I don't know how I didn't know about this sooner - how everyone doesn't know about this already - but there is a huge, continent-sized, pile of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean. Or actually there are two masses that sometimes join together to create, by some accounts, an area that is twice the size of the entire United States. Why isn't this something that we care about! Why aren't we doing something about this? Who/what is to blame? Well, for starters, plastic. Plastic is believed to constitute 90 per cent of all garbage floating in the oceans. And there are garbage patches in most of the world's other oceans too. The UN Environment Programme estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic.
This is having devastating effects on marine life. In addition to blocking sunlight from getting down into the ocean which can affect algae production (and thus be a contributor to global warming), marine animals can ingest or become entangled in the debris like this photo of a deformed sea turtle who likely crawled into that plastic ring when it was much smaller. From GreenPeace's website:
The larger items, however, are consumed by seabirds and other animals which mistake them for prey. Many seabirds and their chicks have been found dead, their stomachs filled with medium sized plastic items such as bottle tops, lighters and balloons. A turtle found dead in Hawaii had over a thousand pieces of plastic in its stomach and intestines. It has been estimated that over a million sea-birds and one hundred thousand marine mammals and sea turtles are killed each year by ingestion of plastics or entanglement.
The garbage patch can even provide a mechanism for invasive species to travel to parts f the world they would never normally get to by floating on the plastic.
This actually has led to action, with some governments, like the city of San Fransisco putting an outright ban on the use of plastic bags. Many countries are also following suit, with Australia, Bangladesh, Botswana, Canada, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kenya, South Africa, Singapore, Taiwan, Tanzania, Uganda, and perhaps most surprisingly China banning plastic bags. Found out about most of these from last week's ZapRoot videoblog from ViroPop (which I get through the increasingly impressive TiVoCast downloads functionality on my TiVo). Completely coincidentally ZapRoot has a feature about the garbage patch or Gyre on this week's show.
Find out more about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch at Wikipedia or listen to this NPR segment.
These photos of Hyenas and their handlers/owners in NIgeria are amazing. They are part of an exhibition of the work of Pieter Hugo at Yossi Milo Gallery. Check out all these links for more.
[Via Cool Hunting]
I have been in something of a theme with my current reading and when you are keenly aware of a topic it is hard not to notice an aggregation and honing of ideas starting to happen both within me and in the world at large. And since it is Blog Action Day and the both the topic of this year's action and the one I have been immersed in are the environment, a post seems in order. I have been meaning to post on several environmental topics recently but now these will all just be jumbled into this one post.
When a majestic, 300-year-old red-wood is cut down and turned into picnic tables, the logging and picnic table-building activities add to the gross domestic product (GDP), while no deduction is made for the loss of that tree and all the nonmarket services it provides. When a paper mill dumps dioxin-laden wastes into a river, the paper-making boosts the GDP, but no deduction is made for the costs associated with the water pollution. Conversely, no addition is made to the GDP for the air and water cleaned by wetlands or old-growth forests.
It is long overdue that we start accounting for non-monetary assets in the way described.
In San Francisco, the municipal water comes from inside Yosemite National Park. It's so good the EPA doesn't require San Francisco to filter it. If you bought and drank a bottle of Evian, you could refill that bottle once a day for 10 years, 5 months, and 21 days with San Francisco tap water before that water would cost $1.35. Put another way, if the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000.
We do quite a lot in this country to make sure we have potable drinking water in every home, we pay for the infrastructure in taxes and when we build our homes. Why not make use of this resource and forgo the petroleum-based container variety?
I have tried not to post about this subject because, as my wife reminds me, it just lends credibility to the wackjobs out there but this seems like big enough news because there are actually people out there that let some old German dude in a dress make up their minds for them.
Yes, out of nowhere a voice of reason from within the religious world! The pope has said what reasonable people had concluded long ago. Namely that evolution and spirituality need not be mutually exclusive. "While there is much scientific proof to support evolution, the theory could not exclude a role by God." He goes further. stating "that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.”
In addition Pope Benedict had word about the environment and our role as stewards.
"Benedict also said the human race must listen to 'the voice of the Earth' or risk destroying its very existence" and that "willfully damaging the environment is sinful."
While I usually applaud politicians thinking big and having dreams, there are some dreams that are worth crushing. One of these dreams is that of ethanol-based fuels for mass-market automobiles. I have long dismissed ethanol and ethanol blends as simply another wasteful use of our public money in the form of subsidies and also environmentally and economically dubious. The wonderful group of researchers at FactCheck.org agree and bust some of the dreams of leading Democratic presidential hopefuls in the process.
Create a carbon tax -- basically a tax on energy calculated based on its carbon content -- and use the new revenue to provide offsetting cuts in the income tax, the payroll tax, or both.
The whole package should be revenue neutral, meaning that it will not increase or decrease the total amount of revenue the government collects. The money will simply come from different sources.
The idea is a great one and constitutes a progressive tax that also happens to be completely "fair".
The tax burden will go up for those who use more than the average amount of carbon-based energy and down for those who use less.
In the grand scheme of global injustice (e.g., being born in a malarial village in rural Africa), that just does not strike me as terribly unfair. If you contribute more than your fair share to global warming, traffic congestion, air pollution, and propping up a repressive regime in Saudi Arabia, then you should pay more.
And if you bicycle to work from your modest, solar-powered home, then society should cut you some slack.
The only drawbacks I see are that the tax base could erode as more people reduce their carbon usage and the cost of reducing carbon usage could cause some inflation in consumer goods. I like the idea of axing the income tax altogether and instead using just a carbon tax and a sales tax (with some modifications for luxury and near-luxury items to make it less regressive). Something like this tax is the only way to get people to seriously consider reducing their use of fossil fuels. Smugness can only get us so far.
A pair of new tv spots are now airing across the country extolling the virtues of, what else, carbon dioxide. Yes, the Competetive Enterprise Institute is back at the task of trying to confuse Americans about environmental issues, but focusing on the stuff we breathe out. How can something that people and animals, and the ocean, create be bad? (stupid ocean) And who would suffer if those mean scientists make us cut back on CO2 production? Our kids, our food, and especially our use of neon signage would, of course.
Maybe, just maybe, the CEI has other things in mind than making sure we can breathe without consequence. From their website:
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to advancing the principles of free enterprise and limited government.
Translation: We believe corporations and profits are more important than individuals and health and safety.
But I am sure that isn't true, I mean their donor list surely should support the idea that the CEI is actually looking out for us right? (incidentally, if you are interested in a list of the most evil corporations this will also apply:
ExxonMobil, Amoco Foundation, Inc, Coca-Cola Company, CSX Corporation, Ford Motor Company, Philip Morris Companies, Inc., Pfizer Inc., Precision Valve Corporation, Texaco, Inc., American Petroleum Institute, Burlington Northern Railroad Co., Cigna Corporation, Dow Chemical, General Motors Corporation, IBM.
Perhaps President Bush was teased when he was young about his surname and so is inflicted with an unnatural hatred for all things green and leafy. Whatever the case, it is certain that the disregard Bush shows national parks and forests, not to mention, clean air and water takes a seat far behind corporate and industry interests.
Unfortunately, this disregard has been rampant in politics for many years, with the Clinton years, in some respects being just as bad as the current and previous Bush's. The misdeeds and blatant flaunting of corporate power and influence are outlined in bleak fashion, page after page, in the book Been Brown so Long, It Looked Like Green to Me: The Politics of Nature by Jeffrey St. Clair. Been Brown So Long... is hard to read for a number of reasons - none of which relates to the writing. Its just that it is hard to keep a train of thought going when every couple of minutes you have to stare at the pages in disbelief and its especially hard to turn pages with clenched fists.
Why does our government bow down to industry and commerce so frequently? Is it really all about money? Can people really be that shallow? News flash: Our economy would function just as well without all the corporate welfare - tax breaks, kickbacks and special privileges - businesses will figure it out. And if capitalism needs those crutches to thrive then it really isn't that great efficient system it is purported to be. Let it evolve, economies aren't explained by intelligent design.
if anyone understands what im (sic). saying please e-mail me at this e-mail adress (sic).
does anyone here bilieve (sic) that there are aliens in other planets? who really made us is there really a god? im not saying there isnt (sic). but who made god? seriously please answer back at me
I do not think that corporations should have the same rights as actual human citizens. Further, I think we should revisit the pacts that corporations function under when granted such status from the states in which the incorporate. I am not proposing that the privilege of incorporation be granted solely to enable activities that benefit the public, such as construction of roads or canals, as was the case when corporations were first established. But wouldn't it be nice it they were at least neutral to the public's interests?
You'd think that things like disasters, or the purity of childhood, or even milk, let alone water or air, would be sacred. But no. Corporations have no built-in limits on what, who, or how much they can exploit for profit. [The Corporation]
The states used to impose certain conditions on those corporations that were granted (some of which remain on the books, though unused) like these:
Through lobbying and paying off politicians over the years, corporations have rendered all of these laws (and more) obsolete and have effectively put themselves above the law - even those laws that apply to you and me. If you throw a McDonald's wrapper out the window of your car (I recommend neither eating McDonald's nor littering) you could get a fine of up to $700 but America's industry throws the equivalent of millions of wrappers into our air, water and land each day without consequence. And while we all (well most of us) pay income taxes like suckers, our "corporate citizens" often pay little or no income tax1.
The main problem is that corporations are treated as real persons according to some laws but not others. Furthermore, corporations do not have the same moral obligations that people do. The only lawful obligation a corporation has is to generate profit for its shareholders. If making money way your only motivation, how would your actions change? Even the most unscrupulous of people in business have at least a few other motivations. Most corporations corporate persons, do not share this with us.
Corporate personhood is the doctrine that corporations are considered to be individual persons in the eyes of the law. Corporate personhood is the most critical social and political issue of our time. It lies at the heart of campaign finance reform, labor abuse, deterioration of communities, destruction of the environment, and more. [PersonsInc]
Some corporations are beginning to see how their corporate actions are affecting the earth (it's people, societies, and environment) and are taking steps to ensure that our kids' kids will be able to enjoy a life such as ours. Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, Inc, the world's largest carpet manufacturer (and maker of the very cool interface flor tiles) has identified the following "7 Fronts" on which to wage a war of change:
Interface has even set up an entire website at interfacesustainability.com to outline its sustainability practices.
Since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring began to expose the abuses of the modern industrial system, there has been a growing awareness that profit at the expense of Earth--of individuals, society, and the environment--is unsustainable. - Ray Anderson, CEO, Interface, Inc.
There is far more that I could post now than I should post now, so I will end this post with a few links to some groups — actually a suprisingly large number of groups — taking up this, and related, issues. Here are a few:
1 - Even in the "over-taxed" state of Minnesota, there are plenty of large companies (3M, U.S. Bank, Target, General Mills to name a few) that legally pay less than a 5% effective tax rate by utilizing methods of tax reduction not available to "average citizens". See the story.
Companies like Propel Fuels of Seattle Washington are making a big push in the promotion of biodiesel fuels as the next great energy source for the U.S. and for the world.
In a recent interview for Make Magazine, a former co-worker Rob Elam makes a compelling case for this, clean-burning, soybean-based fuel source.
Could this make vehicles such as the Volkswagen Turbo Diesel Golf, Jetta, Passat, and Beetle viable consumer options for clean, lean energy consumption? I know I had looked into these for a while as they get upwards of 50 mpg, however the relative dirtiness of the emissions had turned me off. Maybe that has changed now. Perhaps the first major adopters of this fuel source could be commercial trucking companies, etc.
UPDATE: I didn't know Willie Nelson has been promoting his own "Willie Fuel" I should have titled this post "On the road again with biofuel" or maybe "You can't even pretend to think you know about biodiesel! Who do you think you are?"
Is this type of thing really acceptable in this age?
"We tried to do what we could," centre director Charles McCreery said. "But we don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world."
-via bitterpill - via wonkette
Also in the news, the Bush administration is drafting legislation requiring any science teacher when asked the question "Why is the sky blue?" to also provide the alternative answer, "Because Jesus is looking down upon us from heaven with his big blue eyes." When asked what if a child is Jewish or Muslim President Bush responded, "Well, the sky ain't brown now is it, heh heh."
If you feel so inclined contact your senator and tell them that the Edwards amendment is worthy of acceptance tomorrow as part of the new the energy bill. This would give states the option of setting stricter clean-air requirements than the federal government (which as we all know are much lower now that big business has its power back).
HOME | CONTACT | XHTML | CSS
All content by Ben Edwards, except where noted. Licensed under this Creative Commons License.
