Is it possible to imagine people powering their cellular phone or music/video device while jogging on a sunny day?

A University of Southern California team has produced flexible transparent carbon atom films that may have great potential for a new breed of solar cells.

In a paper recently published in the journal ACS Nano, researchers stated that organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells have been proposed as a way to create low cost energy due to their ease of manufacture, light weight, and compatibility with flexible substrates.

This work shows that graphene, an extremely conductive and highly transparent form of carbon consisting of atoms-thick sheets of carbon atoms, has high possibility to fill this role.

While graphene’s existence has been known for many years, it has only been studied extensively since 2004 because of the impossibility of manufacturing it in high quality and quantity.

The Study

The University of southern California team has produced graphene/polymer sheets ranging in sizes approximately 150 square centimeters that in turn can be used to create dense arrays of flexible organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells.

These organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices convert solar radiation to electricity, although not as efficiently as silicon cells.

The power provided by sunlight on a sunny day is approximately 1,000 watts per meter square, for every 1,000 watts of sunlight that hits a square meter area of the standard silicon solar cell, 14 watts of electricity will be generated, Organic solar cells are less efficient; their conversion rate for that same 1,000 watts of sunlight in the graphene-based solar cell could be only 1.3 watts.

Benefits of OPV

But what graphene organic photovoltaic (OPV) lack in efficiency, can potentially be compensated by its lower price and, greater physical flexibility.

Researchers think that it may eventually be possible to cover with inexpensive solar cell layers extensive areas like newspapers, magazines or power generating clothing.

In the meanwhile Prof. Ruoff and his colleagues of the mechanical engineering department at the University of Texas at Austin, are studying the basic science in the development of graphene-based ultracapacitors for usage in electronics and other fields.

Batteries vs Ultracapacitors

Prof. Ruoff says batteries are relatively slow, they can store energy but require sometime to charge up, and then they distribute energy slowly, over time.

Ultracapacitors can be charged quickly, within seconds, and discharge in a short time, but, right now, they’re not able to store very much electrical energy.

The introduction of stable and less expensive ultracapacitors could be a key step in using wind or solar-generated power, specially if researchers can discover methods to enable capacitors to store energy longer, that is not yet possible.

Current Potential Usage

Even with their current storage capacity, the graphene devices could provide quick energy when needed in certain situations on the ecological way.

They could be used, as an example, to absorb the heat generated in braking an automobile or train, and store it for a short time, and use it for the electrical needs of the vehicle (i.e. starting the car or acceleration).

About the writer – Sophia H. Walker writes for the solar panel battery charger blog, her personal hobby site focused on tips to help individuals save energy using solar power for small devices.

This article was originally posted on Natural Environment.

For example, according to the infographic, in 2009, China produced 6,200 million tonnes of CO2 compared to 5,800 for the United States. One only needs to look at the population of these two countries to see that something appears to be out of whack.

China has over 4 times the population of the US and yet, the US emits almost as much CO2 as China. Unfortunately, this gap is bound to widen as China becomes more and more prosperous.

As one would expect, the infographic has an airline/transport spin (no doubt due to the fact that its on a flight website), so there are some interesting statistics in that area.

A copy of the infographic is below. Due to its size, I’ve resized it to fit on this blog.

You can view the full-sized infographic here.

This article was originally posted on Natural Environment.

And in an industrial world where the animals are increasingly seen as a commodity or product to make money on haven’t improved the animals well-being. Rather, the intensification of our agriculture sector has made their life worse. And this cruelty is happening around the world. Even in the Swedish meat industry animal cruelty is common. And this even though the Swedish meat industry often and proudly proclaims itself for having "the world’s best animal welfare", one can see the awful consequences of industrial farming. The latest example of this is the Animal Rights Alliance disclosure earlier last year on the abuse and neglect of Swedish pigs.

The following disturbing photos in this blog post has all been provided by the animal rights organization Farm Sanctuary. The organization, which is based in New York, was founded in 1986. Farm Sanctuary document the abuses of factory farms, slaughterhouses, and stockyards, rescue animals from these conditions, rehabilitating and caring for animals at shelters in New York and California, as well as running advocacy and education campaigns on these issues.

Confined in metal and concrete pens with slatted floors, these pigs will live in these conditions until they reach slaughter weight of 250 pounds.

Female pigs used for breeding (breeding sows) spend most of their lives confined in gestation crates so narrow that they cannot turn around.

As you can see, a female pig in a gestation crate has no freedom of movement, and barely even has room to lay down.

Most beef cattle spend the last few months of their lives at feedlots, crowded by the thousands into dusty, manure-laden holding pens. The air is thick with harmful bacteria and particulate matter, and the animals are at a constant risk for respiratory disease. Feedlot cattle are routinely implanted with growth-promoting hormones, and they are fed unnaturally rich diets designed to fatten them quickly and profitably. Because cattle are biologically suited to eat a grass-based, high fiber diet, their concentrated feedlot rations contribute to metabolic disorders.

To raise calves destined to be slaughtered for veal, the calves are confined in crates about two feet wide and are tethered to the front of the crate with a chain around the neck. These calves will be slaughtered when 4-5 months old.

Dairy cattle make up the largest percentage of downed animals in factory farming, 75%. Too sick or injured to walk, this dairy cow is left in the stockyard while a calf looks on.

Though there have been moves in Europe to phase out battery cages for hens, in the US the vast majority of egg laying chickens are confined in battery cages such as these. These cages have wire floors and four or five hens are commonly packed into each cage. Obviously they cannot stretch their wings or exhibit any normal chicken behavior.

At chicken hatcheries, chicks enter the factory farming world packed into huge drawers.

Behind a hatchery for laying hens, unwanted male chicks–which are of no economic value to the egg industry–are simply tossed into a dumpster with shells and other waste.

Because commercial turkeys have been bred to have such unnaturally large breasts, to satisfy consumer preference for breast meat, they cannot mount and reproduce naturally. Thus, artificial insemination must be used for reproduction.

Due to the severely overcrowded conditions they will face, baby turkeys have the upper part of their beaks seared off so that injuries caused by pecking one another can be minimized.

Although not confined in cages like egg laying chickens, chickens raised for meat are packed so tightly in grower houses that each chicken is alloted about half a square foot of space. If that isn’t bad enough, because broiler chickens have been bred to grow so quickly (twice as fast and large as their ancestors) the organs and skeleton don’t always keep up with this growth. The heart and lungs can’t support the unnatural body mass, resulting in heart failure and large numbers of deaths a year due to health conditions.

Up to 10,000 chickens are often packed into cages for shipping to the slaughterhouse. On route, they are offered no protection from the elements and a certain percentage of birds are expected to die on each journey due to cold or heat.

At the slaughterhouse, chickens are hung up by their feet fully conscious. Although some slaughterhouses stun the birds by passing them through an electrified bath of water, US federal law specifically excludes chickens from the Humane Slaughter Act mandating that animals be stunned before being killed. However, often times the birds are not rendered unconscious by the shock and proceed, still hung by their feet, to have their necks cut by a mechanical blade. Unfortunately if the bird is not sufficiently stunned, the blade may not actually kill it and the animal proceeds to the next stage in the process while still alive. The birds are then submerged in boiling water to scald them and remove feathers. It’s estimated that millions of chickens a year in the US are ultimately killed in the slaughterhouse by this last step, being boiled alive.

This article was originally posted on the Green Blog under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

"Satellite monitoring by the NSIDC in Boulder, Colorado, shows that the melting of sea ice has been unusually fast this year, with as much as 40,000 sq km now disappearing daily.

The melt season started almost a month later than normal at the end of March and is not expected to end until September.

Meanwhile, research from the polar science centre at the University of Washington suggests that the volume of sea ice in March 2010 was 20,300 cubic km, 38% below the 1979 level when records began."

And according to James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and one of the world’s most prominent climate scientist, new data also shows that the global surface temperatures may also be at record levels. According to a newly released paper by Hansen and his colleagues the temperature on Earth has for the past 12 months been 0.65C warmer than previous global temperatures from 1951 to 1980. The paper also shows that the global temperature this year will break the previous record from 2005.

"It is likely that the 2010 global surface temperature … will be a record", Hansen writes.

"Global warming on decadal timescales is continuing without let-up … we conclude that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.2C/decade that began in the late 1970s."

The Guardian article has written about more findings so be sure to check that article out. Especially worth noting is the new data which shows that January to April this year has been the hottest on record so far. Climate Progress writes:

"Last month tied May 1998 as the hottest on record in the NASA dataset. More significantly, following fast on the heels of easily the hottest April — and hottest Jan-April — on record, it’s also the hottest Jan-May on record.

Also, the combined land-surface air and sea-surface water temperature anomaly for March-April-May was 0.73°C above the 1951-1980 mean, blowing out the old record of 0.65°C set in 2002."

And the temperature records continues! New data also shows that the temperature during January-June this year has been the hottest ever recorded by NASA.

"It’s all the more powerful evidence of human-caused warming “because it occurs when the recent minimum of solar irradiance is having its maximum cooling effect,” as a recent NASA paper notes."

But La Nina conditions might build up during July and August which might reduce the average heat temperature for 2010.

Meteorologist Jeff Masters also notes that new temperature records have been reached in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Chad, Niger, Pakistan and Myanmar. Masters writes:

"We’ve now had eight countries in Asia and Africa, plus the Asian portion of Russia, that have beaten their all-time hottest temperature record during the past two months. This includes Asia’s hottest temperature of all-time, the astonishing 53.5°C (128.3°F) mark set on May 26 in Pakistan…. This week’s heat wave in Africa and the Middle East is partially a consequence of the fact that Earth has now seen three straight months with its warmest temperatures on record, according to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center."

Also read:  Hundreds die in Indian heatwave – Death toll expected to rise as India faces record temperatures of up to 122F in hottest summer on record

This article was originally posted on the Green Blog under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

What kind of role does our mass media play in how we perceive and react to environmental problems around us? Who are currently the owners of our mainstream media? And how does corporations use it to their own benefits?

The media these days are just another big business managed not more differently than any other industry. The mainstream media is very global in its scope (just think on CNN as an example) and like any other business its owned by a handful of large transnational corporations, or TNCs. General Electric (GE) is an example of a media owning TNC as it operates NBC Universal in USA.

But how did it come to this? How come TNCs have such a big influence? If we look back in the US history we find some explanations. In the early days corporations was actually a public institution designed to serve the citizens in USA. It might be hard to imagine today in USA but the state had a great control over these political created corporations. But as time moved on these corporations became increasingly privatized. This was in the beginning fueled by the need to create private finances to help in war efforts and colonial state expansion and imperialism which took place during this period. But as corporations grew bigger and richer their political powers increased even further. During the nineteenth century the privatization increased rapidly as laws and ideologies were introduced to accommodate the corporate interests. In 1868 the US Supreme Court ruled in favor for private corporations to be given the same rights and protections as a “natural person” under the nations constitution. This meant that corporations were now free to influence the government with the very same rights as individual citizens had. This paved the way for corporate donations and lobbying which was used to “dominate public thought and discourse”. Elizabeth Campbell notes that as a result corporations today basically controls individual politicians and whole political parties in the USA.

When it comes to the media it wasn’t until around the twentieth century that things changed and a new corporate media industry started to emerge. Before the twentieth century most of the media was local and national and not as globalized or privatized as they are today. The first forms of global media was the radio broadcasting and the film industry. 85% of all the films people were watching in cinemas by 1914 was coming from the US. And it was around this time that corporations and nations started to realize the importance of media as a political tool. At the end of World War II the USA successfully used the global media to reinforce the picture of its nation as a leading superpower in the world. After World War II the transition from local and public-owned media to global and corporate owned media begun. And with the successful spread of English media around the world commercials and advertising increased rapidly.

Mass media and advertising

Because mainstream media is privately owned their end goal is of course to make money from their business. And like one can imagine advertising is one of the main income sources. This means that the media have to comply with and cater to their advertisers wishes so they don’t lose their income source. And those who can afford to advertise are the transnational corporations who all share and push the free-market capitalistic ideology. Campbell writes that these large corporate advertisers rarely want to sponsor shows or programs that involves any kind of serious environmental, social or political criticism towards any corporate activities.

Product-placement in the media, for example when Pepsi pays to have their soda drink visible in a TV-show, is a multi-billion-dollar industry these days. And to be able to influence the public, i.e. their consumers, corporations spend more than half as much per capita on advertising than what is spent on education around the world. With the help of advertising corporations can construct needs and desires among the public for their various products. The ideology which is spread with the help from the mainstream media and the advertising industry encourages mass consumption on an unquestioned level and promotes consumption as happiness.

Because corporations are all about profit margins they want to advertise their products to the largest audience possible. And when the media is profit-driven they want to attract as many viewers or readers as possible to be able to sell more advertisements and increase their sponsor income. And as Campbell notes it seems that the largest audiences can be brought together by offering celebrity gossip news, sex, violence or other shock value tactics. And of course this is what the mainstream media will concentrate their coverage on then. Thus the more in-depth and the more complex social, political or environmental issues gets left behind in the shadows of the spotlight on the “infotainment” news and “advertorials”. See the above image screenshot for example.

Corporate media means less diversity

In the beginning of this post I mentioned General Electric as one of the media owning TNCs. GE is one of the six firms that controls most of the news, commentary and entertainment in the USA. Besides GE these six firms are AOL-Time Warner, Viacom, Disney, NewsCorp and Bertelsmann. They are also ranked among the world’s richest corporations. Just 25 years ago there were around 50 different corporate owners in the US media. So as one can imagine if there are only six corporations in the USA, who all concentrate on their own self-interests, while controlling the majority of all the media consumed it results in less diversity for their audiences. And it doesn’t matter then, as Campbell notes, if there are more information available if there is a lack of diversity. Less diversity means less democratic media. Let me explain this a bit further. In USA the top media sources such as CNN, Fox News and the New York Times etc supply the local papers and broadcasters with national and international news. So while the news are being described in many various media actors the news and opinions all originates from the same source.

Richard Peet and Elaine Hartwick also notes that the mainstream media rarely have any coverage or debates about leftist and socialistic theories of development which are critical of our current capitalistic society. They argue this is because the mainstream media is so much largely controlled by private interests who only want to cover conservative and “at most” liberal viewpoints and topics. “Indeed, most people even in the “free democracies” go through life without even hearing the great critical ideas and the political-economic motives of leftist intellectuals,” they write.

And in an effort to increase their incomes and securing their profit-margins the corporate media is cutting their costs wherever they can. And unfortunately this means less quality and objective news journalism and more cheap “infotainment” like I’ve mentioned before. A big cost for the news media corporations are their overseas and field reporters. In-depth and field-based reporting is even on a national and local level expensive and reporters based overseas is in turn even more costly. Another result of the cost-saving measurements is that the media gets gradually more and more dependent on “official sources” in their reporting. Campbell notes that the global mainstream media is backing up their stories with information from “experts” provided by businesses and governments. An example of this is the Pentagon, as a government funded department, and Exxon Mobil, as a privately owned corporation, who both has the funds available to offer news organizations with everything from “experts” available for questioning to press statements, quotes and photo opportunities. According to Campbell this reliance is risky as it can make the reporters and journalists hesitant to confront, challenge or debate the information provided by these governmental and corporate bodies as it might “damage their established relationship”. It also means that only the wealthy are able to fully access and exercise their right to free speech in the media.

PR firms and think-tanks are the media tools for the corporations

Due to their size, power and involvement in our societies these media corporations play one of the biggest roles in shaping each generations own personal values and thoughts, as well as people’s political and environmental stances. According to Campbell today’s media corporations have “almost total power” to decide what kind of topics will and will not be covered and discussed in our TVs, radios and newspapers. And as Campbell points out environmental topics in the mainstream media are never debated in a way that points out corporations as the source of the problem or the environmental degradation. Her example here is global warming. In USA the climate change debate has been mostly centered around the question if it is a problem or not. This question has managed to stay alive in the media debates mostly thanks to the work of corporate funded think-tanks and PR firms. These PR firms and think-tanks have managed to create a feeling among the public that there still are clear doubts and that the arguments are balanced on both sides of the global warming spectrum.

A Gallup survey released last year shows that an increasing number of Americans (41%) believe that global warming is being “exaggerated” in the media. According to Gallup this is the highest level of public skepticism ever reported when it comes to the coverage on global warming by the mainstream media in USA. The same survey also shows that Americans have started to feel a bit less worried about climate change. The overall worry has decreased from 65% in 2007 and 66% in 2008 to 60% in 2009. According to Gallup global warming was the only environmental issue that “dropped significantly” among the public concerns during 2008. And lastly the survey shows that 16%, a new record-high for Gallup, of Americans believe the effects of climate change will never occur. But it’s still important to note that a majority of Americans still believe that climate change is being correctly portrayed, or even underestimated, in the media.

And as people usually tend to only favor actions on issues that there seems to be no clear doubts about one must say that these PR firms and think-tanks have succeeded in their work of creating “manufactured doubt”. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the CATO institute, all situated in the political centre in Washington D.C., are examples of powerful corporate funded think-tanks who has a huge influence in shaping the global warming debate in the media. These think-tanks use both emotional arguments as well as scare tactics to create their “manufactured doubt” in the media. Examples of arguments can be that any cuts in our energy consumption would harm workers, elder and poor people around the world. Or that renewable energy is both expensive and damaging to the environment. They also promote the views of a selected few scientists who disagree with the strong consensus and the vast majority of scientists and scientific institutions on man-made climate change. Another example is the now disbanded Global Climate Coalition which was carefully created by PR firms to give the impression of a friendly grassroots organization while actually lobbying against environmental reforms. This so-called grassroots organization had around 50 different trade associations and corporations who were involved in the oil, coal, gas, automobile and chemical industry.

The tactics used by the agrichemical industry back in 1962 alongside the release of the widely popular book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson is yet another example. Carson’s book criticized the use of dangerous toxins such as DDT and helped create awareness of environmental destruction. The agrichemical industry responded by distributing thousands of negative book reviews of Silent Spring and at the same time they doubled their PR budget. According to Campbell it is estimated that corporations and businesses in USA spends $1 billion every year on PR firms and think-tanks who help them lobby against environmental reforms, laws and protection in the media.

Earlier this year Greenpeace exposed the US-based Koch Industries, a privately owned oil company, as a major financial contributor to global warming skeptics in both Europe and USA. According to Greenpeace Koch Industries donated around $48 million to different climate skeptic groups and think-tanks between 1997 and 2008. The money went to many well-known conservative and libertarian think-tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato institute and the Foundation for research on economics and the environment. Greenpeace claims all of these think-tanks are “at the forefront of the anti-global warming debate”. The Guardian also writes that Koch Industries also spent nearly $6 million ($5.7m) on various political campaigns and another $37 on lobbying in support of fossil fuels.

“Koch industries is playing a quiet but dominant role in the global warming debate. This private, out-of-sight corporation has become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition. On repeated occasions organisations funded by Koch foundations have led the assault on climate science and scientists, ‘green jobs’, renewable energy and climate policy progress.”

Now one might think that these climate denying think-tanks are solely funded by oil, gas and coal corporations who might have something to win by creating a fog of confusion and doubt around global warming. But this is not entirely the case. The CATO institute is for example funded by well-known corporations such as Comcast, FedEx, GM, Honda, Microsoft, TimeWarner, Toyota, Visa, VW, and WalMart among others. These corporations was, according to Cato’s own annual report in 2007, contributing financially to the think-tank and helped fund an “absurd anti-scientific denier ad” in major American newspapers such as the The New York Times in 2009. Campbell claims that government action on environmental issues such as global warming is lagging behind because these topics can’t be discussed “seriously” in the mainstream media. Instead, she says, the mainstream media and their corporate owners put the spotlight on simplistic topics such as discrediting individual environmentalists and “controversial scientific reports” instead of debating the larger and harder questions. Campbell writes that:

“By reducing complex issues like global warming to simplistic special interest-driven sound bites about whether or not it really exists, citizens consuming the media become incapable of understanding and acting on real debate and questioning and instead prefer easy answers, quick fixes, and easy-to-grasp phrases. Audiences thus grow apathetic, cynical, and quiescent about media presentations of environmental issues, which has resulted in an increasingly widespread lack of interest in engaging in them.”

And this lack of interest is a major threat to democracy which requires a actively involved and informed citizen to function properly. Campbell concludes that a so-called democracy that only caters to corporate interests “will never pursue a path toward social and environmental sustainability”.

Journalismgate

A paper on what kind of role the media plays in how we perceive and react to environmental issues around us is not complete without talking about “Climategate”, as the media calls it. Climategate is what climate skeptics labeled as “the final nail in the coffin” of “the theory of global warming”. The root of this “climate scandal”, as the mainstream media portrayed it, was some email conversations between scientists at a climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain. The emails, who were illegally hacked, was reported to be evidence of some sort of attempt to manipulate and prevent scientific climate data to be released to the public.

One can easily remember all the news reports, debates and commentaries from scientists who claimed the emails were taken out of context and all the various climate skeptics who claimed this was the evidence which exposed man-made climate change as a fraud last year. Even here in Sweden climate skeptics seemed to breathe fresh air from the major Climategate news coverage. Lars Bern who is one of the founders of the Stockholm Initiative, a Swedish think-tank which opposes the strong link between climate change and human activity, claimed that this was evidence on the “systematically manipulation” of temperature data from UN climate scientists.

But was Climategate really the big scandal that the climate skeptics and largely the mainstream media portrayed it as? Of course not. Recently an independent inquiry set up to investigate the Climategate affair came to the conclusion that there was “absolutely no evidence of any impropriety whatsoever.” Lord Oxburgh said that “whatever was said in the emails, the basic science seems to have been done fairly and properly”. But did this exoneration for the involved scientists from the University of East Anglia get as much coverage in the mainstream media as the false claims from the climate skeptics did? Did anyone in the mass media try to figure out who hacked the emails? Well from my own, and many others, experience they did not. Why is it, like Johann Hari says, that:

“…when it comes to coverage of global warming, we are trapped in the logic of a guerrilla insurgency. The climate scientists have to be right 100 percent of the time, or their 0.01 percent error becomes Glaciergate, and they are frauds. By contrast, the deniers only have to be right 0.01 percent of the time for their narrative–See! The global warming story is falling apart!–to be reinforced by the media. It doesn’t matter that their alternative theories are based on demonstrably false claims, as they are with all the leading “thinkers” in this movement.”

I would say that we can find the answers in the mainstream media’s recent corporate development to why the climate skeptics only have to be right “0.01 percent of the time” to get their claims reinforced in the media. I have with the help from Campbell and others tried to make it apparent that the global mainstream media only cares about their profit-margins and rather want to focus on “infotainment” news, and stories like Climategate, as it helps them pursue their corporate owners free-market and consumption-driven agenda. My main and most obvious example of how corporations have controlled the debates and reports in the mainstream media has been global warming. But there are of course other examples of environmental issues and topics that the media has failed to adequately report on.

Two of those are for example the topic of the garbage’s created by our society and the various energy related issues. The media fails to inform the public on the issue of the millions of metric tons of household, chemical and corporate waste that are affecting a large population of people very day. Campbell argues that it becomes an “nonissue” because those people affected by the waste are not “key power holders” or the media corporations main target audience. When it comes to energy related issues such as oil drilling the media often simplify it to a question of whether who is for or against it. But these “both sides of the story” reports can not cover the complete story in such a complex issue as energy is. The corporate media also fails to explain or examine for their viewers and readers about the connections between energy production and consumption, our dependence on fossil fuels and those who control these energy sources. Simply put, the media is failing to relate environmental and social problems with the socioeconomic factors and powers that have created them. Campbell argues that as an result of this people gets the impression from the media that the war on terrorism, energy consumption and corporate power for example are totally unrelated issues to each other.

Rush Limbaugh might be an extreme example of a conservative corporate mainstream media. But he works just fine as a shock example. In the ongoing BP offshore oil drilling scandal, out in the Gulf of Mexico, Limbaugh is claiming that the explosion could have been an inside “Earth Day eco-sabotage” and that the cleanup is unnecessary: “The ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone and left out there,” Limbaugh said. “It’s natural. It’s as natural as the ocean water is”.

So if we want to be able to have informed citizens, move towards a more environmental and socially sustainable society and a media which not only the wealthy have right to access and use we need to deal with the corporate mainstream media. Otherwise we will soon face a major threat to our fragile democracy. After all, those who have the control over the mass media controls our culture and society.

This article was originally posted on the Green Blog under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

“Just as BP is the subject of a federal criminal investigation, causing needless pain and suffering to animals violates each affected state’s anti-cruelty laws,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “BP can compensate for the loss of human livelihoods, but it can never make up for the loss of life that it has inflicted on these states’ animals.”

According to PETA, the anti-cruelty laws of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida provide that any person who unnecessarily causes the torment or death of any animal is guilty of a misdemeanor.

The impact on the oil spill on wildlife includes:

• Some oil-soaked birds lose the ability to float and ultimately drown.
• Other birds die from hypothermia or hyperthermia after oil destroys the insulating powers of their feathers.
• Oil contamination in turtles can cause chemical burns, and kidney, liver, and brain damage can result after animals ingest the tar balls and chemical dispersants that have inundated the Gulf.
• Marine mammals lose body weight when they can not feed due to contamination of their environment by oil
• Birds become easy prey, as their feathers being matted by oil make them less able to fly away;
• Marine mammals such as fur seals become easy prey if oil sticks their flippers to their bodies, making it hard for them to escape predators

Those are just some of the affects of oil spills on wildlife. And, there’s also the affect on the food chain. For example, poisoning of wildlife higher up the food chain if they eat large amounts of other organisms that have taken oil into their tissues. This can also result in poisoning of young through the mother, as a dolphin calf can absorb oil through it’s mothers milk.

To date, more than a thousand animals-including 333 sea turtles and 41 dolphins and other mammals-have been collected dead along the coast. Whales are also expected to be among the casualties.

How Can I Help?

You can assist PETA by sending your concerns to the attorneys general in question.

About PETA

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), with more than 2 million members and supporters, is the largest animal rights organization in the world.

PETA focuses its attention on the four areas in which the largest numbers of animals suffer the most intensely for the longest periods of time: on factory farms, in laboratories, in the clothing trade, and in the entertainment industry. We also work on a variety of other issues, including the cruel killing of beavers, birds and other “pests,” and the abuse of backyard dogs.

PETA works through public education, cruelty investigations, research, animal rescue, legislation, special events, celebrity involvement, and protest campaigns.

This article was originally posted on Natural Environment.

The right-wing government in Sweden unfortunately won, with a two votes margin, the pro-nuclear vote in the parliament this past week and is now in full climate-wrecking gear. The political left-leaning opposition as well as numerous environmental organizations have criticized the plans to scrap the Settlement Act and the ban on new nuclear power in Sweden.

Maria Wetterstrand, political leader of the Green Party, said during the parliament vote that this decision “could mean Sweden will be making itself dependent on nuclear power for 100 more years and there will be 100,000 years of consequences for future generations who will have to take care of the waste.”

If the opposition gets the majority of the votes in the upcoming general election in Sweden this September they have promised that they will try to reverse this nuclear vote.

Ludvig Tillman, spokesman for Greenpeace in Sweden, criticized the narrow vote margin and said that: “With a narrow majority, the members of parliament show they do not take the environmental risks posed by nuclear power seriously, and that they do not trust in the enormous potential there is for Swedish renewable energy.”

The Swedish right-wing government will end their 4 years in power with an rather awful environmental record. Besides ignoring reports that points to nuclear energy as an dangerous, not cost-effective, and too expensive energy solution that even will worsen climate change the coalition of right-leaning parties have also made other climate wrecking decisions. The biggest of them all must be the complete embarrassment during the climate summits in Poland (Cop14) where the Swedish government called for as much as 88% of the EU emission cuts to be allowed to do overseas in development countries. In Copenhagen and during the Cop15 meetings the Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt refused to push for strong climate targets and disagreed with Connie Hedegaard, EU Commissioner for the Climate and COP 15 President, and her calls for 30% emission reduction targets in EU.

Other major climate-wrecking decisions include the controversial Bypass Stockholm (Förbifart Stockholm). The traffic link motorway will span 20 kilometres of which 17 kilometres will be by tunnel. It is estimated the new motorway will cost taxpayers 27 billion kronor ($3.75 billion), although the final costs will probably end up much higher, and will thus become one of the most single expensive traffic construction projects in Swedish history. Critics to Bypass Stockholm have complained that the new motorway will results in increased CO2 emissions. The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that the construction of the new bypass will result in an 80% increase in CO2 emissions in the Stockholm region by 2030.

“The government’s decision is very unfortunate. Bypass Stockholm will increase Stockholm’s effect on the climate and increase vehicle numbers. At the same time, it will take resources from important commitments to communal traffic,” said the Green Party’s spokesperson, Maria Wetterstrand.

But the Swedish government has ignored all this and the appointed Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren even had the guts to describe the new motorway as an “environmentally friendly motorway”. Like it could ever be such a thing as an environmentally friendly motorway.

Another big climate letdown from the Swedish right-wing government is their failure to stop Vattenfall, Europe’s third-largest energy company which is wholly owned by the Swedish Government, from investing heavily in dirty fossil fuels such as coal in Europe. They are currently building a new coal plant outside of Hamburg in Germany that once completed will become the biggest in Europe. As an energy corporation Vattenfall is releasing more greenhouse gases than all of Sweden combined.

Let’s hope that the left-leaning opposition gets the majority of the votes in the general election this September so that they can stop the downward spiral in Sweden. I miss the days when Sweden was a leading role model around the world in green innovation and policies. I mean, If neighboring country Norway can have plans and targets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions with 40% by 2020 so can Sweden.

This article was originally posted on the Green Blog under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

Growing your own food is a great way to reduce your carbon footprint, guarantee food safety and quality, and save money in the process. But if you’re short on time and space, containers are an easy way to garden. If you haven’t started your garden yet for the summer, it’s not too late.

Soil

Make sure that the soil you buy is natural, with no pesticides, herbicides or artificial fertilizers added to it. There are organic options for fertilizers available (such as natural manure and peat) although plants in containers usually thrive without adding anything to the soil. In some cases, plants can benefit from crushed eggshells added to the soil, which provides extra calcium.

Containers

One of the biggest mistakes organic gardeners can make is using treated wood for containers. Chemicals that the wood has been treated with can leach into the soil and into your vegetables. Choose raw, natural wood instead. Ceramic or clay pots are also available, and of course, the cheapest option is plastic. Make sure all the containers have areas for drainage. Most store-bought containers have a hole in the bottom already, but if you’re making your own, be sure to add one.

Vegetables

• Make sure that all the seeds and plants you buy are certified organic. For those of us who live in North America and are not lucky enough to have genetically-modified products and seeds labeled as such, certified organic guarantees that they are not genetically engineered.
• Tomatoes are a great plant for any beginner because they’re so easy to take care of. Also, there are tons of heirloom varieties to choose from. Cherry tomatoes are a classic favourite, but it’s also fun to experiment with yellow tomatoes, green tomatoes, and tiger-stripe tomatoes. They make recipes like pasta sauce and bruschetta more colourful and delicious. The thing to keep in mind with tomato plants is that they can get quite tall, and require sturdy wooden poles for support. It’s easy to tie the plants loosely to the poles with some hemp twine.
• Other vegetables that are good options to include root vegetables like radishes, beets and carrots. Peppers are also surprisingly easy to grow in containers. Organic bell peppers can be quite expensive, so this is definitely a good investment. Greens like lettuce and spinach work well too.
• Finally, herbs are an essential for the beginner gardener. Chives and rosemary are great in cooking, and lavender and mint can make tea and sweet-smelling homemade bodycare products. Parsley is one of the easiest herbs to grow—it doesn’t need a lot of warmth or water (it can even survive the winter!), it doesn’t attract a lot of pests and it can be added to almost any recipe. Herbs can be combined in one big planter, while vegetables should be kept separate.

Watering

The great thing about containers is that they can easily be moved in and out of the sun or rain. You can even buy wheels for the bottom of the containers! Some plants do better in the elements then others, but moving them undercover when its raining is generally a good idea. When watering your plants, water close to the roots and try to avoid getting the leaves and vegetables wet. When you first plant seeds, water gently so the seeds won’t get uprooted and wash away.

Insects

Not all insects are bad in the garden. Knowing which bugs to keep around can actually improve your vegetables. Garden-friendly insects include bees (to pollinate plants), ladybugs, dragonflies and spiders (who will eat insects you don’t want) and earthworms. Not-so-friendly critters include slugs and snails, and aphids. You can also make your own organic “pesticide” by pouring a little liquid soap on aphids, which will kill them. Even better, introducing ladybugs will solve the problem.

In many cases, simply spraying aphids with the hose will wash them away. Slugs can usually be deterred by a ring of eggshells or pine needles around the plants that they cannot cross. To kill slugs, beer and salt both work well.

This article was originally posted on the Green Blog under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

Theodora at The Big Wild recently contacted me to let me know about an infographic posted on The Big Wild website.

The infographic (right), compares how “wild” Canada, the United States, and Mexico are based on facts like each country’s ecological footprint.

I was particularly interested to see that Canada’s “wildness” factor is 82%, compared to 36% and 18% for the United States and Mexico respectively.

I was also amazed to learn that Canada accounts for 24% of the world’s wild forests, 20% of the world’s fresh water, and 24% of global wetlands.

According to The Big Wild:

Real wilderness needs to be large enough to keep the natural balance – and that means thinking big.

That’s the vision behind The Big Wild. Conservation scientists believe we need to protect at least half of Canada’s wild spaces to ensure the integrity of our ecosystems.

About The Big Wild

The Big Wild is a partnership project between Canada’s Mountain Equipment Co-op and Canadian Parks and Wilderness. The Big Wild is a a conservation project dedicated to protecting at least half of Canada’s publicly-owned land and water.

This article was originally posted on Natural Environment.

photo by Kevin Lallier

At this point, most people are at least somewhat aware that pesticides cause a great deal of environmental harm. Less well known are the effects pesticides have on individual and public health. Here, I give you 5 compelling reasons to avoid pesticides.

A quick note: This list is a little data-heavy.  To start, it will help to read through the bold lines first, and then go back to see the data behind each claim.

1. Acute exposure can kill you.

“Late in the afternoon of April 1, 1990, a three-year-old girl playing in front of her trailer home in California’s San Joaquin Valley suddenly lost control of her body and began foaming at the mouth. By the time the girl arrived at the local emergency room, she was near death. She recovered eventually. A report filed with the California Department of Pesticide Regulation concluded the child had been poisoned by aldicarb, a highly toxic insecticide that works the same way on people as it does on bugs — like nerve gas. ‘Somebody had parked a tractor with pesticide material on it right in front of the play area,’ said Michael O’Malley, the author of the report and a physician at the University of California, Davis.”
– Matt Crenson, Associated Press, December 9, 1997

Some common symptoms of over-exposure include burning, stinging, or itchy eyes, nose, throat and skin; nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, wheezing, coughing, headache. These symptoms can range from mild irritation to death. These symptoms are often misdiagnosed and not attributed to pesticide poisoning. [Peel Public Health]

2. Chronic exposure to pesticides can lead to neurological damage, including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.

Several studies have shown a link between pesticide exposure and the onset of Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, as well as other neurological conditions such as epilepsy. The main path of exposure is airborne: breathing pesticides. Recently, UCLA researchers looked at Central Valley residents diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and found that “years of exposure to the combination of these two pesticides [the herbicide paraquat and fungicide maneb] increased the risk of Parkinson’s by 75 percent. Further, for people 60 years old or younger diagnosed with Parkinson’s, earlier exposure had increased their risk for the disease by as much as four- to six-fold.” [ScienceDaily]

Dr. Patrick Carr of the University of North Dakota finds that low doses of pesticide exposure induces physical changes in the brain, shown in a PET scan. These changes correlate to “a loss of neurons in particular regions of the brain.” Other regions not experiencing a loss instead express different amounts of neurotransmitter chemicals, altering the delicate chemical balance in the brain. [MPRNews]

3. Chronic exposure to pesticides increases the chance of developing endocrine and reproductive disorders. Here are two pesticides to use as case studies:

DDT:
Young women exposed to DDT (in the 1950s) have a greater chance of developing breast cancer later in life. From the Pesticide Action Network – UK:

One recent study found higher levels of miscarriages among women exposed to DDT, and reproductive disorders associated with DDT are well documented in animal studies[6,7]. Another recent study found developmental delays among babies and toddlers exposed in the womb[8]. Other studies have linked DDT to reduced breastmilk production, premature delivery and reduced infant birthweights[9,10]. DDT is classified by US and international authorities as a probable human carcinogen[11].

DDT is now banned in the US, but is being revived for use as an anti-malaria agent in developing nations. I mention DDT because it shows you the egregious effects of using pesticides that have been poorly studied. Additionally, DDT is still present in our air.

Atrazine:
Atrazine has been one of the top two selling pesticides in the US, also commonly found in household pesticide sprays. Many studies on frogs and rodents have shown that atrazine causes developmental disorders and delays and compromises healthy immune function. Most significantly, atrazine causes male frogs and rodents to feminize and produce ovaries and eggs. Animal studies have predictive value in humans, as hormone functions are very similar among all animals. Tyrone Hayes, professor of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley (whose course I took, he is absolutely amazing, by the way), has done extensive work on this subject and is a prime example of science activism. His website, atrazinelovers.com informs the public about all deleterious effects of atrazine and is backed up with extensive research data. His site states,

similar to atrazine’s induction of prostate cancer and mammary cancer in laboratory rodents, men exposed to atrazine in a Syngenta production facility in Louisiana developed prostate cancer at 8.4 times the rate of unexposed factory workers [9, 10] and women whose well water was contaminated with atrazine were more likely to develop breast cancer when compared to women who lived in the same area, but who do not drink well water [11].

4. Pesticide spray can drift through the air, being carried thousands of miles from where it was originally sprayed. They contaminate our waterways, and can be found in drinking water.

Pesticides can be detected miles from agricultural sites, can be detected in rainfall, as well as in the air. A study by the US Geological Survey in 2000 revealed that “every rain and air sample collected from the urban and agricultural sites had detectable levels of multiple pesticides. The magnitude of total concentration was 5-10 times higher at the agricultural site as compared to the urban site.” In this study, methyl parathion was the pesticide with highest concentration in both air and rain samples. Additionally, even though two decades have passed since the ban of DDT in the US, a metabolite of DDT (p,p’-DDE) was detected in every air sample collected from the agricultural site and in over half the air samples from the urban site.

Atrazine:
Atrazine is highly mobile and can travel as far as 600 miles from the initial point of application. Every year, a half million pounds of atrazine returns to the US in the form of rain and snowfall. It is also the most common groundwater contaminant, and has persisted in France where it has not been applied for 15 years. [atrazinelovers.com]

The EPA allows an average of 3 ppb (parts per billion) of atrazine to be present in drinking water. This is a running average, and does not consider the maximum level that could possibly be present during peak use of atrazine. “Concentrations as low as 0.1 ppb have been shown to alter the development of sex characteristics in male frogs.” [NRDC]

5. Persistent pesticide use over long periods of time results in lower crop yields, reduced soil fertility, and increased susceptibility to attack by new forms of pests and disease.

Soil fertility and crop yield:
Pesticides reduce activity of beneficial microflora in soil, therefore while yields are initially high, they will decline over time due to loss of soil health and fertility. I will have to save discussion of beneficial microflora in soil for a different entry, but in essence, soil health depends on a large variety of factors. These include a combination of beneficial bacteria (rhizobia), fungi (mycelia), worms, etc, working together to aid plants in nutrient absorption. A study by Tulane University Professor John McLachlan reveals the inhibitory effects pesticides have on these beneficial microflora and fauna, and how this translates to declining yields over time, as well as declining soil health (the ability to continue to grow crops).

Genetic diversity for resistance to pest and disease outbreak:
Industrial agriculture also promotes growing crops in monoculture, which means to grow only one species of crop, eliminating any genetic diversity. Genetic diversity is an asset which protects against new diseases. Pests, viruses, and bacteria are all constantly mutating. If an invading pest arrives with a powerful new mutation, a monoculture cannot withstand the pest attack. However, a genetically diverse set of crops will have a greater chance of withstanding the attack, as some variations may have better protection against new intruders than others. Don’t put your eggs in one basket! Such extensive pesticide use increases a monoculture crop’s vulnerability to disease and also accelerates pesticide resistance in weeds. [PANNA]

To end on an optimistic note: The amount of detectable pesticide residues in human urine drops immediately after switching to an organic diet. [Chengsheng Lu et. al]

For further reading:

• Pesticides in rain in four agricultural watersheds in the United States
• NYTimes: Debating Just How Much Atrazine is Safe In Your Drinking Water
• Chronic dietary exposure to low-dose mixture of Genistein and Vinclozolin modifies the reproductive axis, testis transcriptome, and fertility
• Harvard School of Public Health: Pesticides Exposure Associated With Parkinson’s Disease
• Daily Mail UK: Breathing pesticides can trigger MS and Parkinson’s disease

This article was originally posted on the Green Blog under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.