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• N*Danger

  For Earth Day 2008 we'd like to turn your attention to a handful of the 16,306 species threatened with extinction. An original GOOD Video.
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  • 010: The China Issue
  • Date: Apr 22 2008
  • Contributors: James Sumner, Lindsay Utz, Morgan Currie, and Danielle Flug

• Why China Matters #4

  Because as China builds out its infrastructure, it can set a good or a bad example to developing economies struggling to deal with fragile environments.
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  • 010: The China Issue
  • Date: Apr 02 2008
  • Contributors: Thomas P.M. Barnett

• Black and Green

  Van Jones wants to make sure the poorest citizens get a piece of the new sustainable-living boom.
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  • 010: The China Issue
  • Date: Mar 22 2008
  • Contributors: Maywa Montenegro

• CO2 For Yourself

  Will taking dramatic measures to reduce carbon emissions throw our economy into a nosedive? Or will we make a relatively stable transition to sustainability? It's unclear to us. And economic models, for all their apparent certainty, are themselves based on speculative assumptions. That's what makes Yale professor Robert Repetto's website See For Yourself so useful. He lets you explore the economic effects of carbon reduction based on your own assumptions about the kind of carbon-limiting legislation that's likely to pass and how we'll all adjust to it.
  
  Repetto explains in this somewhat tedious video, but we recommend you just head here.
  
  
  
  Via Treehugger.
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  • Date: May 07 2008
  • Posted by andrewprice

• "Island" Of Trash Update

  A while back we posted about the Texas-sized "island" of trash floating in the Pacific Ocean, and marveled that there weren't pictures of the monstrosity. Now we have them, thanks to the folks at Vice. They hired a boat and struck out for the North Pacific Gyre, the vortex of currents where the trash apparently accumulates. Check out the 12-part "Garbage Island" video series. In episode nine they enter the gyre. What they encounter is an "unfathomable bummer." The trash hasn't gathered in a huge, amalgamated mass (this rumor was always a little suspect). That would have been a big problem, but one with clear boundaries. Instead, limitless volumes of plastic scraps are dispersed throughout the ocean, hopelessly entangled with the natural environment. It's bad news, we know, but worth confronting. Via PSFK.
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  • Date: Apr 30 2008
  • Posted by andrewprice

• China's Green Brothers

  In honor of Earth Day, we'd like to point you to the Green Brothers, aka John Romankiewicz and Shane Zhao Xiangyu, enthusiastic young men in their early 20s whose shared interest in China's various efforts at sustainable energy has resulted in a series of enjoyable video podcasts exploring local initiatives in recycling, biomass power, solar water heaters and windfarming (for some reason, the video links from their own page aren't working; ergo, we've linked directly to their page on YouTube). If the sheer scale of Edward Burtynsky's pictures of industrial waste and environmental degradation can make you feel the problems are insurmountable, the Green Brothers provide a refreshing, humanizing perspective, a sense of life on the ground, including interviews with farmers and workers about recycling and alternative energy. Romankiewicz and Zhao's vivacity and good humor is infectious; the comments section on their intro page is already filling up with interview requests, and an invitation to screen their podcasts as part of a short film festival in Vancouver.
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  • Date: Apr 22 2008
  • Posted by Jaime Wolf

• Air in a Jar

  This group is a place to exchange air captured from significant moments in your life. To share, capture some air in a jar (at your first kiss, on a vacation, at your birthday party, or during any special moment). Then put a label inside the jar, take a picture, and describe the occasion and the air on this group. You can just share it, sell it, buy it, exchange it for free, or request air from a special date or location. Purpose of this project: Because air surrounds us and is invisible, many of us do not stop to think about it. I wanted to create a place where air from different places and moments in our lives can be shared and exchanged. The purpose is to make people think about how important air is and capture memories. I am very passionate about appreciating air and I think this website could make others reconsider air. -Air in the jar dot com Air in a jar
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  • Date: Apr 02 2008
  • Posted by tkusui

• Wilson on Costs of Saving Biodiversity

  James, The estimates Wilson cites are from a 2000 Conservation International conference entitled "Defying Nature's End." Estimates of the cost of saving global fisheries are in Andrew Bamford et al. "The Worldwide Costs of Marine Protected Areas," Proceedings of the National Academyof Sciences, USA 101 (2004): 9694-97, and discussed by Henry Nicholls in "Marine Conservation: Sink or Swim," Nature 432 (2004): 12-14 From pages 97-99 of Wilson's "The Creation" (long quote) "The costs of saving most of Earth's flora and fauna would be relatively trivial for the market economy and, of course, immensely profitable for the natural economy. In 2000 Conservation International sponsored a conference of biologists and economists, entitled "Defying Nature's End," to address this matter. They reviewed the many methods available at that time to secure wildland reserves while simultaneously improving local economies, then estimated the cost. They concluded that in order to put a protective umbrella over the twenty-five hottest spots on the land then recognized (nine more have since been added to total 34), plus core areas within the remaining tropical forest wilderness.... would require one payment of about $30 billion. The benefit, if the allotment is joined with wise investment strategy and foregn policy, would be susbstanntial for 70 percent of Earth's land-dwelling fauna and flora... This sinngle outlay (one payment only), or its equivalent spread over a few years, is approximately one part in a thousdand of the annual gross world product, that is, gross domestic product of all countries combined. By coincidence the latter amount, roughly $30 trillion, also happens to be the estimated rate of the ecosystem services given free by Earth's remaining natural environment. A parallel study, made in 2004 by a second team, estimated the cost of protecting marine areas, the threatened Second Edens of our planet. .. To regulate a reserve network covering 20-30 percent of the ocean surface would cost between $5 billion and $19 billion annually. That outlay could be met by eliminating the current perverse subsidies given to the fishing industry, which fall between $15 and #30 billion annually - and are responsible in the first place for the over-harvesting and falling yield of preferred species." Sorry for the long quote!
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  • Date: Apr 24 2008
  • Posted by RFCapalino

• Wilson

  I believe Wilson discussed this plan in his book: The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth If you google E. O. Wilson and $30 billion you'll find many references. He writes briefly about it in this editorial originally from The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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  • Date: Apr 23 2008
  • Posted by acc