Offsetting Green Guilt. After purchasing airline tickets through Travelocity a few months ago, I received this offer from Arlington, Va.
-based Conservation Fund: “Effectively offset the negative environmental impact of your entire trip. Offsetting Green Guilt. After purchasing airline tickets through Travelocity a few months ago, I received this offer from Arlington, Va.
-based Conservation Fund: “Effectively offset the negative environmental impact of your entire trip. Go without guilt—Go Zero!” For an additional $3.42, I learned, I could neutralize the carbon dioxide (CO2) my one-day trip would emit by planting trees that would absorb the CO2 out of the atmosphere. The organization also noted that my offset purchase would not only fight climate change, but also restore wildlife habitat, improve air and water quality, enhance outdoor recreation areas, and leave a lasting legacy for future generations. Such appeals to eco-guilt are increasingly common, and indeed crop up at many rites of passage. Toxic waste sites and environmental justice: Research roundup - The Fifth Column. Why are the crucial questions about Hurricane Harvey not being asked? Enviros Are Ignoring the Elephant In the Room: U.S. Military Is the World’s Largest Polluter. The Military Pumps Out Staggering Quantities of Toxic Waste, Water and Air Pollution and Radiation.
Report: Expected Paris commitments insufficient to stabilize climate by century’s end. This December’s international climate negotiations in Paris are expected to yield reductions in manmade greenhouse gas emissions, but unless deeper cuts follow, the global temperature is likely to rise 3.1-5.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100, according to a report released this week by the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.
The projected temperature increase far exceeds the 2 C threshold identified by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as necessary to avoid the most serious impacts of climate change, from rising sea levels to more severe precipitation patterns to increased wildfires. New pledges from countries responsible for the largest global share of greenhouse gas emissions, announced in advance of the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, promise to make barely a dent in the Earth’s warming trend, says MIT Joint Program co-director John Reilly, a coauthor of the report, "2015 Energy and Climate Outlook.
" Global context - Green Climate Fund. The GCF mission is to expand collective human action to respond to climate change.
The Fund aims to mobilize funding at scale to invest in low-emission and climate-resilient development on our home planet. Created by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Fund aims to support a paradigm shift in the global response to climate change. It allocates its resources to low-emission and climate-resilient projects and programmes in developing countries. The Fund pays particular attention to the needs of societies that are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, in particular Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Small Island Developing States (SIDS), and African States. How a 94-Year-Old Genius May Save the Planet. Photo Credit: Sunny studio / Shutterstock.com A man old enough to be Mark Zuckerberg’s great-grandfather just unveiled energy storage technology that might save the planet.
Renewable energy draws increasing Republican support. That could shift climate politics. Swedish scientists use wood to create biodegradable, renewable alternative to Styrofoam. Maybe soon we can say goodbye to polystyrene, the petroleum-based material that is used to make Styrofoam.
In what looks like an ordinary bicycle helmet, Swedish designers have replaced Styrofoam with a new shock-absorbing material made with renewable and biodegradable wood-based material. In the USA, Over 200 Million People Will Suffer Serious 'Psychological Distress' From Climate Change. “The incidences of mental and social disorders will rise steeply.
These will include depressive and anxiety disorders, post traumatic stress disorders, substance abuse, suicides, and widespread outbreaks of violence. Children, the poor, the elderly, and those with existing mental health disorders are especially vulnerable and will be hardest hit.” Americans have no idea where their oil comes from, in one chart. You can hardly blame Americans for believing that the vast majority of our oil imports come from the Middle East.
Ever since the 1973 oil crisis, when Middle Eastern countries refused to sell oil to the United States as punishment for backing Israel in that year's Arab-Israeli war, the American political conversation has dominated by calls for "weening ourselves off of MidEast oil. " What most Americans don't know is that we've mostly succeeded. The University of Texas, as part of its annual energy poll, asked Americans where they think US oil comes from. A staggering 58 percent of Americans think that our top source of foreign oil is Saudi Arabia and another 15 percent say it's Iraq — nearly three quarters of Americans. Meanwhile, only a tiny share — 15 percent of Americans — think we get most of our oil imports from Canada or Mexico.
University of Texas at Austin energy poll It turns out that America's biggest source of oil, by far, is Canada. This matters. Causes and Effects of Ocean Pollution. Oceans are the largest water bodies on the planet Earth.
Over the last few decades, surplus human activities have severely affected the marine life on the Earth’s oceans. Ocean pollution, also known as marine pollution, is the spreading of harmful substances such as oil, plastic, industrial and agricultural waste and chemical particles into the ocean. Since oceans provide home to wide variety of marine animals and plants, it is responsibility of every citizen to play his or her part in making these oceans clean so that marine species can thrive for long period of time.