EcocentricGeoengineering
Just in case you missed it, have a look at Bjorn Lomborg’s essay for TIME this week on why we should use geoengineering to stave off the immediate effects of global warming until greener energy sources are practically integrated into the global economy. (Watch a Q&A with Lomborg.)
What do you think? Are man-made fixes — like …
EcocentricOil
Here’s an interesting piece of news from Tim Webb at the Guardian about Greenland’s latest pitch to the oil industry: pay us $2 billion dollars, and then you can drill. Greenland — which is divided on whether the recent interest of global companies in its oil and gas resources is a blessing or a curse — has evidently been …
EcocentricOceans
Full disclosure: I don’t ‘cruise.’ The idea of boarding a moveable city and being forced to share every meal for a week with friendly strangers does not sound like fun to me. Add ship morgues, and the fact that U.S. ships are now required to have sexual assault forensic specialists on board, and I think we’re dealing with …
EcocentricTechnology
Another blueprint for the Green Green Revolution was announced today at the 3rd International Rice Congress, and this time it’s all about — you guessed it — rice. Well, according to rice types anyway (the corn guys might have a different theory). But the scientists that unveiled the Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP), a …
EcocentricWildlife
All along the northern coast of Sicily there is evidence of organized crime: empty tonnaros, or tuna canneries, that went out of business last century when the massive blue fin tunas they hauled from the Mediterranean for generations finally disappeared. Sicily’s ghostly tonnaros may not have much to do with the Corleones or the
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EcocentricWildlife
Call it the deformed canary in the coalmine. Scientists have found that several species of wild birds in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska are growing deformed beaks at rates never before recorded. The birds, whose beaks are severely elongated, curved or even crossed, have developed what’s called avian keratin disorder, and though the
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EcocentricForests
Mount Merapi continued to take its toll today, as the bodies of four rescue team members were recovered from the slopes of the volcano. In the past two weeks of eruptions taking place in west Java, over 140 have died, and civilians have been forbidden from entering a 20-kilometer zone around the volcano.
The archipelago of Indonesia,
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EcocentricPolitics
New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was the belle of the ball this morning at a international climate change conference here in Hong Kong. He was here as the new chair of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, a group of 40 cities worldwide committed to tackling climate change. (Here’s a map of participating cities.)
Bloomberg shared
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EcocentricInvasive Species
Sometime after World War II, the Boiga irregularis, or the brown tree snake, is believed to have hitched a ride on a cargo ship and landed on the Pacifc island of Guam. For the snake, Guam was paradise, home to a large number of prey and no natural predators. By 1970, the snake had colonized the entire island, pushing several bird
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EcocentricUncategorized
When you first get to Hong Kong, there are a few clues that this city might have a trash problem on its hands — like the fact that people seem to live off takeaway food, which all comes in plastic containers that are then wrapped in a paper bag, wrapped in a plastic bag. Or how at global chains like Pret A Manger, the nice people …
