President Bush today established the largest marine conservation area in history. Over three hundred thousand square kilometres in the Pacific will now be protected as national monuments. The covered area includes the depths of the Mariana Trench. The status will protect the waters from commercial fishing as well as oil & natural gas exploration.

I’m sure everyone out there still hates Bush, but hey at least it’s something.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090106/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_marine_conservation

The new European Union president is President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic, and he does not believe in climate change. He thinks that it is a dangerous myth, who is this guy George Bush? Sorry that’s unfair to George Bush because he believes in climate change.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5430362.ece

It is the most dangerous type of person who will consult the consult of a few rogue scientists while ignoring the vast consensus of the majority. Science isn’t faith, you don’t choose which part of it you want to believe. It comes as a whole. You can’t rely on science for every part of your daily life, to fly you across the globe, to watch your satellite television, to save your life on a hospital bed, but then choose to ignore it when it becomes an inconvenience. That’s foolish, but unfortunately the world has many foolish people and we are all paying the price.

Malaysia has begun using satellites to monitor forest cover in the nation in an effort to stop illegal logging. Now they’re mostly doing this to save their own legal logging industry & not because of the environment. But the end result is the same, the environment will benefit. Legal logging can be planned & sustainable where as illegal logging is erratic & destructive.

The Hong Kong government is always looking for new & profitable ways to exploit the harbour & reclaim the land for commercial usage. Someone has to fight on behalf of the waterway & that someone is The Society For Protection Of The Harbour.

Check out their website for more information on how you can help preserve one the world’s greatest beauties for future generations.

http://www.harbourprotection.org/

Check out this blog on BBC, it’s pretty interesting:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/

A dike holding back a retention pond broke in Tennessee this morning contaminating hundreds of acres with a mix of water & coal ash. When asked to comment a TVA spokesperson had this to say: ‘Fuck the environment’.

Follow the link to read more; http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/12/29/tennessee.sludge/index.html

Check out the Arbor Day Foundation’s website where you can have trees planted in the name’s of loved ones. It’s a gift that gives for a lifetime.

http://www.arborday.org/shopping/giveatree/giveatree.cfm

If you need convincing:

‘As the trees grow and prosper, so does the meaning of your gift.

Over the course of 50 years, a single tree can generate $31,250 of oxygen, provide $62,000 worth of air pollution control, recycle $37,500 worth of water, and control $31,500 worth of soil erosion.

Your trees will be silent sentinels, honorable monuments, and for decades to come, active participants in nature’s plan.’

Good news coming out of Brazil this afternoon. The Brazilian forestry service have announced plans to cut deforestation in the South American nation by 70% over the next decade.  They’re doing this in partnership with a new Amazon fund in which first world nations can contribute financially to the conservation of the rainforest.

I think it’s good rich countries have finally lived up to their monetary obligations. The Amazon rainforest is important to the world and the world should share in the cost of its protection.

Check out the following link if you want to know more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7759192.stm

I’m sure a lot of you have been wrestling with the moral dillema for a while now of whether you should dispose of your leftover food in a garbage disposal, or toss it out in the trash.

Really, so none of you have been wrestling with that dillema. Ok I’ll admit I’ve not been either. But I stumbled across an interesting article the other day which should definitively answer your questions on the topic

Should we dispose of disposals?

Last fall, after 20 years of strident inaction, Congress finally passed a bill to increase the fuel efficiency of cars, SUVs and pickup trucks. There was a lot self-congratulation on Capitol Hill. The law seemed to mandate roughly a one-third increase in new-vehicle MPG by 2020 - enough to eliminate the oil the United States imports from the Persian Gulf. Sounds great! “TMQ is hugely suspicious … [there is] a waiver provision that says that if the new standards prove too onerous, automakers can ask they be waived. That is a formula for what Washington specializes in: the appearance of dramatic action while nothing actually happens.” So what’s going on in Washington right now? Pleading poormouth, the big three automakers are already asking for a waiver from the 2015 interim standard, which requires roughly a 15 percent improvement in fuel efficiency. That standard does not take effect for seven years, and already Detroit automakers are saying they can’t meet it.

Or perhaps, they don’t want to try. Lee Hyun-Soon, president of Hyundai, told the Wall Street Journal last week his company will meet the entire 2020 standard by 2015, and will do so entirely with conventional vehicles — no complex plug-in hybrids, just sensible engineering using existing technology. Whenever Washington seems to get serious about oil waste, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai and Subaru put their engineers to work — then build, at American factories staffed by American workers, vehicles that comply with MPG rules. Whenever Washington seems to get serious about oil waste, Chrysler, Ford and General Motors put their lobbyists at work to dilute or evade the standards. There are only 535 people in the United States so gullible they would believe Korean engineers can meet a technical standard, yet American engineers cannot. Unfortunately, those 535 people are the members of the United States Congress.

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