So I just enjoyed a good laugh over some DAMN, NATURE, YOU SCARY-type stories.  (It’s always funny when it happens to someone else.)

I’ve been super-lucky so far with my bug-collecting…other than the praying mantis incident, I’ve escaped relatively unscathed, mainly because I try to stay away from bugs with stingy-looking bits. 

That’s not to say I haven’t had run-ins with nature.    I have, as a matter of fact, been bitten by a pretty good portion of the larger mammals of the province of Ontario: fox, raccoon, skunk, squirrel (both red and grey), groundhog (ohhhh, that one HURT), porcupine, otter, bat…  when one is an intern at a wildlife rehabilitation centre, one’s #1 workplace hazard tends to be “wildlife”.

I’ve been nipped by a handful of snakes (non-venomous thankyouverymuch) and numerous times by one particularly cantankerous bullfrog…did you know frogs have teeth?  They totes do.  It’s WEIRD.

Oh, and my left pointer finger once got slashed by the incisors of a very pissed-off vampire bat (I had it in a bag so I could weigh and examine it).  The wound bled and bled and bled (thank you, anticoagulants) – which was cool because it allowed me to go around to everyone within earshot going, “DUDE, I totes got bit by a vampire bat!!!”  for hours and everyone was like, “OMG no way!”,  and I was all like, “Way!”, and they were all like, “Whooooaaa.”   Yeah, that was cool.   Trying to explain the situation to an ER doc back in Canada after deciding I should probably get a rabies booster was not so cool.  It’s very obnoxious to have to say, “Yes, doctor, it was a vampire bat.  Yes I’m sure.  Desmotus rotundus.  ROTUNDUS.  Will you stop looking at your flow charts and just give me the damn shot?!?!?!”  Honest to god, doctors have big text books with flow charts about bat bites to determine whether a rabies shot is warranted.   Yeesh.

Although many of these experiences made me uncomfortable (in the ow ow owie ow sense) none really scared me much.

I think my only truly DAMN, NATURE, YOU SCARY moment was in Belize.  I was there with a small group of undergrads for a three-week crash course of the ecology of tropical bats; we were in the heart of the small Central American country, nestled along a freshwater lagoon and surrounded by largely unexplored Mayan ruins.  It was our first night in the rainforest.   It was remote and dark as hell.  There were three of us (me and two other students) stationed next to a mist net we’d set up along a clearing in the jungle.  Our head lamps were off.   Leaving them on would mean scaring the bats, which would be bad for bat research-type activities. 

Picture if you will: three completely green city kids with combined field experience of  “zero” .  It is nearing midnight.  Pitch black except for the bazillion stars that blanket the sky all the way down to the flat horizon.  Deafeningly noisy from all the jungle critters that don’t sleep.  We cannot sit down because there are tarantulas and scorpions and poisonous snakes and ants the size of my head.  Plus jaguars.  If you sit down you waste about 2 seconds of perfectly good running-away-from-jaguars time by having to stand back up.   We are pretty much scared shitless.  

Then, nearby, we start to hear a troup of howler monkeys talking amongst themselves.  And by “talking” I mean “making otherwordly freaky utterings and moans and roars”.   We’d seen and heard quite a few monkeys earlier, during daylight, and although they were unnerving they were more interesting than anything.    At night it’s a whole different story. 

The monkeys noisily made their way over to our net station and parked themselves directly overhead.  They chattered and rummaged and banged around up in the canopy while we held our breaths and waited for them to move on.    After about ten minutes, they did, roaring as they went.  We started to relax.

What we didn’t know was that one bastard monkey had stayed behind.  And that he had quietly snuck down a tree until he was a mere few feet from the ground.  And the tree in which he was hiding was about 5 feet behind me and my nervous compatriots.   And what did that bastard monkey do?

That. 

And we screamed.  Literally shrieked and clutched eachother in the pitch blackness and screamed our fool heads off, convinced we were about to be eaten or at the very least messily rent limb from limb.

Our PI (who was neither young nor sleek nor athletically inclined in the slightest)  came “running” over from our main base about 1 mile down a narrow jungle path.   He stopped, doubled over into a near-fetal position with his hands on his knees, and managed to gasp out, “What happened?”   

Our story was met with a withering look that screamed “EPIC TROPICAL FIELD WORK FAIL” and he stomped back down the path to his own station.

It’s funny now.  We quickly got quite used to monkey visitors and even mustered up the nerve to sit on the forest floor at night (just keep your pant legs tucked into your socks and you’re good to go).   The PI eventually forgave me for being such a wuss; he took to calling me “Jungle Jane” by the end of the trip and even shared his carefully guarded bottle of scotch with me on our last night there – a truly memorable evening of geekery, tasty drinkables, sitting on a rickety dock that stretched out over the lagoon and basking in the light of a million stars which twinkled off the still, black waters where they mingled with the red glint of crocodile eyeshine.   

A life-changing experience  to be sure (and totally worth the  thinking I was going to die for a few minutes).    I kind of hope there will be other opportunities to experience the sublime terror of DAMN, NATURE, YOU SCARY in the future.  Hm.  I’m pretty sure there’s a line item in my new research budget for “guys with guns to keep polar bears from eating PhD student”, so a Geek can dream, yes?

Tropical waterfall

Burke Brothers of Wyndmoor, Pa., will take us to Brazil for the 2010  Philadelphia International Flower Show, “Passport to the World.”  Their exhibit is titled “Floresta Amazonica,” which means Amazon rainforest in Portuguese.

 Burke Brothers manager Michele Rich says one of the biggest challenges this year is working with plants that come from a vastly different climate and environment, one that’s dark, lush and tropical.  

“We’re used to designing for Montgomery County,” she says. 

Which is why some of the designers took a trip down to Florida to find the perfect plants to represent the lush Brazilian rainforest. 

Burke Bros. design team and Flower Show staff in Florida. From left: Sam Lemheney (from PHS), Jonathan Troisi, Vivianne Englund-Callahan, Sean Burke, Laurie Clabbers (of Burke Brothers), John Story (Meadowbrook Farm), and Michele Rich (Burke Brothers).

 She says the design team picked out brilliantly colored bromeliads, birds-of-paradise, ficuses and philodendrons. 

“We’re trying to make it as naturalistic as possible,” says Rich. 

They’ll represent the dark side of the Amazon with dense vegetation and representations of the savage wildlife.  

“We’re planning a moving alligator topiary with eyes that light up, and maybe a panther,” says Designer Lori Clabbers.  She’ll also use carnations to create pink flamingoes wading under waterfalls. 

Bromeliads ready for shipment.

       Almost all of the plants will be shipped from Florida right before the Show, including massive 14- to 16-foot palm trees. With almost 800 tropical plants, the exhibit will transport visitors to an exotic and exciting corner of the world. 

For more information about Burke Brothers Landscape Design, call 215-887-1773 or visit their website http://www.burkebrothers.com/

I’ve often contemplated going vegetarian. I really don’t eat all that much meat as it is, and I really don’t think I’d miss it all that much.

I tried it for a while a few years back, but it never stuck. I think I missed certain foods. Bacon, for example. MMMMM, bacon and eggs. Yum.

Daydreaming aside, I come from a family which doesn’t cook meat heavy meals. In fact, my mother could quite happily stop tomorrow. My girlfriend is a vegetarian so I’m being slowly being pushed into becoming a herbivore.

Now, if I am to live up to my eco-credentials (as aspirations of eco-friendliness), maybe it’s the only way forward.

Indeed, all this week, and in the run up to the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen, the BBC World Service is broadcasting a series called “The Climate Connection“.

The series follows five young people as they explore an issue they believe to be at the heart of the climate change debate. The participants come from all parts of the world and they look at potential solutions to the present crisis.

The series is in partnership with the Open University and their “Creative Climate” project. I’ll leave you to discover more about that if you wish. Just click here.

Tonight’s episode was titled “Does the World Need Meat” and followed a young American student from Columbia University in New York.

Together with the presenter she criss-crossed the United Sates in search of answers to that very question.

I thought it was a really interesting programme that took a very balanced approach and examined each side of the argument in equal measure. It did not try to impose a particular view on the listener in what can be a heated debate.

In fact, the “Climate Connection” series has so far been fair to all sides as it looks at quite contentious subject matters that divide opinion.

Why America? Well, if there was ever an avid meat eating nation, this is it. This is the country that chomped its way through millions upon millions of bison, driving it close to extinction, and continues to worship the cow, especially when it is on their plates.

10 billion animals are killed every year in the United Sates in order to feed their voracious and ever growing appetite for all things sanguine.

Of course, unashamed meat consumption is not limited to the US. Such is the demand that one third of the planet is devoted to rearing livestock and demand is expected to double by 2050.

At present, livestock accounts for 18% of global emissions. In the US, that figure is 2.8%. If you have read one of my previous posts, cows et al burp methane and this causes global warming.

The level of burping has a lot to do with the synthetic grain they are fed. Indeed, if you modify their diet, the burps decrease.

Anyway, in the States, the vast majority of cattle are raised in pens and fed on corn. Makes for a tastier animal apparently. Grass just doesn’t cut it (no pun intended).

And there are estimated to be 9.5 million cattle in such pens, or feed lots as they are also known.

What was interesting was the range of views we got in the programme. We heard from both sides of the debate, starting with the staunch defenders of the meat industry. We heard from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the ‘voice’ of beef industry as their Chief Environmental Counsel described it. Keen to point out that livestock produce only 2.8% of the US emissions, she was defensive when the presenter put it to her that the intensive raising of cattle was unnatural.

The American Farm Bureau, the largest farm lobby group in the US, argued that the US is the most efficient food producer in the world and attempting to regulate the industry through stricter standards would only have the effect of moving production to other, less efficient, parts of the world with the net result that the methane footprint would invariably increase.

Their president declared that the war raging between the meat eaters and the herbivores in the US is a pointless one

We like our hamburgers. We like our steaks, We like our chicken. We like our bacon in the morning and I don’t see that changing in the near future

I am inclined to agree with the naysayers. Nevin Cohen, from the New School in New York, said that their is a fatal flaw in the lobbyists’ argument. They fail to account for the vast swathes of rainforest in South America that is destroyed to make way for the soy plantations that feed the cattle. This raises CO2 levels.

Transporting the grain to the US and elsewhere raises CO2 levels.

As a result, the meat industry has a carbon footprint of rather large proportions.

Perhaps we do, as consumers, need to change our eating habits. Perhaps policy makers need to change policies. Yet, as the economic situation of a country improves, so does its meat consumption.

Maybe Pedro Sanchez of the Earth Institute at Columbia University is right..the American way of producing beef is sick. Through unnatural practices, the US is producing fatty beef by feeding them grain after grain. The world needs meat, but we must do it right. We have to use intelligent farming practices.

The problems associated with large scale soy farming in South America are well known. It is saddening to see hundreds and hundreds of thousands of acres of forest being cut down to feed the world’s appetite for meat and other agricultural products.

In its drive to become an agricultural giant, Brazil is plowing one of its most precious resources – the Amazon. We are talking farms the size of large English counties. They are now the world’s largest supplier of soybean and the country could soon replace the American heartlands when it comes to food production.

National Geographic covered the problem in typically excellent fashion.

So, the environmental arguments against meat eating are quite plain to see.

Will the world wake up tomorrow and turn vegetarian? No. People love their meat and will not stop eating it.

Can we modify our farming practices? Perhaps. I leave that to the experts.

More importantly, could alternative methods meet the ever growing demand for meat. Maybe only intensive farming would satisfy it.

I do believe that governments would be reluctant to do away with existing practices, if only for economic reasons. As we have seen, cattle farming in the US is a gargantuan operation with powerful lobbyists supporting it all the way up the steps to Capitol Hill.

Likewise, as much as Brazil would like to increase their eco-standing in the world, soybean farming will continue regardless. Why stop? There is a worldwide demand for the commodity.

If you would like to listen to the programme, click on the link below.

Does the World Need Meat?

P.S. If you have read this far, well done. Note to self: rant less and keep the posts short.

Nairobi to Moshi by mini-bus

Semi-nomadic cattle herders encourage their meatless livelihoods across the parched Kenyan soil, oblivious to the the Mario Kart style wacky racing tournament that dominates the new tarmac road beside them. Our 18 seater racing wagon rockets down the strip, swerving frequently to the other side of the road to dodge pot holes and then sharply back to the left again to avoid the mother of all lorries. Less then an hours drive from Nairobi we come to an abrupt halt. A team of sweat gleaming labourers block the road ahead. Unperturbed, our speed demon driver edges the mini-bus over the lip of a steep embankment and then nose-dives us into a ditch. We bounce and judder in an unsavoury fashion to the dirt track below.

The rude vibrations and abrupt seat expulsions continue for the remaining seven hours of transit. I’m beginning to feel like a tinned peach, marinating in my own sweat and mosquito repellent. But within the hour I’ve retreated into some kind of monster hybrid; Buddhist detachment meets sleep deprivation induced coma! Through wobbly dust stained window I spy lone Masai cattle herders sheltering under gnarly acacia trees. Their lean bodies are wrapped in red sheets and their ear lobes are stretched into humongous flesh tunnels. Thorns are used for the initial piercings which are stretched with bundles of sticks, stones and empty film canisters. Occasionally I catch sight of a lone Masai hut, tiny camouflaged structures made from sticks pasted in cow dung. But the Sunshine is beginning to lose her grip on the blue, blue sky. Wearily, she rests her head on the horizon and reaches out to the dusty foliage with her long spindly fingers. Unable to grip, she slips silently away and we are plunged into sleepy blackness.

Moshi

Coiled around the dirt alleys of Baba Market like some fantastical albino snake, our entourage of fifteen white Kilimanjaro hopefuls instigates curiosity, weariness and relentless entrepreneurship among the locals. Exotic and lucrative, we are pursued through the winding dirt paths of the market, shamelessly charmed and then impaled with the darts of hard line sales pitches. Kilimanjaro sun hats, beaded bracelets and animal oil paintings galore! We seek refuge under the wicker roofed fruit and veg stands. Plum faced women in vibrant patterned clothes smile at us behind piles of sunshine yellow and Amazon green fruit. ‘Mambo!’ My Swahili is still foetal, but ‘pure’ I call back. They laugh wholeheartedly ‘poa’ they correct me, ‘poa!’ This is just the street language of course but our exchange translates to ‘what’s up’ and ‘it’s cool.’ Our guides are anxious to teach us the language and the majority of people we meet and converse with are pleased we’ve made the effort, encouraging us and teaching us new words. An older women perched on a wooden crate eyes us wearily but the children watch our procession in wide-eyed wonder, slapping us lightly as we walk past and shouting ‘jambo’, ‘hello!’ and then running away in high pitched squeals of laughter. We meander past whole pigs and birds strung from the roof, their sporadic blood droplets quenching the dusty floor below. Eventually we re-emerge from the roofed sections and find ourselves in a dusty square, carpeted with rugs and throws, the contents of whole shops laid bare in the open air.

Day 1: The Rainforest

I perch nervously on my bus seat in a haze of wondrous anticipation and gruesome fear. Clouds of dusty beige evaporate into rich, orange fields through my window pane as my fear begins to dissolve, leaving my mind fertile with adventure. Crowds of tiny coco faces form outside passing schools, eyes wide and eager, little hands waving franticly, their voices hollowing at the awesomeness of their spectacle. And onwards our bus rolls, up through muddy tracks and winding into fertile banana plantations minded by weather worn workers; who kick back behind grubby plastic tables in shabby cafe structures in the warm, rainy gloom. Merchants clamour forcefully around Machame gates, knocking purposefully on the bus windows with their goods. Many of them work as porters too when they can get the work, which involves bribing the lead guide for a position in the crew, paying entry to the park and then relentless hours of tiresome work and all for a pitiful amount.

We have to hang around the gates for an hour whilst our documents and park entry fees are put in order and I’m anxious to get going. It’s that fear of the great unknown, the imagined event or challenge is often so much worse then the actuality. I can’t picture myself at the summit but my mind is geared towards negativity. Expect the worst and then every outcome will exceed your expectations, that was my motto then. I envision mind-ripping headaches of epic proportions, volcanic eruptions of vomit, tears, pain, strife, an experience more preferable in memory then in actuality.

As we wait for our park visas to be processed, we sit apprehensively on the stone steps outside the park reception. The frantic shouts of the merchants outside the arched wooden gates has subsided into a lazy babble as they wait for the next bus of white cash cows to arrive. The morning air is fresh and cool following the recent rainfall. I hear a deep vocal rumble and then the scuffling of feet, the frantic thumping of frightened hearts and the soft whistle of a moving air as I follow my group up the earthy path, past the throng of pack laden porters and onto the mountainside.

Despite our courtesy head start, the porters have overtaken us within three minutes. Straining against heavy packs and often balancing huge baskets of food and equipment on their heads, their lean black bodies charge past us. Oh the shame! I feel so puny, pale and worthless. Like a delicate china doll, pampered and privileged whilst these inky oxen struggle and triumph on my behalf. With this soulful realisation, I know I can not fail.

The rainforest itself reminds me of a charming English wood, distorted through the eyes of an acid freak. Silver barked trees twist and tangle in knots of moss and bronze in the sky above, encasing us in their enchantment. Ropes of thick green moss hang mysteriously above our heads like great shaggy serpents and a menagerie of ochre, tan and copper leaves imprint little fairy footsteps upon the ground. With so much lush green foliage encasing the path, detail loses its identity among the frenzy of colours and shapes, re-discovering itself in a 3D Monet masterpiece.

To be continued……

Very short post this evening just to mention a few of my favourite charities.

- Rainforest Alliance

- Rainforest Concern

- The Living Rainforest

- The Prince’s Rainforests Project

- World Land Trust

- WWF

Of course there are many, many more, but it’s a small selection of my favourite.

If there are any others you feel deserve a mention, then get in touch!

Sorry about the long wait, but work comes first.  Anyway, I am getting back in the swing of things for a little while.

Science News in Brief

The Large Haldron Collider has resumed operation and set a new world record for energy.  Its particle beams were accelerated at over one trillion volts.  This was just a precursor to the Collider’s primary scientific tests set for the year 2010.

Still No Black Hole: Just to give you a sense of the energy involved here: a lightning strike hits with about 1 billion volts.

A cross-disciplinary team of researchers from universities across America have released a study which indicates that climate change could increase the likelihood of civil war in sub-Saharan African countries by as much as 50% in the by 2050.  These wars would be fueled by decreased water supplies, fewer food sources, and increased poverty rates.

Talking World War III Blues: Already, 5.4 million people have died from civil war the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, making it the deadliest conflict since World War II.

Scientists seem to have discovered the reason for the hammerhead shark’s strange head shape.  The shape allows sharks to see almost in 360 degrees in binocular vision.

Weird Animal Fact: The mantis shrimp has the best eyesight in the animal world.  It is the only animal to to have hyperspectral colour vision.  That is, it can see across the electromagnetic spectrum.  We can only see visible light.

Cool Creature

I already covered the kakapo, but I have been dying to post this video.

Feature Story: Remember Me

Are some animal species more important than others?  A recent study which examined 222 carnivore species around the world points to the fact that certain carnivores should be more protected than others due to their ecological importance and individuality.

Even though carnivores are probably the most studied animal group, their taxonomic connections are not well understood.  Thanks to genetic testing, scientists are now able to construct much more accurate taxonomic maps.

The study supports the theory that describes the split of carnivores into two main evolutionary groups: dog-like carnivores (Caniforms) and cat-like carnivores (Heliforms).  The same study also revealed some so-called Confused carnivores which do not fit neatly into the aforementioned classification.

Researchers performing the study also isolated a number of carnivores which are unique in the ecological services they perform and the way they evolved.  They suggest that these species, including monk seals, red pandas, and walruses, should be more protected than others because they are so unique.  Because they are evolutionarily distinct, they have genes and evolutionary history not found in any other species.  This makes it important with regards to biodiversity: by increasing genetic variability.

The Cosmic Perspective

All people value equality: the right to be treated with equal respect and dignity as any other human being.  Those who value the environment tend to extend that to the animal world.  We do not like to show preferential treatment to certain animals just because they are cute and cuddly.  So, this study which claims that certain animals are more important from an evolutionary perspective comes as a bit of a shock.  Why should a walrus be more important than a snow leopard?

I look at this from two points of view: that of a scientist and that of an environmentalist, because I consider myself to be both.  As a scientist, I definitely see the merit of protecting certain species.  Different animals perform different tasks in an ecosystem.  Certain animals’ roles are more critical to the functioning of the system as a whole than others.  It is a principle of network systems thinking that  nodes (animals) in a system (ecosystem) can be ranked based on the number of nodes which connect to them and the importance of those nodes.  So, the more important connections an animal has, the more important it is in an ecosystem.  However, even a few important links can prove to elevate a species to a higher status than one with many relatively commonplace connections.

That being said, all animals play an important role in biodiversity.  Biodiversity provides for the astounding variety of different organisms, genes, ecosystems in which they exist, and biological services these organisms provide for life to adapt to changing environmental conditions throughout history.  It would be foolish not to save as much as we can of the already dwindling amount of biological diversity we have on this planet.  We often do not know how important something is before it is gone altogether.

The world is in free fall. With the economy failing, temperatures rising and people confident that they can just carry on living as they have been, we shall soon be at our end.

There are too many components of this debate to list and yet each one of us knows them intimately. Just one such area is deforestation.

One recent effort to highlight this was made by artist Angela Palmer, from Oxford. Her exhibition, “Ghost Forest”, brought the stumps of 10 rainforest trees, complete with roots, to London’s Trafalgar Square.

The trees, most sourced from sustainable rainforests in Ghana, were the artist’s way of campaigning against the atrocities taking place in many rainforest countries.

Palmer told BBC news “I want it to promote contemplation and reflection on rainforests and deforestation and what is happening in the planet.” She continues, “I think there is a lot of scientific analysis and data, but to see something visually like this I think could have real impact.”

The trees stumps certainly cannot be ignored. Lasers have been set up to measure against Nelson’s Column the height the trees would have reached in the wild, “the absence representing the removal of the world’s ‘lungs’ through continued deforestation.” Palmer explains.

The artist has a point. Facts and figures are at the least confusing and at worst a mundane presentation of reality which can all too easily be ignored. Forcing people to see the trees like this and question their presence more effectively engages mind with matter.

It is only with this realisation that we can hope to progress. Change is needed and it is needed fast. Without change more forests will disappear and the world will suffocate. So what can we do?

Keep our eyes and our minds open. Question everything. Do not accept all that the government say and do not trust statistics. Look around, the answers are clear to see.

This year Northern England experienced the highest rainfall since records began. Tell me it’s a coincidence.

Read this article on the BBC’s News Wesbsite: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8361486.stm

Associated Press
Speaking before Amazon summit, Lula calls on industrialised countries to provide financial help to halt deforestation.

Brazil’s president said today that “gringos” should pay Amazon nations to prevent deforestation, insisting rich western countries had caused much more environmental destruction than the loggers and farmers who cut and burn trees in the world’s largest tropical rainforest.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was speaking before an Amazon summit at which delegates signed a declaration calling for financial help from the industrialised world to halt deforestation, which contributes to global warming.

“I don’t want any gringo asking us to let an Amazon resident die of hunger under a tree,” Lula said. “We want to preserve, but they will have to pay the price for this preservation because we never destroyed our forest like they mowed theirs down a century ago.”

In Brazil, the word “gringo” generally refers to anyone from the northern hemisphere.

Lula convened the meeting to form a unified position on deforestation and climate change for seven Amazon countries before the Copenhagen climate summit. But the only leaders who attended were Guyana’s Bharrat Jagdeo and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, representing French Guiana, leaving top Lula aides and environmentalists to admit the gathering will have a muted impact.

Other countries sent vice-presidents or ministers, and the presidents of Colombia and Venezuela embarrassed Brazil by cancelling at the last minute.

Sarkozy supported a recent proposal by Lula to create a financial transaction tax that would be used to build a fund to help developing countries protect their forests. Details will be discussed in Copenhagen.

Despite the lacklustre summit showing, Lula aides said it was important to drive home a message that the Amazon is home to 30 million people, most of whom depend on the forest’s natural riches to eke out a living. About 25 million live in Brazil’s portion.

“In Europe everyone has opinions about the Amazon, and there are people who think the Amazon is a zoo where you have to pay to enter,” said Marco Aurelio Garcia, Lula’s top foreign policy adviser. “They don’t know there are 30 million who work there.”

Brazil has managed to reduce Amazon destruction to about 7,000 square kilometres a year, the lowest level in decades. But that is still larger than the US state of Delaware.

The Brazilian Amazon is arguably the world’s biggest natural defence against global warming, acting as an absorber of carbon dioxide. But it is also a big contributor to warming because about 75% of Brazil’s emissions come from rainforest clearing, as vegetation burns and felled trees rot.

Brazil has an incentive to protect the Amazon because the new global climate agreement is expected to reward countries for “avoided deforestation” with cash or credits that can be traded on the global carbon market.

Norway will give Brazil $1bn (£600m) by 2015 to preserve the Amazon rainforest, as long as Latin America’s largest country keeps trying to stop deforestation.

Norway was the first to supply cash to an Amazon preservation fund which Brazilian officials hope will raise $21bn to protect nature reserves, persuade loggers and farmers to stop destroying trees, and finance scientific and technological projects.

Brazilian environment minister Carlos Minc has said Japan, Sweden, Germany, South Korea and Switzerland are considering donating to the fund.

Australias regnskoger er de eldste i verden, mer enn 100 millioner år gamle (Amazonas er 7-10 millioner år). Vi tok en tur i Daintree regnskogen ved Cairns. Et fantastisk sted å vandre i…  Jeg vet dessverre ikke navnet på disse vekstene. Men flotte var dem alle sammen…  Samme med denne soppen, aner ikke hva den heter…  Eller denne som skulle være ubehagelig å ta på…  Nøtt? Frukt? Kongle? Aner ikke, men fotogen uansett…  Flotte farger som lyste opp der den sto. Turen i regnskogen var en stor opplevelse. Merker at jeg får varmen tilbake når jeg blar igjennom bildene fra turen……Det ble ca 3000 bilder…..

Here is an electronic version of the instructions for your rainforest WebQuest
Rainforest webquest sheet

This is an amazing talk by Willie Smits on integrated approach to rain forest restoration in Kalimantan. It is never too late to reverse damages caused by humans. The local community life was restored as the nature and wild animal habitat is restored.

Willie Smits has devoted his life to saving the forest habitat of orangutans, the “thinkers of the jungle.” As towns, farms and wars encroach on native forests, Smits works to save what is left.

Willie Smits works at the complicated intersection of humankind, the animal world and our green planet. In his early work as a forester in Indonesia, he came to a deep understanding of that triple relationship, as he watched the growing population of Sulawesi move into (or burn for fuel) forests that are home to the orangutan. These intelligent animals were being killed for food, traded as pets or simply failing to thrive as their forest home degraded.

Smits believes that to rebuild orangutan populations, we must first rebuild their forest habitat — which means helping local people find options other than the short-term fix of harvesting forests to survive. His Masarang Foundation raises money and awareness to restore habitat forests around the world — and to empower local people. In 2007, Masarang opened a palm-sugar factory that uses thermal energy to turn sugar palms (fast-growing trees that thrive in degraded soils) into sugar and even ethanol, returning cash and power to the community and, with luck, starting the cycle toward a better future for people, trees and orangs.

“This man has dedicated his life to saving the world, and for this he earns our deepest respect.”

Jean Kern, Ode

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest.html

449

“You can’t censor language. It’s our greatest, greatest achievement.” – John Lydon

Solitude : State of being alone, especially when you find it pleasant.

How many of us are comfortable with being alone?

Not many, as most of us will have this misconception that spending time alone clearly means that we lack attention, social skills, self-centred, outcast, unloved.

For me, being in solitude means a time to find myself again, gather some strength to conquer the battles ahead. To understand and love myself once more.

In the recent months, I find it hard to find my space due to all the work I am getting. I am truly grateful to be busy but then again I’m tipping off my balance from time to time. I feel “cheated” for working too hard and giving my time to others, but deep down I know it’s a challenge. I know and I know that, ” I CAN DO IT” and I will fly and soar after.

The Botanical Gardens have always been my favourite place to spend “ME” time . I’m there so often that the cafe crew would greet me from afar with their big warm smiles.I could spend my whole afternoon reading my book, sipping a cup of latte and watching people go by. My mobile phone will be switched off , no laptop so that I can resist the urge to check on my dishes in Cafeworld.I’ll take occasional breaks from my reading to immerse myself with the surroundings or take a short walk around the park to look at trees.I’ll start to rearrange my thoughts of negativity, my fears and worries… bringing more focus on the present moment. The crisp fresh air, blue skies, butterflies joyfully flying, birds chirping, insects buzzing, landscape of green… the sight and sounds of nature brings forth so much peace. I can feel an energy exchange of calmness and positivity whenever I trust her with my problems. Nature keeps my secrets,she won’t judge me, she listens and embrace me with her love. She teaches me to see my problems as experiences, that will help me learn and grow. After every visit, I gather her strength which helps me see life in a different perspective. Emerging more confident, calm and poise. Ready to face the world of challenges once again.

French designer Patrick Nadeau has created an installation for Italian brand Boffi, consisting of hanging domes covered in living plants. Called Rainforest, the installation comprises a series of Corian frames held together with cable ties. A type of hanging Spanish moss called Tillandsias usneoïdes, which doesn’t need soil, is draped over these frames. The domes are suspended from the ceiling and used to light the Boffi product displays. The installation was displayed during Designer’s Days in Paris, the London Design Festival and Milano Design-in-the-City.

Via & more: Dezeen

Here’s an interesting video with David Attenborough in which he speaks about what it means to lose so much of our rainforests. Enjoy

I haven’t updated since July, but October was one of my best months yet. Despite being in the middle of finishing my masters degree (my albatross), I have found a window of opportunity to get a quick update in. Just to show this site has not left my mind, far from it, ideas are countless still. My next update should be during the winter break between fall and spring semester. So… in preparation for a more in depth article on Latin America I’m going to tell you about the Darien Gap.

What is the Darien Gap?

The Darien Gap - thanks to Canary in the Coal Mine

This question is more difficult to answer than I had originally planned. ‘What is the Darien Gap’ is like asking ‘What is physics?’ Sure – there’s the simple answer that it’s the study of matter and energy and how they interact with each other… but anybody who has ever studied it knows that physics is the greatest mindfuck there is. And like physics, the complexity surrounding the Darien Gap might be equally boggling. And also like physics, there is a simple answer: the Darien Gap is a small swath of jungle that sits on the border of Central and South America on the edges of Colombia and Panama. It’s a mere 31 miles wide from the Caribbean Coast to the Pacific Coast and various thicknesses depending on your source and what they consider to be the Darien Gap since it’s not an entirely defined region. But as I said, this simple answer to the question “What is the Darien Gap’ does it no justice. If I were to create my own answer to this question I might simply call it the most insidious place on Earth.

And there was no light matter in choosing the word ‘insidious’ either. The Darien Gap is insidious in every aspect of the definition. Merriam-Webster describes insidious as “awaiting a chance entrap: treacherous, harmful and enticing: seductive” and the Darien Gap is most definitely both seductive and treacherous. The following are real-life situations and issues directly involving the seduction and treachery of the Darien Gap. And these stories are so extreme that they could only be fact because fiction wouldn’t believe them. But the Darien Gap is virtually unheard of despite its global reach. The 31 miles of unbroken jungle seems paltry to the behemoth Amazon to the South, yet it is crucial to understand the power it holds. But for all these stories to truly have weight, we need to understand the setting: The Darien Jungle itself.

Thomas Griffioen's beautiful snapshot of the Darien Jungle

The Darien Jungle

The Darien Jungle consists of some of the most impassible and impossible terrain on the planet. In some areas rocky cliffs reign supreme while other areas are so swampy that you could hide a few passenger jets deep in the swamp with plenty of room to spare. Some rainforest areas have been described as if being in a giant Cathedral with nothing but dirt on the ground and nothing but canopied trees above, other areas are shrouded in a constant fog of clouds. The picture to the right is from one of the only places I could find quality pictures from the Darien Gap. Most pictures are small or grainy or poor quality in some way. Thomas Griffioen’s website has a lot of high quality beautiful pictures from the area, his set of pictures will really help you get a feel for the area. Through these pictures the seduction of the Darien Gap becomes obvious.  In fact, it seduced this entirely different man to be the first to cross the Darien Gap by motorcycle and he had this to say about describing one part of the jungle:

After two hours on the trail we arrived at the marker on the Panama Columbia border. The hills were getting steeper and longer, sometimes it took three of us to get a bike up a hill. At places the trail was on the side of a steep hill. One slip, bike and rider would plunge into a deep valley that would be almost impossible to get out of. To make problems worse, there were many fallen trees and the jungle seemed to be getting thicker. We could barley see the sky and the jungle seemed like perpetual twilight zone.

He also took some pictures. Ian Hibell, a bicyclist that made the goal to bike from the tip of South America to Alaska went through the Darien Gap and you can see him hiking through a torturous swamp. And that is actually the only video I have of the Darien Jungle deep in its own heart. To think so very few primary resources of any place teeming with life on the planet in the 21st century is shocking.

And hidden deep within the jungle along the coast not accessible by road lays nothing less than one of the most unique fishing locations on the planet. The Tropic Star Lodge’s website proudly acknowledges that they are rated the number one salt-water fishing resort in the world. Built in 1961 by a Texas oil rancher it has become an expensive fishing resort that lures the rich and famous across the planet including John Wayne and Saudi Shieks.

The Tropic Star Lodge poolside, the mystical Darien in the background

As in any unexplored jungle, it is needless to say that species of both plant and animal life still lay undiscovered inside. So naturally there are also numerous species that have been discovered that are endemic within the Darien Gap area. The Darien Gap is also a safe-haven for quite a few endangered species. Of these endangered species you might stumble across a Howler monkey, so surly in disposition it is the only untamed monkey by Native Americans. The Giant Anteater is another endangered species crawling through this tropical dimension. I’m going to take a minute to grind my axe here – I hate it when species like this are endangered, I’ve express this same feeling in my ocean entry about the endangered Leatherback turtles that eat jellyfish.  Speaking from one human to another, we do not want species like this to go extinct. I know the anteater looks like a joke with legs but truly this animal is really smart and useful. Like bats and Leatherbacks they get rid of the pesky primordial species that are always trying to overwhelm the planet to turn the Earth back in to the golden age of when simple-celled organisms and insects ruled the planet. Ants are ridiculously plentiful, nobody is complaining about the scarcity of ants, and nobody is all too keen on hanging around with ants – so why aren’t we worshiping these creatures that have adapted a nose to actually inhale them? AND it’s the BIGGEST of them ALL! These animals are worth not only saving but actually growing their population. But instead we blindly go around eradicating these useful complex species from our planet in favor of the mechanical insects and primordial jellyfish. Why are we so stupid as to pick stinging, burning, biting, insects over silly-looking ant-eaters, flying mammals, and cool turtles, I will never understand this…

But I digress… Another endangered species found in the Darien Gap is the Bush Dog – super cute little guy right there. The white lipped peccary is a hog-like species that are notoriously aggressive and travel in packs. So you might be going for a random stroll through the Darien Jungle when all of a sudden you hear a large herd of white lipped peccaries coming your way – you better climb up the nearest tree because these little guys are nasty and they aren’t afraid of people. The lesser capybara is another rare and endangered species, it also weighs in as the worlds largest rodent. But before you cringe in disgust it’s clear the picture that it looks less like a rat and more like a guinea pig. And giant guinea pigs should be cool in everybody’s book. In fact, looking at this animal makes me understand that even rabbits had to have come from rodent ancestry.  Another endangered species is the Oncilla, a super cute 5 – 10 lb wildcat, I suspect living in a jungle they could get pretty nasty though. Baird’s Tapir is the last endangered animal I’m going to showcase even though it is not the last endangered animal in the jungle; this strange mammal travels largely alone through the inexplicably unforgiving jungle trying to survive despite lower and lower numbers. These Tapirs take over a year to give birth after being impregnated and have to survive in a jungle in addition to being hunted by humans. I’m surprised any animal lives a year in that jungle with all the predators and deadly insects. Finally, some of the native residents of the Darien Jungle are the Embera tribe, traditional warriors of the region. Hunting with blowpipes and into some serious body painting, these native inhabitants have survived the Darien for centuries.

The Darien Scheme

The Isthmus of Darien

So how unforgiving can the Darien Gap be? Well, listen to the story of how the Darien Gap defeats the country of Scotland. Yes – Scotland! How does a 30-mile swath of jungle in Central America defeat a country half a world away? Well, Scotland had existed as an autonomous entity for roughly 1000 years without compromising their independence. Yet it is well documented that at the very minimum the Darien Gap accelerated dissolution of Scotland and the creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

William Paterson was a Scottish fellow who got rich by creating the Bank of England. And for his second trick he decided to return to his native Scotland and create a trading empire out of the tiny kingdom to the North. The cartography of the world had been complete enough at the turn of the 18th century and Paterson recognized a trading monopolists dream. It was clear beyond a doubt that the narrow isthmus of Darien, a mere 30 miles across (have I stressed that point enough yet?), would be ideal to establish a trading monopoly. Paterson was certain that if the Scottish government and the people of Scotland backed this plan they could colonize this isthmus and establish a crucial trading route from the expansive Atlantic and mighty Pacific.

I can only imagine Paterson’s vision. Any completed map of the world back then would clearly show the unique geographic feature of an incredibly thin strip of land sitting conveniently between two massive continents. I can even feel his excitement – the Panama Canal would not be created for another 200 years – plenty of time to make Scotland the ultimate trading monopoly on the planet. For all these years the Kingdom of Scotland sat in the shadow of the likes of England, France, and Spain colonizing half the planet while Scotland held no successful colonies. And here was Scotland’s prodigal son – William Paterson – a successful businessman with capital to invest getting ready to give Scotland its just due in the light of exploitation. No longer will England, Spain, and France be the only countries patting each other on the back for the capitalization of whole regions of the planet – in fact they’ll now be at Scotland’s mercy because they will have control of the Darien isthmus – and thus have control of the simplest trading route between the two monster continents. It would be an unavoidable monopoly and it would be Scotland who would benefit.

So Paterson started pitching this “scheme” to the Scots, and the Scots bought it – hook, line, and sinker. The Scots invested £500,000 which totaled about 50% of the nations capital. There was hardly a Scot who didn’t throw whatever money he could at this global conquest. Originally, the Scots weren’t going to bare the entire load and Paterson had worked the English and Dutch into the deal who subsequently backed out. To this day scandalous rumors float around questioning if this was done intentionally with the foresight of what would happen in Darien. Volunteers for the first trip to Darien were easy to find and were packed on a boat, 1,200 in number, and sailed 4 months across an expansive ocean to settle in their distant tropical paradise, build a colony, and make money! Of course when you cram 1,200 people on a boat for 4 months across an ocean at the turn of the 18th century enthusiasm tends to diffuse rather quickly. The Scots arrived in Darien sick and filled with dead – including Paterson’s wife.

They unloaded their ship and began setting up their colony in the exact jungle in which I’ve already took the liberty to describe for you. And if things were bad on the boat they only got worse in the unforgiving heart of tropical Darien. Jungle diseases quickly began decimating the population and rations were becoming thin. Back at home Scotland sent a resupply ship which got shipwrecked. It then took even longer to send two ships which began their 4 month journey to Darien too late. The colony, decimated, took to the jungle in search of nearby plantations run by other nations. The resupply ships, only equipped for the basic necessities for a fully operating colony landed at Darien in shock and dismay to find nobody.  1,200 resupply colonists reached Darien but it is said that as few as 30 survived.  With a complete and utter disaster realized it’s believed that Scotland became so crippled it forced the 1707 Act of Union with England.

The Pan-American Highway

Nothing can stop the pan-American highway... except for the Darien Gap -click to enlarge-

So we just read some history of the Darien region, now let’s fast-forward to modern day. But again, let’s step away from Darien for a moment and head to the top of the world where the small town of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska sits on the edge of the Arctic Ocean. Like Darien, this is a place on the planet where most people avoid. In fact, Prudhoe Bay has only about 50 residents all toiling in a remote, lifeless region of the planet to pump oil back to civilization for us to consume. According to their website that looks like it was made in 1995, there are 0 families that live at this northernmost town in North America. A few years ago Prudhoe Bay got some notoriety when BP spilled over a million liters of oil.

Now let’s go the the very opposite now – the bottom of the world, Ushuaia, Argentina – often regarded as the southernmost city in the world. Not as extreme as Prudhoe Bay, Ushuaia enjoys milder weather despite its location. What do these two places have in common? They are both the starting and ending points of the Pan-American Highway – a highway created to span across the expanses of two continents. Unbroken lay the chain of highway from Prudhoe Bay to Ushuaia standing as a testament to the power of mankind over nature… well unbroken everywhere except for the Darien Gap.

Yes, you could take the Pan-American Highway and cross its distances from the icy Arctic, where no trees live through the towering rockies and conifer forests, down through the North American deserts, into unstable Central American countries shrouded in jungle, but in the small backwater of Yaviza, Panama the Pan-American Highway stops. A seemingly impenetrable wall of jungle faces you here – you are staring at the Darien Gap. Nothing but raw jungle stands between you and Turbo Colombia. From Colombia, you could follow along the Pacific through Ecuador, Peru, and Chile into the ribbed backside of the Andes Mountains.  The final leg of the intensely long journey would be through country of Argentina, showcasing its capital – Buenos Aires, before turning sharply South along the Atlantic to Ushuaia.

And it’s this fact that draws people to want to know more about the Darien Gap. We have a road that has conquered all aside from this stretch of jungle. Why hasn’t the jungle been breached? Why haven’t we connected this highway that would be an unrivaled global achievement? What power does this Darien Gap have that we cannot tame in this 21st Century? It turns out that these questions are presumptuous, because despite its inaccessibility, it was purposefully left unfinished.

Now, I know what you’re thinking – With all the endangered species I listed above it’s clear that a highway cutting through this very narrow and diverse jungle is something that humanity as a species would never dare ruin because the preciousness of diversity in life far outweighs the worlds longest road.  But the truth is a terrible livestock disease that exists in South America does not exist in North America. The disease is called Foot and Mouth Disease, from Outside Magazine:

FMD is the doomsday plague of the livestock industry, an illness whose outbreak can shake global stock markets. Most recently, an epidemic of FMD ravaged England in 2001, causing more than $7 billion in economic losses. No cases of the disease have been reported in Panama, and the last U.S. outbreak occurred in 1929. But in Colombia, FMD was endemic during the 1970s and remains present today.

“If FMD were to invade Central America, it could have very rapid access to the United States,” says Harold Hofmann, 61, associate regional director of the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), an agency within the Department of Agriculture that’s charged with protecting the U.S. food supply from pests and diseases. “Therefore, the government’s plan is to keep it as far away as we can.”

Not only did the Pan-American highway never get finished but the creation of the Darien National Park was a result of the fear of this disease. A national park ensured no livestock would be raised within its boundaries. The United States has been puppeteering this region because it is precisely the country standing to lose the most if this disease crosses over. The United States Health Inspection Service has a $4.5 million regional budget working towards eliminating both FMD and a critter known as a screwworm whose larvae eat the flesh of cows.

Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia

FARC rebels

So Darien is purposefully closed off, and with essentially good reasons. But when we look closer, we see there is still yet more to the story. It’s essential to remember the Darien Gap is insidious. And while we look at the Darien Gap and see 3 feet tall kitties and cute rodents and endangered species that need to be saved, the people who live with the Darien see the jungle as a giant death trap. Not simply for the natural causes of death – which are many – but because the Darien Gap has been home to Americas oldest terrorist organization. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are a by-product of over a century of civil war in Colombia. In the 1960s, rallying behind Marxist ideas, FARC was organized and began financing through the drug-trade. Today FARC is a multi-billion dollar drug-dealing enterprise supplying the United States with at least 60% of its cocaine.  This is unfortunate because this is financing a group who recruits child-soldiers and kidnaps anyone of seemingly value  and holds them in remote jungle prisons for sometimes years. The FARC have found their way to the Colombia-Panama border and are living (among other places)  in the Darien Jungle kidnapping those they could use in any way and killing those who don’t help in any way. There will be no arrest for your murder when you are murdered in the jungle, because you will never be found. Due to FARCs power people such as Hugo Chavez, leader of Venezuela, use them to cause confusion among accountable established nations by committing a certain amount of support for them. The United States has paid particular attention to them due to their influence.

Other rebel/terrorist groups that exist in this region are the National Liberation Army and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. All groups kidnap for some money. National Geographic Adventure magazine reporter, Robert Young Pelton, and two others were kidnapped for 10 days by the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia attempting to trek the Darien.  When asked advice for travelers considering going to the region he responded:

The Darién Gap is an extremely dangerous place—it’s probably the most dangerous place in the Western Hemisphere, definitely in Colombia. It’s used as a conduit for drugs. There are no police there, there’s no military, the trails aren’t marked. Kuna Indians are freaked out now because of the violence being perpetrated against them. Unless you have a lot of experience in Colombia, I wouldn’t suggest it. [For the most part] the jungle there is not viewed as a place that is pristine and beautiful—it’s looked at as a place where you get killed. Because no one bothers gathering information, like I did. I mean, I know how you can hike the Darién now. But you have to have a group of armed men with you.

Abandoned mining train succumbing to the Darien Jungle

Destruction of the Darien Gap

Despite the Darien Gap existing (albeit dangerously) into the 21st century, it is guaranteed that it will not exist into the 22nd century. In fact it seems the Gap has less than a decade until the natural plug is breached and the Americas are irrevocably connected. Deforestation of the Gap is rampant. The rebel groups infest the interior making it incredibly dangerous for any sort of ecological protection. And the clock ticks until the final, slim, remaining barrier between North and South America is breached and the transference of Foot-and-Mouth disease to the North will be uncertain. The Native Embera tribe and jungle animals are losing their home tree by tree for basic subsistence and the result will be the elimination of an ecosystem of transcontinental importance.

Trucks, Trains, and Trees

November 11, 2009

According to Thomas L. Friedman, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by all the cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships in the world is actually less than the yearly carbon emissions that result from the chopping down and clearing of tropical forests in places like Brazil, Indonesia and the Congo: we are now losing a tropical forest the size of New York State every year! However, if we could eliminate 17% of global CO₂ emissions, we could halt rainforest destruction. Friedman adds on that to do this requires implementing a whole new economic system that can sustain people’s profitable capital- which mostly comes from logging, furniture manufacturing, and agriculture- while protecting the rainforests from over-logging.

The good news is that Brazil has put in place all the elements of a system to compensate its forest-dwellers for maintaining the forests. Brazil has already set aside 43 percent of the Amazon rainforest for conservation and for indigenous peoples. Another 19 percent of the Amazon, though, has already been deforested by farmers and ranchers. So the big question is what will happen to the other 38 percent. The more we get the Brazilian system to work, the more of that 38 percent will be preserved and the less carbon reductions the whole world would have to make. But it takes money.

Click on the link to read more about this issue!

-WooJung Kim

Am pictat  fascinata de padurile tropicale, cu vegetatia de nepatruns, cu atatea nuante de verde… Imi plac mult ferigile, palmierii, lianele, arbustii de diferite dimensiuni si tipuri, orhideele. Sper sa va placa si voua.

New Photos Highlight Rainforest Devastation

October 2, 2009

Prince Charles of Britain has been leading a campaign again tropical deforestation; to highlight his efforts to combat environmental issues, North America and Europe have organized photographic exhibitions.

The images at the exhibition vividly portray the dire effects of climate change on South American, African, and Indonesian rainforests. Photographer Daniel Beltra, a world-renowned environment photographer who won the Prince’s Rainforest Project Award this past year, selected 1,000 images of a total of 40,000 to display.

Beltra’s collection of images was targeted on capturing scenes primarilyfrom the Amazon Basin, the Congolese Forest, and Borneo and Sumatra in Asia.

To view some of these images, click on the link above.

-WooJung Kim

The other night, I let my girlfriend convince me to see Michael Jackson’s This Is It. Not that I don’t like Michael Jackson – he was definitely one of the most talented artists of our time – it’s just that I’m not a big fan of pop music. Anyway, towards the end of the film, where MJ performs his ballad against the depletion of our rainforests and then speaks about how he adamantly disapproves of the environmental disaster, it occurs to me that perhaps no one informed Michael of the large negative impact his music sales have also had on the environment. He is the biggest selling solo artist in history – Do you know how many environmentally unfriendly vinyl, CDs, and DVDs that equates to? I couldn’t find a straight answer on the web, but I’m sure that the actual figure is astounding. Some web sources have quoted 750 million, others 850 million, but the following website has a pretty detailed break down resulting in a much lower number. Let me be conservative about this and use the 335 million music album and 13 million DVD sales figures from this site, since we will use this later on for an important calculation. Now NOTE that these figures are as-at June 18^th 2009 (less than 1 week from MJ’s death). In less than one month from his death, MJ’s music sold another 9 million CDs…now putting all that together, with the continued projected sales from his death, gives us a massive number of plastic and aluminum based manufactured products…and a big impact on the environment.

Now to the point of my first ever blog: Being so environmentally conscious as he seemed in This Is It, Michael Jackson may have been open to the idea of taking a different approach to selling his music…by making both the This Is It soundtrack and movie available exclusively in digital format would have helped him make a more positive impact on the environment, something he seemed to consider as very important. Just image: No production or distribution of millions of environmentally damaging CDs and DVDs, but only the encoding and transcoding of digital files for download directly to digital devices, which could then be burned onto a disk, if desired. For most people working in the film or music industry, this notion may seem absurd, but let’s just pretend, for the sake of my blog (and the environment), that MJ would have wanted it this way…let’s imagine Michael, so environmentally aware and passionate about making a difference, insist on the ‘digital only’ distribution clause in his revised contracts. Now before you think of ways to bash this blog, let’s go through some numbers and see how many football fields of rainforest Michael Jackson could have saved if he were still alive and a digital media ambassador…

The production of DVDs/CDs:

The inherent environmental cost of producing DVDs and CDs (disks) is something that most people don’t think about. Disks are made of plastic (polycarbonate to be precise), which should be obvious, but most people don’t know that they also have a layer of aluminium sputtered onto the surface. Not only is aluminium highly toxic to produce, it also uses a large amount of energy to manufacture. Add this to the inherent environmental issues of plastic, and you have a pretty lethal item on your hands that cannot even be recycled. However, the process of printing (or decorating) the disc is one that arguably has the most potential for environmental cost. There are various different processes for this, but all involve a great deal of waste and the flushing and disposal of environmentally damaging chemicals. There are environmentally more sound options, such as digital printing, but these are not viable for large volume production jobs – And Michael Jackson’s This Is It is definitely a large volume production job!

Let’s disregard the environmental issues from the printing process for the sake of simplicity and just look at the notion of ‘embodied energy’ required in production of blank disks. Embodied energy is defined as the available energy that was used in the work of making a product. By calculating how much embodied energy is used in producing a typical DVD/CD, not looking at the printing process, one can estimate the total energy usage from the This Is It release and from Michael Jackson’s total lifetime album sales. And with this, we can estimate how many football fields (or acres) of eliminated rainforest this embodied energy equates to.

The distribution of DVDs/CDs:

This is another important element that should be included in any estimation of the environmental effects caused by the sale of a manufactured product; however, for the sake of keeping things relatively simple, I have not included this factor in my calculations. But, I welcome any contributions that would help me generate this number.

Total sales forecast for the This Is It soundtrack and movie:

Let’s assume that This Is It, the soundtrack compilation, will sell 150% more than the 2003 compilation release of Number Ones (7 million world-wide), making the forecast 17.5 million units (over its longevity) – Again, open to any feedback on this assumption from those of you who know the music industry well. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to Gfk data to get accurate global DVD sales figure, but let’s take Mamma Mia numbers for the US (6.5 million units from the-numbers.com), assume fewer European unit sales (4 million units) and let’s use a 2 million figure for the rest of the world. Equaling a total of 12.5 million units (over its longevity). Personally, I think that these are conservative estimates, but I’m open to other opinions and sources.

Estimated total embodied energy figure for the This Is It soundtrack and movie production:

From the internet, I’ve been able to gather the following information to help me with the calculation:

• Average weight of a single DVD (with no booklet) = 120 grams.
• Average weight of a single CD (with no booklet) = 100 grams.
• Embodied energy cost for plastics is between 60 & 120 Mj/kg.
• Embodied energy cost for aluminum is between 227 & 342 Mj/kg.

Assuming that one gram of aluminum is used for every CD/DVD and taking a conservative approach to the DVD/CD formats (i.e., assume only use of single DVD/CDs in sales numbers and no double unit collector editions), I’ve come up with the following conservative total embodied energy cost (not including booklet production and disk printing) for the production of DVDs and CDs:

• 1 single CD unit: 9.3 Mj
• 1 single DVD unit: 11 Mj

Using the above sales forecasts, I come up with the following total embodied energy costs for This Is It:

• DVDs: 137.5m Mj
• CDs: 162.8m Mj

Estimated number of football fields of rainforest that the This Is It release will cost our planet:

There are 300 tons of biomass per acre of tropical rainforest. Biomass is essentially biological material derived from living things, or recently living organisms such as wood, waste, and alcohol fuels. Let’s assume that 100% of all biomass within an acre of rainforest is derived from wood. I found a figure for the energy content of wood fuel (air dried with 20% moisture) on the internet of 15 Gj/ton. So, in one acre of rainforest, there are approximately 4500 Gj (or 4.5m Mj) of energy stored – consider this ‘natures’ embodied energy.

So, how many acres of rainforest would give us the combined total of 300.25m Mj of embodied energy (for DVD and CD production of This Is It)? A simple calculation yields 66.7 acres…which are approximately 74 football fields.

The production (NOTE: not including distribution) of the CDs/DVDs of the This Is It release will probably cost our planet the bare minimum equivalent of 74 football fields of tropical rainforest…now that’s a scary thought! An even scarier thought is what MJ’s music and DVD sales have already cost our planet. Take 74 football fields of rainforest and multiply that number by approximately 12 (see numbers from the 1^st paragraph) and you get 888 football fields of rainforest…and this is not even considering the recent sales of Michael Jackson’s previous albums, since his death.

Conclusion:

I would like to believe that if Michael Jackson knew of his music’s carbon footprint and that it has already cost the planet the equivalent of the destruction of at least 888 football fields of rainforest (at a bare minimum), then he would have thought hard and well about the benefits of digital entertainment. I would hope that he would have embraced the opportunity to drastically reduce his environmental footprint, by probably about 74 football fields of rainforest, with the ‘digital only’ release of his next compilation and DVD; which would have been his big global come-back concert in London, but instead has become This Is It. If someone had convinced him about the environmental benefits of digital distribution, he may very well have endorsed digital entertainment to the best of his abilities, turning into one of digital media’s biggest ambassadors.  His managers and producers wouldn’t have been too happy about the idea (clearly reducing their prospective sales and revenue forecasts); however, these same managers and producers did add that heart warming bit at the end of the This Is It film where Michael states ‘We can change…we can change’ over and over again – Perhaps they can change as well.

The more opportunities we have to endorse digital as the real future of entertainment, the sooner we will educate consumers of the benefits and ease that digital distribution can offer them, and the sooner we will make a more positive impact on our environment. As digital media services grow in numbers and improve in their usability, then consumers and advocates of digital entertainment should also grow.  We need ambassadors to the cause – actors, musicians, corporations – who can help with the education process and turn the mass entertainment consumer into a progressive digital entertainment purchaser.

Help me recruit these ambassadors…tweet, forward, publish, etc., this blog and spread the word of the environmental benefits of digital.

‘This Is It’…our chance to make a difference!