EcoLocalizer

Fear. It is a simple emotion. It is a feeling. But it can also create something complicated — in what it makes us think and do. Fear drives many decisions in the world, and may often cause us to make the wrong decision.

The important thing is realizing the difference between thoughtful awareness of negative ramifications and the actual feeling of fear.

On the following pages, I delve into the relationship between fear and the climate change decisions we are making everyday on individual and larger systematic levels. Additionally, I delve a little more into the issue of fear itself.
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Design of the Svalbard seed vault as of early 2007

In 1992, the Global Biodiversity Convention (GBC) was adopted in Rio de Janeiro, and which placed the biodiversity issue center stage–calling for the world-wide preservation of biodiversity and its equitable and sustainable use. The convention was established in response to both the increasing rate of plant extinction (through habitat loss), fears by poorer nations of “biopiracy”, and the increasing agricultural use of land for high-value crops, to the exclusion of lesser-value ones–a practice that diminishes crop biodiversity. These lesser-value crops are typically grown by independent and small farms in less economically advanced countries. Many of these so-called “orphan crops” risk becoming extinct. Further, many species of plant or tree that fall outside the conventional definition of agriculture–such as the sea-water tolerant mangrove tree–are being ignored, to the possible peril of future agriculture.

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How do Brits like to be green, and what green behaviors do they still avoid?

That’s what a new survey by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER), and the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) is showing us by examining the environmental actions and preferences of 100,000 British people from 40,000 households.

The findings presented below are the first from a new annual household survey in Britain named Understanding Society. The environmental topics are one subset of the whole survey, which also examines the “working lives, relationships, health, finances, neighbourhoods, education, transport and more” of Brits.

What are the main findings thus far?

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The complexity and cost of clearing land mines, which are still responsible for to twenty to thirty thousand casualties a year, has lead to a microorganism based detection method that should speed the location mines.

The awesome power released by a detonating mine

The New Mine Detection Technology

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have engineered a bacteria using the latest BioBrick technology. BioBrick an open source technology of the BioBricks Foundation, a not-for-profit organization founded by engineers and scientists from MIT, Harvard, and UCSF. Simplistically stated, it offers the ability to introduce standardised strands of DNA with known function into bacteria. In this case the Bricks gave the ability to detect the chemicals leaked by buried explosives and to produce chemicals that cause it to glow green. Linking these new functions together produces a safe, easy to grow bacteria that after application to the ground in a coulourless liquid glows green within a few hours. With the location of the mine noted, de-mining can be undertaken quickly without the risk of undetected mines. Read the rest of this entry »

Diatoms are one of the most common types of phytoplankton.

Climate change isn’t just warming the atmosphere, it’s also warming the ocean’s surface and deeper levels of the water column. This is known as the pelagic ocean and it just so happens to harbor the most productive ecosystem on planet Earth (the “pelagic zone” is any part of the water column other than that at the sea floor). The pelagic ocean is responsible for an estimated half of the world’s primary production (i.e., the basic food or nutrient making needed to sustain other life), and sustains most of the world’s natural fisheries.

The pelagic zone also plays a very complex but important role in the global carbon cycle. Inorganic carbon (mostly in the form of CO2) can be “drawn down” from the atmosphere by two main processes: the respiration of photo-synthetic algae and plankton (which produce oxygen and serve as a food source as well), and, secondly, the sedimentation of carbon (in the form of sinking, dead marine matter) onto the sea floor. Most algae and phytoplankton have chlorophyll and live in the upper most layer of the water column where there is sufficient sunlight penetration (this is called the euphotic zone; from the surface down to 200 meters is the epipelagic zone). Although carbon is also removed via “outgassing” (the exporting of carbon and carbon-based molecules into the atmosphere via ocean-air circulation), these two processes keep carbon out of the atmosphere. And of the two, bottom accumulation (via sinking) is the predominant means by which carbon is removed from the water column.

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, this series of photo tours is going to be worth about a hundred thousand.

You have probably heard before that the cities on this list are great bicycle cities, but the following photo tours will give you a better and more entertaining visual explanation of why they are considered to be so great.

From public art to art on bikes, seas of bicycles to bicycles that could carry a swimming pool, high heels to naked bicyclists, check out these upcoming photo tours of some of the world’s greatest bicycle cities.
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Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed has told his cabinet members to get ready for an underwater cabinet meeting later this month.

Maldives is a collection of islands and atolls in the Indian Ocean that is less than 2 meters above sea level. Therefore, it is the first country expected to go underwater due to climate change.

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Water scarcity resulting from climate change is the number one issue the world will have to grapple with in the future, according to chief climate scientist and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri.

On the one hand, we will have more water around us with sea level rising. On the other hand, though, drought caused by climate change will leave possibly billions of people without clean water.

This will cause great health and global security issues. Most of these problems will be caused by water imbalances.
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Ganga, the holiest of holy rivers in the Indian sub-continent is also one of the most polluted rivers in the region. Last year, after much lobbying, Ganga was declared the National River of India owing to its religious as well as environmental significance. However, just that could never have been enough for cleaning a river on which millions of Rupees have already been spent.

Now, the Union Environment Minister of India Mr. Jairam Ramesh, who had previously unveiled the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA), has put the NBRBA on a “mission mode” to clean the river by 2020. And his indicator for success is not clear blue waters but the return of the Gangetic dolphins that were once sighted in the river in plenty!

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Al Gore and Dr. R.K. Pachauri (IPCC) under the Mahatma’s words!

Today is the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi – regarded as ‘Father of the Nation’ by the Republic of India and a ‘Global Peacemaker’ by the United Nations; so much so that this day is also celebrated as the International Day of Non-Violence. The Mahatma has also been the inspiration for US President Obama who believes that America has its roots in Gandhi’s India because the teachings he shared with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. helped change U.S. society through the civil rights movement.

Now, with the world facing a climate crisis and already on the crossroads of equity and/in development, it is time to resurrect and revive the Gandhian principles of simple living-high thinking, participatory governance, etc. at the global level.

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