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Captured by Carbon Offsets?
(Photo courtesy of focalplane @ flickr. Used under the Creative Commons license.)
Amongst friends the other day, a group discussion over carbon offsets decamped into a group debate. Two sides formed, the debate got hot, and I tried to get out. Who knew market mechanisms could be so provocative?
The trouble began over the issue of standards in the voluntary market. Whereas offset projects undertaken as a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) have to go through multiple stages of rigorous review, the voluntary offset market has so equivalent. Though there are multiple industry standards, there is no single, agreed-upon standard, no regulated process for certification, no required central registry. As a result, those who purchase voluntary offsets (largely corporations and individuals) often don't know what they're paying for.
The possibilities of where your money could go, and what it could pay for, are endless. As one Audubon article pointed out, you could be paying to plant monoculture ... -
Gaming For Climate Change
(Image courtesy of John Larsson @ flickr, used under the Creative Commons license.)
The thought is absurd, at first: play a game to fight climate change. I admit -- I laughed. But that was because my knowledge of video games ends roughly with the decline of Duck Hunt.
Called Climate Challenge, and created by Red Redemption Ltd., the game offers play of a different sort. Its role-play is political, and the stakes ecologically high. The premise is that, as a European leader, you set international, national and local policy. You negotiate with world leaders to try and reduce their carbon emissions. If you fail at either, you can be voted out. Or, worse yet, the world burns to a crisp. No, really -- it burns to a crisp.
And that's where the game earns your trust. Because what makes this game different is the sense of replicated reality. Not that it's real, but that it makes a sincere effort to not only engage the process of negotiation, but to provide a sense of science and of policy. To... -
Lessons From Hallsands: A Warning to Slapton Ley
(Photo of the ciffs at Slapton. Photo by a.mcgahern @ flickr.)
Between the lighthouse at Start Point and the beach at Slapton Sands lies the abandoned village of Hallsands. Here, on the southern coast of England, the deep red of Devonian cliffs shear off into the sea below a patchwork of farmland. The shades of green pasture and yellow grain make a madras stitched together by hedgerows and speckled with sheep. Between the sleepy summer towns, and the second homes of the wealthy, its hard to believe that here, where England feels like old England, man would be fighting to slow down nature.
Strictly speaking, Slapton Sands is a thin ribbon of shingle beach running between the English Channel and Slapton Ley -- the largest body of fresh water in the Southwest of England. Viewed as a snapshot, it's a beautiful place, with two ecosystems nestled against each other. Moreover, it's the home of many rare flora and fauna, and has been officially designated a Site of Special Scientific Intere... -
Now Playing: Whalesongs
This past Saturday night, while eating brownies and drinking wine at my sister’s place in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, I was also swimming with whales in Hawaii.
The underwater trip (simply taken in my imagination) was made possible by The Whalesong Project, a grassroots organization “dedicated to inspiring stewardship of the oceans and the environment, and to helping ‘give a microphone’ to important voices that may not be heard above the noise of the modern world.” To accomplish this mission, they are capturing the sounds of humpback whales and broadcasting them to the world--connecting people to nature at a time when nature often seems far removed and whales are threatened.To bring these voices to primetime, the volunteers have sunk a hydrophone (a microphone for underwater) in the Pacific, near Maui, Hawaii, where humpbacks routinely gather. The microphone is connected to a floating buoy, which relays the whalesong, via radio signal, to the Maui shore, where it is then bro...
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Leopold’s Land Ethic, Codified into Constitutional Law?
Two years into leftist president Rafael Correa's term, Ecuadoreans are today voting on whether to adopt a new constitution that reflects Correa's ambitious agenda. If enacted -- and all signs are that it will be -- the 444-article document would become the nation's 20th constitution.
I don't presume any particular knowledge of Ecuador's politics or to be remotely qualified to judge the overall merits of this sprawling document, but I will say that in at least one respect it appears to be a first of historic and global significance. The new constitution would grant nature itself certain inalienable rights; see this Christian Science Monitor article for textof the five articles spelling out these rights. And it would give communities, elected officials and private individuals legal standing in the Ecuadorean courts to defend nature's constitutional rights.
I'd missed this story until the EcoWorldlyblog over at Green Options resurfaced it a few days back, for which I'm grateful. Poking ...
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Cities As Segregated Green Spaces
Given the practical impossibilities of counting each and every American, census data is rarely black and white. But it is always suggestive, and it has nearly always been racially charged.
And so it was with recent census data that suggested two trends. Each trend relates peripherally to the environment, reflects racial divides, and forces an ounce of justice.
According to a recent New York Times article, the great tide of "white flight" has turned. Newly released census data shows whites are moving back into New York City. Whereas in the 1990s alone the white population of New York City declined by more than 350,000, more than 100,000 have moved back into the city since 2000. Half of that increased occurred between 2006 and 2007.
While the recent increase relative to the total historic migration out of the city remains proportionally small, the fact that the number has turned is cause for news. The NY Times quoted Andrew A. Beveridge, a demographer at Queens College, as describing ... -
Photo Essay: Making Sustainable Farming Sustainable
Editor's note: this photo essay is a follow-up to Rachel Leventhal's audio documentary Searching for Farming's Future in Its Past, presented as an OnEarth Podcast in September 2007. We're thrilled to note that the piece was recently chosen by the Third Coast International Audio Festival as a winner of a 2008 "Best Documentary" award.
Last year, while working on a series of features about the impact individuals can make on their world, I spent a couple of days at Jonathan and Nina White's Bobolink Dairy farm in Vernon, New Jersey. Lindsay Klaunig, a 23-year-old intern, is one of the people I met there; drawn to Bobolink by its reputation as a cutting-edge experiment in sustainable agriculture, she is one of a new generation of farmers searching for new models that will sustain us into the next century on a groaning, overpopulated planet. But instead of answers, she’s finding that our current practices are so labor-intensive that her body may not sustain her for six more months, let ...
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The Price of Crossing the Ocean
What is the price of crossing an ocean?
The price has varied over time. For the millions of Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine of the 1840s, they could buy a ticket beginning around $10. For those unlucky enough to board the Titanic, a first class ticket cost them around £870. A third class ticket cost between £3 and £8.
I too recently crossed the Atlantic. Having been fortunate enough to win a Marshall Scholarship for two years of study in Oxford, I recently boarded a British Airways flight bound for London for absolutely no cost. There is no doubt that I'm gratefully for this opportunity; in the first few days it has already proven to be an exceptional experience.
But in traveling to the airport, and on the plane, I was reminded of a simple fact: The price of crossing the Atlantic still doesn't factor in the full environmental cost.
Consider the deals currently available on Ryan Air's website. As a part of a deal in which they are giving away millions of ai...
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Are We Really Going to Ride Fossil Fuels to the Bitter End?
Journalist Andrew Nikiforuk -- who a year ago gave OnEarth Canada's Highway to Hell, a memorably sharp portrait of the abomination that is Alberta's sprawling tar-sands oil field -- has a full-length book coming out next month. Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent will map out in painstaking detail the dystopia that U.S. demand for oil is fast making a reality; check out a small excerpt from the book.
Nikiforuk's OnEarth piece sticks with me, grouped in my mind with a story about Wyoming's oil and gas fields -- Alexandra Fuller's February 2007 New Yorker article "Boomtown Blues." In both stories, the energy industry is cashing out vast swaths of landscape, leaving behind what amounts to industrial sacrifice zones. But what's always really struck me about this pair is that in each, the communities in and around the oil patch are troubled by profound spiritual blight -- booze and crystal meth are ubiquitous; crime is through the roof. These people are not doing well. It ...
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Unemployment Rates Could Fall, Says New Report
While on vacation, I missed my chance to blog about the nation’s newest report on green jobs right when it was released. However, the research brings to the table a batch of conclusions so important, that they are still newsy one week later.
The report, “Green Recovery – A Program to Create Good Jobs and Start Building a Low-Carbon Economy,” is a continuation of the story that I began telling in the current issue of OnEarth magazine: that of green jobs, and how a movement toward a green economy, run on jobs that have a positive environmental impact, will not only offer workers employment, it will offer NEW, higher-paying jobs.
This green job discussion has long been absent of agreed upon definitions and solid numbers—until now. According to “Green Recovery,” a collaboration by the Department of Economics and the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (NRDC did not undertake the research, but is part of the overall campaign the s...
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Mowing the Lawn