Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
from Photographers Blog:
An aerial view of Sumatra Island
I joined a Greenpeace tour flying over Sumatra Island to take pictures of their protest over forest destruction.
Five photographers and a TV cameraman set off early in the morning, while it was still dark, in a new, single-propeller aircraft. No one told me it would be nearly three hours to get to Jambi on a small plane with no toilet. Luckily for me I had an empty bottle as an emergency measure.
This was the first time I’ve taken aerial shots, so I took so many types of pictures. I took every single detail that caught my eye -- forest, reflected light from the sun during sunrise, palm oil plantations, river, sea, houses, everything. When we started to take pictures, all five photographers jostled around one opened window. The wind blew very hard, pushing the glass against my face. After one hour, one of the other photographers gave up, and had to take a rest after throwing up all his breakfast. That made me happy – more room for me to take pictures.
In the afternoon when we flew back to Jakarta, I checked my pictures and the dominant images I had were of deforestation, palm oil plantation and acacia forest for paper. One image stands out to me, a clearing in the tropical rain forest in a heart shape, my heart is broken for the loss of the tropical rain forest.
Acacia forest and palm oil plantations dominated my pictures. So that’s how it remained in my mind: Sumatra had recently become just palm oil plantations and acacia forest.
from Mario Di Simine:
Is there a climate conference going on?
Walking through the Copenhagen airport, it's pretty much impossible to miss the signs that illustrate the city's focus is squarely on the climate. Those signs, literally, are everywhere, with advertisements adorning the walls on the walk from the flight ramp through to baggage claim and off into the arrivals area.
Big companies from Siemens to Shell are making sure you know they care.
Those are nice, but to really get a message across the big conglomerates may want to contact the ad guy for Greenpeace and its NGO alliance. The environment group has plastered the airport walls with a campaign "to mobilize civil society and to galvanize public opinion" to help bring about a new climate deal. The ad series features unflattering photos of world leaders like Germany's Angela Merkel (pictured in the ad below), President Obama, and others beside this quote: "We could have stopped catastrophic climate change" followed by the subtext "We did ... nothing". Whether you agree with the group and the alliance of NGOs participating in the ad, you gotta admit it's pretty striking.
There was another ad from Accenture that caught my eye as I strolled toward the baggage claim area, although it had nothing to do with the climate conference. I just like irony:
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A green Nobel Peace Prize next week? Or one too many?
Will the guardians of the Nobel Peace Prize make another green award in 2009 to encourage sluggish talks on new U.N. climate treaty due to be agreed in Copenhagen?
Or is it too early after environmental prizes in both 2004 and 2007?
The five-member Nobel panel likes to make topical awards to try to influence the world – a prize announcement on Oct. 9 linked to climate change could hardly be better timed since 190 nations will meet in Copenhagen in December to agree a new pact for fighting global warming.
And the Nobel prize will be formally handed over at a ceremony in Oslo on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of the death of founder Alfred Nobel – giving any winner a global loudspeaker during the the Dec. 7-18 meeting in Copenhagen.
But any would-be green laureate has a big problem — former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore and the U.N. Climate Panel shared the 2007 prize and Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai won in 2004 for her campaign to plant trees across Africa.
Three prizes so fast might well be one too many.
Bookmakers don’t rate green candidates very highly this year – one has Chinese dissident Hu Jia at 5-1 followed by Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai at 11/2. Greenpeace is an outsider at 40/1.
“Wow. Anon, I am not sure how old you are, but you certainly haven’t done much reading. Do your part please and inform yourself before assuming that “fairness” role.”
If you are going to make aspersions on a person’s age, education, or knowledge that says volumes about your quality as a person.
By the way, is there a reliable climate model for future climate change yet? Or a conclusive finding on exactly what the climate will be in a decade and to what point climate change will effect it? Or a concrete finding as to whether climate change will cause our extinction as a species?
Or is this something only stupid, uneducated people ask for? And all smart scientists know better then to waste time researching?
Don’t expect a response. And learn some civility.
March of the beetles bodes ill for American forests
MEDICINE BOW NATIONAL FOREST, Wyoming – From the vantage point of an 80-foot (25 meter) tower rising above the trees, the Wyoming vista seems idyllic: snow-capped peaks in the distance give way to shimmering green spruce.
But this is a forest under siege. Among the green foliage of the healthy spruce are the orange-red needles of the sick and the dead, victims of a beetle infestation closely related to one that has already laid waste to millions of acres (hectares) of pine forest in North America.
“The gravity of the situation is very real,” said Rolf Skar, a forest campaigner with Greenpeace.
The plague has cost billions of dollars in lost timber and land values and may thwart efforts to combat climate change, as forests are major storing houses of carbon, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming.
The beetle outbreak, which has taken a lesser, but mounting, toll on spruce trees, could make it that much tougher to meet the ambitious target to reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 17 percent of 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050.
Another alarm signal being sounded…So how many more alarm bells need to go off before the human race collectively gets it’s head out of it’s derrier and says “Dude, the house is on fire…”.If it doesn’t, then that will just prove that it wasn’t evolutionarily fit to survive. Bye, see ya, next species is at bat…
from MediaFile:
Nokia retains top spot on Greenpeace list
Nokia has retained the top spot in Greenpeace's latest ranking of 17 consumer electronics companies over their environmental practices, while Philips and Apple made strides up the list.
Philips leaped to 4th place from 11th and Apple moved up to 10th place from 14th -- best among the top 5 PC makers -- in Greenpeace's latest "Guide to Greener Electronics" report. Companies are ranked based on a number of criteria related to chemicals, e-waste and energy, and Greenpeace uses the report to help pressure companies to change.
Samsung moved up to second place from fourth, while Sony Ericcson dropped a spot to third. Sony rounded out the top five.
Greenpeace said it penalized Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Dell for "backtracking" on their commitment to eliminate toxic vinyl plastic (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) by the end of 2009. The environmental group said only Apple and Acer are sticking by pledges to phase out the substances.
Todd Tod Arbogast, director of sustainable business at Dell, said Dell scores well on other portions of the Greenpeace scorecard but that doing away with PVCs and BVRs is challenging.
"Dell continues to commit to eliminating those materials, however as many in our industyr have also acknowledged, its challening to find viable, scaleable substitutes."
Acer ranked 11th on the overall list, with Dell 13th, Lenovo 14th and HP 16th.
from Davos Notebook:
Even in crisis, NGOs pull no punches in Davos
Though a financial crisis and global recession have left many of the world's biggest companies uncharacteristically humbled, that didn't stop NGOs from taking shots at a few of them at the World Economic Forum.
U.S. gold company Newmont Mining and Swiss utility Bernische Kraftwerke picked up a couple of pretty dubious honors from Greenpeace Switzerland and the Berne Declaration.
Newmont received two awards -- the Global Award and People's Award -- for its mining project in eastern Ghana. According to the NGOs, Newmont "is ignoring the environmental and social damage" the planned mine will create.
"If the project goes ahead, 10,000 farmers will lose their land and livelihood and cyanide, used to extract the gold, will poison the soil, water and wildlife," they said in a statement.
Bernische Kraftwerke, on the other hand, received the Swiss Award "for pushing for the construction of a coal-fired power plant in Germany... Its plans blatantly contradict its self-promotion as a forward-looking company that promotes renewable energy and energy efficiency."
There was one positive award given out on Wednesday, for "most courageous employee of the year." Two Colombian union leaders, Jairo Quiroz Delgado and Freddy Lozano, shared that award for their fight for workers' rights at Colombia's El Cerrejon coal mine.
On Antarctic safaris, remember to bring a microscope
Many people hope to come back from a wildlife safari with close-up pictures of lions or elephants – this picture below is my best attempt from a search for the largest land animals in Antarctica.
If you look hard you can see a reddish blob at the tip of the thumb — it’s Antarctica’s most aggressive land predator, an eight-legged mite known as Rhagidia.
Pete Convey, a biologist at the British Antarctic Survey (that’s his thumb), says that such tiny creatures evolved in Antarctica over tens of millions of years — they can freeze their bodies in winter in an extreme form of hibernation.
Penguins, seals and whales are the best known animals in Antarctica, but none live year-round on land, where the biggest creature is a flightless midge whose name is ”Belgica antarctica” and who’s about 0.5 cm long.
Global warming could mean problems for some of these tiny creatures if it keeps going — the Antarctic Peninsula where Pete showed us the creatures has warmed by about 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) over the past 50 years, the fastest rate in the southern hemisphere.
Some other creatures might be able to survive in a warmer climate and threaten mites like Rhagidia.
from MediaFile:
CES: “Green” envy on Day 2
Several exhibitors took up the “green” theme at CES 2009 as the “Pre” party continued. Any chance Dell had to upstage Palm disappeared in a cloud of secrecy with the “Adamo” laptop it briefly presented, but gave no details about.
Fuji said its EnviroMAX alkaline batteries were made of more than 90 percent recycled materials, had no mercury, cadmium and were PVC free.
Singapore-based Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies said their “HydroPack” water-activated and portable power system HydroPak could provide 4 to 5 hours of 50 watt emergency power without pollution or noise.
Design conscious Areaware showed off a retro and playful radio called “Magno”, that it said was made in Indonesia with sustainable harvest timber.
And Greenpeace held a press conference praising gadgets by Lenovo, Sharp, Samsung, Nokia and Toshiba in its 2008 Green Electronics Survey.
Intel rolled out the next generation of its netbooks aimed at the education sector and emerging markets. The third generation Classmate PC netbook is actually a netbook tablet, adding a touch screen and powered by Intel's Atom processor.
Very powerful story and images. The last image is especially grim but you handle all the images in a balanced way. Always interesting to hear what the photographers have to go through as well to get their shots. I hope the one photographer felt better after heaving. Thanks for your work. It’s inspiring to a young photojournalist like myself.