Tragic Planet

From Discover…

40 Years After the Cuyahoga Burned, Clevelanders Fish in It.

Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught on fire 40 years ago June 22 when oily garbage floating in it was ignited, probably by sparks from a passing train. In turn, the fire sparked the creation of environmental agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, along with passage of 1972’s Clean Water Act. And the river, once a dumping ground for industrial waste and an icon for environmental disrepair, today supports more than 60 species of fish along with beavers and various bird species, and serves as an example of environmental restoration.

The river’s recovery is an inspirational account of how even the most putrid bodies of water could be cleaned up.

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Despite all the naysayers’ affirmations that switching to clean energy will damage the economy, reality is the complete opposite. The clean energy economy is already booming despite the hard economic times.

From Change.org

The Clean Energy Economy Is Already Booming

Without much attention from policymakers, or funding from the public trough, a low-carbon economy has already taken off in the United States.  The jobs being created nationwide in clean energy are helping to bolster the nation’s environmental sustainability and cut greenhouse gas emissions — and expanding at a faster rate than the U.S. economy overall.

Research by The Pew Charitable Trusts, published in a new report titled “The Clean Energy Economy,” found that:

• Between 1998 and 2007, jobs in clean energy grew at a faster rate than overall jobs.
• By 2007, more than 68,200 businesses across all 50 states and the District of Columbia accounted for about 770,000 jobs.
• Jobs in clean energy, both white-collar and blue-collar, grew at a rate of 9.1 percent, while total jobs grew at a rate of 3.7 percent.
• Clean tech has not been immune to the economic meltdown, but it’s proving to be an especially resilient sector: Although venture capital investment in clean tech dropped by 48 percent in the first three months of 2009 (compared to the same period in 2008), investment across the board was down 61 percent during the same period.
• Employment in clean energy covers a broad swath of blue-collar and white-collar jobs, including plumbers, machinists, scientists, engineers, bankers and marketing consultants.  Annual incomes ranging from around $21,000 to $111,000.

Read the whole article…

Tags: Clean Energy, Economy

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At his carpet company, Ray Anderson has increased sales and doubled profits while turning the traditional “take / make / waste” industrial system on its head. In a gentle, understated way, he shares a powerful vision for sustainable commerce.

The Business Logic of Sustainability

If an oil-intensive company can do it, anyone can do it…

Tags: industry, Sustainable Dev., Technology

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Here’s a thought provoking analogy, comparing what’s happening with climate-change denial to what has happened with the cod fisheries in Newfoundland.

The tragedy of climate commons

Tags: denial

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From The New York Times
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: April 23, 2009

For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.

“The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood,” the coalition said in a scientific “backgrounder” provided to lawmakers and journalists through the early 1990s, adding that “scientists differ” on the issue.

But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

“The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied,” the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the coalition in 1995.

The coalition was financed by fees from large corporations and trade groups representing the oil, coal and auto industries, among others. In 1997, the year an international climate agreement that came to be known as the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated, its budget totaled $1.68 million, according to tax records obtained by environmental groups.

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Earth Day: 10 Big, Really Hard Things We Can Do to Save the Planet

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Today is Earth Day and here is a classic video by Carl Sagan to help put things back in perspective…

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Here’s an excellent and thought provoking essay from Environment360:
Consumption Dwarfs Population As Main Environmental Threat

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More than two trillion tons of land ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted since 2003, according to new NASA satellite data that show the latest signs of what scientists say is global warming.

More than half of the loss of landlocked ice in the past five years has occurred in Greenland, based on measurements of ice weight by NASA’s GRACE satellite, said NASA geophysicist Scott Luthcke. The water melting from Greenland in the past five years would fill up about 11 Chesapeake Bays, he said, and the Greenland melt seems to be accelerating.

(From The Globe and Mail)

Tags: Arctic Ice, NASA

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The International Energy Agency (IEA) has revised its World Energy Outlook report, and it’s not pretty. They admitted to having finally done some research, and as a result, have moved their peak-oil date a lot. 2020, that’s in 11 years my friends.

At Last, A Date by George Monbiot

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