Green Options » environmental justice

Blue Planet Run Foundation Makes Yard Sales Life Savers

Blue Planet Run — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:57:51 +0000

CLEAR CLUTTER FOR CLEAN WATER (say that 5 times fast!)

Water is on the tip of everybody’s tongue these days. America is facing major crises with floods in some regions, hundreds of wild fires in others, and droughts throughout. As horrible as all of that may sound, the majority of us can all still go to our faucet and access safe and clean drinking water without a whole lot of effort. Not the case for many people worldwide.

Fact: 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water.

Fact: Countless women and children walk on average 4 miles just to fetch a jug of water that is not guaranteed to be safe to drink.

Fact: $30 provides one person with a lifetime of safe drinking water.

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Court Halts Construction of Coal-Fired Power Plant in Georgia

Max Lindberg — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:36:27 +0000

A Superior Court Judge in Fulton County, Georgia has ruled that construction of Dynegy’s Longleaf plant be halted until it is assured the plant will limit the amount of carbon dioxide it releases.

The original permit would have allowed the plant to emit 9 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, something the court said was unreasonable.

The court cited the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling recognizing that carbon dioxide is a pollutant under the federal Clean Air Act. It’s the first time any court has applied the ruling to an industrial source.

Commenting on the ruling, Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club’s National Coal Campaign said:

“Coal-fired power plants emit more than 30% of our nation’s global warming pollution. Thanks to this decision, coal plants across the country will be forced to live up to their clean coal rhetoric.”

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Is the Black Market for Recycling Garbage in Peru a Good Thing?

Levi Novey — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 04:05:42 +0000

Imagine getting up in the morning, collecting the garbage in your home, and taking it outside. After opening your door, you see a person watching you intently from the corner of your street. You walk a few steps, and place your trash bags where they will eventually be picked up. No sooner than you turn your back, that eager person from the corner is making their way over to your refuse. Within moments they are rummaging through the waste. Searching for bottles and other items of value, you might occasionally see them kicking toward hungry street dogs to protect their bounty and themselves from a painful bite. While this scenario might seem ridiculous to you, it happens every day in Peru. The circumstances for why people in Peru collect re-usable and recyclable items in the trash is complex, intriguing, troublesome, and potentially wonderful.

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Amidst Injustice and Apathy, Earth Day Greetings from Delhi, India

Govind Singh — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 20:36:44 +0000

As part of the ‘International Earth Day’ week being celebrated here at EcoWorldly, there were a lot of E-Day events and happenings from Delhi, India that I wanted to share with the readers. I wanted to talk about the screening of the documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ at the American Center here in Delhi followed by a dicussion that shifted from Clean Development Mechanism (and the lack thereof) to the pollution in the city and/or the various tree plantation drives that took place in large number of schools here. More than that, I wanted to vividly illustrate the real time ‘eco’tourism being carried out at the Mandakini Magpie Bird Watcher’s Camp in the Himalayas as an excellent tool for biodiversity conservation. But then, there was something that caught my eye this afternoon.

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Fight the Good Fight

Shirley Siluk Gregory — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:15:22 +0000

Calling all EcoLocalizers: if you’ve been working to solve an environmental problem in your part of the U.S., The Sundance Channel wants to hear from you.

Starting on Earth Day (Tuesday, April 22), Sundance will present a new Web series called The Good Fight. Hosted by Indian-born activist, author and TV producer Simran Sethi, the online series is aimed at building awareness of the environmental justice movement and at highlighting local heroes in various environmental causes.

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The Animals are Innocent, Blame the Local Ecology

Sam Aola Ooko — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:31:53 +0000

There is no recent conflict in Africa that has elicited so much debate around the world and in the United States, in particular, as Darfur. Not even the post election political skirmishes in Kenya drew so much attention. Kenya, once the darling of the continent, the erstwhile adversaries are today sharing a cup of tea as well as power, something unthinkable only two months ago.

In a 2007 newspaper article, UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said: “Almost invariably, we discuss Darfur in a convenient military and political shorthand - an ethnic conflict pitting Arab militias against black rebels and farmers. Look to its roots, though, and you discover a more complex dynamic. Amid the diverse social and political causes, the Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change.”

What does this mean? The Darfur conflict inflicts even more damage on Sudan’s environmental degradation with nearly two million internally displaced people putting pressure on the fragile environment as they clear land and source ground water to survive.

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