Nature Has Lost Its Meaning. The 'Crying Indian' ad that fooled the environmental movement - Chicago Tribune. Washington is 1st state to allow composting of human bodies. SEATTLE — Ashes to ashes, guts to dirt. Gov. Jay Inslee signed legislation Tuesday making Washington the first state to approve composting as an alternative to burying or cremating human remains. It allows licensed facilities to offer “natural organic reduction,” which turns a body, mixed with substances such as wood chips and straw, into about two wheelbarrows’ worth of soil in a span of several weeks. Loved ones are allowed to keep the soil to spread, just as they might spread the ashes of someone who has been cremated — or even use it to plant vegetables or a tree. “It gives meaning and use to what happens to our bodies after death,” said Nora Menkin, executive director of the Seattle-based People’s Memorial Association, which helps people plan for funerals.
“That’s a serious weight on the earth and the environment as your final farewell,” said Sen. In 2017, Spade founded Recompose, a company working to bring the concept to the public. The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain. How to improve education: move the classroom outdoors. When nature is used as a classroom, it has a positive effect on learning among children in at least eight different ways, according to a new survey of the research. Scientists suggest exposing students to natural environments goes beyond making them appreciate life on the planet — it improves a child's ability to learn and can even improve grades, especially in disadvantaged children. The American survey collected peer-reviewed studies that examined the learning outcomes of students who had been taken out of the classroom to not only go on wilderness backpacking hikes, or visit a wetland or a nature centre, but who also held traditional classes in outdoor settings.
Among the outcomes, the experiences boosted academic learning, improved personal development and heightened a sense of environmental stewardship. The many benefits to taking the class outdoors Children on a field trip exploring nature and searching for wildlife in a dipping pond. Of course, not all schools have a forest nearby. Why you may not need to worry about Ontario farmed fish after all. Are farmed fish good or bad for the environment? The answer, according to research published last week, is: it’s complicated. A decade-long study into the effect of farming rainbow trout in the Experimental Lakes Area, located between Kenora and Dryden, in Ontario’s northwest, was published in the journal Freshwater Biology last week, and the results are surprising. When scientists added a fish farm to an otherwise untouched small lake at the ELA, the populations of some wild fish boomed relative to those in a control lake where no farmed fish were added.
Some evidence — gleaned primarily through poorly sited farms from the industry’s early days and from other jurisdictions — has suggested that aquaculture can cause serious ecological problems, but those failed to appear. “We really overloaded the lake, and we did not cause the sort of things that people are scared about.” says Cheryl Podemski, a scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada and one of the lead researchers on the study. How Removing Asphalt Is Softening Our Cities by Lynn Freehill-Maye. Cows are getting a bad rap: Giving up meat won't save the planet. As the scale and impacts of climate change become increasingly alarming, meat is a popular target for action. Advocates urge the public to eat less meat to save the environment.
Some activists have called for taxing meat to reduce consumption of it. A key claim underlying these arguments holds that globally, meat production generates more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation sector. However, this claim is demonstrably wrong, as I will show. My research focuses on ways in which animal agriculture affects air quality and climate change. Setting the record straight on meat and greenhouse gases A healthy portion of meat’s bad rap centers on the assertion that livestock is the largest source of greenhouse gases worldwide.
According to the U.S. Why the misconception? This latter claim was wrong, and has since been corrected by Henning Steinfeld, the report’s senior author. For livestock, they considered every factor associated with producing meat. The value of animal agriculture. Capitalism Will Solve the Climate Problem. Capitalism Will Solve the Climate Problem Skeptics try to deny the evidence of global warming, but businesses already are betting on clean energy. Together, science and capitalism built the modern world. But across the political spectrum, both are under attack. If we are to solve our greatest challenges, including climate change, we have to deploy the power of these twin engines of civilization. The best available research confirms the existence of human-driven climate change, including the rapid pace of global warming. Most climate models predicted warming above the mid-20th-century average of about 1 degree Celsius by 2016.
These results aren’t surprising, given that they are based on many independent data sets. It’s a sign of the reliability of this research that the insurance industry, with trillions in liability at stake, uses it to determine financial models. Unfortunately, skeptics have fostered doubt about climate change by misrepresenting the research. —Mr. Scientists have assembled research exposing industry denial of disappearing caribou. Pair of ‘mouse control technicians’ to lose their jobs when Ontario closes tree seed plant. Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals | Martin Lukacs | Environment.
Would you advise someone to flap towels in a burning house? To bring a flyswatter to a gunfight? Yet the counsel we hear on climate change could scarcely be more out of sync with the nature of the crisis. The email in my inbox last week offered thirty suggestions to green my office space: use reusable pens, redecorate with light colours, stop using the elevator. Back at home, done huffing stairs, I could get on with other options: change my lightbulbs, buy local veggies, purchase eco-appliances, put a solar panel on my roof. And a study released on Thursday claimed it had figured out the single best way to fight climate change: I could swear off ever having a child. These pervasive exhortations to individual action — in corporate ads, school textbooks, and the campaigns of mainstream environmental groups, especially in the west — seem as natural as the air we breathe.
But we could hardly be worse-served. Neoliberalism has taken this internalized self-blame and turbocharged it. Adapting to realities: From conservation science to sleeping outdoors. Evening sky at Old Man on His Back Ranch, SK (Photo by Branimir Gjetvaj) I was about a half hour out of Saskatoon when I realized I had forgotten to pack my tent. It was the middle of September and I was planning on camping at the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s (NCC’s) Old Man on His Back Prairie and Heritage Conservation Area (OMB) in southwest Saskatchewan. It was the night before NCC’s Cypress Uplands Natural Area Conservation Plan (NACP) workshop — an important part of our conservation process that helps us decide what steps to take in the coming years. We’ve done a few of these planning workshops where we develop a conservation plan, referred to as a Natural Areas Conservation Plan (NACP), for the different areas of Saskatchewan in which we work.
Besides being fun and great learning experiences, NACPs become lessons in adaptation; they are how we identify, plan and execute the protection of the best of Canada’s natural spaces and manage and restore them for the long term. Scythe Vs Strimmer. LEAR (agricultural lands) Review – Greenspace Alliance of Canada's Capital / Alliance pour les espaces verts de la capitale du Canada. May 12, 2015 Below and attached are some questions sent to Council in advance of its meeting of May 13, 2015.
Links to a number of background documents are below the letter. Erwin Dear Members of Council, Re: LEAR Review Update Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee (ARAC) on May 7, 2015, approved without change the recommendations by staff regarding the terms of reference for a revived Advisory Committee for the Land Evaluation and Area Review (LEAR). On process, once again the audio record of this meeting is not available. Previous Council’s abolition, in April 2011, of synopsis minutes of committee meetings continues to hurt the democratic process.
On substance, without the benefit of the discussion but informed by information received from staff, I have the following questions: What is the purpose of this LEAR update? “… Agriculture areas now in the Official Plan were identified through a LEAR developed in 1997. On a page on the City’s web site, the study objectives are similarly vague: Urban Turkeys Are Wreaking Havoc in Boston - Atlas Obscura. Springtime in Boston means swan boats in the Public Gardens, bars blasting WEEI all night, and wild turkeys getting up in your face. Over the past couple of months, the birds have been making themselves known throughout the city, strutting down sidewalks, rushing at pets and people, and generally being hooligans. It’s gotten so bad, the Boston Globe reports, that the Massachusetts Department of Fisheries and Wildlife has sent out an explanation to residents, along with some safety tips. “March through May is breeding season for wild turkeys, which means some turkeys may be seen acting aggressively,” the missive begins.
In past years, Massachusetts turkeys have formed a gang in Foxborough, made life hell for a Cape Cod mailman, and forcibly attempted to attend Harvard University, among other locally relevant crimes. Lovestruck turkeys may also “completely ignore the presence of people.” Other times, they just act plain weird. They also like to charge at shiny things. 40+ March for Science Sign Ideas That Are Clever AF. Listen, a good planet is hard to find. Especially one with an ocean as spectacular as ours. On April 22, we celebrate planet Earth with its own special day — Earth Day — and we march!
Need some motivation to start brainstorming your March for Science sign ideas? According to NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, scientists are 95 percent certain that 2016 was the third year in a row to set a new record for global average surface temperatures. This means that our oceans are getting warmer, so it’s extremely important to learn as much as we can about them and the processes that create our global climate. Water You Waiting For? Sign up for Azula’s newsletter to bring the latest ocean news and crazy-cute animal videos straight to your inbox.
If you’re planning to join the march, now’s the time to start thinking about how cool you want to look with your sign. 1. 2. 3. 4. … or just grab a Sharpie and a piece of cardboard from your recycling bin. 5-10. 16-17. 19. 22. 25. 21 Jokes About Bees That Are Weirdly Really Funny. Big changes ahead for Canada’s environmental laws - Environmental Defence. Canadians deserve better. And it’s entirely possible for the federal government to deliver better. That was a key conclusion of the Expert Panel that spent the last eight months reviewing Canada’s environmental laws, and particularly how projects such as mines, dams and pipelines get assessed.
Last week, the Expert Panel delivered its report to the Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, calling for a major shift in decision-making that will help protect Canadians and the environment. It also included a number of important recommendations in line with the ones Environmental Defence put forward. You can read the full Expert Panel report here. Here’s a breakdown of the Expert Panel’s key recommendations: Importantly, the Expert Panel also recommends that IA “establish thresholds and targets for GHG emissions for a particular sector, industry or region and would ensure any new development aligns with Canada’s commitments.” The Expert Panel report isn’t perfect. The US Army Wants To Design Biodegradable Plant-Growing Bullets. As you well know, bullets are designed to kill people. So far, so bad, but the metallic compounds in them also tend to leach into the environment and kill off plants and wildlife too. At training facilities the world over, the US Army uses live ammunition to gear up their soldiers for combat.
These bullets just remain in the wild, and do their damage. Deciding that enough is enough, officials are now asking for proposals to design biodegradable bullets that shall harm the environment no more. Not only that, but they are hoping that the bullets will contain seeds, specialized for each local environment, so that they will ultimately “grow environmentally beneficial plants that eliminate ammunition debris and contaminants.” That’s right – not only will new plants sprout from these seed bullets, but they will help suck out dangerous chemicals from their surrounding environment. Now they just need to be made into bullets that can be fired from a real weapon.
[H/T: Seeker] First Bumblebee Declared Endangered in U.S. For the first time in the United States, a species of bumblebee is endangered. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Tuesday on its website that the rusty patched bumblebee (Bombus affinis), once a common sight, is “now balancing precariously on the brink of extinction.” Over the past two decades, the bumblebee’s population has declined 87 percent, according to the announcement. The threats facing those seven species are similar to the ones that have depleted rusty patched bumblebee populations: loss of habitat, diseases and parasites, pesticides, and climate change.
This is a big deal not only for bees, but for humans too—after all, bees pollinate a lot of our food. “Bumblebees are among the most important pollinators of crops such as blueberries, cranberries, and clover and almost the only insect pollinators of tomatoes,” according to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s rusty patched bumblebee profile. 15 Surprising Environmental Trends to Watch in 2017. From Ensia (find the original story here); reprinted with permission. December 19, 2016 — What should we be thinking about when we think about the future of biodiversity, conservation and the environment? An international team of experts in horizon scanning, science communication and conservation recently asked that question as participants in the eighth annual Horizon Scan of Emerging Issues for Global Conservation and Biological Diversity. The answers they came up, just published in the scientific journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution and summarized below, portend both risks and opportunities for species and ecosystems around the world.
“Our aim has been to focus attention and stimulate debate about these subjects, potentially leading to new research foci, policy developments, or business innovations,” the authors wrote in introducing their list of top trends to watch in 2017. “These responses should help facilitate better-informed forward-planning.” Altering Coral Bacteria Sand Trap. Another Quebec town turns to beet juice to battle icy roads - Montreal. The town of Cowansville, Que., is taking a slightly different approach when it comes to salting icy roads this season. In an effort to reduce its ecological footprint, the municipality in the Eastern Townships has added a little beet juice into the mix, which is meant to save money and protect the environment.
"The beet juice is sprayed directly on the salt," said Sylvain Perreault, infrastructure superintendent for the town. "A portion of the beet is given to the animals. The rest is used to deglaze roads. " By mixing beet juice with ordinary road salt, the municipality uses less salt overall and minimizes its environmental impact. The sticky mixture keeps salt on the roads, which reduces run-off. When sprayed before a storm, a thin layer of beet juice will keep the ice from bonding with the road surface. The beet juice is sprayed directly on the salt to reduce the environmental impact. Cowansville isn't the first municipality to use beet juice. 4 reasons to be excited about sustainability in 2017 | GreenBiz. Canadian environmental policy is a 'tyranny of small decisions' - Home | The 180 with Jim Brown. ‘Like it’s been nuked’: Millions of bees dead after South Carolina sprays for Zika mosquitoes.
These heartland conservation heroes defy stereotypes | Environmental Defense Fund. Weeds as Indicator Plants | What Can Your Weeds Tell You? | The Old Farmer's Almanac.
Water. Climate. This is what Earth will look like in 100 years. Haboob or sandstorm? Arabic weather term stirs controversy in Texas. Rachel Carson, the long green line and our environmental heroes – past and present | Environmental Defense Fund. A meta-analysis of urban and peri-urban agriculture and forestry in mediating climate change. It feels great, fits great and its environmentally friendly. by The Nomadix Team. Carleton Takes First Step toward a Fully Compostable Campus - Carleton Newsroom. The problem with (self-regulated) environmental assessments. St. Anthony Catholic School replaces asphalt with a cool, green garden. DeicingSalt.pdf.
15 awe-inspiring forests around the world. Pre-Polluted: A report on toxic substances in the umbilical cord blood of Canadian newborns. The GM genocide: Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide after using genetically modified crops. Bronx Green Infrastructure Project Will Prevent Almost 2 Million Gallons of Stormwater from Entering Sewers | Inhabitat New York City. One Building, One City: World's tallest prefab, Sky City, is breaking ground in June. DDT so safe you can eat it 1947. Finally, a Real Reason to Cry Over Spilled Milk.
Good Design. Biodiversity/life. Trash/pollution. 3R's. Green energy.