Russ Savage: NaturalEcology

It's all about trade-offs

Sat, 21 Jan 2006 17:05:18 GMT

We continue to ignore or debate, squandering the thing we have the least of - time.

Forecast for Earth in 2050: It's not so gloomy
But people must begin to manage its ecosystems to put the planet on a sustainable path, a new report says.
By Peter N. Spotts, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor, January 20, 2006 edition

...Thursday, officials released a five-volume coda to the UN's Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, an ambitious four-year attempt to explore the relationship between the environment and human development. Summary reports of the findings as they affected four international environmental treaties were released last year. These new volumes represent the detailed information that underpins the earlier reports.

In the process, it outlines four plausible ways the planet could develop politically, economically, and socially by 2050, and the effect they would have on people and the environment....

Even under the most environmentally beneficial paths, however, ecological trouble spots are likely to remain - central Africa, the Middle East, and southern Asia.

In the end, Carpenter says, "there is no optimum approach, no one-size-fits-all. It's all about trade-offs."

To put the planet on a sustainable path, he continues, the report makes clear that people must view Earth's ecosystems as one interlinked system, rather than as fragments....

Unfortunately, humans have "badly mismanaged" the ecosystems that support them," says Walter Reid, a professor with Stanford University's Institute for the Environment and director of the assessment. "We need to manage for the full range of ecosystem benefits, not just those that pass through markets."...

Why did NASA kill a climate change project?

Few Americans have heard of the Deep Space Climate Observatory, but the entire world may come to mourn its passing.

[Editorials & Commentary - International Herald Tribune]

Bus Data Detects Traffic Snarls
By Joanna Glasner, Wired,

...The university's Intelligent Transportation Systems Research Program began collecting bus data close to seven years ago. The data feeds MyBus, a web and text-messaging service that notifies commuters about delays. Seattle-area bus commuters use the service about 5 million times a month, Dailey said

Now, the researchers have attached sensors to city buses to detect when they are moving slowly, as part of a prototype traffic-alert system. During rush hour, traffic can move as slowly as 10 mph along commuter routes.

Highway traffic speeds are relatively easy to measure because traffic rarely stops. Many municipalities, including Seattle, use inductive loop detectors embedded in roadways to record when cars pass by.

But that technology isn't as effective for measuring speeds on routes with traffic lights, Dailey said, partly because it's unclear whether a car is slowing because of congestion or a yellow light....

There is the flip side of the digital.

Wed, 28 Dec 2005 19:30:13 GMT

What happens... after.

One Man's Trash Doesn't Necessarily Become Another Man's Treasure

...Studies estimate that 315 million to 600 million desktop and laptop computers in the U.S. will become obsolete over the next 18 months. That's the equivalent of a 22-story pile of e-waste covering the entire city of Los Angeles. Old PCs and TVs make up the fastest-growing portion of our waste stream, according to the coalition. Add to that the millions of cell phones, whose size has shrunk as fast as their life span, and the now seemingly clunky TVs along with printers and that soon-to-be-retired VCR player, and the pile of junk keeps on growing.

But it's not a lost cause, experts say. There are ways to fight e-waste....

The Futures

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 19:48:09 GMT

What the Raven said

What will it take to convince a few billion people that destroying wilderness, natural habitats and our fellow creatures is not only harmful to humankind, but also irrational, morally repugnant, and instinctively insane? How can we give people who are completely disconnected from nature a sense of what they're missing, what they've lost, forgotten? I don't believe any of this can come from reading books, watching nature documentaries or trips to parks, farms and summer camps.

This connection and knowledge can only come from first-hand experience. The challenge is that there's not much quiet, uncivilized nature left to experience, anywhere in the world. When it's gone, the world that's left, stuffed wall-to-wall with many times more people than it can sustainably support, will be, despite all its people and buildings and cars and inventions and noise, a lonely, barren and empty place....

[how to save the world]

The Future

Wanna go climb a tree or wait 'til its here

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 20:29:34 GMT

And Sometimes, the Island Is Marooned on You
By PAM BELLUCK, The New York Times, Published: November 6, 2005

ABOARD A ROWBOAT IN ISLAND POND, Mass. - The island of Island Pond had it in for Andrew Renna.

Or so it seemed one Saturday evening a few weeks ago. In the middle of a pounding storm, Mr. Renna looked out across the pond, which borders his backyard

"It was raining crazy," he recalled. "I said, 'That wind's going to blow that thing right over here.' Ten minutes later it did. When it moves, it moves pretty quick."

The island, about the size of a football field, made a beeline for Mr. Renna's house - crushing his three-foot chain-link fence, swamping his red-blue-and-purple flagstone patio, wrecking his dock, flooding his shed, hobbling his weeping willow, and drowning the oregano, cilantro, tomatoes and peppers in his garden. Then, with an insouciant shrug, it came to a standstill in Mr. Renna's backyard, an interloper squatting in stubborn silence.

"Normally when it floats you can actually hear the roots rip - it sounds like ripping up carpet," said Mr. Renna, 51, a roofing and siding sales manager. "But this time, it didn't make any noise."

Island Pond's island has been floating for as long as anyone can remember, buoyed by a mat of sphagnum moss and gases from decomposing plants. It is a curiosity and sometimes a nuisance for the 20 or so homes around the shoreline of this nine-acre pond in Springfield, Mass....

Such islands appear across the country and around the world - familiar enough that Minnesota issues removal permits to homeowners, and prevalent enough in some lakes in Florida that they are chopped up or pulverized by large machines with sharp blades....

The islands, which can be as big as an acre and six inches to six feet thick, are rich environments for wildlife, allowing small creatures to outfloat predators. Many of the islands sprout trees, which act as sails; the 20-foot birches, alders and pines on the Island Pond island can ferry it across the entire pond in as little as 20 minutes, residents say....

You really need to read this, this excerpt is pale and wan compared to the article.

What if the rent was due

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 05:11:09 GMT

and nobody came?

Bolivia: Leasing the Rain

Available for viewing online. Privatization sparks a deadly protest in the town of Cochabamba when the Bolivian government sells off its water system to a private, multi-national consortium Aguas del Tunari. New Yorker writer William Finnegan travels to Cochabamba to learn why people took to the streets and what happens next. (more)

[FRONTLINE/World - Reports | PBS]

A moment of context

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 03:57:34 GMT

I recommend you read the whole blog entry.

Reflections on 30 tons an ounce

While my dissertation project is not incredibly obscure, it usually only matters to a small number of people -- most of whom live in Australia, Papua New Guinea, or Vancouver. So I've been really amazed to see the New York Times's series on the impact of gold mining that has been running recently -- suddenly my area of expertise is literally news. How do I feel about the article, and how do I feel about the gold industry more generally?

I study the relationship between indigenous people in Papua New Guinea and the white senior management of a gold mine that they work with. As someone who had studied Melanesia for years before I lived there, and who lived in a local community, the biggest problem I had was fitting in with the white mining executives and not the local Papua New Guineans. Call it the narcissism of small difference. Culture shock and fieldwork with Papua New Guineans was easy in some sense, since no one really expected me to fit in when I first arrived. Mine management, on the other hand, were supposedly 'from my culture.' Learning to like and respect these men (they were almost entirely men) was one of the hardest parts of my fieldwork. They were mostly Australian and Canadian, and had the usual Commonwealth suspicion of Yankees. I was an artist and an intellectual, and over-educated to boot. While many of my informants in the mine had some form of tertiary education it tended towards the vocational, or the physical sciences. And they were MEN in a way that I was not -- they talked about rugby and worked with their hands and had pictures of naked (or nearly naked) women on their walls, in there calendars, on their screen savers. And, of course, in the struggle between landowners and company, I was sympathetic to my indigenous hosts.

Of course, I can imagine how strange I must have appeared to them: hopelessly young, over-educated, exotically Jewish, under-nourished and unshaven. In fact of all of my fieldwork experiences, one of the things that I am most proud of is the fact that I established as close a rapport with them as I did. It was, for me, one of the classical lessons of anthropological relativism: no matter how savage and barbaric your natives -- in this case, Canadian capitalists -- may seem to you, you need to learn to understand them....

The power of the Times article comes from its title: Thirty tons an ounce. The massive amount of effort undertaken -- and hardship inflicted -- for a single ring's worth of gold is tremendous. And yet for the post-fieldwork me it is also emblematic of the nature of the primary industry which supports first world lifestyles. As one mine executive once remarked to me "if it's not grown, it's mined." When staring at an open cut or touring float mills its impossible to escape this fact. But the existence and extent of primary industry is occluded from the view of most Americans. Times readers may be disturbed by the process of gold mining, but what this should really cause them to do is rethink not just gold mining, but their lifestyle in general. Look up from your computer screen for a moment and look around the room -- how much metal do you see? Imagine the copper wires and metal pipes and lines of nails that stretch around you for thousands of miles. Where did they come from?...

As for me, I own a computer and nice knives and pots and pans. After two years of living in rural Papua New Guinea I am more than ready to have the earth pay the price for my current abode[base ']s indoor plumbing and electrification. But I've never owned a car, don't want to, and I have various other idiosyncratic personal commitments to simple living. I know my adopted family in Papua New Guinea wants the same standard of living that I have (except for the car part, which they can get behind), and I think they should have the opportunity to have it as well. I just hope that the readers of the Time's new series realize, as I did, that they have something to come to grips with beyond just the problems of the gold industry.

[Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology -- A Group Blog]

Yes indeed, much to come to grips with.

The Gold Standard for the environment is....

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 12:41:45 GMT

This story series discusses the good as well as bad local impacts of a gold mine in Peru. Also at New York Times.

Peru - The Curse of Inca Gold
PBS Frontline, October 2005

High in the Andean mountains of Peru is a gold mine, Yanacocha, run by Newmont Mining Corporation of Denver, Colorado, the largest gold mining company in the world. Once part of the Incan Empire, this land was conquered by the Spanish, who came in search of gold and silver. ...

The Yanacocha Mine recently celebrated the pouring of its 19 millionth ounce of gold. It is said to be the world's most productive gold mine....

"Communities are becoming more and more involved in their own destinies," says a chastened Kurlander. "When I say a social license, I mean it. Without the community support, you'll be out of business eventually. They will force you out of their community, and it doesn't matter how much government support you have."
[PBS Frontline]

The Toxic Shimmer of Gold

Is your gold ring really worth its weight in gold? When experts include the risks to the environment and the people living near mine operations, some say no. A look at the hidden toxic costs of gold mining....
[PBS Frontline]

Behind Gold's Glitter: Torn Lands and Pointed Questions

Some metal mines, including gold mines, have become the near-equivalent of nuclear waste dumps that must be tended in perpetuity. Hard-rock mining generates more toxic waste than any other industry in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The agency estimated last year that the cost of cleaning up metal mines could reach $54 billion.
[New York Times]

Think Pocketbook, Act Local (& National)

Wed, 02 Nov 2005 12:51:24 GMT

Beyond Gasoline: Taking the Future for a Drive
A California family is the first in the world to drive a car powered by hydrogen fuel cells, the technology that many automakers see as a solution to energy woes. [NYT > Science]

Layered Complexity

Sat, 29 Oct 2005 20:44:41 GMT

Asbestos Removal Laws and You

Asbestos removal laws regulate the removal of asbestos because asbestos has turned out to be such a terribly toxic substance. Thousands of people have come down with horrifying, painful cancers as a result of asbestos exposure[sigma].

[Lockergnome's Net Connections]

There was a program on TV this past week on a gold mining company trying to become a good partner to the towns people harmed by the company's past environmental contamination. They've made great progress and both sides are happy. And no one is touching the sacred mountain thought to contain a billion US in gold.

Meahwhile, New Orleans' complex post-Katrina cleanup includes asbestos risks.

Sat, 29 Oct 2005 19:45:52 GMT

G. K. Chesterton. "Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up." [Quotes of the Day]