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September 19, 2007
Top Ten Ways A Pirate Is Greener Than Your Average Landlubber
Ahoy! Today, September 19, is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, matey. So I thought I'd share with ye the Top Ten Ways A Pirate Is Greener Than Your Average Landlubber over a jug o' grog:
(10) Pirates used rain barrels on deck to collect drinking and washing water
(9) Pirates recycled and reused bottles for their rum, passing messages and as weapons in bar brawls. Then they went back for refills.
(8) Pirates spent as little time on land as possible, helping avoid spreading invasive species
(7) Pirates commuted less and bought local. While merchant vessels carried goods far and wide, pirates took what was nearby, supporting local towns and pubs.
(6) Pirates repaired things instead of buying new versions. They mended sails and damaged ships instead of upgrading immediately. When they did upgrade, they generally "bought" used.
(5) Pirates were kinder to animals (parrots, monkeys) than they were to people.
(4) Pirates kept it simple, from what they wore to how they navigated. No need to launch expensive satellites into space for GPS units to work when the stars are right above your head.
(3) Pirates went paperless. Their codes were generally not written down, because they might be incriminating. Most of their contracts were verbal.
(2) Pirates used wind power to sail the seas
(1) Pirates rarely bathed - that's water conservation for ye.
Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day!
Posted by sorsha at 4:26 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 13, 2007
Baby Bust? Perpetuating The Planet Instead Of The Species
Who wouldn't want a cute little baby of their very own - one with their own superior genes and extraordinary good looks? Someone to instill one's values and wisdom, your own genetic legacy.
Well, Alan Weisman, author of The World Without Us (http://www.worldwithoutus.com), for one. Weisman's new book asks and answers the question: How would the world be different without humans? What would change?
The short answer? A lot, and for the most part, good. But different. His website has a nice little flow chart to talk us through the resulting person-free planet, from the collapse of human-made buildings to the hoards of domestic cats roving the new wilds 100 years after we're gone (makes me think of that X-Files episode).
But why should we care what happens when we're gone? Well, for one thing, what's left is our legacy and Weisman shows us that we have some control over it. He illustrates how some of our more lasting impacts are not the ones we would necessarily prefer to leave behind as a testament to our existence.
While most of Weisman's book focuses on the changes that would occur after we all kick the bucket (if a bucket falls on the planet and no one is alive to hear it...) he also talks a bit about what we can do now. His suggestion: lessen our impact by lessening our numbers - have fewer children. The children we do have will have more value and the abundance of resources available to those who are still around would be more than sufficient to play out the existence of our species in style.
[Weisman] makes his own pitch, moderate in comparison: Let's cut the birth rate to one child per couple, for a few generations at least. The population would dwindle by about 5 billion people over the next century, he says, ensuring the habitability of the Earth for the 1.6 billion who remained.
...What's the environmental cost of having a child? In the crudest terms, you've added another version of yourself into the world, which means you're potentially doubling your carbon-dioxide emissions over the total life of your family. That's a high estimate, since our kids won't spew as much greenhouse gas as we do—automobiles, appliances, light bulbs, and everything else will become more efficient in coming generations. But these marginal improvements aren't going to make our babies carbon-neutral. They'll just contribute to global warming at somewhat lower rates than we do.
Our other green lifestyle choices can't even begin to offset the cost of adding a brand-new CO2-emitter to the population.
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... the birth of every additional child in the developed world can have a major impact on the cost of keeping global warming in check. According to studies published over the last decade, this amounts to as much as $10,000 to $20,000 per baby. In fact, policies that promote family planning—in the United States or elsewhere—might well be more efficient than other means to reduce CO2 emissions, like a Kyoto-inspired carbon tax.
Despite these findings, Earth-advocacy groups almost never raise the issue of family size, focusing instead on lifestyle choices with more modest environmental rewards.
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They have good reason to be squeamish. The anti-life implications of Weisman's book are likely to alienate some moderates, as well as any social conservatives who might otherwise be drifting green.
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As a global solution for climate change, Weisman's depopulation plan may not have much of a chance...But that's no reason to neglect birth rates from the personal calculus of living green.
More At: Slate.com: Global Swarming
One interesting aspect of all this is that if one group of people decided to go baby-neutral, then that gives them a distinct disadvantage in terms of future numbers. This can be said for any group - whether it's green-minded people or a specific culture, race or way of life. If all Inuit people decided to stop having children, their already threatened way of life might very well end altogether. Similarly, if all green-eyed people decided not to have kids, wouldn't that genetic trait be forcefully deselected evolutionarily?
Russian Relations
This is exactly the situation the Russian Federation appears to be struggling with these days. The largest country in the world by a landslide, Russia has a very small and dwindling population, due to low birth rates and substantially shorter life expectancies than the western world. Three years ago, the government decided to take an interesting policy to help solve their demographic crisis:
Yesterday was National Conception Day in the Ulyanovsk province of the Russian Federation. Citizens are urged to take the day off and make some little Russians. Those who succeed can hope for prizes like SUVs and apartments for their new family units.
Officials in the Russian province of Ulyanovsk urged residents on Wednesday to take the day off work and make patriotic love, with prizes for producing a child on Russia Day nine months hence.
Sergei Morozov, governor of this province 900 kilometres (560 miles) east of Moscow, dreamt up the idea as a way of helping to pull Russia out of its demographic crisis.
It is not his first such scheme, as prizes including fridges, televisions and an off-road vehicle were offered to anyone who gave birth on the last Russia Day on June 12.
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The tradition of awarding prizes for giving birth dates back to Soviet times, when women could be named "Hero Mothers" for having especially large families.
But boosting the population level has grown more urgent as Russia's population has slumped from 149 million in 1992, just after the Soviet collapse, to just over 142 million today.
President Vladimir Putin has made fixing the problem a national priority, signing a law recently that grants mothers 250,000 rubles (about 9,555 dollars, or 7,000 euros) for having a second child.
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The day of action was to end later in the evening with an exhibition "Create a family and Save Russia."
More At: AFP: Patriot babies: Russian province holds 'Conception Day'
What also seems ironic to me is that there are so many children around without parents, in need of homes. Taking on a child who is already in the world is not only a noble thing to do, it provides an infant-minded couple with a wanted child without exasterbating the population problem and solving some other problems all in one go. Parents can still teach their values to a child, even one without their genes. So why isn't the Russian Federation looking to their neighbor China for some influx of population - I expect the answer lies in protecting a racial identity (160 different ethnic groups and indigenous peoples make up the Russian demographics according to Wikipedia) as well, but the issue is certainly more complex than that.
All these musings lead me to a couple of conclusions. On the individual level, taking the impact of your future children and their children into account when you consider your personal impact on the planet is a valid thing to do. That said, unless it's a large and all-encompassing, balanced effort, a severe pause in procreating by any one group could have unintended and negative impacts as well. Movements that do not take diversity into account may only succeed in extinguishing themselves.
Still, the current sort of genetic arms race cannot sustain itself and overpopulation looms in our immediate future if we do not take action somehow. Waiting may take our choices away, when nature begins to make these decisions for us.
Posted by sorsha at 6:50 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
September 12, 2007
Wind Power Woes: A Big Blow To Bats
Drive along 580 in the San Francisco Bay area and you can't miss the mountaintop wind turbines, or windmills. One of the earliest wind farms on the planet, the Altamont Pass Wind Farm once produced half the world's wind energy. Over time, the turbines have gotten bigger and more efficient - and less harmful to the environment.
But how can wind be harmful to the environment in the first place?
My husband asked me this a few years ago and it was hard to come up with reasonable concerns and risks. Sound pollution was a concern - the smaller turbines whined like mad - and that alone could disturb people and wildlife, but since many of these wind farms are built in high wind areas (generally not where you want your house) and in fields otherwise used for farming, even that was not a huge deal, from what I could see.
I did wonder if, like any fluid system, if too many wind turbines were clumped together, if they would result in wind blocks, inevitably sending the wind around and altering weather patterns, but that seemed managable through prudent planning and implementation of wind farms.
Still, wind seemed a little bit too good to be true, and this has proven true, to some extent.
The inital smaller turbines did generate a lot of noise and people didn't want to have to look at them. Increasingly, wind farms are being built offshore and there are some concerns about windfarm noise and its effects on marine life, but as far as I know, there are no proven concerns.
On land, the wildlife implications are even more concerning. Birds and bats, especially those using the wind to aid their long migratory paths, are showing up dead beneath wind turbines in disturbing numbers.
Why should you care about bats? Because they are the birds of the night - eating bugs, spreading seeds, and sometimes even pollinating.
...recent evidence shows that certain species of bats are particularly susceptible to mortality from wind turbines. Bats are beneficial consumers of harmful insect pests, and migratory species of bats cross international and interstate boundaries.
Dead bats are turning up beneath wind turbines all over the world, but the mystery of why bats die at turbine sites remains unsolved. Is it a simple case of flying in the wrong place at the wrong time? Are bats attracted to the spinning turbine blades? Why do bats die at turbines in such large numbers? Although these questions remain unanswered, potential clues can be found in the patterns of mortality. Foremost, the majority of bats killed by wind turbines are species that migrate; in fact, peaks in mortality tend to coincide with periods of migratory activity. Bats probably follow corridors of high wind during migration, so the sites considered ideal for wind turbines, such as mountain ridges, could actually be places where bat populations funnel through while migrating.
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Only through further research will we make progress toward minimizing the impact of this new form of sustainable energy on our Nation's wildlife.
More At: USGS: Bat Mortality and Wind Power: a problem of migration?
Now I'm not saying that wind energy should be discouraged because of its wildlife impact, just that having regulation just like any other energy production method, is essential. After all, the environmental impact of wind energy still beats out most traditional energy producers.
Posted by sorsha at 1:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 11, 2007
Queen Of Green Passes Away
By the time I was a teenager, it was the late 1980's and early 1990's. Amongst the public service messages drilled into my generation, like "Just Say No" and "Stop, Drop and Roll", there was another without a cutesy tag line.
It basically went something like this: Don't buy makeup tested on animals. Those poor bunnies were often used for their sensitivity to such products. Ok, I also went on a one-girl boycott of Burger King because of their past support of Japanese whaling, but that's not what I want to talk about today.
Throughout high school, there were two things I always had in my backpack: a waterbottle and a little jar of lip balm from The Body Shop.
Satsuma, Pink Grapefruit, Coconut, Passion Fruit, Grapeseed... I've tried them all. I still use them. At the time, they seemed to be one of the only animal-testing free brands readily available and affordable. You could go in and get refills of their perfume scents, and everything came in delightful little jars.
Without the guilt. I knew for sure that no bunnies were harmed for my shiny lips.
This past week, Anita Roddick, the founder of Body Shop, passed away. During her too-short lifetime, she proved that business could be environmentally and culturally conscious AND successful - these values did not have to compete amongst themselves.
The Body Shop has had a set of corporate values that few, regardless of political or ideological viewpoints, can argue with:
- Against Animal Testing
- Support Community Trade
- Activate Self-Esteem
- Defend Human Rights
- Protect Our Planet
Roddick, known as the "Queen of Green," was lauded around the world for trailblazing business practices that promoted environmentalism and other causes dear to her heart, from human rights to Third World debt relief.
"Businesses have the power to do good," Roddick wrote on the Web site of the company, which was bought by the French company L'Oreal Group last year for $1.14 billion.
The Body Shop opposed animal testing and tried to encourage Third World development by purchasing materials from small communities in poorer countries.
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[Roddick] drew inspiration from women's beauty rituals that she discovered while traveling in developing countries, and lessons that her mother passed on from life during World War II.
"Why waste a container when you can refill it? And why buy more of something than you can use? We behaved as she did in the Second World War, we reused everything, we refilled everything and we recycled all we could," Roddick wrote.
More At: MSNBC: Body Shop founder Anita Roddick dies at 64
According to WorldWatch (and National Geographic), the cosmetics industry is more than a $18 billion dollar market worldwide. Let's hope it continues to become more environmentally sound, cruelty-free and sustainable with each passing year and let's not forget Anita Roddick's role in making that happen.
Posted by sorsha at 7:33 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
