Green Options

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World Wildlife Fund (WWF) published a report in 2006 that documented the plunder of natural resources by human activity and warned that the globe itself could be outstripped in its capacity to support life, rendering the earth extinct in under 50 years.

Based on scientific data collected from across the globe, it revealed that more than a third of the natural world has been destroyed by human activity in just over the past three decades, because of, among others, increased emissions of green house gases into the ecosystem.

Unless consumption of natural resources was cut and the destruction of vital ecosystems was stopped, human life and that of thousands of other animals and plants would not be sustainable hence the suggestion that the earth itself could be extinct by 2050. In short, the demise of biodiversity will be the death of life on earth, as we know it.

I found it interesting – in a report published by the BBC – that the scientist who originally coined the phrase “global warming” is backing a radical solution to stem further damage to the planet caused by CO2.

Speaking at the Hay Literary Festival in Powys, Wales, Wallace Broecker suggests the way forward must surely lie with the construction of millions of “carbon scrubbers.”

These carbon scrubbers would be giant artificial trees that would pull CO2 from the atmosphere via a specially designed plastic and the gas would either be liquefied under pressure to be pumped underground or converted to mineral.

In my talks, I have talked a lot about reinventing normal life and in particular our notions of mobility (among other things)…
Part and parcel is this idea that it’s a small world. We get this small world idea from Disneyland as kids (recall hearing mechanical children swaying to the refrain “Its a small world after all”) as well as from seemingly serendipitous encounters that are probably statistically ordinary in a world were people jet and motor around the country. It is easy to think that the world is small when one can get from point A anywhere in the global economy to point B anywhere in the global economy within a matter of hours (rather than days or months). It makes it easy for us spread out families and friends as people chase paychecks and jobs across the country if not the planet.

Your urine could be the answer to a cheap, sustainable way of putting up shelter in poor areas of the world, without the need to cut any tree for timber or use precious water otherwise needed for drinking to make bricks.

You see, in many poor countries of the world, as it were in ancient Egypt, Sumeria, China, Japan and India, it is not uncommon to use animal waste and other by-products to build houses. Or plant materials like straw bales, bamboo, grass, reeds, sedges, and rattan, as well as plant fibers and leaves. Cow dung and goat skins are very valuable building materials, but human waste!

In ground-breaking findings by Sheffield University’s School of Architecture Professor, Jeremy Till, it has just been discovered that your urine is good for green building. Urea, the main ingredient of urine, has been known as an excellent binding agent, working even better than water. “They are sustainable in literal, temporal sense…some answers are found in unexpected places. Like the bladder. But are effective in their simplicity”.

Meet Flocke, a new polar bear cub at the Nuremberg Zoo in Germany.

Her name means “snowflake.” Since her birth in December, photos and videos from the zoo have been overloading the public with cuteness, stirring up “Flocke fever.”

Still, no one outside the zoo staff had ever seen Flocke in person. This week, she made her first live public appearance.

Announcements by the United Nations World Food Program and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made this week linked climate change and drought to shortages in food, and warned that lack of fresh water could lead to a global food crisis.

In a report presented in Budapest on Thursday, scientists from the IPCC reported that the decline in the quantity and quality of water would affect health and agriculture in arid areas around the world.

The Western United States, Mediterranean Sea basin, and parts of Southern Africa and northeastern Brazil were singled out as places where drought could lead to less water for farming, and hence food shortages.

The UN World Food Program also reported yesterday that drought in Australia has slowed down the nation’s grain harvest, which has raised wheat prices and has diminished the amount of this food source for the WFP. The WFP has traditionally used Australian wheat to feed 80 million of the world’s hungry.

For every Muslim, Halal or ‘permissible’ in Arabic means that it passes the test, as far as food is concerned. This will certainly include correct handling procedures and many more practices.

But the question that has dogged Muslims for centuries has always been how to catch fish, using permissible methods that do not damage the environment.

“Lawful to you is the pursuit of water-game (fishing) and its use for food, for the benefit of yourselves and those who travel” (Surah Al-Maida, v. 96)

Dynamite fishing, cyanide fishing, and bottom trawling are all fishing techniques that may cause habitat destruction. A 2006 article in Science magazine said bottom trawling, the practice of pulling a fishing net along the sea bottom behind trawlers, removes around 5 to 25% of an area’s seabed life on a single run.

Should recycling be a feel-good choice or a legal requirement? CNN and EcoWorldly compare recycling in South Korea and the United States of America. Take a look at some of the benefits that South Korea has reaped as a country through its successful recycling program.

See the video on CNN.

Related reading: Korea Excels at Recycling.

In Africa, the sun is abundant, yet traditional energy sources mostly derived from the local ecosystem like firewood and charcoal are getting depleted daily by a large measure.

The devastating aftermath of this depletion and its toll on the environment should call for another cheaper, plentiful and vastly accessible source of energy on the continent.

Solar cooking is now taking root in Africa more than ever before. Solar cooking projects are springing up on the continent mostly spearheaded by local cooperatives and non-profits working with rural women to assemble cheap solar cookers. Which works for environment.

Following the tears and last minute dramas of last year’s Bali climate talks I’ve been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to write of intriguing political entanglements following last week’s United Nations Climate Change negotiations in Bangkok.

As expected, there were no major advances made, but unexpectedly there were few disagreements either. The wheels of diplomacy continue to grind slowly towards a solution which may or may not deliver some actual benefits. There are some who suspect that negotiators are biding their time until new US administration gets to work later this year. Then there is the other theory that the world has just gotten tired of seemingly never ending negotiations in tropical locations.

Hard to imagine that at exactly this time last year, I drove off with the family to the neighbouring county for an Easter break and coincided our holiday with an absolute blinder of a heatwave.

The normally pallid writer who blinks mole-like in the daylight returned a week later a bronzed sex god.