TreeHugger is right to be happy that, following an official UN decision that took far too long than it should to create a holiday, June 8 this year will be celebrated as World Oceans Day...just like it has, unofficially, in each of the last 17 years.
I've never owned a car and I've lived between Washington D.C. and Manhattan for most of my adult life. Before that I lived on organic farms in Lebanon.
It's interesting to read this and consider that there may be some ancillary benefits to living in a big city:
Generally speaking, studies have shown that city dwellers, who frequent public transportation, occupy smaller-than-average and multiunit living spaces, use less energy to heat and cool, tend to have lower carbon footprints than their suburban or rural counterparts, who often have bigger homes, use more energy to heat and cool, and typically drive themselves to and fro.
A 2008 report by the Brookings Institution, for example, found that the average American in a metropolitan area has a carbon footprint of 8.21 tons — 14 percent less than the average American living outside the city.
The flip side is that lately, I've become more and more sensitive to the smell of exhaust in New York. In day to day city living, you rarely think about the smell of air, but when you do, it's somewhat alarming to realize how much fouler it is than country air.
I just switched my lights off - here's why:
From an Antarctic research base to the Great Pyramids of Egypt and beyond, the world switched off the lights on Saturday for Earth Hour, dimming skyscrapers, city streets and some of the world's most recognizable monuments for 60 minutes to highlight the threat of climate change. Time zone by time zone, nearly 4,000 cities and towns in 88 countries joined the event sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund to dim nonessential lights from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Apropos Dayo's commentary on Nigeria's electricity woes, it doesn't seem like a good idea for the country to be sending natural gas up in flames.
The latest deadline set by the Nigerian government to stop flaring natural gas from oil wells in the Niger Delta has passed without stopping the flames, which campaigners say are poisoning local people. "Sometimes you can't tell whether it's the dawn breaking or the flame," says activist Vivian Bellonwu, the frustration clear in her voice, after seeing nothing change despite the 1 January target. "It's a history of shifting goal posts, missing deadline after deadline". Everyone agrees gas flaring wastes billions of dollars in useful gas. Campaigners say it causes huge environmental damage and according to doctors, it is responsible for causing chronic health problems among people who live in the Delta.This seems like one of those priorities that you shouldn't exactly keep letting deadlines pass.
Passport's Preeti Aroon reports that President Bush's legacy might get an aquatic boost:
U.S. President George W. Bush might be going down as the greatest protector of the seas ever. Later today, he is to announce the establishment of the "largest area of protected sea in the world." Commercial fishing and mining will be largely prohibited in protected zones of the remote Pacific that include some of the most biologically diverse locations on Earth.Some critics' heads may be spinning between the administration's countervailing ocean protection and the air pollution, but mine is still turned seaward. If Bush were so committed to protecting ocean life (not to mention securing more fishing and oil rights), why oh why did he not push harder for the United States to ratify the law of the sea convention? With what other agreement could you find President Bush tucked in with environmentalist and oil industrialist bedfellows? (image from flickr user Eric M Martin under a Creative Commons license)
The United Nations Environmental Program just released a report in graphs, maps and graphics all of which tell the scary story of global water scarcity. Of course, less water means that it is a more valuable commodity, which in turn raises the potential of conflict. In places where the rule of law is not especially strong, the prospects for water resource conflicts are particularly grave.
Consider this map of Lake Chad as it was in 1963 and as it is today. The lake straddles the border between Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger.
And this is a similar map charting the disappearance of the Aral Sea in Central Asia.
Niki Gloudeman at MoJo's Blue Marble blog has the scoop on a Brazilian plan to slow the rapacious destruction of Brazil's precious Amazon.
The Brazilian government announced this week that it will curb Amazon deforestation by 70 percent over the next decade--an ambitious plan that will be formally presented at the UN climate change conference in Poland this week. Home to the world's largest area of tropical woodlands, Brazil lost nearly 4,633 square miles of forest between 2007 and 2008. That's roughly the area of Connecticut. Previous efforts to limit deforestation include a recent crackdown on soy production. Brazil's Environment Minister Carlos Minc said the plan should prevent 4.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted through 2018.I like my soy and all, but I certainly prefer air without 4.8 billion tons of additional carbon dioxide. (image from flickr user gidsicki under a Creative Commons license)
My week long trip to Ethiopia wrapped up yesterday and I would be remiss if I did not offer a word of praise for the people who made this possible for me: the Danes.
Denmark is a country of only about 5 million and has an Gross National Income (GNI) of $311 billion. Yet a staggering 0.8% percent of its GNI is allocated for foreign development assistance. This makes Denmark one of only five countries that have internalized a United Nations goal that at least 0.7% of developed countries' GNI be dedicated to foreign development assistance. By comparison, the amount of official development aid as a percentage of GNI is 0.38% for France, 0.27% for Canada, and 0.16% for the United States.
Denmark's generosity, though, is not driven entirely by altruism. Rather, foreign aid is seen as a way for Denmark to punch above its weight in global affairs. It was this impulse that drove Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to establish the Africa Commission, which met in Addis Ababa last week and was the reason for my coming.
The African Commission is made up of a number of foreign leaders and dignitaries including Deputy UN Secretary General Asha Rose-Migiro, Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, and the African Union Commissioner Jean Ping among others. They met in Addis to discuss ways to increase employment opportunities for Africa's bulging youth population. The need is great. Some 46% of Africans are between the ages of 5 and 25, a vast majority of whom are uneducated and underemployed.
The current government of Denmark is center-right, which was reflected by commission's singular focus on ways in which the private sector can be incentived to invest in African youth. (Indeed, the traveling Danish press made hay over a statement by Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen that the previous government engaged in fluffy, "aid socialism.") Despite this focus on the private sector, civil society was not shut out of the meeting. The Danish government sponsored a parallel African Youth Panel, which included some 60 dedicated, innovative and amazingly bright social entrepreneurs from all across Africa. After a week of hashing out ideas among themselves, the youth delegates presented the Commission with their own recommendations.
The Commission will meet again in Copenhagen in May 2009 and offer a final set of recommendations on how to increase the effectiveness of foreign development assistance. I will certainly stay on the story.
Finally, on a separate note, the African Commission is clearly top foreign policy priority for Denmark. But the country's biggest moment in the international spotlight comes in December 2009, when world leaders meet in Copenhagen to discuss a successor international climate change treaty to the Kyoto Protocols, which are set to expire in 2012. It was pleasantly shocking to me as an outsider to witness the extent to which climate change permeated nearly every aspect of this meeting. This includes the carbon offsets the government bought to fly me there to thematic discussions about how climate change will affect employment opportunities for African youth.
I already pointed out Denmark's relative aid generosity. Other countries could do worse than following Denmark's lead on climate change as well.
Via Kevin Drum and Brian Beutler, the Maldives is looking to purchase land should global warming cause sea levels to rise and erase the tiny Island-state from the face of the earth.
The president, a human rights activist who swept to power in elections last month after ousting Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the man who once imprisoned him, said he had already broached the idea with a number of countries and found them to be "receptive". He said Sri Lanka and India were targets because they had similar cultures, cuisines and climates. Australia was also being considered because of the amount of unoccupied land available. "We do not want to leave the Maldives, but we also do not want to be climate refugees living in tents for decades," he said.For more on the consequences of climate change to small island states check out this video from Go Green Tube.