Tag Archives: environment

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Lovelock: give up on trying to save the planet

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lifeboatJames “Gaia Theory” Lovelock suggests that there may be as few as one billion human beings left in 100 years time:

Lovelock’s point seemed to be that we should give up on trying to save the planet and the entirety of the human species by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and focus instead on equipping “lifeboat nations” with the necessary infrastructure (schools, roads, houses) to support swarms of climate refugees.

The UK and Canada are lifeboat nations, in case you’re wondering. Probably Siberia too. Basically, anywhere that will be relatively cool and have water in a world that is on average 5°C warmer than it was 100 years ago.

Which sounds interesting and… controversial. The suggestion that places like the UK and Canada should massively overinvest in infrastructure over the next few decades may be be Quite A Good Idea in any case (fiscal stimulus, anyone?).

But is this giving up too soon?

[image from Troon Lifeboat on flickr]

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1 tree = 111 books: is reading an environmentally sound pastime?

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book stacksOver at Tor.com, novelist M M Buckner does a bit of soul searching regarding her reading pastime; if one tree makes 111 books, is the environmental sacrifice justifiable?

How long does it take you to read 111 books? What if you count magazines, newspapers, catalogs, photocopies , billing statements, Valentine cards to loved ones? Every year, one tree absorbs 26 pounds of carbon dioxide and exhales enough oxygen to keep four people alive. The UN says, to make up for all the trees we’ve killed in the last decade alone, we’d need to plant a forest the size of Peru. Only, Peru is just not into that.

So is buying a book a form of murder? When I leaf through the latest science fiction thriller, am I suffocating some future possible infant in the crib? Does reading make me a baby killer?

Her response is that the ebook revolution that’s currently gathering pace is the antidote to any such worries, and it comes with a side serving of “literary egalitarianism” – in other words, it activates a kind of Long Tail economics where more obscure titles become better business propositions, which is something that one would hope even the most die-hard climate skeptic can get behind. [image by ginnerobot]

Of course, if you’re still worried about atoning for your book habit, you could always reduce your footprint in some other way, like eating less meat…

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Better living through chemistry? Indian river water contains 21 pharmaceuticals

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assorted pharmaceuticalsThe world is full of ironies. Many people can’t afford or get access to the drugs they need to make themselves well; meanwhile, others get more drugs than they need or want, whether they like it or not. In Pantacheru (near Hyderabad in India), recent samples of river water showed concentrations of an antibiotic high enough “to treat everyone living in Sweden for a work week”.

And it wasn’t just ciprofloxacin being detected. The supposedly cleaned water was a floating medicine cabinet — a soup of 21 different active pharmaceutical ingredients, used in generics for treatment of hypertension, heart disease, chronic liver ailments, depression, gonorrhea, ulcers and other ailments. Half of the drugs measured at the highest levels of pharmaceuticals ever detected in the environment, researchers say.

Those Indian factories produce drugs for much of the world, including many Americans. The result: Some of India’s poor are unwittingly consuming an array of chemicals that may be harmful, and could lead to the proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria.

Good old MSNBC… just in case the plight of the Indians didn’t move you, they reminded you of the drug-resistant nasties that you might encounter in your own country. This is the nasty underbelly of globalisation; industrial production moves to where it can be done most cheaply, regardless of what corners get cut in the process. Outta sight, outta mind, right? [via BLDGBLOG; image by Amanda M Hatfield]

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Seed vault for plant preservation

An interesting article on the Millennium Seed Bank project here at Physorg. It seems thematically linked to the Long Now Foundation’s Rosetta Disk (intended as a very long term record of current written languages). The Millennium Seed Bank “seeks to develop a global seed conservation network, capable of safeguarding wild plant species:”

The futuristic facility, with its low-slung steel and glass structure over the vaults, is seen by scientists as an insurance policy against nature and human folly. It is a quiet place, where young scientists in white smocks spend hours cleaning seeds by hand, using microscopes, scalpels, forceps, and tiny brushes.

[image from Arria Belli on flickr]

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George Monbiot unimpressed by climate report

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Environmentalist and activist George Monbiot is unimpressed by the the British Committee on Climate Change’s latest report, entitled Building a Low Carbon Economy, claiming it doesn’t go far enough in what it demands:

[The] report, published yesterday, is long, detailed and impressive. It has the admirable objective of trying to cap global warming at two degrees or a little more. This, it says, means that greenhouse gas pollution in the UK should fall by 80% by 2050 and by 31% by 2020.

But there’s a problem. There is no longer any likely relationship between an 80% cut and two degrees of warming. This gets a little complicated, but please bear with me while I explain why [the report’s] proposal is about as likely to stop runaway climate change as the Maginot Line was to hold back the Luftwaffe.

The key findings and suggestions of the report are summarised here. Monbiot believes further action than is suggested in the report is necessary, including raising the top rate vehicle excise duty from £400 to £3000, and reducing the number of airline landing slots in the UK to 5% of current capacity.
[image from kevindooley on flickr]