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Must Read
Rising Tides in America
The northeast coast of the U.S. "is likely to see the world's biggest sea level rise from man-made global warming." The new study finds that because of changes in ocean currents and the strength of the Gulf Stream, cities like New York and Boston will face an extra 8 inches of sea level rise on top of the 2-3 feet that's predicted globally by 2100. "It's not just waterfront homes and wetlands that are at stake here," one expert said. "Those kind of rises in sea level when placed on top of the storm surges we see today, put in jeopardy lots of infrastructure, including the New York subway system." [AP]
Must Watch
A massive oil spill closes down 40 miles of popular Australian beaches. [Guardian]
Should Read
Solar in the City
A new experiment in financing solar photovoltaic installations is gaining popularity in California. Cities provide municipal financing for the upfront costs of installing solar, allowing residents to pay it back with increased property taxes over the course of 20 years. [New York Times]
The Great Migration
The idea of "climate refugees" is often thought about in the future tense, but the Bangaladeshi city of Dhaka is proof that "climate migration" is already underway. While it's impossible to know exaclty how many of the 500,000 yearly arrivals in Dhaka have moved for predominantly environmental reasons, migration experts are saying that "climate change already is fueling urban arrivals. Coastal flooding is occurring with more frequency. Rice crops, in particular, are slowly dying because of creeping salinity levels, and in the worst cases, entire homes and villages are lost to fearsome storms." [ClimateWire/New York Times]
Pigs and Public Health
Nick Kristof visits a community nearby industrial pig farms, and finds a frighteningly high rate of antibiotic-resistant staph infections, or MRSA. [New York Times]
In Memoriam
Jack Lorenz, a fisherman-cum-advocate for nature preservation, and founder of the Izaak Walton League, a conservation group long associated with fishermen. [Washington Post]
What else is happening...........
It appears that hundreds of billions of dollars, now amounting to trillions of dollars, and every available tool of governance and human enterprise, are being put into service for the sake of rescuing the global economy, but precious little money and scant tools are used to address the larger and much more forbidding, human-driven global challenges posed to the family of humanity by unbridled per-capita resource overconsumption and runaway climate change?
Are the self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe who organize and manage the global economy refusing to recognize that there can be no such thing as a viable global economy on Earth if the planet's limited resources continue to be recklessly dissipated and its frangible environment relentlessly degraded?
Who knows, perhaps necessary change from a soon to become patently unsustainable leviathan construction to a sustainable global human economy, one that benefits a democratic majority of the human community, is in the offing.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176