Biology
Breach
April 20, 2013, from Sustainable Pulse
A new peer-reviewed scientific review paper has been released in the US stating that glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup are contributing to gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer's disease.
The review paper states that "glyphosate enhances the damaging effects of... food borne chemical residues and environmental toxins. Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body. Here, we show how interference with CYP enzymes acts synergistically with disruption of the biosynthesis of aromatic amino acids by gut bacteria, as well as impairment in serum sulfate transport. Consequences are most of the diseases and conditions associated with a Western diet, which include gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer's disease."...
[Eighty percent] of genetically modified crops, particularly corn, soy, canola, cotton, sugar beets and most recently alfalfa, are specifically targeted towards the introduction of genes resistant to glyphosate, the so-called "Roundup Ready® feature".
April 20, 2012, from UCS
Corrupting the Science. Corporations suppress research, intimidate scientists, manipulate study designs, ghostwrite scientific articles, and selectively publish results that suit their interests.
Shaping Public Perception. Private interests downplay evidence, exaggerate uncertainty, vilify scientists, hide behind front groups, and feed the media slanted news stories.
Restricting Agency Effectiveness. Companies attack the science behind agency policy, hinder the regulatory process, corrupt advisory panels, exploit the "revolving door" between corporate and government employment, censor scientists, and withhold information from the public.
Influencing Congress. By spending billions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions, corporate interests gain undue access to members of Congress, encouraging them to challenge scientific consensus, delay action on critical problems, and shape the use of science in policy making.
Exploiting Judicial Pathways. Corporate interests have expanded their influence on the judicial system, used the courts to undermine science, and exploited judicial processes to bully and silence scientists.
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Climate
Chaos
April 20, 2011, from IRIN
Officials and aid workers in Somalia's Middle Shabelle region have raised the alarm over the plight of drought-stricken villagers urgently needing food and water.
"We are experiencing the worst drought we have seen in decades; since the beginning of March, we have buried 54 people who died from the effects of the drought, seven of them today [20 April]," said Ali Barow, leader of the small town of Guulane, 220km northeast of Mogadishu, the Somali capital.
Barow said Guulane and the surrounding villages of Eil Barwaaqo, Hirka Dheere and Hagarey, with an estimated population of 20,000-25,000, were suffering the effects of a prolonged drought....
He said all the water points in the area had dried up. "The remaining water points are not fit for human consumption but people are desperate and will drink anything."
Tifow said almost all the deaths were water related. "Most of them died of AWD [acute watery diarrhoea] that was caused by drinking contaminated water."
Alasow Sharey Bool, 80, said both people and livestock were dying in the area. "In my 80 years, I have never experienced what I have seen now. This is the worst drought I have witnessed in my lifetime."
April 20, 2009, from via ScienceDaily
Maintaining a healthy body weight is good news for the environment, according to a study which appears April 20 in the International Journal of Epidemiology. Because food production is a major contributor to global warming, a lean population, such as that seen in Vietnam, will consume almost 20 percent less food and produce fewer greenhouse gases than a population in which 40 percent of people are obese (close to that seen in the USA today)... When it comes to food consumption, moving about in a heavy body is like driving around in a gas guzzler', say the authors.
April 20, 2009, from National Geographic News
Lead in the air is causing clouds where there shouldn't be any "in conditions typically too warm and dry for cloud formation," according to scientists who've "bottled" clouds and even grown their own.
Driven mainly by industrial lead-dust emissions, lead-heavy clouds could change weather patterns and might actually help fight global warming, the study suggests. Researchers collected cloud samples atop a Swiss mountain and found that about half of their ice crystals contained lead... As our world warms and becomes drier, these leaded clouds may drive unpredictable changes in rain and snowfall...
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Resource
Depletion
April 20, 2013, from Bloomberg
The top 200 oil, gas and mining companies spent $674 billion last year finding and developing fossil fuel resources, according to research by the Carbon Tracker Initiative and a climate-change research unit at the London School of Economics. If this rate continues for the next decade some $6 trillion risks being wasted on "unburnable" or stranded assets, according to the report, released today....
Bonds of fossil fuel companies could be vulnerable to ratings downgrades, pushing up their financing costs while equity valuations could plummet as much as 60 percent if industries become less carbon-intensive, the study showed, citing HSBC Holdings Plc analysis.
The analysis shows that 60 to 80 percent of coal, oil and gas reserves of the 200 public companies studied could be unburnable if the world is to curb emissions to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, a United Nations target.
April 20, 2011, from Discovery News
A worldwide growth in the price of gold has accelerated the pace of deforestation in some of the most pristine parts of the Peruvian Amazon, where miners are cutting down trees in order to extract the valuable natural resource.
From 2003 to 2009, found a new study, the rate of deforestation in two gold-mining areas increased six-fold alongside record-setting leaps in the international price of gold. During one two-year period, as gold prices climbed steadily, forests disappeared at a rate of 4.5 American football fields a day from one of the two sites.
Alongside the accelerating paces of both mining and deforestation, the study found, there has also been an exponential rise in the use of mercury, which helps miners extract gold from the Earth.
April 20, 2009, from Inter Press Service
The melting of glaciers resulting from climate change and the lack of adequate water management policies seem to be the main causes behind the water shortages that are fuelling conflicts in Peru.
This warning is being sounded from a variety of sectors.
Nearly 50 percent of the 218 social conflicts recorded by the national ombudsman’s office as of February 2009 were triggered by socio-environmental problems, many of them related to water management issues, states the report "Water Faces New Challenges: Actors and Initiatives in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia", published by the international anti-poverty organisation Oxfam on Mar. 20.
Two southern departments, Moquegua and Arequipa, are at loggerheads over water. And rural communities in the Andean highlands region along the Yauca River have experienced violent clashes that have even claimed lives.
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Recovery
April 20, 2012, from USAToday
Federal regulators issued first-ever air pollution rules for "fracking" wells on Wednesday, requiring that drillers burn or capture the gas and its smog-producing compounds released when the wells are first tapped.
Going into effect in 60 days, the rules cover the period when a well is first drilled when natural gas is still venting but before it begins actual production. In a compromise with the industry, regulators said the drillers can flare, or burn off, the gas for now, a process that can last for weeks. But starting in 2015 they would lose that option. Instead, they'll be required to collect it -- so-called green completion of new fracking wells.
"We wanted to encourage 'green completions' as soon as the technology can become widely available," McCarthy said, explaining the 2015 "phase-in" of the rules. The announcement came in response to a lawsuit involving the Clean Air Act. EPA estimates the rules will cut 95 percent of the smog-related chemicals released by fracking wells, ones linked to asthma, respiratory ailments and cancer.
April 20, 2011, from Fast Company
In late 2009, he started Shareable, a not-for-profit web hub that provides individuals and groups with a playbook for how to build systems for sharing everything from baby food and housing to skills and solar panels. "Business has spent centuries making buying really easy," says Gorenflo. "We're just at the beginning of making sharing easy."
Gorenflo is a leading proselytizer of a global trend to make sharing something far more economically significant than a primitive behavior taught in preschool. Spawned by a confluence of the economic crisis, environmental concerns, and the maturation of the social web, an entirely new generation of businesses is popping up. They enable the sharing of cars, clothes, couches, apartments, tools, meals, and even skills. The basic characteristic of these you-name-it sharing marketplaces is that they extract value out of the stuff we already have. Many of these sites depend on millennials disenchanted by the housing bubble and the banking crisis, or uninterested in traditional icons of success such as house or auto ownership. But the number of people who have quietly begun tapping in is impressive: Already, more than 3 million people from 235 countries have couch-surfed, while 2.2 million bike-sharing trips are taken each month. Contends Rachel Botsman, coauthor of the recently published What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption: "This could be as big as the Industrial Revolution in the way we think about ownership."
April 20, 2009, from San Francisco Chronicle
Some mayors tool around in Priuses and hybrid Civics. But Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates has taken green transit a step further. No more cars for him, at all.
The 71-year-old mayor is trading in his 2001 Volvo for an AC Transit pass and a sturdy pair of walking shoes.
"I'm trying to reduce my carbon footprint to the absolute minimum," he said. "I figure, if I really want to go someplace I can just rent a car."
Bates' long farewell to the Volvo began about a year ago, when he started walking to work as a way to lose weight and stay in shape. The 18-minute trek from his home in South Berkeley to City Hall was so invigorating he started walking everywhere he could - to Berkeley Bowl, the BART station, city council meetings.
April 20, 2009, from London Guardian
The Chinese government is for the first time considering setting targets for carbon emissions, a significant development that could help negotiations on a Kyoto successor treaty at Copenhagen later this year, the Guardian has learned.
Su Wei, a leading figure in China's climate change negotiating team, said that officials were considering introducing a national target that would limit emissions relative to economic growth in the country's next five-year plan from 2011... While that is a minority view and final decisions are some way off, the proposals are striking because they are at odds with China's official negotiating stance.
April 20, 2009, from The Daily Climate
California regulators, trying to assess the true environmental cost of corn ethanol, are poised to declare that the biofuel cannot help the state reduce global warming.
As they see it, corn is no better -- and might be worse -- than petroleum when total greenhouse gas emissions are considered.
Such a declaration, to be considered later this week by the California Air Resources Board, would be a considerable blow to the corn-ethanol industry in the United States. If passed, the measure could serve as a model as other states and the federal government tackle carbon emissions.
That has the ethanol industry in a full-court press against the proposal, saying it risks killing investments needed to create the next generation of cleaner, more efficient biofuels.
April 20, 2009, from Reuters
Alaskan Inuits, Australian aborigines and Pygmies from Cameroon have a message for a warming world: native traditions can be a potent weapon against climate change.
At a summit starting Monday in Anchorage, Alaska, some 400 indigenous people from 80 nations are gathering to hone this message in the hope that it can be a key part of international climate negotiations.... The summit is taking place about 500 miles from the Alaskan village of Newtok, where intensifying river flow and melting permafrost are forcing 320 residents to resettle on a higher site some 9 miles away in a new consequence of climate change, known as climigration.
Newtok is the first official Arctic casualty of climate change. A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study indicates 26 other Alaskan villages are in immediate danger, with an additional 60 considered under threat in the next decade...
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