Environment

In Ireland, Carbon Tax Means Less Waste and More Revenue

- Adam Clare

Modern economies indirectly subsidize environmentally damaging corporate practices by ignoring the environmental costs ( younger generations have to deal with the environmental damage), this can be seen in everything from the tar sands in Alberta to ewaste in electronics. In Ireland they have started a carbon tax to deal with this environmental problem while raising a lot more revenue for the country.

The results in Ireland prove promising and may encourage other countries in Europe to take the European Commission’s suggestions that a carbon tax can help other debt-ridden economies.

Household trash is weighed at the curb, and residents are billed for anything that is not being recycled.The Irish now pay purchase taxes on new cars and yearly registration fees that rise steeply in proportion to the vehicle’s emissions. Environmentally and economically, the new taxes have delivered results. Long one of Europe’s highest per-capita producers of greenhouse gases, with levels nearing those of the United States, Ireland has seen its emissions drop more than 15 per cent since 2008.
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The three-year-old carbon tax has raised nearly 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) overall, including 400 million euros in 2012. That provided the Irish government with 25 per cent of the 1.6 billion euros in new tax revenue it needed to narrow its budget gap this year and avert a rise in income tax rates.

Read more here.

Thanks to Mike!

Nature in One Cubic Foot

- Adam Clare

A portrait photographer has been travelling the world with a one cubic foot frame and cataloguing what’s in the area the cube covers. He has captured the value of biodiversity and along with science, notes that a bio-diverse farm is more productive and healthier than one that is focused on monocultural approach to crops.

There were 30 different plants in that one square foot of grass, and roughly 70 different insects. And the coolest part, said a researcher to the Guardian in Britain, “If we picked the cube up and walked 10 feet, we could get as much as 50 percent difference in plant species we encountered. If we moved it uphill, we might find none of the species.” Populations changed drastically only a few feet away — and that’s not counting the fungi, microbes, and the itsy-bitsies that Liittschwager and his team couldn’t see.
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We need to feed our planet, of course. But we also need the teeny creatures that drive all life on earth. There’s something strange about a farm that intentionally creates a biological desert to produce food for one species: us. It’s efficient, yes. But it’s so efficient that the ants are missing, the bees are missing, and even the birds stay away. Something’s not right here. Our cornfields are too quiet.

Read more at NPR.

Washington State Creates Panel to Address Ocean Acidification

- Adam Clare

Ocean acidification is a symptom of climate change and the rate of ocean acidification has increased alongside the general disrespect of the environment modern society has, fortunately there are smart people looking into this issue. In Washington State the effects of ocean acidification are already evident so they have created a panel of scientists and policy experts to tackle the complexity of ocean acidification.

This is the first such panel in the world and let’s hope that it inspires more regions to begin looking into the depths of the seas.

Ocean acidification also has implications for the broader marine environment. Many calci- fiers provide habitat, shelter, and/or food for various plants and animals. For example, rockfish and sharks rely on habitat created by deepwater corals off the Washington coast. Pteropods, the delicate free-swimming snails eaten by seabirds, whales, and fish (especially Alaska pink salmon), can experience shell dissolution and grow more slowly in acidified waters (Figure S-1). Some species of copepods, the small crustaceans eaten by juvenile herring and salmon, experience similar problems with growth. Impacts on species like pteropods and copepods are a significant concern because of their ability to affect entire marine food webs.

Find out more at the panel’s website.
Via Reddit.

Australia Starts Two-Year Super Trawler Ban

- Adam Clare

Commercial fishing is one of the most damaging things one can do to gather a food source. Trawlers are so inefficient they perform the equivalent task of cutting down an entire forest to get a couple cows. With this hugely negative impact that trawling can have on undersea life in mind Australia has decided to ban, for at least two years, trawling by large boats in some protected waters.

Conservationists have welcomed the Government’s decision, saying the trawler would have “plundered” domestic fish stocks.

“The Government is right to take a precautionary approach, because monster boats like the Abel Tasman have no place in our waters,” Greenpeace spokesman Ben Pearson said in a statement.

The Greens also welcomed the announcement, but Tasmanian senator Peter Whish-Wilson says he is concerned other fisheries may be open to the Abel Tasman.

“There are other fisheries, both in the state water such as the sardine fisheries that it could fish, and potentially in mackerel,” he said.

Read more at ABC.

Better Block is Bettering Cities

- Dan Harrison

The Better Block initiative was started in Dallas, Texas as a rapid urban revitalization project of an underused, nearly abandoned block of  old buildings along an old streetcar line.  They project takes the “pop-up” business model to completely revitalise old city blocks with storefronts, community events, and cafés, and sustainable transportation (like bikes and streetcars)!   By combating out-of-date laws, re-purposing unused space, and connecting with engaged citizens, the Better Block has spread to multiple cities in the USA.

Watch an energized, exciting, and inspiring talk by Jason Roberts (who started The Better Block) from TEDxOU (Oklahoma University):

Thanks to urbanvelo and Upworthy for posting the original story!

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