Environmental Graffiti

Enchanter’s Nightshade

Thrives in moist shady woodland. Its minute white flowers and small round hairy fruits grow along thin, spiky stems. In classical mythology, Circe is said to have used it to turn Odysseus’ men into pigs!

Dog Rose

A wild, scented rose pale pink or white in colour, appears in clusters of one to three in June hedgerows. Its scarlet rosehips, which appear in autumn are edible and rich in vitamin C. These can be very tasty and have been recommended by lots of environmental blogs.

Ivy-Leaved Toadflax

A Trailing plant with ivy-shaped leaves that can grow up to 60cm long, even through walls and pavements. One might say, a symbol of Environmental Graffiti – organic life struggling in an urban jungle. Each tiny lilac flower looks like a snapdragon.

Friends of the Earth welcomed the collapse of the G4 world trade negotiations in Potsdam, Germany on 21st June. The current proposals would have further impoverished the world’s poorest people and caused irreparable damage to the environment.

Friends of the Earth Trade Campaigner Joe Zacune said:

“The collapse of these secretive trade talks is a good opportunity to develop an alternative approach to trade that works for developing countries and the environment. The proposals on the table have been driven primarily by the EU and the US which put the commercial interests of their corporations before the needs of poor communities and their natural resources. Indeed all latest studies show that the poorest developing countries and their environment would lose out from a WTO deal. Hopefully this signals the nail in the coffin of the Doha Round.”

The so-called `Doha Development Agenda’ is not about development. Recent studies show that the poorest developing countries will lose out from current proposals. It is clear that the interests of the largest and most powerful countries and their trans-national companies continue to dominate the WTO’s agenda.

Furthermore, consideration of the disastrous potential global environmental impact of current negotiating proposals is virtually non-existent within the WTO. This is in spite of the fact that there is increasing evidence elsewhere, including from studies commissioned by the European Commission, that escalating international trade in natural resources is likely to damage global biodiversity and local economies.

Forests and fish and fish products are both sectors slated for complete or exceptionally high levels of liberalisation in the WTO’s current negotiations. Yet worldwide, some 60 million indigenous people are almost completely reliant on forest resources for their livelihoods – for food and fuel, medicines and materials – and some 36 million people directly employed in small-scale fishing. Similarly, current negotiations to expand international trade in agricultural products could threaten the livelihoods of millions of small and peasant farmers worldwide.

Within the next ten years fifty million people could be driven from their homes by expanding deserts, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia, a report says. The study by the United Nations University, produced by more than 200 experts from 25 countries, suggests that climate change is making desertification “the greatest environmental challenge of our times”.

According to the report, one third of the Earth’s population – home to about two billion people – is a potential victim of its creeping effect. People displaced by desertification put new strains on natural and environmental resources, as well as on other people. This could threaten international instability.

“There is a chain reaction. It leads to social turmoil,” said Zafaar Adeel, the study’s lead author and head of the UN University’s International Network on Water, Environment and Health.

The largest area affected was probably sub-Saharan Africa, where people are moving to northern Africa or to Europe, while the second area is the former Soviet republics in central Asia, he added.

The UN report suggests that new farming practices, such as encouraging forests in dryland areas, were simple measures that could remove more carbon from the atmosphere and also prevent the spread of deserts.

Is there something positive that can be done or will there be a war?

EU Takes Legal Action

Piled up on the streets of Naples and its province Campania, lie thousands of tonnes of rubbish, uncollected and now rotting in the heat wave, which has soared through southern Europe. Authorities scrabble to find temporary waste dumps. The atmosphere is volatile. It stinks.

“The television reports we have all seen showing piles of garbage rotting in the streets of Campania or set on fire by angry residents have been truly shocking,” Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said in a statement. Because of this, on Wednesday the EU took the first steps that could lead to a landmark case against Italy in the European Court of Justice, the EU’s top court.

Campania, has always been problematic for waste – in 1994 it even declared a state of emergency. Despite this, organized crime and local incompetency have failed to stop this desperate situation. Locals have no choice but to dump, or rather burn their household waste in the streets. This, of course adds to pollution.

Brussels issued a statement: “Reflecting the urgency and gravity of the situation, the Commission is giving Italy one month to respond to its warning letter instead of the usual two-month deadline.” They noted that if the crisis persists, serious health and environmental risks are imminent through the spread of disease and through the pollution of water, air and land.

The EU also said it was checking whether four planned new waste landfill sites in Campania meet EU law and if they will help solve the waste problems, especially in the longer term.

Combine the words iceberg and global warming together and what comes to mind? Probably an image of ice sheets falling down and the apocalypse! But what if I were to say that a new study carried out in the Southern Ocean by leading US scientists has found icebergs to be “ecological hotspots” that enable the surrounding waters to absorb an increased volume of carbon dioxide?

The findings published in the online journal Science Express, state that minerals released from the melting ice triggered blooms of CO2-absorbing phytoplankton (microscopic plants). Shrimp-like organisms called Krill then ate the phytoplankton and the waste material containing the carbon sank to the ocean floor.

How does this link to Global Warming?

According to the BBC…

The number of icebergs found in waters around Antarctica had increased in recent decades as a result of global warming, the researchers wrote in the paper.

“We got a satellite image that covered roughly 11,000 sq km (4,200 sq miles), and counted the number of icebergs within that area,” explained Ken Smith, an oceanographer from Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, California.

We are going to go back and look at smaller icebergs to see how important they are

Dr Ken Smith
Oceanographer
“We had almost 1,000 icebergs.”

The team focused its attention on two icebergs, one measuring 2km by 0.5km (1.2 miles by 0.3 miles) and another 21km in length and 5km wide (13 miles by 3 miles).

Using instruments that included a trawl net and a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) with a video camera, the researchers sampled waters from the ice blocks up to 9km away (5.5 miles).

They found a “substantial enrichment” of minerals, phytoplankton, krill and seabirds in the surrounding water up to 3.7km away (2.3 miles) compared with areas with no icebergs.

“These results suggest that free-drifting icebergs can substantially impact the (open sea) ecosystem of the Southern Ocean and can serve as areas of enhanced production and sequestration of organic carbon to the deep sea,” the scientists wrote.

Geologists are investigating the disappearance of a two-hectare lake in Chile today. Located in the Magellanes region, 2,000km from the capital Santiago, all that is left is a huge crater with bits of ice that used to float on top. It is as if someone pulled the plug out after having a bubble bath.

In March, park rangers patrolled the area and reported the lake to be full and at normal levels. However, Juan Jose Romero from Chile’s National Forestry Corporation, Anaf stated that when “We went again in May, to our surprise we found that the lake had completely disappeared. All that was left were chunks of ice and an enormous fissure.”

One theory, is that the disappearance may been created by an earthquake. This seems plausible, a quake hit the neighbouring region of Aysen in April and there was a huge fissure, maybe that drained it away!

Glacier specialist, Andres Rivera, told Chilean newspaper “La Tercera” that the Magallanes area “has seen interesting changes in the last few decades” – the lake wasn’t there thirty years ago and it’s disappearance seems to be part of the continual reforming of the landscape.

Penguins the size of humans roamed South America some 35 million years ago, and what’s more – they lived in Peru!

A new study by North Carolina State University paleontologist Julia Clarke and her team have discovered two new species of penguins from fossils, including the first complete skull from an ancient giant penguin.

The penguin is reported to have lived in Peru around 36 million years ago and is the third largest penguin known and stood about 4.5 feet (1.5 meters) tall.

The other specimen, dates back to 42 million years and was about three feet (a meter) tall, similar to that of today’s second largest living penguin, the king penguin. The largest penguin around today is the Emperor Penguin, which stands almost 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall.

The earliest known fossil of these aquatic flightless birds, found in New Zealand, dates to about 61 million years ago, not long after the extinction of the dinosaurs and many other life forms 65 million years ago.

Many scientists had believed that penguins did not leave cold-weather regions like Antarctica and New Zealand for warmer, more equatorial regions until perhaps 4 million to 8 million years ago, but these two newly discovered species indicate this took place tens of millions of years earlier.

Penguins tend to populate cold climates such as Antarctica, but also inhabit warmer regions closer to the Equator like the Galapagos Islands.

Bottled water has been banned for San Francisco city workers under an order by Mayor Gavin Newsom, who claims it is too costly, increases pollution and is no better than tap water.

According to the Mayor’s order “In San Francisco, for the price of one 1 gallon of bottled water, local residents can purchase 1,000 gallons of tap water,” saving around $500,000 annually and minimising the use of oil to make the plastic and to transport the bottles.

This news comes at an important time – city officials in March already prohibited the use of plastic shopping bags in large supermarkets, due to the inefficiency of the recycling efforts. Is the State going too far, or should we be excited that they are taking the lead?

From tomorrow Waitrose supermarket will begin selling milk in a new form of “environmentally friendly” packaging: the reusable jug and plastic milk bag are to be launched in the UK.

Whilst the supermarket is heralding this as the start of a new form of environmentally friendly consumption, in fact, this is not the first time that the scheme has been attempted. A similar project was tried and abandoned by Sainsbury’s six years ago. Nonetheless, proponents are keen to point out that we are now in a supposed new age of customer environmental concern and awareness. The milk bags use seventy-five percent less packaging than the plastic milk bottle and furthermore, it is estimated that if in the UK such milk bottles were entirely replaced by the pouches, one hundred thousand tonnes less plastic waste would arrive in landfills. If the Waitrose scheme succeeds, it will be extended nationwide – currently it is due to run only in seventeen branches in London, Bath, and Wales. A jug will cost £1.99 and an organic one litre milk bag will be 91p.

It will be interesting to see whether the British customer will be willing to take action. Will the prospect of burst bags and tricky pouring dissuade otherwise loquacious promoters of environmental friendliness? However, Canada already uses bags for forty percent of its milk consumption, and India and South Africa do not lag far behind.

Is organic bagged milk in a jug a gimmick or revolution? The other supermarkets will no doubt be watching carefully.

This is quite a funny global warming awareness video, featuring some good old-fashioned innuendo from the residents of Devon. The aim of the advert is to make the county’s inhabitants acknowledge ways in which they can reduce their carbon footprint and be more environmentally friendly. Check it out!

Thanks Linton for flagging this one up!