http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2008/Update76.htm

Standing before the United Nations General Assembly in October 1987, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, President of the Maldives, made an appeal representing “an endangered nation.” That year for the first time, “unusual high waves” in the Indian Ocean inundated a quarter of the urban area on the capital island of Male’, flooded farms, and washed away reclaimed land. Gayoom cited scientific evidence that human activities were releasing greenhouse gases that warm the planet, ultimately raising global sea level as glaciers melt and warmer water expands. The trouble extended beyond small islands; studies showed that rising seas would wreak havoc on the U.S. Gulf Coast, the Netherlands, and the river deltas of Egypt and Bangladesh.

Fast-forward through two decades of swelling seas and more powerful storms and the call has moved from the need to study global warming to the necessity of dramatic action to stabilize climate. With small island nations in peril, these days President Gayoom evokes the vision of a United Nations where “name plates are gone; seats are empty.” He does not speak alone: this fall, some 50 countries, including a number of small island nations along with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the European Union, are planning to put a resolution before the U.N. General Assembly requesting that the U.N. Security Council address “the threat posed by climate change to international peace and security.” As Ambassador Stuart Beck of Palau has asked, “Would any nation facing an invading army not do the same?”

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Nature has published a major analysis concluding that higher sea surface temperatures caused by global warming are creating stronger hurricanes. The net effect of global warming on the frequency of hurricane formation remains uncertain. Global warming causes sea surface temperatures to increase, but it also causes wind shear to increase, which disrupts hurricane formation.

However, this new study concludes that the effect of global warming on hurricane intensity is to make them stronger.

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It was reported a few days ago that some 10 billion pounds of airborne pollutants from Asia — ranging from soot to mercury to carbon dioxide to ozone — reach within the borders of the US annually, quoting numerous scientific estimates.

But the pollution figures that scientists studying the impact of Asian, and mostly Chinese, environmental waste in the atmosphere have suggested are more than alarming.

The real impact of the Asian Tigers, helped by their giant brother, China, which is now thought to have overtaken the US in emissions of greenhouse gases, may amount to a kind of colonization of the United States, and by extension, North America, potentially destabilizing weather patterns across the North Pacific and masking the effects of global warming.

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Read more at UNEP’s Website and find an insightful commentary on “Gustav, Global Warming and Sarah Palin” at Salon.

Image credit: NASA at Wikimedia Commons.

According to Nancy Rabalais, head of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, the recent hurricane that swept through the Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Dolly, managed to keep in check the growth of the dead zone.

“If it were not for Hurricane Dolly, the size of the Dead Zone would have been substantially larger,” she said in a news release sent from the consortium’s research vessel, the Pelica, as it returned from its annual mapping cruise, carrying Rabalais out at the same time each year to measure the area.

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I’ve been more fortunate than many, but my post-hurricane experiences have actually raised my awareness a great deal about the importance of sustainability. Because few things make you understand the challenges of sustainable living more than a few days or weeks in a disaster zone with no electricity, no drinkable running water, no passable roads.

And so, with another hurricane season once again looming (it starts June 1), here are some of the sustainability lessons I’ve learned over the years:

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