Yule Heibel's Library tagged environment →  View Popular, Search in Google

Feed bees high fructose corn syrup (and the corn was treated with neonicotinoid pesticide) and you kill off the bee colony.

Doesn't high fructose corn syrup also kill humans? Why do we use this stuff at all?
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It has taken a long time to understand the link between Colony Collapse Disorder and neonicotinoid pesticides, because scientists were looking for an instant-killer, and not something that caused slow deaths over several months, says Lu. In addition he adds that scientists ignored "the fact that the timeline of increasing use of neonicotinoids coincides with the decline of bee populations."

Lu says policy makers "need to examine the effect of sub-lethal doses of pesticides throughout the life cycle of the test model (in this case honey bees)." He further notes the depending on LD50 findings (i.e. a lethal dose that results in the death of half of the specimens tested) "is not relevant to the modern day chemical toxicity testing." In other words, regulators need to start testing the long-term impacts of chemicals in the environment, and not simply focused on whether or not they instantly kill test subjects.
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pesticides bees environment

I love this presentation by Garth Lenz - and (sorry, but it has to be said) I hate Canada very much for condoning the tarsands. Canada gets away with pretending to be better than the US, but the tarsands show otherwise.
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A visual journey through the Alberta Tar Sands and a discussion of the the local regional and global impacts and how we can respond.

For almost twenty years, Garth's photography of threatened wilderness regions, devastation, and the impacts on indigenous peoples, has appeared in the world's leading publications. His recent images from the boreal region of Canada have helped lead to significant victories and large new protected areas in the Northwest Territories, Quebec, and Ontario. Garth's major touring exhibit on the Tar Sands premiered on Los Angeles in 2011 and recently appeared in New York. Garth is a Fellow of the International League Of Conservation Photographers

Filmed at TEDxVictoria on November 19 2011
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tarsands oil_sands boreal_forests canada garth_lenz tedx victoria video environment

I need to read this book (loved Natural Capitalism).
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Lovins believes that most people in business are just waiting for Washington to tell them what to do, but that's not necessarily where the answers are. Business leaders might alternatively look to state and local government, which can implement the policies needed to speed the transition to efficiency and renewables. As we have seen, military leadership can also accelerate change in the civilian sector.
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amory_lovins energy environment

It may be winter, but summer's on its way. This is great:
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A cooling method used by the ancient Romans—circulation of cold water—has found a modern home at Harvard University. The hydronic air-conditioning system used at Harvard's operational services facility at 46 Blackstone Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of the energy-efficiency innovations that has helped win the building the U.S. Green Building Council's top-ranked Platinum LEED status.
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air_conditioner environment

Several studies recently, one claiming that cities aren't so green (whereas this one counterindicates it). I like this article because it argues for more trees.
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While this news may just be common sense (trees are good!), it's another important argument for why urban planning needs to incorporate green space, particularly the shady kind. The human population is on track to add more than two billion people to our ranks in the next fifty years. Much of that growth will happen in urban areas, which currently shelter more than half of the globe. We'll need that urban land to absorb as much carbon as possible if we have any hope of fighting climate change.
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good_mag cities environment carbon_sequestering ecological_urbanism

Dave Douglas nails it.
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Why I Don’t Like the Law
(...)
1 It treats Americans like dirt. In my experience supporters of the law have had two views on consumers: 1) they’re being stupid for not understanding the long term cost benefits, or 2) they have reasons to want to still use the old ones, but GHG reduction is more important. I believe US consumers are smarter than people believe, and are making rational decisions based on their own situation. As a result, I find both of these views disrespectful and outside of the founding ideals of this country.

2 Other industries will try the same thing. If you think the success of this ploy by GE and Philips hasn’t been noticed in other parts of those companies and in other industries, then you’re quaintly naive.

3 It’s setting a really bad precedent. The federal government now believes it has a new tool in its efficiency toolkit: outlawing inefficient products, irrespective of whether they are popular or there exists a true replacement in the market. Many have said “relax, its only lightbulbs”. Beyond the fact that sometimes lightbulbs matter to people (see #1 above), lets see what products the government tries to apply to tool to next.
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environment cfl lightbulbs dave_douglas law epa

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The cleantech industry is one of the fastest growing industries in British Columbia, with the province being home to one of the largest industry clusters in Canada and North America.
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See also Vancouver Sun article: Clean technology emerges as driver of B.C. economy

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Clean+technology+emerges+driver+economy/4948691/story.html

kpmg cleantech jobs economic_development british_columbia environment

Could this work?
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Where the Hartwell paper becomes controversial is in its approach to decarbonisation. The authors argue that the large emerging economies are clearly fuelling themselves with renewables and nuclear as well as, rather than instead of, fossil fuels, for various reasons, and that this will not change soon. Nor, they imply, should it. They argue that there is something wrong with a world in which carbon-dioxide levels are kept to 450 parts per million (a trajectory widely deemed compatible with a 2 degree cap on warming) but at the same time more than a billion of the poorest people are left without electricity, as in one much discussed scenario from the International Energy Agency.

Their oblique approach is to aim instead for a world with accessible, secure low cost energy for all. The hope, intuition or strategy at play here is that since fossil fuels cannot deliver such a world, its achievement will, in itself, bring about decarbonisation on a massive scale. Following a path stressing clean energy as a development issue provides a more pleasant journey to the same objective.

This analysis moves the policy prescription away from making today’s fossil fuels more expensive while subsidising the use of current suboptimal renewables, and towards the development of new energy technologies that will be cheap in absolute terms. This is to be achieved by spending public money directly on the development of the new technologies needed, rather than by hoping that putting a price on carbon will naturally move the market to the same destination. When it comes to technology development, the message is a distinctly un-Brownian “go straight for what you want” that will be familiar to those who have come across California think tank The Breakthrough Institute, the founders of which were also among the authors of the Hartwell paper.
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green_strategies hartwell capability_brown environment

Great article on greenwashing, with a link to Terrachoice's Seven Sins of Greenwashing (which includes a cool online game).
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The problem of greenwash seems like a mild issue to worry about. But as advertising giant Ogilvy & Mather puts it in a new report, greenwash is actually "an extremely serious matter...it is insidious, eroding consumer trust, contaminating the credibility of all sustainability-related marketing and hence inhibiting progress toward a sustainable economy." In other words, it's very hard for customers to know what choices make a difference when some marketers are muddying the waters for all. When buyers throw up their hands in confusion, we all lose.
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harvard_business andrew_winston greenwashing environment

THIS is scary:\nQUOTE (caption for photo accompanying article):\n"In a Chinese village, this man burns plastic circuit boards to recover the precious metals, releasing toxic smoke. (Photo courtesy StEP-EMPA)"\nUNQUOTE\n

e_waste waste_management developing_countries environment

Interesting environmental/ sustainability angle: Boston's Children Museum is stepping up its green credentials:
"The museum expansion and renovation was designed to enhance the building's connections to its urban waterfront site, guided by a desire to build environmental education opportunities into the design. From the adaptive reuse of the onsite 19th-century wool warehouse and industrial site to the new graywater storage system and green roof, the museum has become an environmental teaching tool for its young audience, in addition to becoming the first LEED-certified museum in Boston."
And:
"The museum is a working exhibition that demonstrates green building elements. The programs incorporate three principles:

1. Green by Example: The "Green Trail" is a series of interactive stations with age-appropriate explanations of the building's green elements and their relationship to the ecology of the area.

2. Green Hands-On: All programs will be based on current research on how children learn about the natural world. For example, children and families were invited to help plant parts of the green roof.

3. Green at Home: The museum will create a "Growing Green" section of its website for further interpretation of the building as well as steps for children and families to take toward greater sustainability in their own lives."

green_buildings museums boston childrens_museum environment

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Andy Lipkis, Founder and President of TreePeople, describes how this organization has pioneered an integrated approach to managing urban ecosystems as watersheds in the Los Angeles region. This involves strategic tree planting, tree-mimicking technologies, and community engagement to generate multiple solutions to the environmental threats facing our cities, including ensuring a sustainable water supply, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, preventing water and air pollution, fostering stronger neighborhoods, and creating jobs. For a summary of TreePeople's six demonstration projects that are now collecting 1.25 million gallons of water every time it rains 1" in Los Angeles, visit www. treepeople.org. Video Going to Green: Planting Seeds of Change with Community Forestry produced by the Media & Policy Center Foundation for PBS.
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Great stuff here - fascinating to see how "silo-think" works against solving problems.

environment ecological_urbanism los_angeles envirospeak.tv green_technologies urban_renewal

Great article from May 2005, by Stewart Brand, on scientific thinking v romanticist thinking, applied to environmentalism and predictions for the future. Great stuff. It starts like this (and doesn't slow down):
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Over the next ten years, I predict, the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbani­zation, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power.
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mit_techreview stewart_brand environment ecology criticalthinking futurismo

Backed by a recent announcement by Dalton McGuinty (that "the province will limit the endless NIMBY wrangling that accompanies its every attempt to introduce environmental measures"), Hume takes aim at Toronto NIMBYs and blasts away. No holds barred, great stuff:
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The NIMBY response has become a given, a default position, an automatic reaction, a cliché. It's the same whether we're talking about highrise condos in north Toronto, narrowing Jarvis St. from five lanes to four, constructing a streetcar right-of-way on St. Clair Ave., rehabilitating the Wychwood Barns or trying to slow global warming to save the planet and this sorry ass of a city.

Many residents assume that to live in a neighbourhood confers the exclusive right to decide what should or shouldn't happen in it. In some cases, NIMBY opponents of homes for unwed mothers and the like have claimed the right to say who can live next door. The sense of entitlement behind such an attitude could sink a battleship.
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So true.

nimbyism toronto christopher_hume cities environment

Fascinating project:
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Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.

This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, I hope to raise some questions about the roles and responsibililties of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

~chris jordan, Seattle, 2008
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photography visualization statistics consumerism culture environment chris_jordan art_projects

Hmmm, from the header: "electric changes everything :: When we break the cycle of oil dependence, new things become possible. See how the switch to electric transforms the relationship between cars, people and the planet."

Proposed solution? Electric everything?

Portal page.

Interesting - lots to explore...

ecology economics environment electricity futurismo better_place shai_agassi

"New guide to cutting greenhouse gas emissions shows how businesses can save millions and the environment." Portal page for downloading the document(s), etc.

environment ecology economics business david_suzuki green_strategies

CBC portal page for a program on Germany's shift to a green(er) infrastructure/ economy, w/ focus on Hermann Scheer, parliamentarian who helped make it happen.
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Hermann Scheer is a German parliamentarian who has turned ideas into practical solutions. Because of the laws that bear his name, Germany is now a solar-paneled, windmill-building, job-producing green powerhouse of the industrialized world. Fifteen per cent of Germany's electricity now comes from renewable energy systems. Scheer predicts that, if his country continues on this course, that number could be 100 per cent by 2030.
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cbc hermann_scheer environment economy green_strategies germany

Great defense of cities by Paul Hawken.
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Urban migration represents a kind of collective wisdom, and how we configure our cities will be critical to our survival. Regardless of the myths about living close to the land, cities are where human beings have the lowest ecological footprint. It takes less energy, wood, material, and food to provide a good life for a person in a city than in the country. Rather than perceive the city as an ecological sink sucking up the resources of the countryside, which cities can do, cities can also be a kind of ecological ark, places where humanity gathers while we peak in population and develop ecological intelligence for a new civilization. There is wisdom in this that is rather extraordinary. It was not predicted that cities might be the best strategy for our long-term survival and well-being. Yet that is exactly what is happening.
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sustainlane paul_hawken sustainability cities urbanization environment ecology

I wonder whether something like this could be used to power city streetlights? Just stick the poles in the ground, and ...?
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Sounding like something out of a science fair project, the Soil Lamp runs on mud. Designer Marieke Staps says that the metabolism of biological life within the soil produces enough electricity to power the lamp’s LED bulb. The mud is housed within copper and zinc cells that conduct the electricity produced within the wet soil. Maintenance is simple - pour a little water in the dirt, and the lamp will keep going.
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psfk lighting environment innovation