Published on May 16th, 2008
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If you are obese, you are probably more responsible for global warming than you ever thought. And your contribution to global warming is really serious and very, very significant because 400,000,000 of you are obese!
Your often too generous uptake of food and fuel for transport is actually placing a great strain on already depleting world resources, according to some British researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
This may be too warm to handle… What compounds the weighty problem is that obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size, adding to food shortages and higher energy prices.
By 2015, 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese, according to current World Health Organization (WHO) projections.
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Published on May 16th, 2008
The Greendex from National Geographic compares your green score with citizens around the world
In many circles, India and China are considered to be the fuming smoke stacks of the world, with Western politicians pointing to huge increases in Co2 emissions from the East as the perfect cover for lacklustre environmental performances at home.
However, at the individual consumer level things look very different for India and China according to the new "Greendex" index of consumer behaviours and attitudes from National Geographic. According to the Greendex, India, China and Brazil have been ranked no.1 in environmental performance, far ahead of the USA and much of Europe who have been awarded some of the lowest scores. The results will be surprising to some, and show how individual attitudes do not necessarily reflect government policies.
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Published on May 5th, 2008
The following ten stories, organized by region, made international headlines from April 27 to May 4 for their impact on the environment and society. For more stories that changed the world, see our archive, here.
North American Environmental News
Canada has proven once again that it is way ahead of the rest of world with its progressive government. Ontario has banned the use and sale of lawn and garden pesticides for homeowners. Quebec instituted a similar ban on 20 some pesticide products back in 2006.
The new ban is set to take effect by spring of 2009. Home Depot has already agreed to stop selling the pesticides by the end of 2008! This is a huge victory for anti-toxic supporters all over the continent. If only someone in the United States government could take such affirmative action we could all be spared. Ontario will basically phase out some 80 different chemicals and over 300 products that contain them.
Continue reading this article at the Environmental Blog. Join the discussion about this article at Care2.
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Tags:
activism,
bicycling,
cacao,
chocolate,
Climate Change,
computers,
Conservation,
corruption,
Headlines,
internet,
logging,
organic,
pesticides,
volcano,
waste,
water
Published on April 30th, 2008
Almost nine in ten Americans or 89% use the cell phone, and this can translate into lots of “junk” that needs throwing away, because the average American is not known to own a handset for more than two years at least.
And according to a survey just released, only 40% of the US population actually recycle their cell phones while another 10% simply toss them into the bin while singing away…
But recycling your old cell phone could also be more than a green thing to do. You could be saving the highly endangered and rare Eastern lowland gorillas, also called Grauer’s gorillas.
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Published on April 28th, 2008
There’s a review of this book that goes by the title “50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth” and curiosity got the better of me to get to know how I have personally impacted on the future of our planet.
But then it has been around with us since just before Earth Day 1990. A lot of water have since passed under the bridge. Save the forests; there is a website and a rave blog too: 50 Simple Things.
Eco-friendly shopping, for instance, may be fashionable, but critics have argued it won’t reduce global warming. What has been the role of the Green Movement in ecological modernization?
Since the early 1980s, green as a political ideology championing ecological and environmental goals, has given the face of the Green movement a newer look, but not without the usual controversies: global warming, biofuels, or “agro-fuels” in more fluent eco-speak, solar-powered future, etc.
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Published on April 28th, 2008
This week, the writers at EcoWorldly will explore ecocities around the world. Stay tuned to this topic by checking in daily at EcoWorldly, or subscribe to our RSS feed to receive email updates.
Having just heard from Keith Rockmael at San Francisco’s Ecocity World Summit 2008, we decided to take a closer look at ecocities, starting with the question “what makes an ecocity?”
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Published on April 27th, 2008
Following, organized by region, are the top international environmental news for during the week of April 20 - 27. See an archive of top international environmental news here.
Asia
Working the land the natural way: Organic farming in China
It’s been almost four years since the project was launched, and of the nine households who have tried organic farming, only four are still at it. The others decided it just wasn’t worth it. Organic farming requires much more labor, the yield can be half or less of that of conventional farming, and besides, hardly anyone in Chengdu is eating organic. Our stock broker-turned-farmer estimates their customer base to be only 0.01% of Chengdu’s population.
Anlong farmer Gao Shengjian believes there’s a link between the use of pesticides and fertilizers on farms and the growing incidences of various diseases among the rural population.
Source: Crossroads China. Vote for this article in social media: StumbleUpon.
China down to 12 days worth of coal
China only has enough coal for 12 days of consumption, three days less than a month ago, state media reported Wednesday, sounding the alarm bells over the nation’s most important source of energy.
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Tags:
cars,
Climate Change,
co2,
coal,
farming,
food,
forest,
Headlines,
human rights,
logging,
organic,
pine beetle,
rainforest,
Tibet,
Transportation,
trees
Published on April 27th, 2008
A year after having first noticed the green ‘cyber’wave, months after informing the world about Global Internet giants going green and weeks after being appointed as the new Moderator of the Delhi Freecycle Network(TM) group, the green ‘cyber’wave just got stronger. And Yahoo! has taken the lead. Starting Earth Day, it is not just spreading the message, “Free is good - Give stuff, get stuff. Do good for the environment” through its green pages, but is also working to achieve the same.
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Published on April 25th, 2008
This week and the one before it, I have covered various aspects of the global food crisis and focussed especially on the predicament of the world’s poor as food prices spiral, and the likely contributors to the problem of inadequate food supply vis-a-vis the cost of basic foodstuff.
On April 12, we looked at how starvation and anger were driving millions to protest in the streets demanding government action. But social unrest can only be avoided when the hungry are assured of plentiful availability of their staples at prices they can afford.
We looked at perspectives on the crisis in 19 Myths and Facts on Global Food Crisis on April 21 and compared experiences of a protester in Damascus, Syria and a stay-at-home mother in Cairo, Egypt. We also quoted several world leaders and experts on biofuels, now being mentioned widely in connection with the diversion of traditional food crops to produce “cleaner” fuel.
Lastly, on April 23, we journeyed together through 12 World’s Largest Biofuel Plants, most of them in the US. Today, to cap this week’s insights on the global food crisis, I present (some of) the figures behind the whole story:
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Published on April 23rd, 2008
In the midst of the global food crisis, biofuels have been named as a probable culprit in driving the cost of food high up out of the reach of the world’s poor. New laws have just come into force in the United Kingdom requiring that all petrol and diesel be at least 2.5 per cent biofuel.
That target is expected to increase to five per cent by 2010 as part of efforts to make transport fuels more environmentally friendly. United States has just surpassed Brazil as the world’s largest producer of ethanol fuel.
The increased demand for biofuels from the world’s richer nations is being partly blamed for the skyrocketing food prices. Farmland that was once used to grow crops to feed people is now growing fuel for cars.
Here are (some of) the world’s biggest biofuel plants, including those in the pipeline, by production:
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