» 2007 » May

Rupert Murdoch says his entire empire is going green — while telling its audience to do the same — because it’s “simply good business.”

When Rupert Murdoch, the cantankerous and conservative owner of Fox News, enthusiastically joins the fight against climate change, you know we’re past the tipping point on the issue. Think landslide.

Last week, the media mogul pledged not only to make his News Corp. empire carbon neutral, but to persuade the hundreds of millions of people who watch his TV channels and read his newspapers to join the cause. Messages about climate change will be woven throughout News Corp.’s entertainment content, he said, from movies to books to TV sitcoms, and the issue will have an increasing presence in the company’s news coverage, be it in the New York Post or on “Hannity & Colmes.” Yes, as Murdoch said in an exclusive interview on his climate plan, even Fox News’ right-wing firebrand Sean Hannity can be expected to come around on the issue.

Source: www.salon.com/…

LS » There is hope yet. If an old conservative curmudgeon like Rupert Murdoch can go green than anybody and everybody can.

It’s been called bizarre, mysterious, puzzling, and potentially catastrophic. So much hand-wringing, and all of it over a creature no bigger than the tip of your thumb.

It is, of course, “Colony Collapse Disorder,” the convenient and media friendly name given to the confounding and dangerous disappearance of honey bees over much of the Western world, and particularly the U.S. Bees that are as integral to our food system as soil are vanishing like tigers in India. Some estimates suggest that up to 40 per cent of all American bees are gone.

According to the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturalists, the situation here is also worsening. Last winter, 29 per cent of all Canadian honey bees were lost, compared to previous national averages of just 15 per cent. Here in B.C. the figure was 23 per cent.

Source: www.canada.com/vancouversun/…

LS » The complexities that have caused the bee pandemic are astounding, but luckily the solution isn’t overly complicated except for the enrivo-biz paradigm shift that is required to facilitate the solution.

Our MP’s have worked hard over the last few months to hammer out a new piece of legislation in the fight against climate change. The Clean Air and Climate Change Act contains tough new provisions for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from industry and vehicles. It restates Canada’s commitment to meeting its Kyoto reduction requirements, and it sets out challenging but achievable long term reduction targets. The proposed act is widely supported, and it could go a long way toward redressing Canada’s past inaction on the climate crisis. It’s a good bill and it should become law. Read more about support for the bill here.

Unfortunately, unless the Conservative government brings the bill back before the House for a vote, it will die on the order paper, all the hard work of the last few months will be lost, and Canada will be that much further behind in achieving the reductions we need to help keep the climate from tipping into chaos. For what ever reason, it appears that the Conservative government would prefer to adopt intensity targets which allow emissions to continue to rise in the near future, and they are already doing their best to scuttle the bill by suggesting that we have to choose between reducing emissions or preserving our standard of living.

Source: www.vtacc.org/…

LS » Go on give it a try, it is fun to send politicians things in the mail that they don’t want to receive, especially if they receive a whole bunch of those things.

This edition promises to build awareness of the environment and that’s sparking excitement

People are buzzing about David Suzuki’s latest job title: guest editor of The Vancouver Sun.

“It’s gutsy,” said Gary Clarke, a professor of earth and ocean sciences at UBC, adding that Suzuki is a good choice for the job. “He’s a good person because he combines a good message with a high symbolic image. People know who he is.”

Even if it is just for one day, an editor like Suzuki will build awareness of the environment, he said.

“If you start thinking about what really matters, the environmental future of the Earth is actually a very big deal.”

Source: www.canada.com/vancouversun/…

LS » This is a good move for a major corporate media outlet, although it would have been really bold if they had done it two years ago before the environment became such a du jour topic. Now if only the White House would bring in a guest President to give it a greenwashing.

Does buying that cute recycled organic lip balm really do any good? Your government snickers.

It’s the great painful bitch-slapping soul-stabbing environmental conundrum du jour:

Say you’ve been reading up and doing your eco-homework and watching the appropriate inconvenient documentaries and you finally get yourself a little excited to go green, and so you buy your compact fluorescents and turn off all your power strips at night and recycle and reuse and compost and go organic and local and grass-fed and everything’s just orgasmically sustainably delicious.

And maybe all this good eco-vibration spurs you on even further, and you decide to green up the whole house, get into gray water and solar and reclaimed wood and non-VOC paints and all the rest, and fill the joint with organic cotton sheets and chem-free cleansers and passive heating systems and non-phthalates dildos and you sit back in your ethically farmed chair and sigh and say, Well, there ya go, did what I could, the world is a better place, maybe just a tiny bit — I mean, isn’t it?

Source: www.sfgate.com/…

LS » Sure it is up to us, one small action at a time, but to really affect change, the powers that be, corporations and governments, need to get on board the sustainability movement. Until they do the status quo will remain. Every incandescent light bulb changed to an energy efficient light bulb should be accompanied with a political action.

New research suggests climate change could be faster and more furious than anyone expects.

It is 24°C at the North Pole. It rains copiously, and the Arctic Ocean feels like a warm bath. The rest of the planet is sweltering. The sea is acidic; ocean currents have stopped or shifted course. As many as half of the single-celled benthic foraminifera, a key part of life on the ocean floor, have been wiped out. Some parts of the world are experiencing extreme flooding, ferocious storms, and frequent cyclones. It is too hot even for tropical jungles, and three-quarters of the Colombian and Venezuelan rainforest has died. It is a global crisis, affecting every part of the land, the air, the ocean, and everything that lives on or in them.

Source: www.walrusmagazine/…

LS » Do we need more of these doom-and-gloom articles? Judging by our current political discourse, apparently some of us still do. How’s this for a quote:

“We don’t know what the final result of this is going to be,” says Pagani. “We don’t know the consequences of our actions. The thing about the climate system is, it’s a monster. Once it shifts, it’s not going to shift back.” He pauses to think for a moment. Then, to avoid sounding alarmist, he adds, “I’m not willing to say it’s going to be bad. It’s going to be different.” He pauses one more beat. “Florida will be gone.”