Environmental Graffiti

Every week we are offering you the chance to submit all of your niggling or frustrating questions about ethical business and environmental policy to Maria Surma Manka - a top expert in US environmental policy and green business. We will then publish your answer on our blog! Here is the first in hopefully a long series.

Dear Maria,
How do you think we can provide incentives for business to put sustainability before profit?
Cheers,
David

Thanks for your question, David. Businesses exist to make money, so I don’t believe we should necessarily try to convince them to put sustainability before profit. Rather, so many businesses are getting involved in the cleantech revolution and global warming solutions because we’ve hit the sweet spot of sustainability going hand-in-hand with profit.

Renewable energy is one of the “green” areas we hear about often; it’s growing, it’s making businesses and people a lot of money, and it’s cutting down on the global warming pollution. In the U.S., wind power grew 27 percent in 2006 and worldwide it’s quadrupled since 2000. Solar power – despite bumps in the road – continues to be a hot area for investment.

As with most economies, government policy plays a crucial role and must set the rules of the cleantech game. Incentives for renewable energy construction, green buildings, and carbon trading mechanisms (like a cap-and-trade system) are all ways that policy can help drive the move towards a cleaner, more efficient energy system; one that makes economic sense and eco-sense.

We also can’t forget consumer choice in all of this. “Vote with your dollar” sounds a bit cheesy but it’s certainly true, and it’s how businesses learn that their sustainable choices are profitable or how their unsustainable choices are not. Europe and the U.S. can hardly keep up with the demand for organic food and the cost of green power may be increasing in some areas of the U.S. because demand is so high. We can’t expect the government and businesses to do all of the work for us; we have to make conscious decisions in our daily lives to make smart purchases that encourage more of the action we want to see.

What we’re experiencing now is really a coming-together of major factors: Global warming impacts are being felt around the globe, elected officials are hearing that their constituents want smarter energy choices, cleantech innovations are popping up every day, and there’s the potential to make a load of money. This intersection of sustainability and profits can drive a smarter, more diverse economy and a cleaner way of doing business on the planet.

Simmons blogs at Thoughts on Global Warming. If you feel like writing for us, drop us an email!

Last week we reported that hundreds of camels in Saudi Arabia had died from a mysterious disease.

Now it is being revealed by the Saudi Arabian Agriculture Minister that over 1700 more camels have died from the same mysterious illness.

A total of 1,982 camels have perished.

The Saudi Arabian government has been on the lookout for foot-and-mouth disease, known as hoof-and-mouth disease in the region.

“Veterinary experts say the symptoms indicate cases of poisoning and not an infectious disease, and this accords with what camel owners have said about animal feed they bought,” Agriculture Minister Fahd Bilghoneim told a news conference.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s “The 11th Hour” is a feature length documentary concerning the environmental crises caused by human actions and their impact on the planet. “The 11th Hour” documents the cumulative impact of these actions upon the planet’s life systems and calls for restorative action through a reshaping of human activity. With the help of over fifty of the world’s most prominent thinkers and activists, including reformer Mikhail Gorbachev, physicist Stephen Hawking, and Nobel Prize winner Wangari
Maathai, “The 11thHour” documents the grave problems facing the planet’s life systems. Global warming, deforestation, mass species extinction, and depletion of the oceans’ habitats are all addressed, and their causes rooted in human activity. The combination of these crises call into question the very future not of the planet, but of humanity.

If you’d like to find out more, you can have a look at the film’s offical website, which has plenty of interesting articles and information.

Recently we put up a post called monsters of taxidermy with a provoking photo. We wanted to know your opinions about what you thought of it: whether it was cruel, pointless or actually beneficial. The responses we got were many and varied. Some of you despised the idea and sent us one word expletive emails! Others just accepted the title for what it was and didnt have much to say. However, we thought one answer stood out from the crowd for two reasons. Firstly, they wrote their answer publicly, instead of emailing us and second they didn’t accept the title at face value. The winning answer from Xnobxt2con is printed below!

The upside of taxidermy is that it brings people closer to animals we never can see or touch in the wild. Think, Natural History Museum in Los Angeles, CA.

To add, the beloved Dr. Suess (Prof. Theodore Geisel) created these sort of beastly creations for fun… just sayin’.

Simmons blogs at Thoughts on Global Warming and Thoughts on the World. If you feel like writing for us, drop us an email!

Japan, home of the Kyoto Treaty, is being overwhelmed by smog. Experts blame China.

Warnings for high levels of smog have been issued for a record 28 Japanese regions.

The type of smog – known as “photochemical smog” because it forms when sunlight reacts with exhaust – is a special concern because it can cause breathing difficulties and headaches. Smog can also cause acid rain and sandstorms.

“In terms of average levels of photochemical oxidants measured annually across Japan, there has been quite a rise since the 1990s,” Toshimasa Ohara, head of the National Institute of Environmental Studies’ regional atmospheric modeling section, told Reuters. “We believe a substantial part of that rise has come from increasing emissions in China. We’re looking into what percentage this factor has accounted for.”

As a first step, government officials say Japan is working with China to measure pollution.

Rogue traders in Thailand have been selling the deadly meat of the puffer fish masked as salmon, Environmental Graffiti has learnt today. Eating the fish can cause paralysis, vomiting, heart failure and death. This is exactly what has happened. At least 15 people have died and 115 more have been hospitalised over a 3 year period.

The fish was officially banned at the beginning of 2002 due to the fact that its ovaries, liver and intestines contain the deadly poison tetrodotoxin. It is so powerful that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration say it can “produce rapid and violent death.” However, people across Asia still eat the fish and it is still widely available in large quantities at local markets and restaurants.

Narin Hiransuthikul of Bangkok’s Chulalonkorn University Hospital said that, “Some sellers dye the meat of puffer fish and make it look like salmon which is very dangerous.” Carving and gutting the fish requires a great level of skill and training, at least 10 years to be precise.

In Japan the puffer fish is named fugu – it is often eaten by thrill-seeking Japanese businessmen and aesthetes, who believe that the risk of being posing adds extra attractiveness to the dish.

Deep in the middle of the Atlantic lies a huge underwater mountain range, equivalent in size to that of the alps, better known as the Mid-Atlantic ridge. Underneath the huge mass of water, right on sea floor, lurk creatures that have never seen before by human eyes. That is because only 1% of our ocean floor has been explored. It is still one of the greatest mysteries of our times.

Just recently, an expedition led by Monty Priede, director of the Oceanlab research center at the University of Aberdeen returned successful. “We found lots of these primitive species,” said Priede “It was like going to a new country.” Indeed, it is a bizarre world, 11,500 feet beneath the sea. It is filled with exotic worms, beautiful coral, transparent fish and yet it is completely in the dark.

The team of 31 scientists, coordinated by the Norway-based MAR-ECO project and the global Census of Marine Life program initiative, were the first to see a huge range of marine species, due to the depths and pressures that the ocean yields. They mapped over 1,500 square miles of the sea floor from the Azores to Iceland.

The National Geographic reported that:

“At least one new species, a tiny crustacean called a seed shrimp, is likely new to science, researchers said.

“Another exciting find was a “spiral poo worm,” an animal first identified in 2005 that deposits spiral-shaped feces, some of which have been found in the fossil record dating back hundreds of millions of years.

“Further voyages planned for 2008 and 2009 will retrieve this equipment and collect more samples, Preide said.”

Simmons blogs at Thoughts on Global Warming and Thoughts on the World. If you feel like writing for us, drop us an email!

New islands are appearing in the Arctic as sea ice shrinks to record lows.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a report earlier this year that summer sea ice in the Arctic could almost vanish by the end of this century.

“Islands are appearing just over the fjord here” as glaciers recede, said Kim Holmen, research Director at the Norwegian Polar Institute, gesturing out across the bay. “I know of two islands that appeared in the north of Svalbard this summer. They haven’t been claimed yet,” said Rune Bergstrom, environmental expert with the Norwegian governor’s office on Svalbard. Svalbard is a Norwegian archipelago.

The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said on Friday that Arctic sea ice had “fallen below the 2005 record low absolute minimum and is still melting”.

The vanishing sea ice is a big concern for wildlife in the area; Polar bears and seals depend on the sea ice to hunt.

If you like this post, why not subscribe!!!

We’ve all seen it in horror movies, the archetypal black bat, who suddenly morphs into human form, retaining its sharp teeth, lunging for and infecting its victim. The truth unfortunately, is just as horrifying.

Scientists claim that a specific type of fruit bat, scientifically known as the Rousettus aegypticus is responsible for two extremely deadly diseases. Ebola is one of the most contagious viruses known to man. A bare handshake can infect the victim and the deadly virus kills between 50 to 90 percent of its hosts through massive internal bleeding. Worst of all, there is no cure. Marburg is a disease characterized by fever, with similar mortality rates.

National Geographic reported last month that:

“There has long been speculation among scientists that bats are the natural reservoir for Ebola. In scientific experiments, researchers have injected bats with the Ebola virus, and the bats have survived. “You find bats in almost every outbreak,” said Bob Swanepoel, head of the Special Pathogens Division at South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases.”

Additionally, the researchers, from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and Centre International de Recherches Medicales de Franceville in Gabon tested more than 1,000 bats caught in caves in Gabon and DR Congo, and came to the conclusion that the bats were responsible.

“Identifying Marburg and Ebola infection in the African fruit bats brings us one step closer to understanding this deadly disease,” Eric Leroy, one of the study’s authors, told AFP news agency.

Marburg and the related Ebola virus have caused in the past large outbreaks with extremely high mortality rates, 80 to 90%, in humans and great apes.

The largest outbreak of the Marburg disease occurred in Angola in 2004 - 2005 and killed over 300 people.

Scientists believ this break-through may help them to further understand the diseases and come up with cures.

If you like this post, why not subscribe!!!

Environmental Graffiti stumbled across this picture. Instead of writing the usual article we thought *actually* we’d like to know what your opinion is. Why don’t you give us a piece of your mind - the best answer will be published on the blog and given credit to.

You can either post your comments below or send your submissions to info(at)environmentalgraffiti(dot)com