Now, you may think that ‘harsh truths’ doesn’t sound a lot like good news. But I beg to differ. I recently joined the Greenpeace e-mailing list, and by doing so I have been updated with some ‘harsh truths’ about our planet, but whats more this information is educating me on how to diminish my effect on the destruction of our planet and contribute to larger scale change. Which I feel is pretty good indeed.
My most recent e-mail was so very eye opening I felt the desire to share what detailed info I came across regarding Canada’s forests.
*Canada’s Boreal Forest is the largest ancient forest in North America and comprises 90% of the Countries remaining intact forest areas, providing habitat for endangered species like the woodland caribou, lynx, grizzly bear and wolverine. It also provides the largest storehouse of terrestrial carbon on the planet!
*The forest is home to nearly a million aboriginal peoples-many of these First Nations and Metis are currently in conflict with logging companies and governments over forestry in their traditional territories.
*Ancient forests are being detroyed at a rate of one football field every 2 seconds, and more than half of all forest destruction has taken place over the past 35 years.
*Consumers like us can make a difference by purchasing recycled paper products or FSC-certified products, refusing to buy from companies that use or sell products made from the destruction of the Boreal Rainforest and by taking action toward greener initiatives.
*In British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest many of these campaigns to stop deforestation, and the support of consumers and companies changing their ways, has led to the protection of great areas of the old growth forests totalling over 2 million hectares!!!!
Good Fact
Cable to Research the Depths
While I’m in Vancouver, British Columbia, I want to find more good news coming from the west side of North America (I live in Toronto). To get the ball rolling, here’s a news report on how they are wiring the oceans to learn more about the depths of the seas. Some scientists are going to drop a huge cable to monitor ocean life via the internet.
“They are so important to our understanding of our planet and the understanding of the consequences of changes in our planet for our everyday lives.”
Taylor Neptune stands for North-East Pacific Time-series Undersea Networked Experiments. Eventually the B.C. cable loop, which can support up to 700 sensors, will be joined by, and to, another loop in U.S waters, for a total of 3,000 kilometres of cabling covering most of the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, the smallest of the major plates that make up the surface of the planet.
Games as Outbreak Simulations
Two years ago a disease ravaged the country sides of the World of Warcraft, an online virtual world in which players have to interact with one another to solve problems. The virtual disease effectively ‘killed’ the players and now researchers are thinking that they can examine these virtual outbreaks and compare them to real-world scenarios because in both cases the outbreak is treated as real by the humans involved.
Researcher Professor Nina Fefferman, from Tufts University School of Medicine, said: “Human behaviour has a big impact on disease spread. And virtual worlds offer an excellent platform for studying human behaviour.
“The players seemed to really feel they were at risk and took the threat of infection seriously, even though it was only a game.”
She acknowledged that a virtual setting might encourage riskier behaviour, but said this could be estimated and allowed for when drawing conclusions.
Green Companies Will Prosper
There’s an alright post over at CopyBrighter from a little ways back that looks at the growing demand for green companies and how we need to cater to that demand and look towards the future. Essentially green companies will prosper because it’ll be the only option in due time, so why not be green now and profit from it?
It’s not that green companies should run as a hedge fund to profit from crisis… but rather, they should not underestimate the potential demand for what they are developing now. We must be prepared to leverage the imminent explosion of mass desire and honorably fulfill it.
Plane Explodes, Everyone OK
A plane exploded in Japan and it sounds like it was from an action movie or a comic book because nobody died. The speed of the evacuation was phenomenal!
All 157 passengers – including two small children- fled the Boeing 737-800 unhurt on inflated emergency slides just minutes before the plane burst into a fireball, Transport Ministry official Akihiko Tamura told reporters.
I’m flying to Vancouver tomorrow, hopefully my plane won’t explode. It’s good to know that planes can be evacuated fast. Also, I think this is the only time an explosion as been used as an image on Things Are Good.