Environmental Graffiti

I was at the coffee shop this morning and, much to my dismay, did not have three dollars with which to pay the lady for my sanity and large muffin. This led to me reaching for plastic charge cards, which, if you didn’t know, means she now has to foot some of my bill.

See, credit card companies assume the risk that something bad will happen in between the time I receive my product and they receive their money (the merchant gets theirs instantly)–and therefore take a small percentage for their trouble.

Last night at the Oscars John Stewart said “Oscar is 80 this year, which makes him now automatically the front-runner for the Republican (presidential) nomination.” However, I’m not sure he would have made his little dig if he had known what Environmental Graffiti had to say…

Image by Buschap

“Oscars” or as we refer to them - the little gold statuettes that actors get if they are good - have suddenly become more valuable and desirable since

To rephrase a line from the critically acclaimed masterpiece RoboCop, “Atlanta has a cancer, and that cancer is crime.”

Photo of a creepy man dressed as RoboCop by Karl Palutke

But not to worry ladies and gentlemen, because a real life RoboCop is now prowling the city’s streets dispensing justice and shots from a water cannon in equal measure.

In 1735 Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus published the first edition of Systema Naturae, the first real successful attempt to group and classify the living things in our world.

At more than 30,000 pages for just the first volume, this encyclopedia will fill a lot of books. Image by Lienhard Schulz

The work gave us the system using kingdoms, genus, species and the like. Originally just 11 pages long, scientific discovery and a better understanding of the natural world pushed the work into the thousands of pages by its final edition 35 years later.

Last month, two members of the radical anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) boarded a Japanese whaling ship.

The SSCS ship Robert Hunter before its transformation into the Steve Irwin. Photo by Alpha

The story became an international incident when the two men were held on board by the whalers for several days, sparking allegations of terrorism from both whalers and activists and creating a diplomatic incident between Australia and Japan.

This may be a bit of old news, but then again I think that delusion of a grand scale deserves to be called out from time to time.

Photo by Stephen Codrington

I think we specialize in this in the US, and for whatever reason our state legislatures are especially good at it. Georgia is invading Tennessee, and now Kentucky has Rep. Jim Gooch, taking his revenge after getting embarrassed last fall. What exactly could he have done that’s worth mention alongside the border war?

Bob Lutz is the product development chief and Vice Chairman at General Motors.

Mr. Lutz recently called ‘global warming…a “total crock of sh*t,”‘ but then went on to claim that ‘his views had no bearing on GM’s commitment to build environmentally friendly vehicles.’ Apparently not realizing that people are not complete idiots, Mr. Putz

For astronauts spending months in space, the smallest touch of home can make a big difference.

Kimchi. Image by Nagyman

So when South Korea’s first astronaut Ko San boards the International Space Station this April he’ll be bringing along a hefty supply of kimchi, the national dish of his native country.

With public sentiment beginning to turn against high carbon shipping methods like air freight and cargo freighters, French wine producers are looking to the past for eco-friendly ways to ship their products.

Wine casks. Image by Ildebrando

This week almost 60,000 bottles of wine will be sent to Ireland on a traditional 19th century sailing ship. Shipping the wine via sailing ship from Languedoc will save an estimated 18,000 tons of carbon.

Years of unchecked pollution in France’s Rhone River have taken their toll with the recent discovery of PCB levels at 10-12 times the safe limit in the river’s fish.

The Rhone near Ardeche. Photo by PRA.

The discovery has led to a ban on fish from the river, prompting many to wonder about the health effects eating the fish may have had and leaving some of the rivers’ fishermen suicidal.