Archive for the ‘environment’ Category
Why not space?
This by Tom Murphy is a must read. Read it right to the end, though, or you’ll miss his point. tl;dr? He’s saying: getting humans into space is not a way to save Earth from its resources and overpopulation crisis. It will take technology and resources well beyond what we can marshall at the moment [...]
In: environment, science
All the things I wrote in 2008 and 2009.
Introduction With a rare exception or two I haven’t written here for several years. Various things have intervened – moving to a new country, starting a new business, and preceding all that some formal study. What I’d like to do is go through here and edit things, weed out the crap, format it nicely, and [...]
In: environment, philosophy, science, society, theory
Nuclear power back on the agenda
Greg Palast writes: So, we’ve got both candidates hawking the nuclear snake oil. But there is one difference between them. A big big BIG difference. McCain’s ready to spend a hundred billion dollars on nuclear power, no questions asked. But Barack Obama puts a crucial condition on his approval for building new nukes: an affordable [...]
Your Weld Is Being Destroyed
The Weld Valley remains one of the most diverse areas of native ecology in southern Tasmania. The Weld sits at the frontier of Europe’s “ecological empire”, between the ancient rhythms/landscapes of the western wilderness and the graduallty expanding radius of white settlement. Today indiustrial forestry pushes into the virgin forests of the lower Weld, while [...]
Plan to genetically engineer insects
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service today announced its intent to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) to evaluate the use of genetically-engineered fruit flies and pink bollworm in certain plant pest programs. APHIS is inviting the general public to attend a series of public meetings aimed at soliciting comments [...]
In: environment, observations
Round up ready nation
A documentary about the dangers of GMO foods and the way the biotech industry has covered this up. Here is the trailer, and you can find more about the film at Roundup Ready Nation.
In: environment, observations, science
Weld valley logging protests
Huon Valley Environment Centre has made a video documenting the protest against logging in the Weld Valley, in Tasmania’s southern forests. It runs for an hour, and to watch it you’ll need at least 800kbps link speed and Quicktime 7. More for more information about the campaign to save the Weld, see the Huon Valley [...]
Oil water and permanence
Australia is facing terrible water shortages on a continuing basis, due to climate change. We’re running out of fossil fuel, so we probably won’t be able to continue to make fertilisers in the same way, or to make heavy use of transport and refrigeration to ship food around the country out of season. This is [...]
In: environment, science
Nemo sibi nascitur
Christopher Alexander was interviewed recently on radio in Australia. He mentioned that several years ago he had been appointed part of the planning approvals process for Pasadena housing units. His contribution was to insist that the developers show how their proposal would benefit the larger unit – the street, suburb, or the city of Pasadena. [...]
In: environment, observations, society, world
China’s water crisis
From The Anthropik Network: According to hydrologists, government officers and industrial leaders, water and waste pollution is the single most serious issue facing China. Presently, one in three rural inhabitants lacks access to safe drinking water. The urban situation is not any more heartening. More than a hundred large cities are short of water and [...]
In: environment, observations, world
Earth First! and the FBI
Edgar Jacobi: Heh. Well, you know that kind of cancer that you get better from eventually? Rorschach: Yes. Edgar Jacobi: Well, that ain’t the kind of cancer I got. Judi Bari and Earth First! In the 1980s some environmental activists, including Dave Foreman, in the western part of the United States began consider using direct [...]
In: environment, law, society
Reply to the global warming sceptics
Greenhouse sceptics argue that the proponents of a human cause of global warming have not made a convincing case. They say we need to understand things better and rule out natural causes before we make costly changes to legislation. This attitude is based on bad science, and the consequences are serious. No one disputes the [...]
Corporate slash and burn in Tasmania
I live in Tasmania, an island about the size of the republic of Ireland, or the state of South Carolina, which lies off the southern coast of the mainland of Australia. It has a population of just under half a million, a temperate climate, and an ongoing war over the question of forestry. Evano seeded [...]
In: environment, society
A nuclear magic bullet for greenhouse
A number of prominent conservationists have recently been quoted in support of nuclear power as a way of decreasing greenhouse emissions. The gravity of the situation is undoubted, but it has led people to grasp at flawed solutions. In fact the greenhouse card can be seen as the last gasp of a dying industry which [...]
In: environment, society
Who owns the politicians?
Australian current affairs television program Four Corners had a program called Greenhouse Mafia about the way the coal industry had total control of Australian government policy in relation to climate change. The executives in that industry and the politicians in government have vested interests in continuing and extending the status quo which overcomes their common [...]
In: environment, observations, society
Wilderness
I have seen attitudes to conservation split into the following categories: The Romantic-Transcendental Conservation Ethic In the mid-nineteenth century Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and John Muir waxed eloquent about the wonders of nature in a mystical, almost religious language. Their writings convinced many of the need to save wild places, regardless of whether [...]
Environmental crisis on Easter Island
The same thing happened to me as Jared Diamond says happens to his students, in response to learning of the way deforestation destroyed the livelihood of the Easter Islanders – I began to wonder what situation prevented them from preserving enough trees to at least build boats. Professor Diamond makes a few, somewhat facetious suggestions, [...]
In: environment, society, world
