Interesting article on how Mexico City has become so successful in reducing waste that it is closing it’s largest landfill. Mexico City will close one of the world’s largest garbage dumps by Dec. 31 and will instead turn the garbage from millions of people into reusable materials and energy, MayorMarcelo Ebrard announced Monday. Some 700 [...]
environment
Gone
As the Guardian puts it. This image shows the biomass of popularly-eaten fish in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1900 and in 2000. Popularly eaten fish include: bluefin tuna, cod, haddock, hake, halibut, herring, mackerel, pollock, salmon, sea trout, striped bass, sturgeon, turbot. Many of which are now vulnerable or endangered. As you can see, [...]
The cost of not using nuclear
Angelo Persichilli has a great article in today’s Toronto Star about the future of nuclear energy in this country. While I don’t trust those who tell me that nuclear energy is completely safe, likewise I don’t trust those who say we have an alternative that can sustain our demands to run our businesses, our economy [...]
Peak Oil is here
Jeff Rubin in the Globe and Mail …Mr. Husseini acknowledged Saudi production is never likely to get to Aramco’s 12.5 million barrel per day target. Instead, the country is struggling to produce even 10 million barrels a day and it may soon encounter a production peak after which flow rates will inevitably decline. Yet the [...]
Record Low Arctic Sea Ice Extent for January
From NASA During the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2010–2011, unusually cold temperatures and heavy snowstorms plagued North America and Europe, while conditions were unusually warm farther north. Now the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has reported that Arctic sea ice was at its lowest extent ever recorded for January (since satellite records [...]
BP to drill in the Arctic
I know environmental groups are upset but with BP’s recent safety record, why worry? Oh right. The Arctic is to become the "new environmental battleground", campaigners warned yesterday after BP announced plans to drill in one of the last great unspoilt wildernesses on earth. Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) have vowed [...]
Nuclear powered drilling ships?
From the Independent The Rosneft drilling "blocks" are in the Kara Sea, where, according to a 2008 Bellona report, nuclear-powered underwater drilling ships are to be deployed sometime soon, as well as floating nuclear power plants. And why is so much of the Russian Arctic closed to foreigners? Who is hiding what? On the Domodedovo [...]
What Will Future Generations Condemn Us For?
From the Washington Post …a look at the past suggests three signs that a particular practice is destined for future condemnation. First, people have already heard the arguments against the practice. The case against slavery didn’t emerge in a blinding moment of moral clarity, for instance; it had been around for centuries. Second, defenders of [...]
Dam It Jim!
There are 2.5 million dams blocking U.S. rivers and streams and 85% of them are past their 50 year life expectancy. Popular Mechanics shows how the world’s biggest dam removal will return Washington’s Elwha River to its free-flowing state. In the fall of 2008, Lake Mills, the 415-acre reservoir above the Glines Canyon Dam, will [...]
The River That Once Ran Through It
Canadian Geographic has a great article on how the South Saskatchewan River is in danger of running dry. The true danger is hard to know. A 2009 report by World Wildlife Fund Canada called it the country’s most-threatened river. Yet record rains this year have caused floods and widespread crop damage. Amid such climatic uncertainty, [...]
