Photo Credit: James Jordan
If you’ve been following the genetically modified crop debate over the past years, I’m sure you’ve heard of Roundup Ready crops: pesticide-resistant plants that make it “easy” to blast weeds while keeping yields in tact. Roundup itself, the herbicide technically known as glyphosate, was developed by Monsanto in the 1970s to be marketed together with its Roundup Ready genetically engineered (GE) seeds that can resist the herbicide, and is now the most popular herbicide in America. Yet, like most problems it’s faced with, nature has found a way to survive. Read more…
Photo Credit: Rob Holland
Target stores nationwide have recently developed a recycling movement in all of their 1,740 U.S. stores. The storefront recycling stations will encourage shoppers to take part in Target’s commitment to the environment and bring in their aluminum, glass and plastic beverage containers, plastic bags, MP3 players, cell phones and ink cartridges. What’s unusual about this is that it is the first time a major retailer has made full-out recycling available to their “guests”. Read more…
Photo Credit: Marc Fueeg
On Sunday, Southern California celebrated the Easter holiday and felt the tremors of the Baja California earthquake, while on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, Australians are trying to clean up the mess that could seriously damage the world’s largest coral reef. Read more…
When approaching the topic of sustainability, many people in the West have viewed needed changes as both drastic and new. Yet, many countries in the very recent past were indeed self-sufficient by necessity, and, although still considered “poor” by todays standards, maintained sustainability as a way of life. Sadly, the emergence of a Western dominated international policy has ruled away the right of many peoples ability to be self-sufficient in the name of industrialization, “development”, and progress. Read more…
Photo credit: Jonas Clemens
As China continues its surge as a world superpower, it also has no intention of capping its greenhouse gas emissions whilst the country is industrializing. This is in spite of the increasing pressure from other leading nations to set caps on emissions and begin reversing the damage caused over recent decades. Read more…
Photo Credit: Keith Bacongco
The dense jungle interior of northwest Indonesia has been home to rebel troops throughout the last several decades. Throughout their struggle, the jungles and forests in the province of Aceh have been a haven for these rebel foot soldiers fighting for independence and control of natural resources. Although the area has not seen combat for the last five years and the war is largely over, many of the rebels still live the jungles of Aceh and look to illegal logging for revenue. Read more…
Photo Credit: Jonathan McIntosh
If you read my last post entitled, Canada’s Oil Sands: Once Considered Too Expensive and Too Harmful To Exploit…, you would know that the provincial government in Alberta Canada has been making billions off of royalties collected from oil companies drilling in Alberta (a.k.a. the pristine Boreal Forest). This is one of the reasons, according to National Geographic, that the government has not turned down a single oil drilling lease application and has basically turned a blind eye to the environmental destruction taking place.
However, last week the conservative government made a decision regarding oil drilling in Alberta… and the decision is even more Read more…
Joao Maximo
Ski resorts often get a bad rep when it comes to being eco friendly. They use an immense amount of energy every day to power their lifts, light their lodges and accommodate the sprawl of condominiums that have sprung up where green land used to be. However during a recent vacation to Copper Mountain in Colorado, it was nice to see that even ski resorts are making efforts to reduce their carbon footprint. Read more…
An Alberta Oil Sands Toxic Lake. One of Many.
At one point or another we have all witnessed the effects of a much too free market economy when it comes to the oil industry. Massive oil spills, serious deforestation, and now, of course, global warming are all byproducts (or externalities for the eco-nomists) of the carbon intensive lifestyle that we are so accustomed to. Without current government regulation, our planet’s health would be in even more jeopardy than it already is, which, for me, is hard to fathom.
So with that said, what happens to two million square miles of pristine forest, known as Canada’s Boreal Forest, when the worlds second largest oil deposits lie deep below the forest floor, the government turns a blind eye because it’s making billions off of lease sales and royalties, and oil prices skyrocket as they did in the summer of 2008 and are forecasted to again in 2030? Read more…
Graphic Credit: Christian Guthier
Last December, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released the findings of its investigation on the harmful effects of greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases not only drive the climate change we are experiencing which is causing freak weather and the endangerment of the few all natural habitats left in the earth, but, more close to home, the EPA found that the climate change that greenhouse gases drive can cause heat waves that are a danger to people prone to strokes and the ground-level ozone pollution can be linked to respiratory illness. Read more…
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