Grist: treehugger.com

E.U. abandons plans to cut critically endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna quotas

treehugger.com — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 18:45:06 +0000

Photo: David OomsKiss them goodbye … As reported by the Associated Press, pressure from France, Spain, and other Mediterranean nations has forced the E.U. to abandon previously touted plans to significantly cut quotas on Atlantic bluefin tuna next year. At current fishing rates, where actual catch numbers are far about official quota levels, the iconic fish is expected to be extinct by 2012:

After drawn-out negotiations, the 27-nation E.U. abandoned a plan to seek cutbacks in fishing quotas based only on scientific advice and said Thursday it will now also consider the interests of tuna fishermen.

Though the E.U. is still considering a reduction of 2,000 tons from current quotas, anything beyond that — including supporting an outright cessation of fishing, which many campaigners and scientists say is needed to allow the fishery to recover — is off the table.

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Filed under: Business & Technology

Yellow Page publishers sue Seattle

treehugger.com — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 07:36:26 +0000

Photo: m_e_mccarronLet your fingers do the walking … to the courthouse. As promised, Yellow Page publishers have sued to overturn a law in Seattle that lets people opt out of receiving paper phone books. The publishers say the law, the first of its kind in the U.S., is unconstitutional.

Dex One Corp., SuperMedia, and the Yellow Pages Association argue in a suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington that the Seattle ordinance “restricts publishers’ fundamental right to free speech.”

The First Amendment prohibits government “from licensing or exercising advance approval of the press, from directing publishers what to publish and to whom they may communicate, and from assessing fees for the privilege of publishing,” attorneys say.

The suit also claims that the Seattle ordinance unlawfully interferes with interstate commerce and violates the privacy rights of Seattle residents.

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Filed under: Business & Technology, Living, Politics

Global communications industry has similar global warming effect as aviation

treehugger.com — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 01:02:28 +0000

Photo: Ronnie GarciaThere have been a number of studies analyzing the climate change impact of different parts of the global communications industry, from video games, to data centers, and so on. Now, the first comprehensive study of the IT, telecommunication, media, and entertainment sectors has been concluded. The result: It all adds up to three percent of global carbon emissions. That’s roughly the contribution of global aviation.

The study, done by KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, breaks out the different sub-sectors’ contribution to warming, based on 2007 data.

Global telecommunications and IT made up 1.3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, 620 megatons of CO2-equivalent. Media and entertainment was 1.7 percent of the global total, at 820 megatons CO2-equivalent.

As for how that breaks down into manufacture and usage, the report says that production of telecommunications technology is half that of operations. Using televisions as an example: Actually watching television, over the lifetime of the device, produces three times the emissions as manufacturing it.

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Filed under: Business & Technology, Climate & Energy

Fast food wrappers and popcorn bags leach fire-fighting chemical into food

treehugger.com — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 08:12:47 +0000

Photo: Waymond CThe evils of fast food are seemingly endless: They are hazards to both our health and to the environment, and who knows what the consequences of all the preservatives are. But now, turns out the packaging also leaches its own worrisome problems directly into the food wrapped inside it.

A new study has found that perfluoroalkyls, synthetic chemicals that repel oil and are used on paper packaging like food wrappers and popcorn bags to prevent grease from leaking through them, can migrate directly into food — and then into human blood, where these chemicals have already been found.

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Filed under: Food

Turning energy savings in London into solar for Africa

treehugger.com — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 11:22:01 +0000

A new solar system sits on the roof at the Naitiri Friends School.Photo: Solar AidWe all know that energy conservation is good. And it is clear that solar can be a life saver in developing countries, as well as a great catalyst for improved school performance. But what if turning off the lights in your home or office could help people in Africa turn theirs on? An innovative new program is aiming to do just that — turning the energy and money saved from conservation efforts into funding for renewable energy in the developing world.

Developed as a partnership between UK communications agency Wieden Kennedy London, and solar development charity Solar Aid, the Off-On program encourages employees to save energy, and it funnels the resulting savings into funding for solar installations in Africa.

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Filed under: Living

Shell Oil pays $6 million for clean air violations, Texas schools use funds to go solar

treehugger.com — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 04:11:25 +0000

A school roof in California featuring solar panels.Photo: mjmontyHere’s a story with a sense of justice (albeit small) from a case of environmental wrongdoing: Shell Oil was sued two years ago for releasing millions of pounds of chemicals, including benzene and other toxins, from its Deer Park refinery in Texas into the air. It was violating the Clean Air Act — and of the $6 million legal settlement that resulted, $2 million is now helping two Texas schools go solar. Beautiful irony.

The 700-panel, 145-kilowatt system is currently being installed on the roofs of two schools, one in Pasadena and one in South Houston. School faculty will use the panels to help teach students about renewable energy.

Grace Blasingame, who is on the science faculty at one of the schools, said, “We are installing three different solar technologies and will be monitoring them separately. Our students will experience a real life science experiment where they can make a hypothesis on which solar panel group will be the most efficient, collect the data, and draw conclusions.”

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Filed under: Business & Technology, Climate & Energy

Twitter chatbot argues with global warming deniers automatically

treehugger.com — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 02:08:16 +0000

Nigel Leck got tired of arguing with people who were skeptical about global warming science. Noticing that most of them used the same debunked arguments over and over again, he decided to make a Twitter chatbot to answer them automatically. The bot is named @AI_AGW (the photo is of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey‘s camera-eye), and every 5 minutes it searches the twitterverse for debunked arguments. When it finds one, it sends a reply with a link to a source that explains the counter-argument.

Image: Twitter

So far the bot has made almost 40,000 tweets, though not all of them to climate skeptics. Now that the bot is better known, lots of people are testing it just for fun.

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Filed under: Climate & Energy

French artist turns 'garbage with talent' into beautiful lighting [PHOTOS]

treehugger.com — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 01:52:46 +0000

Photo: Gilles EichenbaumThose old rusty colanders, kettles, pots, and pans of yours have hidden talents. That’s according to Parisian craftsman, artist and bricoleur extraordinaire Garbage, a.k.a. Gilles Eichenbaum, who refurbishes old, seemingly mismatched objects like kitchenware, scales, and toasters into fantastic lamps.

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Filed under: Living

Alaska's NPRA oil reserves estimate lowered about 90 percent

treehugger.com — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 04:28:05 +0000

Image: U.S. GovernmentThe National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA) is a piece of land owned by the United States federal government located west of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). While it gets less press than ANWR, it is another target of the “Drill, Baby, Drill” crowd. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has just released a revised estimate on the amount of “undiscovered” oil and gas that is likely to be found in the area, and let’s just say that it is a cold shower for fans of more drilling in Alaska.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates 896 million barrels of conventional, undiscovered oil and 53 trillion cubic feet of conventional, undiscovered non-associated gas within the NPRA and adjacent state waters. The estimated volume of undiscovered oil is significantly lower than in 2002, when the USGS estimated there was 10.6 billion barrels of oil. The new estimate, roughly 10 percent of the 2002 estimate, is due primarily to the incorporation of new data from recent exploration drilling revealing gas occurrence rather than oil in much of the NPRA.

Considering that the world consumption of oil has been hovering at around 85 million barrels per day, and the U.S. represents about a quarter of that, there’s only enough oil in the NPRA to fuel the world for about 10-12 days, or the U.S. for about 45 days.

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Filed under: Climate & Energy

Why attitudes can be as important as infrastructure

treehugger.com — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 02:07:58 +0000

TehranPhoto: Kamyar AdlIn the latest example of how tough life can be for would-be women cyclists around the world, the new police chief of the Iranian city of Esfahan has decreed it a crime for women to ride a bike or roller-skate in public — an infraction he said would be “severely prosecuted.” It’s little wonder, then, that twice as many Iranian women as men are obese.

We’ve written before about restrictions on women cycling in India, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, but reading a story by Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty about the Esfahan announcement right after writing about the increasing obesity problem in Turkey and Iran really brought the issue home for me.

I have it easy in Istanbul, of course, though even here it can be a bit intimidating for a woman to go out and get some exercise. I sweated through the summer running in long pants and a T-shirt, trying to make myself inconspicuous, and it’s taken me a while to feel confident that the men who stare or call out at me largely seem to mean no harm. (Friends who’ve tried to run in more conservative parts of the city have had a harder time.) If running or biking was more frowned upon — much less outlawed — I could easily see how staying home and being sedentary would seem like a pretty good option.

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Filed under: Cities, Living