Coral damage linked to Deepwater Horizon spill
By Matt Smith, CNN

(CNN) — The Deepwater Horizon oil spill damaged coral formations deep beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico and miles from the ruptured well at the heart of the disaster, researchers reported Monday.

Scientists using remote-controlled probes and the venerable research submersible Alvin spotted a coral colony covered in “black scum” about 7 miles (11 kilometers) southwest of the undersea gusher, Penn State University biologist Charles Fisher said. Another nearby formation was covered in a gooey brown and white mix of oil and organic materials from the coral, he said.

“What this does tell us is there was acute damage to a reef 7 miles away,” Fisher said. “It tells us it’s likely this oil hit a lot of other areas of the seafloor.”

Fisher was the chief scientist for an expedition that surveyed the area in November and December 2010 with funding from the National Science Foundation. Some of the findings are being published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Samples taken from the coral beds, located at a depth of about 4,300 feet, matched the chemical fingerprint of the oil from the Macondo well, said Helen White, the lead author of the paper documenting the results.

An estimated 4.9 million barrels (206 million gallons) of crude poured into the Gulf after the April 2010 explosion that sank the drill rig Deepwater Horizon and killed 11 men aboard. Oil spewed into the sea for nearly three months before a cap was placed on the BP-owned Macondo well, nearly a mile beneath the surface.

Scientists have previously confirmed that a plume of hydrocarbons from the well settled in the deep Gulf. White, a geochemist at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, said other data is still being analyzed.

“I think it’s going to take a while before we understand the long-term impacts of the spill,” she said.

Fisher said coral is a good bellwether because it is stationary, draws sustenance from the surrounding water and provides a refuge and breeding ground for other marine life.

“When a coral gets insulted, if you will, what it does is it produces a lot of mucus to try to get rid of that insult, kind of like we do reacting to dust or hay fever,” he said. The coral would normally shed that material, but in this case, it started to die, and the oil and other residues stuck to it.

What scientists saw wasn’t a “big puddle” of oil, “but there was enough in it that we could vacuum it off and fingerprint it,” he said.

“It certainly told us that we need to look around for more coral communities in the area and try to define the full footprint of the impact,” he said.

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Shea Body Products

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Could this $30 million green tower be the future of world cities?
By Miguel Llanos, msnbc.com

SEATTLE – An office building that lasts 250 years with no monthly electricity or water bills? It may sound like an environmentalist’s pipe dream, but it will soon be a reality, say the builders of what they hope will be the biggest office tower in the nation that produces as much water and electricity as it consumes.

Currently rising from a pit in downtown Seattle, the $30 million, six-story “living building” is being spearheaded by Denis Hayes and Jason McLennan, who believe they can save the world one building at a time by reducing the massive energy appetites of modern cities.

“Eighty-two percent of Americans, and more than half of humanity, now live in cities — none of which have been designed for sustainability,” said Hayes, who in 1970 helped create Earth Day, which has developed into the planet’s unofficial holiday.

Hayes, 67, now heads the Bullitt Foundation, an environmental nonprofit that intends to practice what it preaches by moving into the building when it’s completed, currently planned for November.

The Bullitt Center, as the building will be known, is designed to use just a third of the energy consumed by a typical office building its size. It also aims to minimize its resource footprint by generating electricity from solar power, collecting water from rainfall and treating all sewage and wastewater onsite. It also will have no parking for cars — just racks for bikes.

It won’t be entirely off the electrical grid, so that it can make it through the periods when there isn’t enough sunlight to meet the tenants’ demands. But it will later repay those withdrawals, said McLennan, 38, who is CEO of the Northwest-based International Living Future Institute.

“In the summer it gives excess energy to the (power) grid and in the winter it gets it back when we can’t generate enough,” he said. “It nets out at zero on an annual basis.”

As for the water system, Seattle law requires the building be hooked up to its water supply but the goal is to take in enough rainwater to make ends meet.

Standard buildings are a “negative gift” to taxpayers, he said, because of the burdens they impose in terms of pollution and wasted energy. “We clean up our own messes … that’s the big picture,” he said.

Hayes said that in addition to being self-sufficient, the building will make sense financially, explaining that while it may cost a third more to build than a traditional office building, it is designed to last centuries longer.

“We are using the Bullitt Center to explore what is possible on the cutting edge of green, using existing technology and constrained by reasonable economics,” said Hayes. “Durability is key. The average building lasts 40 years, we’re going for 250 years. … It’s a fundamentally different approach.”

Getting the building to last 2 1/2 centuries, McLennan said, comes down to three factors: quality building materials; careful and clever detailing from the architecture firm; and high quality construction from the contractor.

Ultimately, the partners hope to get the Bullitt Center certified under the “Living Building Challenge,” which is run by the Living Future Institute.

In order to be certified as a living building, developments much meet benchmarks in seven performance areas. The slideshow at the top of the story illustrates those areas, each of which includes several “imperatives,” such as “car-free living” and “urban agriculture.”

So far, about 140 projects are registered for the Living Building Challenge, including a handful in Seattle. Only four have been certified as meeting the challenge criteria so far, as many are under construction or have not yet met the year of occupancy necessary for certification. Most are small projects; a few are office buildings, but none is as large as the Bullitt Center.

Net-zero homes have been around since the 1970s, but McLennan noted that it’s “much harder to achieve this in a larger building, as the larger the building the more difficult it is to generate all your own energy and harvest all your water. Scale makes it challenging.”

If the Bullitt Center is certified as a living building, it will be the largest net-zero office building in the U.S., McLennan said. A three-story Center for Sustainable Landscapes also is under construction in Pittsburgh at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, he noted.

Here are some of the major pieces that Hayes and McLennan say will enable the building to meet the challenge:

•Solar panels on the roof that extend over the sides of the building will provide the electricity. (Panels have gained enough efficiency in recent years to make them operable even in places with as much cloud cover as Seattle.)

•26 geothermal wells, each 400 feet deep, will pump underground air that’s a constant 55 degrees into the building to help offset heating costs in winter.

•Rainwater will be collected in a 56,000 gallon basement cistern. Purification steps include a special membrane for the roof, ultrafiltration and ultraviolet light. Because the process has to be tested before Seattle will consider authorizing it for drinking water, sinks and showers, Hayes calls it “the last big hurdle” for the center.

•Sewage will be sent to 10 basement composters and then shipped offsite to become fertilizer.

•All timber frames and other wood will be certified as sustainable by the Forest Stewardship Council.
The criteria for certification, McLennan said, are “more high performing” than the standards of the better known LEED, for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, which were developed by the U.S. Green Building Council and adopted by many developers across the country.

“It’s time to move the ball farther,” he said, adding that “single projects can change the way the design community thinks.”

The U.S. Green Building Council said it welcomes the living building concept and has worked closely with McLennan, who also runs the council’s Seattle chapter.

“It’s more challenging,” acknowledged Scot Horst, the council’s vice president for LEED. “Most buildings that attempted but couldn’t meet the (living building) criteria were still LEED certified.”

Even a cutting-edge development like the Bullitt Center can have difficulty meeting the living building benchmarks. For example, it is replacing a single-story bar and thereby covering up the views from apartments behind it.

That would appear to violate the Living Building Challenge’s “equity” imperative: “The project may not block access to, nor diminish, the quality of fresh air, sunlight and natural waterways for any member of society or adjacent developments.”

But McLennan notes the apartments went up knowing that the Bullitt property would some day be developed. “The windows for the adjacent building were placed along an alley where development was always expected and part of city zoning for that site,” he said.

Hayes said tenants will get a rent reduction in return. “It’s not a perfect solution but we’re doing what we can,” he said.

McLennan added that the upsides — more diversity and added jobs in the area — outweigh any downside.

Eco-friendly projects aren’t immune to the community frictions that often greet new developments.

In Wallingford, a neighborhood of homes and low-rise commercial buildings in Seattle, a green developer inspired by the Bullitt project says it needs to exceed the city’s height limit in order to make its building cost effective.

That has angered neighbors like Katherine Bragdon, herself an environmental activist, and put the project on hold as city government deals with the opposition.

“No developer should be given special privileges to exceed current zoning by 44 percent, impair views that belong to the public, and trump years of work and consideration that have gone into neighborhood planning,” Bragdon said. “I’ve worked on a number of conservation campaigns around the country over the past two decades so I want to stress that I respect and value the green building aspect of this project. … But I also believe that we can’t trample over one good cause (well-planned neighborhoods, public process, fair zoning) for another.”

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Shea Body Products

http://www.countrymeadowltd.com/

End of coal power plants?
EPA proposes new rules
By msnbc.com staff and news services

The Obama administration on Tuesday proposed the first-ever standards to cut carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants — a move welcomed by environmentalists but criticized by some utilities as well as Republicans, who are expected to use it as election campaign fodder.

“Right now there are no limits to the amount of carbon pollution that future power plants will be able to put into our skies — and the health and economic threats of a changing climate continue to grow,” Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement.

While the proposed rules do not dictate which fuels a plant can burn, they would require any new coal plants essentially to halve carbon dioxide emissions to match those of plants fired by natural gas.

The proposed standards have divided the power industry between companies that have moved toward natural gas, such as Exelon and NextEra, and those that generate most of their power from coal, such as Southern Co. and American Electric Power.

Record low prices for natural gas and the looming air rules already have pushed many companies to put older coal plants into retirement.

“There are areas where they could have made it a lot worse,” said Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a coalition of power companies. Still, “the numerical limit allows progress for natural gas and places compliance out of reach for coal-fired plants” not planning to capture and sequester carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas.

Steve Miller, CEO and President of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a group of coal-burning electricity producers, took a more dismal view, saying it “will make it impossible to build any new coal-fueled power plants and could cause the premature closure of many more coal-fueled power plants operating today.”

Other opponents of the long-delayed EPA proposal say it will limit sources for electricity by making coal prohibitively expensive.

“This rule is part of the Obama administration’s aggressive plan to change America’s energy portfolio and eliminate coal as a source of affordable, reliable electricity generation,” said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., who as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee has led the charge against environmental regulations. “EPA continues to overstep its authority and ram through a series of overreaching regulations in it attacks on America’s power sector.”

Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail have claimed that Obama-era rules affecting power plants in recent years could cause blackouts. Numerous studies and an Associated Press survey of power plant operators have shown that is not the case.

Environmentalists were quick to welcome the proposals, which will be finalized after an undetermined period that will include public comments.

Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, called it a “historic step … toward protecting the most vulnerable among us — including the elderly and our children — from smog worsened by carbon-fueled climate change.”

The American Lung Association agreed. “Scientists warn that the buildup of carbon pollution will create warmer temperatures which will increase the risk of unhealthful smog levels,” said board chairman Albert Rizzo. “More smog means more childhood asthma attacks and complications for those with lung disease.”

The proposed rules would affect only new plants, not existing plants, which was a concession to industry. In addition, they would not apply to units that will start construction within the next 12 months.

Still, the proposals could set the stage for the EPA to regulate existing plants in the coming years.

The EPA is moving forward on the climate rules, which do not need approval by Congress, after a wide-ranging climate bill died in the Senate in 2010.

The proposal, which was due to be released last July but was held up at the White House, stemmed from a settlement with environmental groups and states. The government already controls global warming pollution at the largest industrial sources, has adopted the first-ever standards for new cars and trucks and is working on regulations to reduce greenhouse gases at existing power plants and refineries.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Shea Body Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

Without a doubt plastic bags are a pollution problem which has led some cities to ban stores from using them altogether.

However, the problem is not with the bags themselves…

It’s with the people who use them.

Plastic bags CAN be recycled if people are willing to recycle them!

We have three trash containers.
One for garden/compost.
One for paper/glass/plastic/metal items.
One for actual garbage.

We cannot put plastic bags in the paper/glass/plastic/metal recycle container however we can go to the extra effort and take them to a local store for recycling. Just about all large grocery stores have a recycle bin for these bags!

You should feel comfortable using plastic bags knowing they are completely recyclable.

Don’t believe me?

Then watch this video!

How Plastic Bags Get Recycled

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Shea Body Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

Beaver Bill Unanimously Passes Washington State Senate
February 29, 2012 By Rhonda Winter

The Washington legislature has unanimously passed HB 2349, a bill concerning the sustainable management of beavers. The new law will help to improve the state’s water management infrastructure by relocating and maintaining healthy beaver populations. This proposed law is not only sensible, but also cost-effective. Instead of spending billions to construct concrete dams, this bill supports utilizing natural mechanisms to improve and restore Washington’s riparian ecosystems with families of beavers.

This important restoration work is already being done on a regional scale by the Spokane-based Beaver Solution, a successful program of The Lands Council. The organization works educating the public about the vital role that beavers play in our environment, as well as live trapping entire families of “nuisance” beavers, and safely relocating them to areas where they are needed.

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Shea Body Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

Spike in rhino poaching threatens survival of species

By Meghan Frank and Jessica Hopper
Rock Center

In South Africa, home to three quarters of the last remaining rhinos on the planet, conservationists, private game reserve owners and security forces are waging a desperate battle against poachers intent on killing the country’s rhinos for their lucrative horns.

“It is an epidemic. It’s a war that right now we’re losing,” Graeme Rushmere said. “It’s not a South African issue as such, it’s really a global issue.”

Rushmere owns Kariega Game Reserve, a nearly 25,000 acre private reserve. The reserve is home to critically endangered black rhinos and white rhinos.

Rhinos have roamed the Earth for millions of years, but at the turn of the twentieth century there were only about 50 white rhinos left in the world. All were in South Africa. Over the course of several decades, South Africans brought the white rhino back from the brink of extinction. Through incredible conservation work, there are almost 20,000 white rhinos today. The recent spike in poaching has South Africans worried that all of their hard work to save the rhino will be reversed.

Just a decade ago, only about a dozen rhinos were poached each year. Last year, poachers killed more than 400 rhinos.

For Graeme Rushmere and his friend and neighbor Dr. Will Fowlds, the fight to stop the poaching is personal. They lost one of their beloved rhinos, Geza, after his horn was brutally hacked off by poachers.

“We called him Geza which means ‘the naughty one,’” Fowlds said in an interview to air Wednesday night on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams. “It was because he had such a naughty playful character.”

Fowlds is a wildlife veterinarian and co-owner of a wild game reserve named Amakhala.

Fowlds has dedicated his life to caring for animals and restoring their habitats, especially the rhinoceros. He still remembers the first rhino that was ever brought to his property. It was Geza’s mother.

“When she stepped off that vehicle and walked out onto that plain and started grazing immediately, it was as if something just fell into place,” Fowlds said.

His first rhino became pregnant with Geza. When he was born, the mom put her baby calf on display.

“It was as if she wanted to show it to the world. She was so proud of her little son. So those were special days,” Fowlds said.

When Geza was three, Fowlds sold him to Rushmere as a way to help grow the rhino population.

“Geza was one of our first four rhino that we introduced back into that wilderness area that basically then had rhino back on it for the first time in probably 160, 170 years,” Rushmere said.

In February of last year, Rushmere received a devastating call that poachers had attacked Geza and that incredibly, he was still alive. Rushmere alerted Fowlds who rushed to the reserve.

“I went in by myself and when I came around the corner and first saw him, obviously the first thing that strikes you is that there’s an animal that’s supposed to have horns on it and not only were the horns gone, but a large part of his face was missing too,” Fowlds said through tears. “It was just an all consuming sight of pain and agony and confusion. It was an awful thing.”

Rarely are poached rhinos found alive. The poachers had knocked Geza out with a tranquilizer dart and then hacked through his skull with a machete to get every inch of his horn.

“I couldn’t explain why, why someone would do such a thing, but to be there with that animal, I just, I just kept on saying, I’m so sorry boy,” Fowlds said.

Fowlds examined Geza and knew he could not be saved. Before putting the rhino to sleep, he made an agonizing decision to bring a cameraman to document the rhino’s suffering. He hopes the footage will help raise awareness.

“I still don’t know if I did the right thing. I think that will only be known when I see results, if I see the level of poaching start to decrease,” Fowlds said. “Maybe I can say to myself, well part of that had something to do with those images we were able to show the world, but at this stage, I still don’t know if I made the right decision.”

Hundreds of rhinos like Geza are under brutal and bloody assault because of an increasing demand for rhino horn in Asia.

“The worrying thing is if the escalation continues for another one or two more years at this rate, we will very soon start to lose more animals than we can produce,” Fowlds said.

Tom Milliken monitors the illegal rhino horn trade for an organization called Traffic and links the uptick in poaching to increasing wealth and purchasing power in places like China and especially Vietnam.

“Vietnam’s entry into the trade is what has driven this upsurge that we’re witnessing now,” Milliken said.

On top of increased purchasing power, rhino horn is being marketed in a new way. Milliken said that the traditional medicine systems of Asia have long promoted rhino horn as a way to reduce fever and other ailments like nose bleeds, but an urban myth has recently taken hold that rhino horn can cure cancer. Scientists have studied rhino horn and found that its medicinal value is virtually non-existent.

“Suddenly rhino horn was being promoted in a very lucrative market as a miracle cure and that has led to just carnage in Africa and the highest prices for rhino horn that we’ve ever seen in its history,” Milliken said.

An average sized rhino horn in Vietnam can sell for as much as a quarter of a million dollars, which makes rhino horn gram for gram more valuable than gold or cocaine.

“Highly orchestrated, highly choreographed” rings do the poaching and selling of the rhino horn, Milliken said.

Milliken explained the crime syndicates have “the modern threads of technology: cell phones, computers, Internet.” They also use helicopters, GPS, thermal imaging and powerful medicine to tranquilize the rhinos. That medicine is typically only available to veterinarians, meaning that the very people who are supposed to care for the rhinos are assisting some of the poachers.

In South Africa, the upcoming trial involving two veterinarians, a helicopter pilot, a wild game reserve owner and others accused of slaughtering rhinos, has shocked the country.

Desperate to stop the killing, several short-term measures have been taken to try and protect the animals.

On the reserve where Geza was killed, owner Rushmere moved the remaining rhinos closer to the lodges where his anti-poaching patrol could keep watch on them. He also decided to dehorn several of his rhinos. When done properly, it doesn’t hurt the rhino to have its horn cut off and the horn grows back. Graeme hopes the dehorning is just a temporary solution.

“They’re measures which make you feel you’re going backwards. I mean to dehorn a rhino is defacing a beautiful animal and it’s just, it’s contrary to all of our gut instincts about conservation and wildlife, but it’s a life saving measure. It’s one of those decisions. It’s a lose, lose scenario,” Rushmere said.

Lorinda Hern has taken an even more drastic measure. Her family owns the Rhino and Lion Nature Reserve outside of Johannesburg. They decided to inject the horns of their rhinos with a parasiticide that she claims is safe for the rhino, but would make humans sick.

“We’ve armed our rhinos. We’ve armed them. We’ve treated their horns and if you do consume the horn, you do so at your peril. I can guarantee you, it will not have the desired effect,” Hern said.

Hern and her family made the decision after two of their rhinos were killed. The poachers used tranquilizer darts and the animals were found dead the next day.

“It’s still hard to speak about it because of the excessive cruelty of it. If you do need to kill it, then just kill it. Don’t make it suffer and it doesn’t understand what’s happening to it. It’s the most vile, inhumane act,” she said through tears.

Others have added microchips into the rhino’s horns and taken DNA samples that can be used to track rhino horn sold on the black market.

Most of South Africa’s rhinos roam the country’s large national parks, making them easy targets for poachers.

“It’s actually got to the stage now where we’re at home, the phone rings and you [are] now sort of terrified that it is another rhino,” said Rusty Hustler, head of security for South Africa’s North West Parks and Tourism Board.

The fight has turned deadly for humans too. Twenty-six poachers were killed last year.

Hustler said that South Africa’s military has been deployed in some public parks to fight poachers. In others, park rangers have received paramilitary training and joined anti-poaching units.

At Pilanesberg, a park under Hustler’s watch, ecologist Stephen Dell said that it’s been several years since he has worried much about the balance of plant and animal life. Instead, he’s become like a soldier fighting a war against the poachers.

“It is absolutely a war, they’re armed so we have to be armed…it’s difficult for us to stay one step ahead of them because they’re the ones who are prepared to take the risks and big risks. People are dying in this, poachers are dying,” Dell said.

One member of the anti-poaching unit at Pilanesberg told NBC News that he’s willing to risk his life for the rhinos.

“It cannot defend itself. It doesn’t have a gun,” Mpho Motshegwe said. “Poachers have guns, so I’m willing to stand up and fight for the rhino because it can’t fight for itself.”

For Dell, the ecologist turned warrior, he fears we’re nearing a tipping point in the survival of the species.

“When you have done it for so long and there are very few success stories in conservation and the rhino is one,” Dell said. “Poaching is taking out animals that are young and female, they’re not going to breed. They’re gone out of the system. You’re going to go straight into a vortex of extinction and that’s how it happens.”

Editor’s Note: Harry Smith’s broadcast report, ‘Last Stand,’ airs Wednesday, Feb. 22 at 9pm/8c on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams.

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Shea Body Products

Country Meadow Ltd.

Asia Pulp and Paper Greenwashing
New report documents a tiger sanctuary under threat from deforestation

On December 14, 2011, WWF partner Eyes on the Forest released a new report titled “The Truth Behind APP’s Greenwash.” The report includes evidence that Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) continues to clear cut tiger forests in Sumatra, Indonesia. These areas are within the boundaries of land the company claims to protect.

Through field investigations in June and October 2011 and satellite image analysis up to June 2011, Eyes on the Forest found that the APP supplier, PT Ruas Utama Jaya, has been clear cutting tropical forests inside the Senepis Tiger Sanctuary.

Fact Versus Pulp Fiction
The investigation shows a tiger sanctuary reality vastly different from APP’s claims. Key findings from the report conclude:

•APP has pulped an estimate of almost 5 million acres of Indonesia’s tropical forests since it started paper production there in 1984
•APP has continued clear cutting forests including elephant, tiger and orangutan habitat despite displaying an environmentally responsible image in the media
•86% of the tiger area that APP claims responsibility for conserving is already under protection through Forest Stewardship Council-certified partners
•APP’s required reporting of greenhouse gas emissions—both from deforestation and the draining of swampy peatlands for agriculture—could be more than 500 times what the company claims
•An APP wood supplier is clear cutting within the Senepsis Tiger Sanctuary—an area APP claims it protects
APP sells office paper, paper-based packaging and other paper products. They are also expanding globally into tissue products like toilet paper, including brand names such as Paseo, which is available on many U.S. supermarket shelves.

APP has failed to reduce the impact of their operations in Sumatra despite attempts over several years to engage them in seeking solutions. WWF now works with global companies that buy pulp and paper from Indonesia to ensure their supply chain is sourced sustainably. By seeking responsibly sourced materials these companies will ensure that they are not responsible for the continued destruction of Indonesia’s tropical forests and the homes of Sumatra’s last surviving tigers.

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Shea Body Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

With 7 billion on earth, a huge task before us
By Jeffrey D. Sachs, Special to CNN

Editor’s note: Jeffrey D. Sachs is director of The Earth Institute, Columbia University. He and colleagues will discuss the 7 billion mark in a free live webcast Monday, October 17. He is the author of “The Price of Civilization,” published this month.

(CNN) — Just 12 years after the arrival of the 6 billionth individual on the planet in 1999, humanity will greet the 7 billionth arrival this month. The world population continues its rapid ascent, with roughly 75 million more births than deaths each year. The consequences of a world crowded with 7 billion people are enormous. And unless the world population stabilizes during the 21st century, the consequences for humanity could be grim.

A rising population puts enormous pressures on a planet already plunging into environmental catastrophe. Providing food, clothing, shelter, and energy for 7 billion people is a task of startling complexity.

The world’s agricultural systems are already dangerously overstretched. Rainforests are being cut down to make way for new farms; groundwater used for irrigation is being depleted; greenhouse gases emitted from agricultural activities are a major factor in global climate change; fertilizers are poisoning estuaries; and countless species are threatened with extinction as we grab their land and water and destroy their habitats.

The economic challenges are equally huge. Population is growing most rapidly in the world’s poorest countries — often the places with the most fragile ecological conditions. Poor people tend to have many more children, for several reasons. Many live on farms, where children can be engaged in farm chores.

Poor societies generally suffer from high rates of child mortality, leading parents to have more children as “insurance” against the possible deaths of children. Girls rarely make it to high school, and are often married at a very young age, leading to early childbearing. And modern methods of contraception may be unavailable or unaffordable.

When poor families have six or eight children, many or most of them are virtually condemned to a lifetime of poverty. Too often, parents lack the wherewithal to provide decent nutrition, health care and education to most of them. Illiteracy and ill health end up being passed from generation to generation. Governments in poor countries are unable to keep up, their budgets overmatched by the need for new schools, roads and other infrastructure.

So the arrival of the 7 billionth person is cause for profound global concern. It carries a challenge: What will it take to maintain a planet in which each person has a chance for a full, productive and prosperous life, and in which the planet’s resources are sustained for future generations? How, in short, can we enjoy “sustainable development” on a very crowded planet?

The answer has two parts, and each portends a difficult journey over several decades. The first part requires a change of technologies — in farming, energy, industry, transport and building — so that each of us on average is putting less environmental stress on the planet. We will have to make a worldwide transition, for example, from today’s fossil-fuel era, dependent on coal, oil and gas, to an era powered by low-carbon energies such as the sun and wind. That will require an unprecedented degree of global cooperation.

The second key to sustainable development is the stabilization of the global population. This is already occurring in high-income and even some middle-income countries, as families choose to have one or two children on average. The reduction of fertility rates should be encouraged in the poorer countries as well. Rapid and wholly voluntary reductions of fertility have been and can be achieved in poor countries. Success at reducing high fertility rates depends on keeping girls in school, ensuring that children survive, and providing access to modern family planning and contraceptives.

Two centuries ago, the British thinker Thomas Robert Malthus famously warned that excessive population growth would cut short economic progress. That is a threat still with us today, but it is a warning, not an inevitable outcome.

We face an urgent task: to adopt more sustainable technologies and lifestyles, and work harder to achieve a stable population of some 8 billion or so by mid-century, rather than the current path, which could easily carry the world to more than 10 billion people by 2100.

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

Recycling, not reefs, in store for old aircraft carriers
Environmental group worried about sea pollutants welcomes choice
By Miguel Llanos

It’s a heave-ho, U.S. Navy style. After several years during which turning old warships into artificial reefs was fashionable, four decommissioned aircraft carriers will instead be dismantled, and recycled, at shipyards.

An environmental group that’s been championing the shift said it makes sense: creating shipyard jobs in the U.S., instead of a potential toxic mess at sea.

“The Obama administration’s new plan to recycle these four aircraft carriers appears to be a signal that the administration may be correcting long-standing misguided policies that not only squander resources, but American jobs as well,” stated Colby Self of the Basel Action Network, a group that monitors global toxic issues and that last December issued a report critical of the artificial reefs.

The four decommissioned carriers are:

•USS Constellation
•USS Forrestal
•USS Independence
•USS Saratoga

The Navy would not comment but Navy records show that bids are being accepted to dismantle the veteran ships.

Self said the Forrestal alone has some 40,000 tons of recyclable steel, copper and aluminum.

“With a strong metal market, these recoverable metals could bring a return of up to $30 million,” Self told msnbc.com. “After accounting for the ship purchase price by competitive bid, towing, environmental remediation of toxic materials and labor rates, the recycling of this vessel should be a profitable venture for the domestic ship recycling industry and should give the local economy a great boost.”

Dozens of other warships have previously been dumped at sea or turned into reefs after efforts were made to remove toxic material.

BAN said that the environmental work on two recent aircraft carriers to meet that fate — the America and the Oriskany — cost more than $20 million each and that not all contaminants were removed.

The Oriskany was sunk off Pensacola, Fla., in May 2006 at a depth of 210 feet with the purpose of becoming an artificial reef.

The America was used for live-fire tests and scuttled in May 2005 at a depth of nearly 17,000 feet about 250 miles off the coast of North Carolina.

BAN estimates that recycling the Forrestal will save millions of taxpayer dollars and sustain about 1,900 jobs for one year.

BAN said it was still concerned that plans might still be in place to sink the decommissioned destroyer USS Arthur W. Radford next month in waters off Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland.

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

Key device in busted Gulf well got U.S. OK in just 90 minutes
Commission report warns disaster ‘might well recur’ without significant reform

A request by BP to set an “unusually deep cement plug” on the Gulf oil well that subsequently exploded killing 11 people was approved by the then-Minerals Management Service in just 90 minutes, according to a presidential commission report on the disaster.

That decision was one of the nine technical and engineering calls that the commission says — in a 48-page excerpt of its final report obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press — increased the risk of a blowout.

The oil spill commission said a string of poor decisions led to technical problems that contributed to the deadly April 20 accident, which led to more than 200 million gallons of oil spewing from BP’s well a mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico.

“The blowout was not the product of a series of abberational decisions made by a rogue industry or government officials that could not have been anticipated or expected to occur again,” the commission concluded.

“Rather, the root causes are systemic, and absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur,” it added.

BP hired the firm Halliburton to seal the Gulf well with a temporary cement plug after the exploratory rig found oil. A number of tests on the cement were carried out in the weeks running up to the disaster.

In October, a government panel said Halliburton had used flawed material to cement the well and knew that it was unstable.

In response to that finding, Halliburton vigorously defended its actions and said BP was responsible for the disaster because it did not perform a key test to determine the integrity of the cement work.

However, Halliburton later acknowledged that it had skipped doing a test on the final formulation of cement.

Four out of 13 preliminary conclusions released by the commission in November noted problems relating to the cement plug. Cement is an essential barrier to preventing blowouts.

The disaster prompted the Obama administration to introduce a moratorium on deepwater drilling.

In mile-deep seas, work is done in total darkness and near-freezing temperatures . The water pressure is enough to crush a submarine and the explosive methane gas that likely ignited on the Deepwater Horizon can be much more damaging if not properly controlled.

In the intense pressure and cold of the deep, methane hydrates exist in a slushy, crystalline form. But as methane rockets upward in a blowout, passing into lower-pressure zones, it converts to a gaseous state and gains tremendous force.

The use of heat in cementing, or sealing a well, which was under way prior to the blast, can destabilize methane hydrates at extreme depths.

Halliburton acknowledged as much in an industry presentation in 2009, calling the risks “a challenge to the safety and economics.”

Interior Department spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said the presidential commission’s report focused on areas in which the agency in charge of offshore drilling has already made improvements.

“The agency has taken unprecedented steps and will continue to make the changes necessary to restore the American people’s confidence in the safety and environmental soundness of oil and gas drilling and production on the Outer Continental Shelf, while balancing our nation’s important energy needs,” Barkoff said in a statement.

Share prices rise
The report already has the companies involved with the blown-out well and Deepwater Horizon rig pointing fingers at each other again.

However, it did not appear to be affecting their market value with London-listed shares in BP trading up 1.3 percent at 506 pence at 3:07 a.m. ET Thursday and those in Swiss-based Transocean up 2.3 percent.

BP, in a statement issued Wednesday, said the report, like its own investigation, found the accident was the result of multiple causes, involving multiple companies.

It said the company was working with regulators “to ensure the lessons learned from Macondo lead to improvements in operations and contractor services in deepwater drilling.”

Transocean Ltd., which owned the rig being leased by BP to perform the drilling, said in response to the commission’s findings that “the procedures being conducted in the final hours were crafted and directed by BP engineers and approved in advance by federal regulators.”

And Halliburton also said it acted at the direction of BP and was “fully indemnified by BP.”

The commission underscores its central conclusion with a quote from an e-mail written by BP engineer Brett Cocales on April 16, just days before the disaster.

The e-mail was first unearthed in an investigation conducted by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who at the time led the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“But, who cares, it’s done, end of story, will probably be fine and we’ll get a good cement job,” Cocales wrote, after he disagreed with BP’s decision to use fewer centralizers than recommended.

Centralizers are used to center the pipe to ensure a good cement job. The cement failed at the bottom of the Macondo well, allowing oil and gas to enter it, according to investigations.

The full report is due to the president Jan. 11.

Key questions
But key questions will remain, namely: Why didn’t a hulking piece of equipment that sat at the wellhead and was supposed to choke off the flow of oil in the event of a blowout do its job?

Federal investigators analyzing the blowout preventer at a NASA facility in New Orleans aren’t expected to finish until February.

The Justice Department continues its own investigation, as does a joint U.S. Coast Guard-Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement panel.

BP, Halliburton and Transocean, the three key companies involved with the well and the rig that exploded, each made individual decisions that increased risks of a blowout but saved significant time or money.

But ultimately, the Deepwater Horizon disaster came down to a single failure, the panel says: management. When decisions were made, no one was considering the risk they were taking.

The suggestion that the BP disaster may not be an isolated incident runs counter to assurances by the oil industry, which has worked hard to portray the accident as a rare occurrence.

“This clearly was a rare incident,” the president of the American Petroleum Institute, Jack Gerard, said Tuesday when his organization published a new report urging Congress and the Obama administration to open more areas to oil and gas drilling.

Outside experts in technological disasters were split by the report’s excerpt.

They lauded the commission’s focus on organizational and managerial failures instead of blaming the rig workers. But they were divided whether the panel went far enough in criticizing the companies for taking time- and money-saving shortcuts.

University of California at Berkeley engineering professor Bob Bea, who has studied and worked on offshore oil rigs for decades and is an international expert on technological disasters, lauded the panel for “articulating the hows and whys.”

“This was a preventable disaster,” Bea, who ran a Berkeley investigation into the accident, said.

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com