Plastics Break Down Quickly In The Ocean

Plastics Pose A Threat To Sea Life Right Now

First Published Date: August 23, 2009

It has long been held that plastic waste, when dumped in the sea, posed more of a risk to careless swimmers as a bludgeoning hazard than it did to aquatic life as a pollutant. The received wisdom was that plastics were hardy materials likely to release their contaminants over time. Now, according to new research from scientists presenting to the American Chemical Society (ACS), it seems that that is not the case. It may well be, in fact, that plastics break down with ease and speed in our oceans, and are posing a threat to sea life right now.

It is well known by anyone who has seen footage of “Beaches from Hell” that often waste thrown in the ocean will wash up on the beach. This may not be desirable, but the fact that it was at least visible brought some strange comfort, at least to those of us who could ignore that the beach itself was an ecosystem all of its own. However, it is fair to say that a more than significant amount of plastic waste thrown into the sea never finds its way to the shore. Some stays in the ocean and interferes with marine life directly – as anyone who has ever tried to free a fish or a seagull from a plastic bag can attest – and a lot of it, we can now say without fear of contradiction, breaks down while in the ocean, releasing toxins that do their own brand of harm to the marine population.

Famously, the expanse of water between Hawaii and California has become known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. What is less well-known is a little statistic which states that the area is twice the size of Texas. Think of how much marine life finds its home in that area, and consider then that the water is not just polluted by bottles, bags and other detritus, but by the component parts of that detritus. Although not as viscerally horrible as the Exxon Valdez oil spill, this is a major problem and will require attention. While we have always assumed plastic in the ocean to be undesirable, now we find the true extent of how much this is the case.

It emerges that plastic when thrown into the ocean reacts extremely badly as it is exposed to the rain and the sun while already weakened by the saltwater in the ocean. The contamination caused by this has an immediately obvious negative effect – poisoning marine life – but the secondary effects it can have by entering the food chain are no less concerning. At the moment we do not know what shape the effects could take, but previous studies in animals have demonstrated that Bisphenol A – a major constituent of many plastics – can disrupt animal hormone systems. Although it would be unwise and unhelpful to become too apocalyptic in our vision of the effects this could have, it bears attention and reminds us that vigilance is vitally important. The consequences of ignorance could yet be very damaging.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on Aug 23, 2009.

Is The Kyoto Protocol Dead?

The Kyoto Protocol: Twelve Years On

Published Date : Sep 22, 2009

With the majority of the world’s governments set to have representatives at the Climate Change Conference in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, at the end of this year, there is naturally a great deal of interest and desire that the parties present will be able to get a deal in place whereby the world works at bringing down the carbon emissions on a country-by-country basis. This is, after all, the mood that was taken into a similar meeting in Kyoto, Japan twelve years ago. At the end of that conference there was a deal on the table – but slowly it became clear that the deal was not on the terms that many of the signatories found desirable. The very reason that the parties concerned are due to meet in Copenhagen is the failure to set terms at Kyoto that were fitting for each country.

Famously the United States, although a signatory to the protocol laid down in the agreement made at Kyoto, has never ratified nor withdrawn from the agreement, but it has been clear since early this decade that they wished to renegotiate what was laid down in the Kyoto bill. Critics of the agreement felt that it singled out the United States as a country which had to do more than others, and that attempting to live up to the provisions laid down in the bill would seriously and negatively affect the viability of the US economy. Indeed, the most skeptical commentators felt that the entire bill was slanted in favour of persuading the US to bend over backwards to do more than anyone else, and was an anti-American document per se.

In the light of these feelings, it became impossible to see how the United States would ever ratify Kyoto’s protocol, especially when it elected the notorious climate change skeptic George W Bush to two terms in office as President. Many people’s hopes for a move at the Copenhagen conference lean on the fact that Barack Obama is seen as more amenable to Green politics, and although there is evidence to support this it remains to be seen whether first of all Mr Obama is prepared to sign up to terms which will suit the other signatories to the bill, and secondly whether he will be able to carry with him a Congress which has become more partisan than ever in recent times, with the President having endless difficulties steering through a healthcare bill that carries no elements which would give the majority of other countries much pause for thought.

It is largely accepted that the Kyoto protocol are to all intents and purposes dead in the water. While countries have independently gone about meeting their requirements as set out in the document, it was a document that depended upon the agreement of all signatories if it was to meet its own requirements. Any bill now agreed may well be the son of the requirements set out at Kyoto, but the fact remains that without some quite searching negotiation, Copenhagen may well not be the endgame in the battle against climate change

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on Sep 22, 2009.

European Greens Perform Above Expectations

Positive News For The Green Movement

First Published Date: June 26, 2009 ADawnJournal.com

The elections for the European Parliament at the beginning of June have presented some very positive news for the Green movement, against a backdrop of seeming apathy towards politics in general outside of economic protest votes. From a greatly reduced pie (736 parliamentary seats, down from 2004’s total of 785), the continent’s Green parties demonstrated a real rise in popularity, picking up an additional eleven seats, which took them from 43 in 2004 to a hugely impressive 54 seats. France and Germany were the epicentre of the improvement in the Green vote, each bestowing 14 seats on their respective Green parties, while most other countries voting for the parliament also delivered at least one seat.

This comes against the backdrop of what has been considered to be the “recession election”, which had threatened to become a procession of punishment for the governing parties in favour of some of the more cynical, populist parties. In the United Kingdom, where the unpopular Labour government has been the subject of scandal after scandal and is due to lose its place as the governing party at next year’s general election, the Greens increased their share of the vote by 2.5% – better than any of the established parties and considerably better than the highly publicized far-right British National Party. Due to the vagaries of the voting system, however, the Greens and the BNP ended up with two seats each, with much of the publicity going to the more headline-friendly far-right organization.

In France, however, the story was better yet, with the Greens taking third place behind the ruling centre-right coalition and the opposition Socialists. The interesting aspect to this story is that there has been a Europe-wide trend in the media pointing up issues such as immigration, national and cultural identity and issues that are euphemistically referred to as “family values”. The success and increase of the vote for the Green parties – even on a reduced turnout against the backdrop of voter apathy – does seem to point to a recognition among voters that the environment is important, and that Green politicians are well-placed to understand the challenges that we face as a world, and the issues that Europe as a continent is currently facing.

Among all the other matters that Green politics cover, there seems to be an increasing recognition that concern for the environment and for the economy are not mutually exclusive. Clean energy can be cheap energy, renewable energy can be affordable energy, and this can be a way of solving problems using joined-up thinking. Among the many initiatives supported by the pan-European Green parties are moves towards the improvement of public transport initiatives – reducing emissions and at the same time providing the public with a better choice – as well as issues of personal and individual freedoms. This Europe-wide endorsement of the Green message is one that can be taken as a positive sign that people are taking notice of the planet we share and will give to our children. Long may it continue.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on June 26, 2009.

Top Cities in The World

Mercer’s 2014 Top Highest Living Quality Cities in The World

First Published Date: March 9, 2014 ADawnJournal.com

International consulting company Mercer recently published its 2014 best cities in the world ranking and like any other rankings of this type, Canadian cities dominate the list. Let’s look at the world’s top best five cities for quality for life.

1. Vienna – Austria

2. Zurich – Switzerland

3. Auckland – New Zealand

4. Munich – Germany

5. Vancouver – Canada

Here are some highlights from the report:

– Vienna is the highest ranking and Baghdad is the lowest ranking city on earth.

– Vancouver is the top North American city.

– Singapore is the top Asian city.

– Dubai is the top Middle East and African city.

– Top five North American cities are Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, and San Francisco.

– Bottom five North American cities are Mexico City, Detroit, St. Louis, Houston, and Miami.

– Political instability, crime rates, air pollution are some of the factors determining rankings.

Mercer publishes its Quality of Living Raking to help multinational corporations evaluate and compare the standard of living between their own countries and host foreign countries. View the full report here: Quality of Living City Rankings

Lights Off for Earth Hour

Earth Hour 2009

Published Date: March 28, 2009

This Saturday (28th March) marks an effort to raise awareness of the need to take action on climate change. For a global problem, the initiative needs to be global, and so it is proving with Earth Hour – a worldwide initiative which recommends that every business and household switch off its lights and non-essential electrical appliances between the hours of 8:30 and 9:30 pm. By doing this, it is hoped that the amount of energy wasted will come down not only on Saturday night but, given the awareness raised by Earth Hour, people will take the decision to keep all non-essential appliances off when they are not in use. Earth Hour 2009 is the second annual worldwide celebration, but the movement has been in place since 2005.

Originally celebrated in Thailand in 2005, Earth Hour arose again in Australia in 2007, with lights going out across Sydney at 7:30pm. Last year was the first time that it officially became an international movement however, with thirty-five countries getting involved on a governmental level, and in all 400 cities taking part. Monuments such as the Empire State Building, Sydney Opera House, Bangkok’s Wat Arun Temple and the CN Tower all switched off non-essential lighting for the day. This year, the number of countries and cities participating has gone up by a huge amount, with 82 countries involved and more than 2100 cities. With the United Nations Climate Change Conference due to take place in December, organizers are hoping that the event has as great a level of success as possible.

Although it has had its critics, Earth Hour is viewed by and large as a major method of raising awareness. The amount of energy saved on the evening will, it is true, be dwarfed by the amount used during the rest of the day, and there are many who view the event of tokenism. The environmentalist response to this must be to point out that if one must consider it to be symbolism, it will at the very least be symbolic of differences we can all make in our own energy consumption, and in the use of energy in general. With so man y countries and cities already taking part in the campaign, the importance of as high a level of compliance as possible to demonstrate to national governments the public desire for action on climate change is essential.

100+ cities in Canada are signed up to the event – a sign of national feeling on the issue – and when you realize that the idea at the outset of this year for the organizers was to get 1000 in total worldwide, the fact that this has been more than doubled is something quite astonishing to behold. For the first time, there will be participation from Africa, with Kenya and South Africa both signed up. India and China – each of which has a population of over one billion people, have also agreed to participate. This is a real measure of what people power can achieve.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on March 28, 2009.