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    • Beat Global Heat
      Saturday, July 26th is going to be hot! The first ever Beat Global Heat Backyard Festival will see a series of small scale concerts independently organized by people like you across Canada.
    • Earth Hour
      Earth Hour 2009 aims to reach more than one billion people in 1000 cities around the world, inviting communities, business and governments to switch off lights for one hour at 8:30pm on Saturday March 28 and sending a powerful global message that we care
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      Earth Run helps raise awareness and funds for environmental organizations and initiatives.
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      The sessions (COP 15) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is open to Parties of the Convention and Observer States (Governments), the United Nations System and observer organizations duly admitted by the Conference of the Parties.
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      Every September 22, people from around the world get together in the streets, intersections, and neighbourhood blocks to remind the world that we don't have to accept our car-dominated society.

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    • Last exit for the Holocene era The Holocene epoch is that blessed time of stable, warm climate (but not too hot) and unchanging sea levels in which human civilization was born and grew to its present size.
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» 2009 » January

Blowing away King Coal

Posted: Thursday, January 29th, 2009 • Author: Xander
Categories: Articles: Energy Issues, Articles: Political Issues • Comments: Awaiting Comments

Blowing away King CoalCan a scrawny young wind-power activist topple the biggest, dirtiest industry in West Virginia?

On Jan. 16, as Barack Obama visited a wind turbine factory in Ohio, Rory McIlmoil snaked along a muddy mountain road in West Virginia on a similar mission. He was headed up Coal River Mountain, the last mountain left untouched in a historic range ravaged by strip mining.

On a ridge, the 28-year-old activist brought his four-wheeler to a skid. He couldn’t believe what he saw. Bulldozers had begun clearing the site for the first phase of a mountaintop removal operation, a radical strip-mining process that would clear-cut 6,600 acres of hardwood trees, detonate thousands of tons of explosives and topple the mountain range into the valley. A 100-foot swath of forest just below the ridge lay like an open wound.

For McIlmoil, this should have been ground zero in Obama’s green recovery plan. Not a future wasteland.

Source: www.salon.com/…

LS » Go Rory!!!

Will the salmon be back in 2009?

Posted: Friday, January 16th, 2009 • Author: Xander
Categories: Articles: Climate Issues, Articles: Food Issues • Comments: Awaiting Comments

Will the salmon be back in 2009?Climate change may help explain the historic collapse of the species. Yet ocean experts see signs that idle fishermen can fire up their boats again.

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For decades, fishermen and environmentalists have directed their ire at the degradation of rivers. But in the last year, marine biologists have focused on increasingly stressed oceans as the cause of the crash. Yet surprisingly, as 2009 dawns, salmon experts see signs that idle fishermen can start firing up their boats again in the coming year.

Bruce MacFarlane of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) Salmon Ecology Team in Santa Cruz explains that the historic 2008 crash begins with the fact “that ocean conditions weren’t good when the salmon went to sea.” Salmon need the right food in the right places to thrive to maturity in the ocean. Those needs weren’t met for 2008’s salmon run, whether the cause is global warming, as many scientists suggest, or simply the natural variability of the environment. And, of course, the rivers are still a major player. If the salmon population wasn’t already in a weakened state, there would have been more survivors left to spawn the next generation.

Source: www.salon.com/…

LS » The intricacies of the environmental and ecological systems are amazing. This article gives a glimpse into the inner working of our oceans. May we continue to learn more about these intricacies and to always have salmon to eat.