Is Alberta public opinion turning against the Tar Sands? With the ongoing trial of the dead ducks heating up in the oil patch, it may become rallying point for Alberta environmentalists – especially if Syncrude wins. They are pleading not-guilty and have quite an army of lawyers to plead their case.
This issue is well outlined in this New York Times article. The question is, why are they bothering to fight this? And secondly, will the backlash be greater than any benefit of winning the case?
It is also interesting to note that Syncrude has not posted a sustainability report on their site since 2007.
If you love beautiful things, then you will love this 15 minute commercial of Porshe’s hybrid vehicles. More and more cars are going hybrid and electric and it is great to see the top of the line companies following suit.
Many environmentalists confuse material consumption with environmental stewardship. The desire for beauty and performance is so ingrained in the human psyche, it is hard to imagine we will ever not want beautiful things. Archeologists have found jewellery dating back over 40 000 years – long before civilization.
If we can marry beauty and technology to produce sustainability, we may still yet have some hope to stave off environmental disaster.
Treating toxic waste is very expensive. So, some less than savoury companies hire ships to carry their waste and then… the ship mysteriously sinks! Who could imagine? To bring light to this issue, a new mash-up of shipping data exposes some questionable losses. “In Fondo Al Mar“, or At the Bottom of the Sea, illustrates the ships, their contents and their location of sinking. Ships contained marble (which is used to hide nuclear waste), toxic sludge and various mining ores – great fish food.
Not only do fish die, but there are numerous reports of hazardous waste leading to civil strife. There are numerous reports (and another) that nuclear waste was dumped off the coast of Somalia, leading to a die off of fish. The fisherman, having little other choice, turned to piracy.
From Al Jazeera News,
Nick Nuttall, a UNEP spokesman, told Al Jazeera that when the barrels were smashed open by the force of the waves, the containers exposed a “frightening activity” that has been going on for more than decade.
“Somalia has been used as a dumping ground for hazardous waste starting in the early 1990s, and continuing through the civil war there,” he said.
“European companies found it to be very cheap to get rid of the waste, costing as little as $2.50 a tonne, where waste disposal costs in Europe are something like $1000 a tonne.
Not only does hazardous waste kill marine life and ecosystems, it can destroy human societies as well.
We deal with a lot of companies who are certified ISO 14001 – a popular environmental management system. But who knew there was an ISO standard for tea making. Among other things, the standard outlines the ideal tea pot dimensions. Make sure to follow closely for ideal tea quality. See some interesting comments on the standard and details of brewing tea.
Carl Zimmer reports on a new study on sea acidification and worries that we may be headed inexorably towards a massive wave of marine extinctions:
The acidification of the ocean today is bigger and faster than anything geologists can find in the fossil record over the past 65 million years. Indeed, its speed and strength — Ridgwell estimate that current ocean acidification is taking place at ten times the rate that preceded the mass extinction 55 million years ago — may spell doom for many marine species, particularly ones that live in the deep ocean.
Who thought this could happen, Bill Gates gives a stunning presentation on climate change. Famous for his cluttered slides and disorganized presentations, Gates has seriously improved his game. Soon, he might be toting an iPhone and wearing black turtlenecks.
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UPDATE (16/02/2010 10:30AM): The site is back up and running normally, we apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused.
There is pressure mounting on large companies to increase transparency of their environmental damages. Pressure is coming from three places, consumers, investors and other companies. Just recently, Whole Foods, which drives over 21 million miles a year, has decided to boycott tarsands produced oil (article here).
Recently I visited many Canadian companies websites to see who is ISO 14001, but one interesting thing struck me – at least 80% of companies now have a page dedicated to their environmental work or policies on their site. This is rather new and quite promising, companies seem to understand that strong environmental stewardship is becoming part of daily business activities.
Another major source of pressure is investor groups – notably ethical and pension funds. A good outline of various “green” investors was done at the Davis blog here. As we all know, money talks; if major funds are requesting greater environmental transparency then companies will have to take this seriously.
China is building a train network that should wake you up (NYT article here). Their voracious appetite for energy has spurred China to build a high-speed network of trains to remove traffic from the existing rails so that coal and raw materials can more easily be transported around the country. The middle kingdom will build 5000 miles of high-speed trains by 2012. Canada and America have no high-speed trains and the first one might be working in 2014. Talk about being asleep at the wheel.
Things are really unraveling at the IPCC, with officials finally admitting that the UN panel has to improve its procedures when reviewing reports.
The worst part about any scandal is the cover-up and Climategate is no exception. Had climate scientists come down hard, early on, on the practices at East Anglia and the methods of the IPCC, this series of blunders could be more easily corrected and forgotten.
Here’s what the Observer has to say about the series of blunders committed by the IPCC lately:
“[Deniers] deal not in the balance of risk but the exposure of uncertainty. Tiny doubts on the periphery of the case, they say, undermine the whole story, banishing the threat.
That isn’t true, but it is bad science and bad politics to counter scepticism with righteous indignation. In the long run, public confidence will be inspired more by frankness about what science cannot explain.”
Even a top British government scientist is on the record for saying that the panel is losing all credibility.
It will take years before this community of scientists will be able to repair their damaged reputation.
We deal with a lot of companies who are certified ISO 14001 – a popular environmental management system. But who knew there was an 
