http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/03/18/tech-bluefin-tuna-ban.html

A U.S.-backed proposal to ban the export of Atlantic bluefin tuna prized in sushi was rejected Thursday by a UN wildlife meeting, with scores of developing nations joining Japan in opposing a measure they feared would devastate fishing economies.

A chef slices high-grade fatty Atlantic bluefin tuna at a sushi restaurant in Tokyo. (Itsuo Inouye/Associated Press) It was a stunning setback for conservationists who had hoped the 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, would give the iconic fish a lifeline. They joined the proposal’s sponsor Monaco in arguing that extreme measures were necessary because the stocks have fallen by 75 per cent due to widespread overfishing.

Japan is increasingly hampering environmental efforts around the world in connection to the oceans because of it’s overwhelming greed and short-sightedness with its fishing industries.  Perhaps due to their bloated deficit and economy that is on near collapse they are desperately trying to bail out the water in their sinking ship but in the process they are taking the rest of us down with them.  Their fishing industry isn’t going to save their economy, nothing next to a complete reset will save their dying economy and yet here they are grabbing at straws, flailing in the water like a drowning man, taking down any unfortunately passerby they can grab with them.

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http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/epa-gallery/

Wired has a piece running right documenting the documentation of pollution in the 70′s when Nixon started the EPA.  Some great photos are up, I’ll post a few here but check out the link above for the rest of them as well as going here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/collections/72157620729903309/

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Sure we’ve seen 100 such claims before, we’ve been promised cheap, clean energy 100 times before but there is something about this company that makes me say hmmm.

For instance, they’ve raised around $400 million in venture capital from the same firm that helped fund google.  Google only got $25 million for it’s startup.

They’ve been ultra-secretive for the past 10 years, doing absolutely everything in their power to prevent any word from leaking about what they were doing or how they were doing it.  If someone’s here to sell snake-oil, they are announcing it to the world as being the real McCoy the instant they can, not waiting 3 days before the company officially launches.

They have some massive clients on board already, from Ebay to Google spending millions of dollars on this technology, who have been using the Bloom Boxes for up to a year and a half.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

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http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2010/02/24/gm-hummer.html

Ah this made me smile today when I saw this disgusting symbol of waste and destruction would soon be no more.  The funniest part was the # of hummers sold in 2006 vs 2009.

This should help to define some of the strength of not only the environmental movement but the positive effects of high gasoline prices.

In 2006 71,524 Hummers were sold

In 2009 a whooping 325 Hummers were sold – 325!!!

That’s an absolutely monumental drop in demand for something that so recently was a must have status symbol.

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http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/02/save-winter-stop-oil-sands.php

A great opinion piece on Tree Hugger today making a plea for winter.  As a fellow Canadian in love with Winter I couldn’t agree more with this.  The axe needs to be brought down on the Oil sands which represent one of the greatest dangers that this planet is facing right now.  A danger which the greedy Canadian government is blatantly ignoring in exchange for more and more cash.  A government which I have long become embarrassed to be associated with by citizenship, a government which has caused my citizenship to become an embarassment for me because of their environmental policies.

Every day it seems as if we see another energy company trying to convince us of new ways to keep us tied to oil and coal. Yet these fuels always turn out to be dirtier and more expensive, especially when their environmental costs are considered.

Liquid coal is one of these same old fossil fuels the industry touts as the next best thing for American energy, but the latest culprit in this pattern of dirty fuels purported to be the U.S. energy savior is “oil sands,” a thick, black dirt derived from the soil under the great forests of Canada.

Use of these polluting oil sands is particularly ironic right now, as we approach what may be a near snowless Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Many have found it strange to read the reports of snow being shipped into Vancouver from hundreds of miles away; sadly, due to the effects of global warming, future winter Olympic Games may never be the same. We’re unveiling a new website today that helps bring this message home: www.LoveWinter.org

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Forests that spread across 100 million hectares (247 million acres) in 1900 have dwindled to 33.19 million hectares (82 million acres), officials said.

“In 100 years, we have lost between 60 and 70 percent of our forest heritage,” Environmental Undersecretary Sergio La Rocca told reporters on Friday.

Forest destruction has accelerated in the past 10 years with the boom of soy crops, a major motor of growth in Argentina, the top exporter of soy flour and oil and the third-largest exporter of soy seeds.

The northern province of Salta alone lost 26 percent of its forests in the past 30 years, according to a study by the College of Agronomics at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA).

The UBA study found that in 2007, “the highest rate was reached: 2.1 percent of forests destroyed in a single year.”

Faced with the breadth of the devastation in the province, the Supreme Court ordered a halt to deforestation in natural forests, following an appeal by indigenous populations.

The move ran counter to the provincial authorities, which had authorized forest exploitation.

La Rocca spoke at the ninth session of the conference of parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCDD) in Buenos Aires.

The scourge of desertification directly affects 200 million people, according to UN figures.

Buenos Aires will host the 23rd World Forestry Congress October 18-23, a forum where governments, civil society and the private sector exchange views to formulate forestry policy.

(c) 2009 AFP

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6836112.ece

Just to cement the hypocrisy of the World Bank a little more reports coming out today show that, despite their own warnings on the devastating effects of Coal Plants, they are pumping billions into building these dirty behemoths in countries where their effects will be felt the greatest.

The bank’s World Development Report says: “Developing countries are disproportionately affected by climate change — a crisis that is not of their making and for which they are the least prepared. Increasing access to energy and other services using high-carbon technologies will produce more greenhouse gases, hence more climate change.”

Last year the bank and its partner, the Asian Development Bank, approved $850million in loans to finance a coal-fired plant in Gujarat, western India.The Environmental Defence Fund, a US lobby group, said that the plant, the first of nine planned in India, would be one of the biggest new sources of greenhouse gases on Earth, emitting 26.7million tonnes of CO2 a year for the next 50 years.

The bank is also contributing $5billion towards South Africa’s power generation expansion plan, which includes six coal plants

Tim Jones, policy officer of the World Development Movement, which campaigns to reduce poverty, said: “The World Bank is acting in the interests of Western countries and companies and not in the long-term interests of the world’s poor.

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Check out more of the original article here: http://www.earthzine.org/2009/05/07/forest-watch-science-and-education-strive-to-halt-climate-change/

Eastern White Pine – Pinus strobus L. USDA photo

The state of New Hampshire, one of the most densely forested in the United States, takes its Eastern white pines very seriously. In Colonial times, the tree’s enormous height (one ancient tree was recorded to be 220 feet tall), straight trunk and flexibility made it the preferred source of masts for the British Royal Navy and the subject of one of the Colonies’ first laws, the Mast Preservation Clause of 1691. That was the cause of the nation’s first revolt against Great Britain in 1772 in Goffstown and Weare, N.H.

In the early years of the nation, millions of acres of Eastern white pine – Pinus strobus L. – stretched across southern Canada, the northeastern U.S., and as far west as northeastern Iowa, and as far south as northern Georgia. But by the 1800s most of the New World’s vast virgin forests had been logged out. Yet the Eastern white pine is a fast-growing conifer, upright with long five-needled polystelic shoots and it still abounds, second only to the sugar maple in numbers.

The neighboring state of Maine holds the title of “The Pine Tree State” and boasts the tallest Eastern white pine now standing at 132 feet (National Register of Big Trees), but New Hampshire’s harvest of Eastern white pine and hardwoods is still the state’s largest industry at $134 million for the wood alone. Emblematic of the dominance of trees in New Hampshire’s culture and economy are the University of New Hampshire’s academic and cooperative extension forestry programs for landowners, conservationists, students, researchers, policy planners and the lumber industry.

Yet industrial and automobile pollution concentrated around the state’s cities had taken their toll on the Eastern white pine. Residents didn’t need a forestry degree to see that the trees looked unhealthy—stunted with rust-colored needles. Congress passed the Clean Air Act Amendment of 1990 to reduce the volume and size of air particulates and their damage to human health (death included) and vegetation. Subsequent amendments went even further. But when the smog cleared, there still was no systematic, scientific evidence to measure how much the Clean Air Act was helping the trees.

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Ontario recently anncounced that it would be giving a massive boost to it’s feed in energy tariff’s.  These are the rates that the government pays individuals and companies who produce green energy and feed it into the grid, rates which are 2-4+ times higher than the going rate for energy.  Hopefully this will lead to a big growth in green energy initiatives.  Tree hugger has all of the details:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/03/ontario-proposes-massive-renewable-energy-boost-new-feed-in-tariff.php

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Ontario recently anncounced that it would be giving a massive boost to it’s feed in energy tariff’s.  These are the rates that the government pays individuals and companies who produce green energy and feed it into the grid, rates which are 2-4+ times higher than the going rate for energy.  Hopefully this will lead to a big growth in green energy initiatives.  Tree hugger has all of the details:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/03/ontario-proposes-massive-renewable-energy-boost-new-feed-in-tariff.php

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