness and giant factory farms are exposed in the film. These corporations rely on uneducated consumers, many of whom maintain extremely unhealthy diets in a broken system that is quite literally killing people. What many consumers don't realize is that their voice can be heard with their food choices.

The Fourth of July is all about the independence of the United States. But when it comes to its food industry and the eating habits of its citizens, the nation is stuck in a vicious cycle of co-dependency.

Hopefully this July 4th, Americans will think of a different kind of independence and heed the rallying cry of sustainable-food advocate Michael Pollan: "Vote with your fork."

GET INVOLVED

  • Declare your Food Independence this July 4th and sign a letter urging the first families of the 50 U.S. States and territories "to lead and eat by example this July 4th by sourcing the ingredients of your Independence Day meal as locally and sustainably as possible"
  • Find out how green your diet is with the Eating Green Calculator
  • Sign the MakeOurFoodSafe.org petition urging the US Congress to pass strong food safety legislation (US citizens only)
RELATED POSTS
image: roeyahram

Thursday, July 2, 2009

The Pot Is Boiling

Patented 311 years ago today, the steam engine has a mixed legacy

Perhaps he was watching the pot boil as he was making tea.

Whatever the inspiration, English inventor Thomas Savery realized the power of steam. On July 2, 1698, he patented the world's first steam engine.

In his 1936 book Links in the History of Engineering and Technology from Tudor Times, Rhys Jenkins called Savery's creation "a new invention for raiseing of water and occasioning motion to all sorts of mill work by the impellent force of fire, which will be of great use and advantage for drayning mines, serveing townes with water, and for the working of all sorts of mills where they have not the benefitt of water nor constant windes."

Indeed, this "impellent force of fire" -- with critical improvements made later by Scottish inventor James Watt -- marked the beginning of a sea change in modern human history -- the Industrial Revolution, an era of extraordinary growth in manufacturing, agriculture, transportation and mining.

But though this era of industry has made our lives easier in countless ways, its legacy hasn't necessarily been a good one in regard to the environment.

Increased amounts of global-warming carbon dioxide emitted into Earth's atmosphere from all this productivity has also radically increased global temperatures. In the last 250 years, human activity has increased carbon dioxide levels by 30%.

"Since the start of the industrial revolution...emissions of greenhouse gases have been making this blanket thicker at an unprecedented speed," according to "Climate Change As A Global Challenge," a 2007 United Nations paper. "This has caused the most dramatic change in the atmosphere’s composition since at least 650,000 years ago."

The report adds, "If emissions continue to rise at their current pace and are allowed to double from their pre-industrial level, the world will face an average temperature rise of around 3°C this century. To explain the magnitude of such seemingly insignificant global temperature changes from a different perspective: the difference between the present average global temperature and an ice age is 5°C.

Hopefully the United States Senate will take the lead of the House of Representatives, which just passed a landmark energy and climate change bill -- and that more countries (especially big emitters like China) will follow suit.

"The House’s approval last week of a bill capping greenhouse gases was a remarkable achievement, almost unthinkable six months ago," states a June 30 New York Times editorial.

"Yet all of the hard work -- the hearings, the negotiating, the arm-twisting -- will add up to zero if the Senate cannot be persuaded to do the same, and preferably better. The country would be left with an outdated energy policy and the planet would be stuck with steadily rising emissions."

Considering all the available data, any action taken now to mitigate the effects of climate change would certainly be better than watching the pot boil.

GET INVOLVED

  • Sign a Defenders of Wildlife letter urging your senator to follow the lead of the House of Representative and support legislation to mitigate the effects of climate change (US citizens only)
  • Take the Public Agenda quiz and find out how much you know about energy
  • Sign the "We Can Solve It" petition for a global treaty on climate change
RELATED POSTS
image: the 1698 Savery Engine, based on the designs of Denis Papin

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