“…climate change may have a tendency to dominate the sustainability agenda, but there is no sustainable development without sustainable water.”

General water crisis is growing globally, for two very simple reasons that exacerbate each other:
(1) demand is increasing,
(2) supply is decreasing.

As populations and their aspirations grow, and industry and agriculture grow with them, fresh water needs go up drastically.   Meanwhile, a combination of accumulating persistent pollutants in fresh water sources, depletion of “fossil” water (very old underground aquifers that recharge very slowly), and precipitation changes brought on by climate change and forest clearing add up to sharply less fresh water available to meet ever-growing needs.

As last year’s UN World Water Assessment noted, “of all the social and natural resource crises we humans face, the water crisis is the one that lies at the heart of our survival and that of our planet Earth.  “

Source: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001409.html

Over 1 billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water; more than 2 billion lack access to adequate sanitation; and millions die every year due to preventable water-related diseases.   Water resources around the globe are threatened by climate change, misuse, and pollution.   But there are solutions: we can provide for people’s basic needs while protecting the environment by using innovative water efficiency and conservation strategies, community-scale projects, smart economics, and new technology.

That 1.  2 billion people lack access to clean water is surely one of the greatest development failures of the modern era.   That as many as 5 million people – mainly children – die every year from preventable, water-related disease is surely one of the great tragedies of our time.

Unfortunately, despite a growing recognition that more must be done to help those without clean water or adequate sanitation, a report by the Pacific Institute estimates that over 34 million people might perish in the next 20 years from water-related disease — even if the United Nations “Millennium Development Goals,” which aim to cut the proportion of those without safe access by half, are met.

The problem is not merely a lack of aid (although more money is needed) or a lack of technology.   It is a failure of vision and will.   According to many international water experts, hundreds of billions of dollars are needed to bring safe water to everyone who needs it.   Since international water aid is so paltry, many of these experts claim that privatization of water services is the only way to help the poor.

But many critics of this approach note that community-scale infrastructure and efficiency and conservation can bring basic water services to the millions who need it without breaking the bank.   And many critics of the “gold-plated” approach argue that water privatization, although it can play some productive role, will never be able to bring water to the world’s poorest people.

However, there are solutions to the global water crisis that don’t involve massive dams, large-scale infrastructure, and tens or hundreds of billions of dollars.   First and foremost, we must use what the Pacific Institute calls “soft path” solutions to the global water crisis.   Soft path solutions aim to improve the productivity of water rather than seek endless new supply; soft path solutions complement centrally-planned infrastructure with community scale projects; and soft path solutions involve stake-holders in key decisions so that water deals and projects protect the environment and the public interest.

Source: http://www.pacinst.org/topics/water_and_sustainability/global_water_crisis/

Eating a vegan diet does not mean that you are going to lose weight.  It is fat and sugar that make us fat. It’s really that simple. A vegan eating too much oil and sugar is going to get just as fat as a meat eater eating too much meat, dairy and sugar.  Meat eaters who maintain their weight do so only because their fat and caloric intake is equal to the energy that their body burns through exercise.  Even as a vegan, I climb on the scale every morning to make sure I am not gaining weight. I also know that unless I get those few hours of exercise in every week, those pounds are going to creep back on.

However, it is because their diet is high in animal cholesterol that slender meat eaters face the same health issues (heart disease, cancer…) as overweight meat eaters. An overweight vegan who eats too many meals like the burger shown here, though they are not going to look as hot in a bikini as a slender meat eater, is a whole lot healthier on the inside. Their blood flows freely through their veins and their organs function as they should, negating the need for cholesterol, blood pressure and even Stage II diabetic  medications. It is a proven medical fact, and is even stated in some of the product commercials for erectile enhancement pills, that the reason why men get erectile dysfunction is because those vessels down there are clogged with cholesterol, thereby causing performance issues for little johnny.

And so, besides the important ethical reasons related to factory farming, the next important reason for eating a vegan diet is to improve and extend the quality of your physical health.  Most Americans consume meals that include animal protein amounts higher than 10%. Scientist call this the Western Diet, and attribute it to the steep increase in vascular and cancer diseases. One of the scariest things about eating meat and dairy is that many researchers and scientists have established a link between the ingestion of animal cholesterol and casein (known as cancer ‘triggers”) in our Western Diet and our ranking as number one for breast cancer in the world.

The literature that definitively lays out for laymen the reasons for us to rethink our Western diet is The China Study, written by Dr. T. Colin Campbell. From thechinastudy.com:

“Early in his career as a researcher with MIT and Virginia Tech, Dr. Campbell worked to promote better health by eating more meat, milk and eggs — “high-quality animal protein … It was an obvious sequel to my own life on the farm and I was happy to believe that the American diet was the best in the world.”

He later was a researcher on a project in the Philippines working with malnourished children. The project became an investigation for Dr. Campbell, as to why so many Filipino children were being diagnosed with liver cancer, predominately an adult disease. The primary goal of the project was to ensure that the children were getting as much protein as possible.

“In this project, however, I uncovered a dark secret. Children who ate the highest protein diets were the ones most likely to get liver cancer…” He began to review other reports from around the world that reflected the findings of his research in the Philippines.

Although it was “heretical to say that protein wasn’t healthy,” he started an in-depth study into the role of nutrition, especially protein, in the cause of cancer.  The research project culminated in a 20-year partnership of Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine, a survey of diseases and lifestyle factors in rural
China and Taiwan. More commonly known as the China Study, “this project eventually produced more than 8000 statistically significant associations between various dietary factors and disease.”

The findings? “People who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease … People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease. These results could not be ignored,” said Dr. Campbell.

In The China Study, Dr. Campbell details the connection between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, and also its ability to reduce or reverse the risk or effects of these deadly illnesses. The China Study also examines the source of nutritional confusion produced by powerful
lobbies, government entities, and irresponsible scientists.”

Dr. Campbell is a vegan, as is the head of the breast cancer clinic at the number one ranked cancer treatment hospital located in NYC (I know this because my dd worked their as a chemo nurse).

As long as the medical research, education, media exposure and legislation for humane practices continue to bear out the rationale for eating a vegan diet we can look forward to a time when humans will enjoy better health and live in a more humane environment. No longer will we buy into the hype that there is a magic pill to solve all of our problems. Most of all, there would be a dramatic shift in our self-centered and ingrained 1960s-based cultural focus of  “I should have whatever I want”, to “I should have what is good for me so that I can be the best person that God wants me to be.”

I recently came across the book Sleeping Naked is Green by Vanessa Farquharson, a self-proclaimed eco-cynic who write about her daily attempts to make one green change every day for a year. As the book jacket declares, “Vanessa writes about her foray into the green world with comical and accessible insight in the honest look at what happens

 when an average girls throws herself into the murkiest depths of the green movement”.

I liked the book, it was funny and honest. But what I liked the most was that she addressed many truths about what it takes for people to change their actions. As Vanessa put it, “no one likes listening to smug hippies brag about how they don’t use toilet paper or lecture about the evils of plastic bags and SUVs, but most of us do want to lessen our ecological footprints”.

Let’s face it. You may love the environment, but do you love the idea of swearing off hot showers and coffee? – Probably not. However, what Vanessa showed through her book was that if she – a pop culture fanatic who loves trendy clothes, make-up, and styled hair

 - can learn to accept, and even stand behind green changes that really anyone can.

Here are a few of the 366 (it was a leap year) changes Vanessa made:
-No more bottled water
-Cancel cable
-No disposable cutlery and plates
-forgo electronic gym equipment
-unplug the refrigerator
-no more food delivery
-buy cereal in bulk
-eat only free range eggs
-cut hair short
-make jams
-keep a brick or plastic bottle in the toilet tank
-sell car
-buy a used mattress

I guess the point of all of this is that some changes are simple and some are not, but they are doable. What it takes is just a little bit of thinking, which can admittedly be hard sometime – especially in our consumer driven world, to take a step back and think about what you can realistically do to make a little difference. Almost every choice we make each day, from what to have for breakfast to how to get to work, probably has an “eco” option.

Maybe give something like this a try, challenge yourself just for a day maybe, or even an hour, to make the “eco” decision, and maybe you’ll find out that it really isn’t that hard. Or maybe you will think it sucks and you’ll decide this was a terrible idea, but hey, at least you will have tried.

I’ve learned that being a college student can teach you to be apathetic. 

Don’t get me wrong, there are hundreds of student groups on campuses around the globe doing lots of good things, making changes that only college students can make.  But it’s interesting for me to look through the list of students groups on campus and realize that most of the groups are focused on making big changes or changes far from home – not little changes on campus that could really make a big difference.  So I ask myself why?  I mean, I am guilty here too, if you told me I could join an organization that would send me half way around the globe to build a school garden, or join one that sent me ten minutes down the road, well – I would jump on the plane.  There is a need to examine this want of excitement – but that is a whole other discussion – when arguably building a school garden in my own backyard would make a much bigger impact, not to mention lessen my environmental footprint by not spewing tons of CO2 into the atmosphere by jet-setting. 

But of all the classes I took on environmental sustainability (whatever that really means) I left after most classes feeling like there was nothing I could really do, that the problem was bigger than I could handle.  I mean sometimes I would get really excited about an issue, ok maybe a little nerdy, and dream up all of the things that I could do to help fix it.  But they would be things that started with: when I graduate I will…, when I have time I will…, in ten years I could…, none of them being ok right now I will do this.  It really is just easier to sit in class and soak up all the information, write a paper saying what should be done, maybe sign a petition or two, and then move on to the next subject….apathetically.

But there really are things you can do now that can make a difference (sorry if that sounds too cheesy).  I’m in the middle of reading No Impact Man, I love that he made himself a superhero btw, which is a little too extreme for the average college student, but he makes some good points: when are you going to stop reading about the problem and telling ‘others’ – the government, your peers, etc – they should do something about it and actually make some changes yourself?

So here is my pledge: tell one story everyday about something good that someone out there is doing to make a difference.  Think of if as a little counter balance to all the doom and gloom you hear from what have become the green industry.  Feel free to let me know of people you know who are making a difference, even if it’s just that you refuse to buy coffee if you forget your coffee mug – baby steps.

Published: October 4, 2009 Go To Source…nytimes.com

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times Migrants from the mainland have put pressure on the wildlife of the Galápagos.

PUERTO AYORA, Galápagos Islands — The mounds of reeking garbage on the edge of this settlement 600 miles off Ecuador’s Pacific coast are proof that one species is thriving on the fragile archipelago whose unique wildlife inspired Darwin’s theory of evolution: man.

The New York Times The booming human population of the archipelago, which doubled to about 30,000 in the last decade, has unnerved environmentalists.

Tiny gray finches, descendants of birds that were crucial to his thesis, flutter around the dump, which serves a growing town of Ecuadoreans who have moved here to work in the islands’ thriving tourism industry.

The burgeoning human population of the Galápagos, which doubled to about 30,000 in the last decade, has unnerved environmentalists. They point to evidence that the growth is already harming the ecosystem that allowed the islands’ more famous inhabitants — among them giant tortoises and boobies with brightly colored webbed feet — to evolve in isolation before mainlanders started colonizing the islands more than a century ago.

The growth has become enough of a threat to the environment that even the government, which still welcomes growth in the tourism industry, has expelled more than 1,000 poor Ecuadoreans in the past year from a province that they feel is rightfully theirs, and it is in the process of expelling many more.

By limiting the population, officials hope to preserve the natural wonders that bolster one of Ecuador’s most profitable sectors: tourism. But the measures are feeding a backlash among unskilled migrants who say they are being punished while the country continues to enjoy the many millions of dollars tourists bring to Ecuador, one of South America’s poorest nations.

“We are being told that a tortoise for a rich foreigner to photograph is worth more than an Ecuadorean citizen,” said María Mariana de Reina Bustos, 54, a migrant from Ambato in Ecuador’s central Andean valley, whose 22-year-old daughter, Olga, was recently rounded up by the police near the slum of La Cascada and put on a plane to the mainland.

The first settlers came to the islands to live off the land, working as fishermen, ranchers and farmers. Now, most of those who make the short flight from Quito, the capital, or sneak on the islands in boats are lured by different sorts of riches: the relatively high wages they can earn as taxi drivers and hotel maids or workers in the islands’ growing bureaucracy.

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times At Luis Mendoza’s home in Puerto Villamil, hangs the carcass of a wild pig he hunted to help feed his family.

For decades, the country’s leaders did little to prevent people from coming here, partly to build the tourism industry and then to ensure the government had a presence among the pioneers. There seemed to be something of a natural limit on growth: the country had put aside 97 percent of the archipelago as a park.

But as tourism and migration grew over the last decade, pressure began building within the archipelago’s scientific and environmental community and abroad for Ecuador to act on curbing the islands’ population. The United Nations put the Galápagos on its list of endangered heritage sites in 2007.

Scientists here said people had already done significant damage, pointing to fuel spills, the poaching of giant tortoises and sharks and the introduction of invasive species — including rats, cattle and fire ants — that threaten animals endemic to the Galápagos.

Even seemingly benign human activities like owning a pet can have outsize consequences here.

“With people come cats, and with cats come threats to other animals found nowhere else in the world,” said Fernando Ortiz, coordinator of the Galápagos program for Conservation International.

Conflict is built into the rules that allowed the Galápagos to be colonized in the first place, despite a lack of fresh water in the archipelago. Technically, residency is granted to a limited number of people, including those born here and their spouses, people who arrived before 1998 and those with temporary work permits. The police, known in local slang as the “migra” for their role in tracking down illegal migrants, set up impromptu checkpoints throughout the islands. But the same government that oversees the expulsions also offers subsidies to people living on the islands.

One subsidy allows gasoline to cost about the same here as on the mainland. Another allows residents to fly between the islands or to Quito for a fraction of what foreigners pay. Loopholes also flourish. For instance, a black market in residency thrives in which migrants marry established residents to obtain coveted identity cards.

The result: Puerto Ayora’s streets beckon with discos, food stands and souvenir shops. On the outskirts, a billboard with the image of Leopoldo Bucheli, the pro-development mayor, celebrates a project called El Mirador that is clearing an area on the edge of town to build 1,000 new homes.

“All we want, like people anywhere on this planet, is a dignified existence,” said Yonny Mantuano, 36, who bought a lot to build a home at El Mirador. He heads the teachers union here, whose 600 members have chafed at one of the government’s new attempts to limit subsidies: a measure this year cutting their cost-of-living bonus.

The government’s somewhat schizophrenic view of life here is echoed by the sentiments of the people. Margarita Masaquiza, 45, an Indian from Ecuador’s highlands who arrived here at the age of 14, abhors the government’s expulsions.

“We built this province with our own hands, so, yes, it pains us to see our countrymen deported like animals,” Ms. Masaquiza said. “After all, we are indigenous Ecuadoreans, how can we be illegal in our own country?”

But when asked how she felt about the impact of new migrants on her four children and four grandchildren, Ms. Masaquiza adopted a different tone.

“We must preserve opportunities for our families,” she said.

Most people in the Galápagos live on San Cristóbal, an island where a penal colony functioned decades ago, and Santa Cruz, where Puerto Ayora is located. Development is spreading to other parts of the archipelago, as well.

Isabela, the largest of the islands, offers a glimpse into the Galápagos frontier.

Despite its streets of sand, Puerto Villamil, Isabela’s main town, looks not unlike a Phoenix subdivision around 2007. Laborers work feverishly on 200 new cinderblock homes on the town’s edge. Only about 2,000 people live in the town, but it has one of the Galápagos’s highest rates of population growth, about 9 percent a year.

“I earn $1,200 a month here, while I could only earn $500 a month on the continent,” said Bolívar Buri, 26, a construction worker born in Puerto Villamil who made a small fortune this year when he sold an empty lot for $8,000 that he bought six years ago for $600.

But even in the archipelago’s less spoiled areas, there is little doubt that man’s intrusion has altered life on the islands that enraptured Darwin.

On the road from Puerto Villamil to the drizzle-shrouded crater of the Sierra Negra volcano, subsistence hunters on horseback scan the forest for wild pigs, a species introduced by mariners over a century ago. White cattle egrets, another introduced species, fly overhead.

One recent day, Manuel López, a cowboy and migrant from the mainland who tends a herd under the volcano’s mist, emerged from a forest thick with guava trees.

He paused under the equatorial sun; his gaze narrowed.

“If it is God’s will, I’m on this island to stay,” said Mr. López, 36.

“We must be in Galápagos for a reason,” he said, prodding a visitor to reply. “Yes or no?”

The construction of the dog kennel on Isabela Island has been completed and the guides and dogs have been transported to the island. The dogs will commence their inspection on Isabela, which has the highest level of poaching in the Galapagos, in an effort to reduce crime there.

Construction on Isabela on the day it was completed

Construction had been delayed due to lack of funds for months and would still be on hold if it weren’t for the incredible efforts of Sea Shepherd volunteers from Fremantle, Australia.

Construction had been delayed due to lack of funds for months and would still be on hold if it weren’t for the incredible efforts of Sea Shepherd volunteers from Fremantle, Australia.

For months they have been organizing extra fundraising events specifically aimed to raise the money for the construction.

he Fremantle group from left to right: Leith, Craig, Paul, Louis, Shaun, Jasmin plus Brandy the Dog

The Fremantle group from left to right: Brita, Michael, and Jess

Read More…Go To Source…worldzootoday.com

By Jim Eagles

A giant tortoise taking a nap. Photo / Jim Eagles

There’s good news and bad news on the subject of Lonesome George, the last surviving giant tortoise from the Galapagos island of Pinta and described by the Guinness Book of World Records as the “rarest living creature”.

First the good news. I saw Lonesome George the other day and there’s no reason for him to be lonely any more.

These days he shares his leafy enclosure at the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz island with two nice lady giant tortoises, with whom he apparently gets on fairly well, despite the fact that they’re a different sub-species found only on Isabela island.

Unfortunately, the day I came calling George seemed to be in a bit of a huff. He was lying on the far side of his spacious quarters, alongside a stone wall, with his back to the viewing area.

His lady friends were out and about, eating leaves and posing for visitors, but George didn’t stir. I tried to pass on greetings from a colleague whose nickname, for reasons obscure to me, is also Lonesome George, but he ignored my efforts.

Read More…Go To Source…nzherald.co.nz

Environment education in schools continues to be a redundance as in almost all schools, hardly anything has been done to use alternative sources of energy like solar equipment. In mostly all schools, generators are being run to brave the power crisis, despite the fact that these pollution-causing sources of energy are proving counter-productive in the face of efforts to spread a message among students in favour of environment conservation.

Some private schools have taken an initiative in this regard, but as for government schools where generators were installed last year, a thought has not been spared on spending the money on alternative sources of energy.

Talking about it, Dr Surjit Singh, chairman, Ambedkar Nagar Welfare Society, said, “All schools have got generators installed with the help of PTA funds and have spent nearly Rs 50,000 each, but now, these generators have been reduced to mere showpieces as schools don?t have sufficient funds to maintain and run them.”

To read full article click here

By Eduardo Garcia

We’ve all heard the word conservation over and over again, but what exactly is conservation?  Conservation seems to have gained many fans in the last decade with the threat of global warming and rising gas prices.  However, conservation is not a new idea, nor a unique idea to those fighting global warming today.  Theodore Roosevelt, the 26^th president of the United States, spoke eloquently about the concept of conservation.  For Roosevelt, it was the government’s job to conserve and preserve our nation’s natural resources and the ‘great wild’ along with the rugged individualism that went with it. Roosevelt did his part for conservation by forming national parks – and to imagine that he was a republican.

But what does conservation mean today?  On the UW campus, the 2^nd largest research university in the US and home to 40,000 undergraduates, conservation may mean different things to different people, but most likely the concept of energy comes to mind when thinking about conservation.  Some students may turn off their lights when they leave a room, turn down the thermostat in the winter, or reuse a water bottle – all in the name of conservation.  However good all of this conserving is, 65% of the energy used on campus is independent from the people.  In other words, most of the energy used on campus is used behind the scenes to power the buildings that you learn in – the number one source of energy being that which is used to heat and cool buildings.

Another question you might be asking is where does this energy come from?  The short answer here is the sun.  All of our energy sources can be traced back to the sun in one way or another and have been buried over time.  Traditionally we used things like wood, coal, oil, or steam to power our engines, but over the last few decades we are hearing more and more about natural gas, nuclear, biofuels, and other alternative sources like solar, wind, and hydro.  Coal is cheap, available, and plentiful, but it’s dirty.  How do you choose between two sources?  The real lesion to learn here is that there is ‘no free lunch’ when it comes to energy.  Hydro is clean, available, and plentiful, but has high ecosystem impacts associated with damning. 

 In a way, our society has evolved away from building practices and habits that save us energy.  Think of the classroom you are sitting in right now.  If it’s an old room there are probably high ceilings, big windows, and no air conditioning.  Although the seats might be a bit uncomfortable that room has the potential to operate in the middle of the day with no lights or air conditioning.  However, the new rooms are built with small or no windows, low ceilings, and blasting air conditioning – which doesn’t bode well for its energy impact.

In many ways our generation has turned to technology to solve our problems and that seems to be happening today with our fuel problems.  In many ways your can buy your way to conservation, drive a Prius, recycle, use CFLs, but how about altering the way we interact with these things in the first place.  While hybrid cars are nice, try walking – or using a refillable mug instead of needing to recycle, or using natural sunlight instead of CFLs.  The question here is how can we enforce or encourage this behavior?  Does the answer lie in government intervention in the form of taxes?  Or does it lie in the market?  We did see a change in people’s transportation habits when gas prices went up last year.  Lets face it, coal is cheap.  Solar power is expensive.  Not many people are going to move away from coal power unless it hits them where it hurts – their pocket books, which can be done through markets or the government.

Our generation will be faced with a decision regarding energy that will impact our lives.  Up until now we, the global population, have picked the low hanging fruit so to say in energy.  We have done what we can to fix the easy efficiency issues first.  However, we – our generation, will not be able to technology our way out of this problem.  We may be at that point now where we have to turn to policy in order to move forward.  We may implement a leveling tax for fuel so that you will never pay below three dollars a gallon, and if the price of oil drops below that, the money is used to invest in alternative energies.  Maybe its seeing more programs like the government initiated ‘cash for clunkers’ campaign, which went a long way towards getting more fuel efficient cars on the road.  There are a number of ways to look at what will be sustainable for our future and what conservation will continue to mean.

But we have to ask ourselves some questions.  Who are we conserving for: so we can continue our lifestyle the way it is or so a kid growing up in China can have heat in their home?  How long are we talking: conserving for the next 5, 100, or 10,000 years?  And finally what exactly are we conserving: a way of life, natural resources, or an idea of how things should be?  If we are conserving for our planet, what exactly does that mean?  Or maybe I should leave you with words from Aldo Leopold:

There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm.  One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.

To avoid the first danger, one should plant a garden, preferably where there is no grocer to confuse the issue.

To avoid the second, he should lay a split of good oak on the andirons, preferably where there is no furnace, and let it warm his shins while a February blizzard tosses the trees outside.  If one has cut, split, hauled, and piled his own good oak, and let his mind work the while, he will remember much about where the heat comes from, and with a wealth of detail denied to those who spend the week end in town astride a radiator.

We’ve all heard the word conservation over and over again, but what exactly is conservation?  Conservation seems to have gained many fans in the last decade with the threat of global warming and rising gas prices.  However, conservation is not a new idea, nor a unique idea to those fighting global warming today.  Theodore Roosevelt, the 26^th president of the United States, spoke eloquently about the concept of conservation.  For Roosevelt, it was the government’s job to conserve and preserve our nation’s natural resources and the ‘great wild’ along with the rugged individualism that went with it. Roosevelt did his part for conservation by forming national parks – and to imagine that he was a republican.

But what does conservation mean today?  On the UW campus, the 2^nd largest research university in the US and home to 40,000 undergraduates, conservation may mean different things to different people, but most likely the concept of energy comes to mind when thinking about conservation.  Some students may turn off their lights when they leave a room, turn down the thermostat in the winter, or reuse a water bottle – all in the name of conservation.  However good all of this conserving is, 65% of the energy used on campus is independent from the people.  In other words, most of the energy used on campus is used behind the scenes to power the buildings that you learn in – the number one source of energy being that which is used to heat and cool buildings.

Another question you might be asking is where does this energy come from?  The short answer here is the sun.  All of our energy sources can be traced back to the sun in one way or another and have been buried over time.  Traditionally we used things like wood, coal, oil, or steam to power our engines, but over the last few decades we are hearing more and more about natural gas, nuclear, biofuels, and other alternative sources like solar, wind, and hydro.  Coal is cheap, available, and plentiful, but it’s dirty.  How do you choose between two sources?  The real lesion to learn here is that there is ‘no free lunch’ when it comes to energy.  Hydro is clean, available, and plentiful, but has high ecosystem impacts associated with damning. 

 In a way, our society has evolved away from building practices and habits that save us energy.  Think of the classroom you are sitting in right now.  If it’s an old room there are probably high ceilings, big windows, and no air conditioning.  Although the seats might be a bit uncomfortable that room has the potential to operate in the middle of the day with no lights or air conditioning.  However, the new rooms are built with small or no windows, low ceilings, and blasting air conditioning – which doesn’t bode well for its energy impact.

In many ways our generation has turned to technology to solve our problems and that seems to be happening today with our fuel problems.  In many ways your can buy your way to conservation, drive a Prius, recycle, use CFLs, but how about altering the way we interact with these things in the first place.  While hybrid cars are nice, try walking – or using a refillable mug instead of needing to recycle, or using natural sunlight instead of CFLs.  The question here is how can we enforce or encourage this behavior?  Does the answer lie in government intervention in the form of taxes?  Or does it lie in the market?  We did see a change in people’s transportation habits when gas prices went up last year.  Lets face it, coal is cheap.  Solar power is expensive.  Not many people are going to move away from coal power unless it hits them where it hurts – their pocket books, which can be done through markets or the government.

Our generation will be faced with a decision regarding energy that will impact our lives.  Up until now we, the global population, have picked the low hanging fruit so to say in energy.  We have done what we can to fix the easy efficiency issues first.  However, we – our generation, will not be able to technology our way out of this problem.  We may be at that point now where we have to turn to policy in order to move forward.  We may implement a leveling tax for fuel so that you will never pay below three dollars a gallon, and if the price of oil drops below that, the money is used to invest in alternative energies.  Maybe its seeing more programs like the government initiated ‘cash for clunkers’ campaign, which went a long way towards getting more fuel efficient cars on the road.  There are a number of ways to look at what will be sustainable for our future and what conservation will continue to mean.

But we have to ask ourselves some questions.  Who are we conserving for: so we can continue our lifestyle the way it is or so a kid growing up in China can have heat in their home?  How long are we talking: conserving for the next 5, 100, or 10,000 years?  And finally what exactly are we conserving: a way of life, natural resources, or an idea of how things should be?  If we are conserving for our planet, what exactly does that mean?  Or maybe I should leave you with words from Aldo Leopold:

There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm.  One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.

To avoid the first danger, one should plant a garden, preferably where there is no grocer to confuse the issue.

To avoid the second, he should lay a split of good oak on the andirons, preferably where there is no furnace, and let it warm his shins while a February blizzard tosses the trees outside.  If one has cut, split, hauled, and piled his own good oak, and let his mind work the while, he will remember much about where the heat comes from, and with a wealth of detail denied to those who spend the week end in town astride a radiator.

Here’s a little fact: about 60 percent of energy in Wisconsin comes from coal, and UW Students are faced with this fact every day as they walk by the Charter Street coal plant.  But how many students out there really know what the other energy options are?  Yeah, solar sounds good but what are the costs?  Same with wind and biofuels.  The point to get out of the whole energy debate is this – there is no free lunch (well the corn and apples were free I guess), there are pros and cons to every energy choice – and heres the thing: you should know what they are.   And this is what the University tried to show  (energy literacy) with a Smart Cookout to welcome students back to campus. 

To celebrate the end of summer, the beginning of fall, and starting the new semester in ec0-style, WE CONSERVE  hosted a smart cookout on Library Mall with UW Energy Hub, UW Engineers Without Borders, and REThink Wisconsin.  The event was to promote and raise awareness for clean and renewable energy, conservation,  locally grown food, recycling and composting – in total saving 1,000 lbs of food waste from the landfill! 

Locally grown roasted sweet corn from Heck Markets in Arena WI and crisp organic apples from Ten Eyck Orchards in Broadhead WI were given out for free on Library Mall to draw students to learn about renewable energy – really, whocan avoid the captivating smell of roasting sweet corn?  Food miles, the distance that your food travels before it gets to your stomach – which can be in the thousands for a typical meal, were under 30 miles – except for Lowry’s Seasoning Salt, I’m not sure where that comes from. 

The event was quite a success as different student orgs joined together to promote clean energy.  Also present at the event were, F.H. King to promote local food, Powered Green to promote wind energy, MG&E with an awesome solar trailer, and Midwest Renewable Energy Associantion (MREA) with a demonstration size wind turbine.

I hope to see more events like this in the future.  There are 22 ‘green’ student orgs here on campus, each doing great work – but think of what can be done if they work together like they did on Tuesday. 

Here are some pictures from the event:

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves.

And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

Henry Beston American writer and naturalist

“Other Nations”

“Earthlings”

Henry Nicholls is the editor of Galápagos News and the author of Lonesome George: The Life and Loves of a Conservation Icon. Go To Source…www.timesonline.co.uk

It may have taken him 80 years but George the lonely Galapagos giant tortoise has finally emerged from his shell

The thought of a wrinkled octogenarian trying to make babies is somewhat unsavoury — unless we are talking about Lonesome George, the Galápagos giant tortoise, the last of his kind and hence the world’s rarest living creature. Last month, one of two females with whom George shares his enclosure laid a clutch of eggs, triggering widespread speculation that George was about to become a dad.

Since 1971, when a snail biologist came unexpectedly face to face with this large male tortoise on the remote island of Pinta, in the north of the Galápagos archipelago, George has shown a remarkable talent for setting the news agenda. His discovery sent ripples of excitement around the Pacific island group, which lies some 600 miles off the west coast of South America. Two centuries of culinary exploitation by pirates and whalers had taken their toll on all 15 Galápagos tortoise varieties, and those on Pinta — and a couple of other islands — had been assumed to be extinct.

George, the first tortoise seen on Pinta for more than 60 years, proved otherwise. In March 1972, wardens from the Galápagos National Park shipped him to the central island of Santa Cruz, where he has remained ever since at the Charles Darwin Research Station, waiting for some bright scientist to find a way to coax his special set of genes into the next generation.

George does not have the most encouraging of reproductive records. In the early 1990s, after almost two decades in solitary confinement, he was given a new enclosure and some company in the shape of “Female No 106” and “Female No 107”. These tortoises had been sourced from Wolf volcano on Isabela, the closest island to Pinta, the idea being that hybrid hatchlings would be better than no hatchlings at all — although, given that George may live to be 200, there was no point in rushing things. To the frustration of his matchmakers, though, George had something more important to do than procreate. He was busy building a brand.

For the next decade, George stubbornly avoided sex. He was even able to contain his arousal when, in 1993, a dedicated Swiss zoologist who became known as “Lonesome George’s girlfriend” gave him manual manipulation every day for four months. But, as a conservation icon, he did win the affections of a growing number of tourists. “Whatever happens to this single animal, let him always remind us that the fate of all living things on Earth is in human hands,” declared the information panels around his enclosure.

The downside to George’s fame became apparent in 1995, when he began to receive death threats. A handful of sea cucumber fishermen, unhappy with quotas imposed on their activities by conservationists, stormed into the research station and threatened to kill the reptilian poster boy unless restrictions were lifted. After tense negotiations, they were allowed to return to their boats. The sea cucumbers were the losers but George was safe.

The celibate recluse was now the most famous resident of Galápagos, his name appearing with impressive regularity alongside that of the archipelago’s best-known visitor, Charles Darwin.

In 2003 it was announced that George’s native island was at last free of goats, which compete with giant tortoises for the vegetation on which both creatures feed. More than 40,000 of the destructive goats, descended from a pair released on Pinta in the 1950s, had been shot by wardens in the 1970s and, now that they had been eliminated, it was hoped that tortoises from a different island might be introduced as ecological stand-ins for Lonesome George’s long-dead ancestors. There was talk of allowing George to join them for the rest of his days. But in May 2007, an announcement from geneticists at Yale University in the US put the move on hold.

George, they revealed, was not entirely alone among Galápagos tortoises. While analysing blood samples taken from a few tortoises on Wolf Volcano, on Isabela, several years earlier, they had found DNA from one male whose father appeared to have been a Pinta tortoise. That male may still be out there on Wolf’s steep slopes — a “brother” for George, if you like.

In December last year, the geneticists went to collect blood from more Wolf volcano tortoises. If some samples turn out to have come from tortoises with Pinta genes, a further expedition will be mounted to find the reptiles themselves, which could then be shipped to Santa Cruz in the hope that they can hit it off with George and create a population of Pinta-like tortoises.

The geneticists initially sampled just 27 tortoises on Wolf volcano and found one with Pinta ancestry. The recent expedition has given them 1,663 tortoises to assess, so there is a good chance of finding more.

Meanwhile, there has been great interest in the eggs laid in George’s enclosure. Last year, both Female No 106 and Female No 107 built nests for the first time and furnished them with 20 eggs. But none of them hatched and, when the Yale geneticists combed the rotting eggs for signs of George’s DNA, they found none. So even if he did mate with the females (which nobody can confirm), it remains uncertain whether he is ready or even able to be a father.

But this year is rather special for Galápagos and George may be orchestrating a publicity stunt to suit the occasion. Last month, when a warden found the clutch of five eggs in his enclosure, both the Galápagos National Park (which officially owns him) and the Charles Darwin Foundation (which houses him) celebrated their 50th anniversaries. If, by some miracle, the eggs turn out to be fertile, they would hatch in mid-November, just as the world celebrates the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

Henry Nicholls is the editor of Galápagos News and the author of Lonesome George: The Life and Loves of a Conservation Icon.

Press Release Submitted by neraksells on Wednesday, August 26 2009

Annual World Savers Award in the category of Cruise Lines. Ecoventura president Santiago Dunn to accept the honor at the 3rd Annual World Savers Congress in New York City on September 21.