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Sun, 2009-03-22 04:36 — mdmcdonald

The mission of this Working Group is to enhance our understanding and relationship with the environment and ecology.

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This working group is focused on issues of Environment and Ecology to ensure resilience and sustainability for all.
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The UVA Bay Game - Global Watershed Sustainability Simulation Projects

Sat, 2011-06-25 11:32 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Theresa Bernardo

The UVA Bay Game is a large-scale participatory simulation based on the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The Game allows players to take the roles of stakeholders, such as farmers, developer, watermen, and local policy-makers, make decisions about their livelihoods or regulatory authority; and see the impacts of their decisions on their own personal finances, the regional economy, and watershed health. It is an adaptable educational and learning tool for raising awareness about watershed stewardship anywhere in the world; a tool for exploring and testing policy choices; and a tool for evaluating new products and services.

Developed by a multi-disciplinary faculty and student team, the UVA Bay Game combines a video game format with current demographic, economic, and scientific data to create a powerful tool with real-world applications and impact. It has been hailed by federal and state agency, NGO, and corporate and education leaders as "the first of its kind."

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The Earth Is Full

Thu, 2011-06-09 22:54 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Thomas L. Friedman - The New York Times - June 7, 2011

You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?

“The only answer can be denial,” argues Paul Gilding, the veteran Australian environmentalist-entrepreneur, who described this moment in a new book called “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.” “When you are surrounded by something so big that requires you to change everything about the way you think and see the world, then denial is the natural response. But the longer we wait, the bigger the response required.”

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To Make Logging Legal, Liberia Will Give Every Tree a Barcode

Fri, 2011-05-27 01:04 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by: Albert Gomez

Good - May 23, 2011

The African country of Liberia is blessed with lush rainforests full of pygmy hippos, Diana monkeys, duikers, and lots of valuable trees. But when Charles Taylor started plundering the forests to fund his forces in the country's civil war, the UN placed sanctions on Liberian timber.

Now President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf wants to establish a legitimate timber trade to boost the Liberian economy. To that end, she has signed a deal with the European Union that would require companies bringing Liberian lumber into the EU to have proof that it's legal. To make that possible, every legally harvestable tree and every cut log would have to carry a barcode that makes it traceable. Helveta, a British company that specializes in timber supply chain management, has invented the tracking system.

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Green City that has a Brain

Wed, 2010-10-13 07:46 — mdmcdonald

An eco-city in Portugal that its makers are aiming to build by 2015 takes its cues from the nervous system IF TODAY'S cities were living things, they would be monsters, guilty of guzzling 75 per cent of the world's natural resources consumed each year. Now a more benign urban creature is set to emerge. The planned city of PlanIT Valley, on the outskirts of Paredes in northern Portugal (see map), is aiming to be an environmentally sustainable city. And, just like an organism, it will have a brain: a central computer that regulates everything from its water use to energy consumption. The central computer of the city will act like a brain, regulating water use and energy consumption Various eco-cities are in the pipeline, but this could be the first to be fully built - by 2015 - and could open its doors as early as next year. While Masdar City in Abu Dhabi welcomed its first inhabitants this month, it will not be completed until at least 2020. And the development of Dongtan near Shanghai in China has not even got off the ground yet, following financial and political difficulties. Like other sustainable cities, PlanIT Valley will treat its own water and tap renewable energy. Buildings will also have plant-covered roofs, which will reduce local temperature through evapotranspiration, as well as absorbing rainwater and pollutants.

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U.S. lifts moratorium on deep-water drilling in Gulf of Mexico

Wed, 2010-10-13 07:40 — mdmcdonald

Reporting from Washington — The Obama administration on Tuesday lifted its moratorium on oil and gas drilling in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, potentially blunting a serious political issue in the weeks before the midterm congressional election and signaling its confidence in newly tightened regulation. "There has been significant progress over the last few months in enhancing the safety of future drilling operations, and in addressing some of the weaknesses in spill containment and oil spill response," Michael Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, said in announcing the moratorium's end. "More needs to be done," he said, "but we believe the risks of deepwater drilling have been reduced sufficiently to allow drilling under existing and new regulations." But the moratorium's end satisfied few players involved in offshore oil drilling issues. Some environmentalists criticized ending the drilling suspension while investigations and cleanup continued into the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which killed 11 people and unleashed the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. Get breaking news alerts delivered to your mobile phone. Text BREAKING to 52669.

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Darker Times for Solar-Power

Sun, 2009-05-10 19:09 — admin

The global recession and tight credit conditions have cast a chill on the solar-power industry after years of breakneck growth, and could usher in long-term changes in the industry.

Banks have curtailed financing for major solar projects, and Spain -- the world's second-largest solar-power market after Germany -- has slashed subsidies for the industry, leading to sharply lower demand for solar cells. Sales of the tiny chips that convert the sun's rays into electricity are expected to drop by at least 20% this year.

Study Finds Pattern of Severe Droughts in Africa

Wed, 2009-04-22 16:47 — admin

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: April 16, 2009
For at least 3,000 years, a drumbeat of potent droughts, far longer and more severe than any experienced recently, have seared a belt of sub-Saharan Africa that is now home to tens of millions of the world’s poorest people, climate researchers report in a new study.

The scientists warned that more such mega-droughts are inevitable, although there is no way to predict when the next one could unfold.

Editorial: Somalia's piracy problem was fueled by environmental and political events

Wed, 2009-04-22 07:38 — admin

William Jelani Cobb says Somalia's piracy problem was fueled by environmental and political events.

For more information than the excerpt below, go to:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/04/19/cobb.somalia.piracy/index.html

Third-World Stove Soot Is Target in Climate Fight

Thu, 2009-04-16 08:55 — admin

KOHLUA, India — “It’s hard to believe that this is what’s melting the glaciers,” said Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, as he weaved through a warren of mud brick huts, each containing a mud cookstove pouring soot into the atmosphere.

Black Carbon
This is the first in a series of articles about stopgap measures that could limit global warming. Future articles will address appliance-efficiency standards, reducing global-warming gases other than carbon dioxide and other efforts.

America's Ten Most Endangered Rivers

Fri, 2009-04-10 05:21 — admin

(CNN) -- Rivers are the arteries of our infrastructure. Flowing from highlands to the sea, they breathe life into ecosystems and communities.

A levee breach in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River System could have dire effects, a new report says.

But many rivers in the United States are in trouble.

Rivers in Alaska, California and the South are among the 10 most endangered, according to a report released Tuesday by American Rivers, a leading river conservation group.

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