» 2007 » December

Fed up with politicians and the media, scientists are pleading to the world to wake up to the imminent threats of global warming.

How dire is the climate situation? Consider what Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the United Nations’ prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said last month: “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.” Pachauri has the distinction, or misfortune, of being both an engineer and an economist, two professions not known for overheated rhetoric.

In fact, far from being an alarmist, Pachauri was specifically chosen as IPCC chair in 2002 after the Bush administration waged a successful campaign to have him replace the outspoken Dr. Robert Watson, who was opposed by fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil. So why is a normally low-key scientist getting more desperate in his efforts to spur the planet to action?

Source: www.salon.com/…

LS » If this kind of stuff is even half true I hope we get some political leaders with the cajones to do something significant by 2012. I am optimistic we can overcome droughts with desalination and stuff and the loss of 50% of the world’s species would be a brutally depressing fact to have to live with as a civilization but if the sea levels rise as they are expected to, that is going to f@#$ people up; most of us live on the coast, after all.

Trash is a choice. Time for ‘Cradle to Cradle’ design.

A month after Vancouver finally settled its garbage strike, people are breathing easier as their cans once again fill and miraculously empty every week.

Which means we’ve missed a huge opportunity here. We should still be asking the true question raised by all that smelly inconvenience:

Why do we have garbage in the first place?

In fact, there is no reason we have garbage — that is, no good reason. In fact, a world without garbage may be as easy as the red-faced emperor pulling on pants and a t-shirt.

It turns out that garbage is a choice — and not just in the “do you recycle” kind of way. Garbage is the product of how we have decided to produce things and run our society.

Source: www.thetyee.ca/…

LS » How cool would that be if we could keep a lot of our consumptive behaviour and not have to turn old products into crap that we toss into a landfill after its utility is finished. There is no time like the present for a paradigm shift in the modus operandi of how we design products including the life-cycle of those products.

It swirls. It grows. It’s a massive, floating ‘garbage patch.’

Located in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii and measuring in at roughly twice the size of Texas, this elusive mass is home to hundreds of species of marine life and is constantly expanding. It has tripled in size since the middle of the 1990s and could grow tenfold in the next decade.

Although no official title has been given to the mass yet, a popular label thus far has been “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”

As suggested by the name, the island is almost entirely comprises human-made trash. It currently weighs approximately 3.5 million tons with a concentration of 3.34 million pieces of garbage per square kilometer, 80 per cent of which is plastic.

Source: www.thetyee.ca/…

LS » If that isn’t a huge indication of how stupid, self-centered and plain gross and obnoxious our species can be then I don’t know what is. Do you think we could collect it in tanker ships and take all that plastic to the recycling depot?

Now that I am ready to start investing, I want to find out if my money can grow in green fields.

… So, for the first time, I’ve started to think about investing. In search of a firm that could help me invest in companies that aren’t raping and pillaging the planet, I found Trillium Asset Management Corp.One of the oldest socially responsible firms in the country, they directed me toward the $50 million Green Century Balanced Fund, a mutual fund that invests in environmentally responsible companies. ”

Green investing isn’t going to solve all the world’s problems, but if you’re concerned about the environment, then it’s critical that your investment dollars reflect that,” says Eric Becker, a vice president of Trillium who co-manages Green Century. “If you’re investing in companies that continue the cycle of pollution, that’s a waste of your resources.”

Source: www.salon.com/…

LS » The more money that individual investors can move away from the polluting corporations and to the environmentally conscious corporations sooner we will create a sustainable society and economy.