Environment

Save the Planet: Plant More Trees

- Adam Clare

Simple stuff really: forests are good for the environment and we ought to have more of them.

The researchers’ calculations suggest that carbon storage in Midwestern forests could offset the greenhouse gas emissions of almost two-thirds of nearby populations, and that proper management of forests could sustain or increase their storage capacity for future generations.

Based on measurements taken between 1999 and 2005 at a forest study site in northern Michigan, the scientists have determined that similar upper Midwest forests covering an estimated 40,000 square miles store an average of 1,300 pounds of carbon per acre per year.

Factoring in effects of climate, history and tree type, the researchers developed an equation suggesting that a heavily forested region in northern Michigan could store more than 350,000 tons of carbon per year. With the area population emitting about 573,000 tons of carbon annually, the forests would sequester approximately 62 percent of the region’s human-caused carbon emissions – the equivalent of yearly emissions from about 225,000 cars.

The Ecology of Work

- Adam Clare

Environmentalism is something that cannot be compartmentalized, at least that’s how I’ve always seen it. For example, I don’t see how someone working for an oil company can even hint at the idea that they are environmentalist, considering that their living comes from a very destructive industry. I’m glad that Curtis White agrees with me in his essay The Ecology of Work– and he says what I’ve been thinking in a much more logical way.

Here’s a choice section of the essay:

Aldous Huxley provided a very different and a very human account of work in The Perennial Philosophy. He called it “right livelihood” (a concept he borrowed from Buddhism). For Huxley, work should serve other people, provide learning experiences that deepen the worker, and do as little harm as possible. (You will note that there is nothing in this description about a competitive compensation and benefits package.) But what percentage of American jobs conforms to this description? Five percent? Even in the new “creative” information economy where the claim could be made that computer designers and software technicians are constantly learning, is it a learning that deepens? That serves others broadly? And what of the mindless, deadening work of data processors and telemarketers—our modern, miserable Bartlebys and Cratchits—locked in their cubicles from San Jose to Bangalore? Our culture’s assumption that there is virtue in work flatters us into thinking that we’re doing something noble (“supporting our families,” “putting food on the table,” “making sacrifices”) when we are really only allowing ourselves to be treated like automatons. We all have our place, our “job,” and it is an ever less human place. We are diligent, disciplined, and responsible, but because of these virtues we are also thoughtless.

Buy the Planet to Save it

- Adam Clare

Millionaires are buying large tracts of land to protect the environment as oppose to destroying it.

Parque Tantauco, which Piñera created in 2005, is on one of South America’s largest islands, Chiloé, off the coast of Patagonia.

Piñera bought the land and immediately set about protecting the offshore habitat of blue whales and the inland virgin forests.

Pulling out a map of the park, Piñera explains his plan, tracing his finger over a trekking route that will be connected by rustic cabins.

‘We have been buying all the land around us. We started with 110,000 acres and now we have 150,000,’ he says. ‘I want my children and grandchildren to remember me for making one more million? No! So I now have many projects like this.’

Community Welsh Farm Still Going Strong

- Adam Clare

Five years ago a community wanted to stop developers from building on a farm, so they literally bought the farm. The Guardian takes a look at this successful non-profit farm run by the local community.

This is no ordinary Welsh mountain farm – and yet, until five years ago, that is exactly what it was. In 2003, intensively grazed and in the aftermath of the foot and mouth outbreak, its 320 acres were unable to support the farming tenant. But when the estate owner decided the farm should be sold – possibly for holiday accommodation – the local community had different ideas. Residents from Tregarth, Rhiwlas and Mynydd Llandegai, the three villages that surround Moelyci, in the shadow of Snowdon, dug deep and bought it.

Around 200 people invested in the farm, forming a not-for-profit industrial and provident society (IPS), with the help of loans from Triodos Bank and ICOF, a community development finance institution that invests in areas of deprivation. It was the first venture of its kind in Wales and one of just a handful in the UK.

Five years on, Moelyci IPS supports around 16 jobs and has 500 community shareholders. The original loans have been replaced by a mortgage, and when that is paid off, in 18 years’ time, the farm and its mountain – much of which is now designated a site of special scientific interest and a special area of conservation – will really be theirs.

Dandelion Rubber for Tires

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Dandelions can be used to create a natural rubber that can be used in tires. This weed will be put to a good use!

“No matter how much chemistry we’ve applied, we still haven’t been able to find an artificial substitute for natural rubber,” said William Ravlin, a researcher involved in the project. “We’re still harvesting [rubber] the same way they did 1,000 years ago; by cutting into the tree and letting the sap drip into containers. It’s not a very efficient system.”

I keep noticing that a lot of these natural solutions to our current problems were actually being used years ago. Our civilization just gets wrapped up in its own “progress” and we forget what we knew. From the same article on dandelions:

The price for rubber, which has doubled in recent years, along with technological advances, makes alternative sources of natural rubber more attractive than past efforts, which reach all the way back to World War II, when the Soviets made TKS-based tires.

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