GreenWatch

B. McPherson Never forget the law of unintended consequences Washington State has given the oyster harvesting industry the go ahead to spray about 2000 acres of sea bed with imidacloprid to kill burrowing shrimp. Imidacloprid is a neurotoxin that particularly affects invertebrates(animals without backbones). The state department of ecology has issued permits to spray the mudflats of Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor. The stated reason is to reduce the population of burrowing shrimp. They are also known as ghost shrimp. The two areas that are to be sprayed with the pesticide are important oyster producing areas. The annual revenue is over US$60 million per year. The shrimp are feeders of small particles and given a high enough population can compete with other plankton eaters for resources. Burrowing shrimp dig in the intertidal mud flats almost constantly and kick out sand and other detritus. The sediment can cover the very young oysters(spat), suffocating them. Imidaclop...

B. McPherson Palm oil is used in a myriad of places around the world. From face creams to biodiesel, palm oil is everywhere in today’s modern world. Why? Because it’s a cheap(relatively), versatile substance that remains soft but solid at room temperature, is non-toxic and edible and can be produced by trees and sunlight. It sounds like an all around winner but as the palm oil industry has grown along with massive tropical plantations of the oil palm major environmental damage is becoming evident. About 87% of the world’s palm oil is produced from plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia. The ripping up of rain forests has far reaching deleterious effects on the people and animals that were living there. Now the insatiable appetite for palm oil is industrializing tracts of land in Africa with Nigeria leading the way in leasing out land for palm oil plantations. Researchers at the University of Bath may have come up with an alternative to digging up the tropical forest...

B. McPherson Delegates from 190 countries are spending two weeks in Lima, Peru, discussing and dealing to try to come to an agreement on reducing countries’ carbon dioxide emissions. The aim is to agree on binding limits in order to pass them at next year’s two week conference in Paris. Already China, the world’s biggest polluter has already announced that they will not allow independent inspectors of their emissions. That may well be enough to trash the China/US emissions agreement signed in November. The US, world’s second largest polluter, is also unlikely to agree on binding restrictions. In spite of China’s reluctance to admit inspectors, the European Union countries have made pledges to reduce their carbon releases in the range of 40% by 2025. The US and Denmark have made multi-billion dollar pledges to develop new ways to help keep the Earth’s temperature an average of only 2 degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial Revolution levels. The trouble with pledges is t...

B. McPherson Dow Chemical, third largest company in the world, should be able to spare a few million to clean up this mess. The people in Bhopal India are still suffering from the chemical release that has killed 25 000 to date. It has left many with respiratory problems, blindness and birth defects. Union Carbide, now wholly owned by Dow Chemicals(head offices in Michigan) had a pesticide manufacturing plant in the town. A release of methyl isocyanate gas spread over the town 30 years ago dropping small children where they stood, adults took a few minutes to die. Residents of Bhopal marked the terrible anniversary by marching in the streets and demanding that the corporations involved and the Indian government treat them fairly. Compensation was meagre and spotty. A widow was awarded the equivalent of $3.20/month. Eventually this was increased to $12/month. Death payments were $1000 but only if deaths could have been proved to be a direct result of the gas leak. Some In...

B. McPherson Fracking hype in the UK may be just that. Laws have been changed to make it easier for petroleum corporations to shatter the shale beds to extract the oil or gas held in the rocks. People have been told that the sacrifice of land and water to facilitate this extraction is for the common good, that it will make the UK self-sufficient in natural gas. Prices will remain as is or be reduced. A credible report from the University of Sussex challenges that assertion. Published in The UK’s Global Gas Challenge, the report points out that the year 2000 was the last year that the UK was self-sufficient in natural gas. As the fields in the North Sea diminished their productivity, the UK gradually increased its dependence on foreign suppliers. Now about 50% of the natural gas that the UK uses comes from Norway and Qatar. The US has led the world in fracking to obtain natural gas. Canada has followed suit. There has been a large increase in the supply of natural gas, b...

B. McPherson The cosmetic industry is taking a quick turn in their product offerings. The recent phenomenon in the beauty world of offering microbeads in everything from tooth paste to body scrubs is being phased out. By 2018 in the USA most states will have banned their use and the cosmetic companies are listening. Perhaps in the past you have purchased Crest toothpaste with neat little glitter bits in it. It’s supposed to encourage children to brush their teeth, but adults can use it too. I’ve used it. It’s kind of fun. Turns out the glitter bits are small pieces of coloured plastic. They are not poisonous, but polypropylene is not high of children’s meal menus. Many cosmetics contain tiny plastic beads as well. They have been touted as a way to achieve smooth skin. The organization Beat the Microbead has an extensive list of products that contain these tiny pieces of plastic. Those tiny pieces of plastic make their way down the drains of the cities and from there to...

B. McPherson Small but a big problem -- zebra mussels Warmer ocean temperatures are blamed for the shutdown of a major electrical producer in Germany. The EON SE plant at Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea was forced to shut operations because of marine mussel infestation.  The power plant normally produces enough electricity to light 1.5 million homes. “We usually scrape tons of mussels out of the area where the cooling water flows during the plant’s usual revisions, but this time there were so many that we couldn’t wait for the next inspection,” Markus Nitschke, a spokesman for EON, said by phone from Dusseldorf today. “The warmer temperatures have caused this infestation.” Bloomberg News Invasive mussels are causing additional expense and operating hazards around the world. Some species may be native to an area, but slight changes in their environment like temperature change may favour more rapid reproduction. Other species are introduced to an area where there are...

B. McPherson There continues to be a small minority of people who refuse to recognize the changes in our world’s climate. The change is not consistent world wide, but the trend is towards a warmer world. Because much of our planet is covered by oceans, the ability to plan for a warmer world is extremely important. As long as humans have been trading, the importance of sea ports has grown. With the predictions of sea level change by the end of this century reaching at least 8 inches(0.2m) and possibly as much as 6.6ft.(2m) coastal cities need to start preparations now for the changes that are coming. Some have in Europe with London and Venice installing barriers to protect against storm surges. According to NOAA’s predictions some US areas will be affected more than others by rising sea levels. Alaska and the US Pacific Northwest are still rebounding from the last ice-age, so the land is rising. Other areas of the US are not so lucky. Chesapeake Bay area is subsiding as i...

B. McPherson Are you killing the orangutans? Demand clean palm oil. The palm oil industry in tropical south east Asia has been hit by a severe drought. Rainfall has dropped to levels not seen in over a decade. The oil palms are very sensitive to lack of water and adapt by producing fewer and smaller fruits which, crushed, are the source of palm oil. Indonesia normally produces 86% of the world’s supply of this versatile oil. Twix chocolate bars are a small fraction of the uses industry has for this oil. Widely used in the food industry, palm oil is also found in many cosmetics and used as biodiesel in some countries. The two largest consumers of palm oil, India and China, are facing steep increases in the price of the commodity as production has fallen 12%. Some shortfall may be made up by competing oils produced in the Western Hemisphere, canola and soybean oil. The agricultural industry has been hit in other areas as well with a falling off of rice and coffee produ...

B. McPherson This is not the latest release of tonnes of radioactive water, nor will it be the last. The Fukushima nuclear facility in Japan continues to bleed radiation into the Pacific Ocean. In spite of assurances from the top politicians and TEPCO executives, the situation at the wrecked electrical plant is still not under control. Mistakes and coverups continue to shake the public’s faith in their proclamations. President Abe, in the frenzy to obtain rights to the 2020 Olympic extravaganza assured the selection committee that the situation in Fukushima was under control. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe touched on the Fukushima problem in Tokyo’s final presentation and said the government would never put Tokyo in harm’s way, saying, “The situation is under control. Tokyo 2020 will offer guaranteed delivery.” The Japan Times The short reply to that is, it is not. Now the people tasked with the multi-year clean-up are admitting it publicly. The manager of the proj...

B. McPherson This is what we stand to lose if Enbridge Northern Pipeline is completed. The feds in Ottawa have with the stroke of a pen declared that the North Pacific Humpback Whale is no longer endangered. It is now merely of “critical concern”. It was only in 2005 that the Humpback was red listed as critically endangered.   The SPLASH estimates for the combined Southeast Alaska and British Columbia feeding areas are around 3,000-5,000 (Calambokidis   et al. 2008) …No comprehensive assessment of North Pacific humpback whales has been conducted by the IWC Scientific Committee. The evidence suggests that North Pacific Humpback Whales have been increasing, following depletion by whaling, but that this recovery is not yet complete .    ICUN Red List of Endangered Species Environmentalists are crying foul at the federal government’s actions. There is a federal requirement that for critically endangered wildlife, the habitat must also be protected. Unfor...

B. McPherson Dirty coal is killing people in China China’s great push to establish itself as the leading industrial nation has come at a heavy price. Currently there are 2 300 operating coal fired electrical plants in the country. Noxious emissions are calculated to kill about 275 000 people each year. The figures are staggering. A  WHO's Global Burden of Disease report   estimated that 1.2 million people died prematurely in China in 2010 due to air pollution. Research published in the  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences  (PNAS) in July found that air pollution has caused the loss of more than 2.5 billion years of life expectancy in China – shaving   5.5 years off the average life expectancy . Greenpeace Pollution and In particular, air pollution has become a flash point in the PRC. The expanding middle class in China has been objecting to the rampant pollution which sickens their children and shortens their lives. Coal f...

B. McPherson Bumblebees are part of the free services we receive from Mother Nature Spring in Europe will see fewer bumblebees. Bumblebees are those large, wild bees that don’t look as if they could get off the ground, but they do. They are docile creatures that only ask that we leave them some forage and don’t poison them. Unfortunately about a quarter of the 68 species residing in Europe are red-listed or critically endangered. Nearly half of the species are in decline. A study done by the International Union for Conservation of Nature(IUCN) has warned people that the loss of these species will be catastrophic to food producers. The study, which contributes to the European Red List of pollinators and is part of the Status and Trends of European Pollinators (STEP) project, stresses that three of the five   “most important insect pollinators of European crops”   are bumblebee species .  RT Bumblebees are important pollinators of many of our food crops...

B. McPherson An environmental good news story October 2010 the world watched a toxic red sludge engulf a small Hungarian town. The village of Devescer was flooded a with two metre deep wall of burning, toxic mud that escaped from a holding pond, the by product of the aluminum industry. The disaster killed 10 and seriously injured 150 more. It looked as if the town was finished. Houses were ruined and had to be demolished. Farm land was rendered useless for food crops. But that’s not what happened. This is ultimately a good news story. Today Devescer stands an example of resilience and smart thinking. The town has reinvented itself as an environmentally sustainable village. The site of the two metre flood has been cleared of sludge. Farmland was planted with fast growing trees and the forested land with more mature trees have been turned into parkland. The fast growing poplars are both a carbon sink while they are growing and a source of energy for heating when they are...

B. McPherson Sea Shepherd, Australia and other conservationists cheer the court decision Score one for the whales in the Southern Sanctuary. The UN International Court of Justice(ICJ) has ruled that Japan’s whaling fleet is not engaging in scientific research in its forays to the Southern Ocean. Australia brought the matter of the Japanese whalers to the international court to rule whether the killing of whales – up to 1000 each season – was for scientific purposes which is allowed, or for commercial purposes which is not. The Japanese government has maintained that they need to harpoon whales for science. The selling of whale meat in the markets there is simply a by product of the activity. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has been front and centre for the past decade trying to stop the slaughter of the cetaceans. This season, the group that has been fighting, literally, the whalers have named their group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Australia due to legal tan...

B. McPherson Is this the future? Residents of Beijing are choking on smog. The miasma is spreading. According to Xinhua News now 50 more cities are reporting high levels of air pollution. Eleven of those come up as “severely polluted”. The smog currently covers 980 000 square kilometres of land. Authorities are hoping for a change in weather to sweep the air pollution out to sea. While Chinese health authorities have set the pollution danger at the second highest level, the World Health Organization(WHO), has a different take on the problem. On Sunday the levels of fine particulates in the heart of the city measured 198 micrograms per cubic metre. WHO sets a safe maximum at 25 micrograms per cubic metre. Authorities have initiated a ban on outdoor barbeques and fireworks. It is unlikely that they are the chief polluters in that country. Coal fired electrical plants, steel works, chemical works and cement production are all big contributors to atmospheric pollutants. ...

B. McPherson This may be a Japanese tradition but it is not civilized behavior. An estimated 250 dolphins have been slaughtered in “The Cove”. For four days dolphins have been herded into the small bay outside of Taiji Japan. Those looking for dolphins for the captive market have now had their pick and the rest are being slaughtered. The favoured method is to jam a sharp spike into their blowhole to sever their spinal cord or at least, cause them to drown in their blood. Sea Shepherd Society has outed this barbaric practice since 2003 but has been unable to stop it. Their web site gives graphic detail of the bloody destruction of families. I was struck by the fate of an albino calf at the hands of the dolphin slavers who grabbed the youngster for selling to an amusement park. There is widespread speculation that the mother of the albino calf committed suicide after her baby was violently taken from her. Our volunteer Cove Guardians documented and witnessed the grieving mothe...

B. McPherson There are still some holdouts in the debate about the global climate, but the majority of objective scientists agree that change is happening. Non-professionals have observed local changes to migratory patterns and plant blooming. Locally, timber companies are planning ways to cope with expected temperature changes by planting diverse species of trees that they expect to better survive warmer years. Personally, I grew up able to skate on our old farm pond. That hasn’t frozen hard enough for many years now. Hummingbirds that winged south every winter are now spending the winter, cadging drinks from feeders, but finding enough tiny insects to survive. Extreme weather events are becoming more common. The most recent publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Summary Report is quoted by National Geographic: “Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850.” On averag...