1474645948000

gaia

%feed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ken-berlin/clean-energy-the-not-so-d_b_12154500.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
Clean Energy: The Not-So-Dirty Secret to Global Economic Prosperity
In a week of dark news dominated by a senseless terror attack, police shootings, and the increasingly divisive presidential campaign, there was a moment at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York that instead showed humanity at its most aspirational and generous and reminded us what extraordinary things we are capable of when we put aside narrow self interest and work together.

"2016-09-23-1474644456-6795010-roadtoparis.jpg.jpeg"

That moment? When over 60 nations formally accepted the Paris Agreement to fight climate change reached at last year's COP 21 summit. The number is significant because for the agreement to go into force, at least 55 nations collectively responsible for at least 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions must, in the words of the UN, "have deposited their instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession." With these 60-plus nations - who together account for 47.5 percent of emissions and include major economies like the US, China, and Brazil - now on board, we've crossed the first threshold.

Crossing the second is likely to now only be a matter of weeks, if not days with momentum for all 195 signatories to accept the agreement building with the force of a 20-ton boulder careening down a mountainside. And when we do cross that line, the world will have its first truly international framework to address climate change in effect as a matter of global policy. "Awesome" does not begin to describe the achievement.

Many factors, of course, contributed to us being here today in sight of an accomplishment that only six years ago - with the collapse of previous climate talks in Copenhagen painfully fresh in the memory - felt like a distant dream. But one in particular stands out as essential to the achievement that began in Paris and really came into focus during the UNGA and the discussion of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) during this week's meeting.

That factor, of course, is clean energy. The seventh SDG calls for world leaders to "Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all." And if we're serious about stopping climate change and pursuing a truly sustainable path for development that not only lifts millions out of poverty but gives people everywhere the chance to shape their own future, then expanding clean energy has to be the cornerstone effort.

Why? The answer begins with the simple fact that no solution to the rising temperatures that have seen 15 of the 16 hottest years on record come this century is possible without a global shift from the dirty fossil fuels driving climate change to clean, renewable energy sources like wind and solar.

By limiting global average temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius (while aiming for 1.5 degrees or less), as the Paris Agreement requires, we lessen the chance that catastrophes like Super Typhoon Haiyan - which destroyed some 1.1 million homes in the Philippines, displaced 4.1 million people, and caused the region hundreds of millions of dollars in damage - become regular facts of life, crippling development in nations just getting on their feet. We give people everywhere a better shot at making good lives where they live, without being forced to flee recurrent disasters like mega-droughts. And on and on.

Even with these benefits being so clear, efforts to expand renewables globally face significant barriers, beginning with a widespread lack of understanding of the economics of clean energy today, due in no small part to the culture of denial fostered by the fossil fuel industry. Since the climate movement's earliest days, the industry and its allies have employed denial as a tactic to stymie progress. Denying the truth of climate science was the first salvo. Now we see the same tactic at work in economic denial as the industry perpetuates a dangerous myth that renewable energy is a luxury disenfranchising hardworking people struggling to make ends meet.

Other unfortunate barriers to widespread deployment of renewable energy exist as well, including the assumed political risk of supporting clean energy initiatives. However, as we cut through the myths and tell the real story, these flimsy barricades to progress will fall, paving the way for a booming and vibrant clean energy economy that will bring positive economic consequences on a global scale.

The good news is that these barriers are already beginning to fall - and economic denial is becoming ever more untenable - because renewables are becoming cost-competitive with oil, coal, and natural gas in more and more regions around the world. The result is that rather than disenfranchising hardworking citizens, affordable clean energy is instead playing a key role in solving energy poverty around the world, sparking innovation and creating opportunities for communities at all stages of development. In India, for example, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made solar an integral part of his plan to bring electricity to the 400 million Indians living without it. In Africa, off-grid solar is poised to become the next "hot market" for investors, according to Fortune magazine, thanks in part to innovators like D.Light that have sold over 10 million solar lanterns in regions where many earn less than $2 a day.

The economic benefits of clean energy aren't limited to developing nations either. Here in the US, forward-looking policies like the Clean Power Plan will save Americans an estimated $55 to $93 billion in climate and health benefits per year by 2030 while also cutting average annual electricity bills by 8 percent.

But perhaps the biggest vote of confidence in the economics of clean energy comes from the growing numbers of major corporations from Apple to Bank of America to Ikea shifting to 100 percent renewable electricity to power their businesses. One factor driving these shifts is undoubtedly moral concern for the planet, but the fact remains that Fortune 500 companies would not be embracing clean energy at the level and pace they are unless doing so made compelling economic sense too.

Encouragingly, people on all continents are increasingly seeing renewables as the way forward and calling on their leaders to make a clean energy future a reality. We saw this last year when over 6 million came together to call for a strong climate agreement in Paris. And we saw it again this year in Brazil, where my own organization, The Climate Reality Project, and Brazil Branch Manager Alfredo Sirkis joined local partners in the Ratifica Já campaign, bringing millions together to create a broad popular and political consensus on climate action leading to the nation's formal approval of the Paris Agreement this month.

But despite these successes and reasons for hope - and there are many more - we have more work to do. Yearly investments in clean energy need to increase to $1 trillion per year (and last year reached only about a third of that figure). We need the leadership of dedicated public servants, government figures, activists, and concerned citizens to push for structure and incentives to bring clean energy solutions to a truly global scale.

The question isn't whether humanity can afford to shift from dirty fossil fuels to clean energy. With the cost of solar continuing to plummet and projected to drop even further, as just one example, we know we can. And when we consider the alternatives - with one scenario by Stanford University researchers projecting that unmitigated climate change could cost the world as much as 20 percent of GDP - it becomes clear we must. As much as the fossil fuel industry wants to deny this reality, the truth is right in front of us. People around the world are calling out for truly sustainable development, powered by affordable clean energy. It's time for our leaders to listen.

To learn more about The Climate Reality Project, visit the organization's website: https://www.climaterealityproject.org/

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post to mark the occasion of the one-year anniversary of the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, or, officially, "Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development"). The SDGs represent an historic agreement -- a wide-ranging roadmap to sustainability covering 17 goals and 169 targets -- but stakeholders must also be held accountable for their commitments. To see all the posts in the series, visit here.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

gaia

1474645018000

design

%feed
https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/19-25-september-2016/john-spencer-language-design-indivisible/
John Spencer: “Language and design should be indivisible”

"dw4-0022" — Design Week Awards 2016 Best of Show winner, and Writing for Design winner: 500 Years of Stories by Grey London for Tate Britain

Master designers like Alan Fletcher, Bob Gill, Milton Glaser and George Lois all put language at the heart of their work. Fletcher's book The Art of Looking Sideways is about verbal and visual interplay. George Lois, in his book Lois Logos said, “As a graphic thinker, I claim my love of language as a birthright”. And he went on to describe himself as “the most word-driven art director of our media age”.

I've been intrigued by the relationship between language and design since I was a student. It all began with a book, first published in 1962, called Watching Words Move by designers Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar. Their aim was to “…explore the evocative potential of words and vividly express their meaning”. In their introduction they said, “…we looked at the words and did to them what they themselves suggested”. Watching Words Move shows how you can make words more evocative of ideas and emotions.

I love Watching Words Move because it's what graphic design's all about crystal-clear, expressive and idiosyncratic communication that makes everything our clients say, look like only they could have said it.

You'd have thought it goes without saying that language and design are indivisible so why are they so often out of step, even at odds? Why do words play second fiddle to design? Why do a lot of designers seem hell-bent on churning out work that's slick but meaningless when they should to be helping their clients communicate?

Design schools fail to cultivate a love of language

There's a big problem with design education. Design schools fail to cultivate a love of language. Their focus always was, and still is, on the visual. They're teaching decoration not communication. Bob Gill said, “I realised that the best test of the validity of an idea was if the client could comprehend it, be excited by it and accept it without even seeing it.” So he'd tell them about it rather than show them. And he made his students tell him about their work before they showed him. He made words the starting point for design.

Everyone thinks they can write

A lot of the writing we have to work with is shamefully inadequate because everyone thinks they can write and all too often, everyone and anyone does. People who lack the well-honed skills of professional writers dash off colossal amounts of business writing that's short on clarity and has no discernible personality. So designers are forced to spend their time camouflaging forgettable words when they should be bringing language to life. No wonder many are inclined to dismiss words as filler the boring stuff that spoils all the fun.

Bad writing is bad thinking written down

Well-structured, perceptive design briefs are priceless because defining problems in words is where design begins. Cut and paste marathons, stuff and nonsense cobbled together by people who ought to know better, are worthless. But all too often, designers seem happy to accept waffle and, in the absence of any clear direction, churn out bucket loads of “concepts” in the hope that something gets picked. Bad writing is bad thinking written down, and bad thinking will never inspire good design.

Bob Gill, in his book Forget All the Rules About Graphic Design, says: “Taking problems which don't make interesting (unique) statements and redefining them so that they do is what my graphic design is about. It's how I get my ideas. From the problems themselves”.

A few years ago I was asked to design a logo and graphic identity for The National Archives, one of the largest and oldest archival collections in the world. It holds government and state papers from the eleventh century to the present day. It's responsible for their preservation and on-going selection. And it makes the collection available to everyone. They described themselves as the “national memory” and the “protector of democracy” through open access to information. There was more to it, but that's it in a nutshell.

I redefined their statement to make it more interesting; The National Archives is the place where history meets the future. That was my starting point and it inspired a logo that's made from the coming together of two very different letterforms one ancient, one modern.

Writers write, designers design, and that's that

Collaboration between writers and designers is nothing like as commonplace as it should be. By and large, writers write, designers design, and that's that. I know quite a few very good writers who just aren't interested in how their words look, and even more designers who couldn't care less what the words are about. It shouldn't be that way. Writers and designers ought to collaborate, like advertising agency art directors and copywriters have done for decades. Because language and design are indivisible like words and music in a song.

And Babies is an iconic anti-Vietnam War poster. It was designed in 1969 by the Art Workers Coalition. It uses an infamous photograph of the My Lai massacre in which hundreds of unarmed civilians were killed, and women and girls raped. It shows about a dozen dead and partly naked Vietnamese women and babies on a dirt road. The picture's overlaid with translucent red lettering that asks along the top, “And babies?” and at the bottom it answers, “And babies”.

The photograph was taken by Army photographer Ron L Haberle and the quote is from a CBS television interview with a soldier who participated in the massacre. The poster speaks volumes. It's a remarkable example of language and design coming together to tell an unforgettable story.

Interesting words need “boring” design

You don't need to make interesting words look interesting. If you do, what they look like will probably compete with what they mean and that'll make them harder, not easier, to understand. But so often the meaning of words is clouded by designers who can't resist the temptation to tart them up.

It's been 23 years since The Economist launched their eye-catching “white out of red” campaign. But Abbott Mead Vickers' words have lost none of their freshness.

On the edge of a conversation. One of the loneliest places on earth.

To err is human. To er, um, ah is unacceptable.

Don't end up like Wotsisname.

The simple red posters echoed the design of the Economist's masthead. The words were so good, they needed very little design. You've heard the saying “a picture's worth a thousand words”. Well it's not always true. Sometimes a few well-written words are worth much more than any picture.

How to do it

Here are six suggestions to help you bring language and design together, and create work that's crystal-clear, expressive and idiosyncratic.

Collaborate with writers. Writers, collaborate with designers.

Redefine the brief. Make it more interesting.

Have an opinion. It's how you get ideas.

Have a reason. Don't do something just because it looks good.

Write your ideas down. See if they still make sense.

Trust your instinct. It's always right.

The post John Spencer: “Language and design should be indivisible” appeared first on Design Week.

design

1474645015000

design

%feed
https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/19-25-september-2016/first-look-design-junction-2016/
First look Design Junction 2016

"_as13566_rgb" — Cubitt House by Satellite Architects

Trade show Design Junction is a wholly different affair this year, uprooting to King's Cross where there is a new focus on several distinct types of design.

Although broadly speaking Design Junction is a trade show under the London Design Festival banner, it is looking to offer a lot more.

Having moved on from locations in central London at the Sorting Office and the former Central St Martins building, Design Junction has now fanned out across a 67 acre site in King's Cross.

The registration area at The Crossing is also an installation by Michael Sodeau Studio for Dinesen. A mix of brands sit around it and all of them have made an effort to create some kind of installation for their products.

The TfL collaborations are probably the pick of the bunch. There are three separate licensed collaborations, each of which is demonstrated in a timber frame structure. Kirby Design has used a Piccadilly line moquette on a chair it has designed exclusively for Made.com.

Meanwhile Loris&Olivia has made pan mats and coasters from rubber train flooring and Vallila have created a series of bold prints, which have been fashioned into tea towels, cushions and the like.

On the way to Cubitt House you can find the Johnston Twitter Machine, designed by Florian Dussport. It's a giant roundel created in homage to the Johnston Typeface, which was designed by Edward Johnston 100 years ago in 1916.

Dussport has designed the machine so that it stamps out tweets that have #inspiredby in them.

Cubitt House is where you can find the bulk of the trade stands. It's a temporary and not particularly arresting structure. Recognising this Design Junction looked to Satellite Architects, which has disguised the whole thing behind a façade comprised of a grid of squares and a row of trees, which gives a pixilation effect.

Inside there are two floors showing more than 100 furniture and lighting companies. It's a very light structure so you get to see the furniture upstairs in natural light.

Look out for a beautifully elegant collaboration between Bethan Gray and Shamsian, which does that rare thing of reconciling modern and classic styles while also mixing eastern and western influences. It was the Iranian practitioner Mohamad Reza Shamsian who approached UK designer Bethan Gray for the project.

Casper was a particularly big hit. Versions of the Casper stool had been customised by the likes of Tom Dixon, Anthony Burrill and Vic Lee and will be the subject of a charity auction.

We bumped into Vic Lee working on a mural outside the entrance to the The Canopy, a retail destination showcasing 70 boutique design labels selling fashion accessories, technology, stationary, ceramics and graphics.

There was some lovely stuff from Dorothy, which creates data visualisations, prints and graphics often in the form of maps.

They showed us their latest projects, some of which were being seen for the first time at Design Junction. This view of post punk bands mapped out as a transistor is particularly satisfying.

In Granary Square you'll find a series of red houses resembling Monopoly hotels. Each one is the location for a different installation. Design studio Four23 used their house as an immersive VR experience, designed to eschew the stresses of the modern world with a transcendental and genuinely blissful escape.

It's based on the neuroscience of Daydreaming, there's lots of rigorous explanatory research on the wall panels inside and the Four23 people are very helpful too. Really you just need to have a go though.

If you get down to Designjunction on Saturday you might want to catch talk on design and dyslexia. It poses the question: Is having dyslexia always a learning difficulty, or can it facilitate lateral and creative thinking? Design and architecture writer Grant Gibson chairs the discussion, which sits alongside Designjunction's current exhibition, Dyslexic Design, showcasing the work of dyslexic designers. Panelists include illustrator Kristjana S Williams, industrial designer Terence Woodgate, furniture designer Tom Raffield and writer Margaret Rooke.

Design Junction runs from 22-25 September at 1 Granary Square, London, N1C 4 AA

The post First look Design Junction 2016 appeared first on Design Week.

design

1474645012000

design

%feed
https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/19-25-september-2016/223413-2/
5 important things that happened in design this week

Mozilla shortlisted four logos in its rebrand project

"jb_Mozilla-sept_C_protocol_1_truncated-1400x652"

Mozilla is currently undergoing a rebrand but rather than simply enlisting a design consultancy to fulfil a brief, the software company has called on the public to comment on ideas.

Working with consultancy Johnson Banks, Mozilla is posting different iterations of the new logo on its blog, where Mozilla employees and the general public can post their comments.

Now, four visual identities have been shortlisted one which uses the “://” symbols, a pixelated flame, a depiction of an internet network and a dinosaur's head.

All of the logos have their explanations behind them, but so far, our readers have been leaning towards “Protocol 2.0” the logo which cleverly encapsulates the “://” into the word “Mozilla”.

Reader Hannah Stephens says: “It's bold, meaningful and memorable the others for me are too complex and don't have the same impact.”

A final brand identity is expected to be revealed in October.

The visual identity for UEFA Euro 2020 was revealed

"LONDON, — Photo © Christopher Lee, UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images

This week, UEFA revealed the branding for its 2020 European Football Championship (Euro), which is going to be doing things differently in 2020.

Held every four years, the tournament usually takes place in one European city, but in 2020 it will be held in 13 cities across Europe, with the semi-finals and finals taking place at London's Wembley Stadium.

To symbolise the joining up of Europe which is also fitting to our current post-Brexit climate the branding features a bridge, representing “the universal symbol of connection”, says UEFA.

The branding was completed by Y&R Portugal.

The creative industries were invited to share views on the impact of Brexit

This week, an inquiry was launched on the parliament.uk site which encourages people working within the creative sectors to submit their thoughts on Brexit.

The inquiry has been proposed by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, and asks people to submit their personal details along with an open letter on how leaving the European Union (EU) will affect the creative industries.

They want views on issues including employment, the fall in value of the pound, copyright, design and trademark laws, loss of EU funds such as the Creative Europe Fund and reduced access to the EU's single market, which allows free movement of goods, people and services across Europe.

Beware that on the whole your views won't be anonymous letters are published to the website, and if you want your thoughts to remain confidential, you'll have to provide your reasons.

The deadline for written submissions is 28 October. You can access the form here.

Oculus Rift launched in the UK

Virtual reality is now readily available to consumers and designers as Oculus Rift hit shelves in retail stores this week.

The headset, which comes with a sensor, remote and an Xbox One wireless controller, is priced at £549. Oculus VR has also chucked in a VR platform game Lucky's Tale, along with a series of 360 degree videos and VR movies.

It's now available to buy at John Lewis, Curry's PCWorld, Game Digital and London department store Harrods, and can also be purchased online via Amazon.

You'll need a PC to run it, and make sure it's up-to-date it needs to have an operating system of Windows 7 or newer, and a memory of 8GB RAM or above.

Oculus Touch controllers are yet to launch in the UK, but when they do they aim to provide greater control and more natural use of the hands when using VR.

Concepts were created for supposedly comfier train seats

"ttdt_ISLANDBAY_still_s02_SIDE_characters_UP"

Design consultancy PriestmanGoode has created two new seats intended to alleviate passengers' stress when riding crammed trains.

While the concepts don't tackle the problem of over-populated carriages in itself, they aim to make better use of space to accommodate more passengers in both sitting and standing positions.

The Horizon concept has a staggered seat design, which creates more shoulder space between passengers, and foot rests at different heights to accommodate people of different sizes.

The Island Bay concept can be converted during rush hour by folding the seat up, and also includes a window table that converts into a seat, and extra padded backrests facing into the aisle of the train.

PriestmanGoode is currently working with Rail Interiors Solutions to find suppliers. Read more about the concepts here.

Got a design story? Get in touch at sarah.dawood@centaurmedia.com.

The post 5 important things that happened in design this week appeared first on Design Week.

design

1474642290000

gaia

%feed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/his-holiness-the-dalai-lama/giving-the-world-your-joy_b_12051310.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
Giving the World Your Joy
In April 2015, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu met in Dharamsala for a historic conversation about joy. The Book of Joy (on sale now) chronicles the week-long discussion. Learn more at bookofjoy.org and on social media with hashtag #sharethejoy.

"This question comes from Micah in South Africa. She asks, 'How can you be of service to people, nature, and causes in need without losing yourself completely to a crisis mentality? How can we help the world heal and still find joy in our own life?'"

"My younger brother, here, go first," the Archbishop said.

"I think you know better."

The Archbishop laughed. "This is the first time, please note, that he said I know better."

"Is the question about Africa?" the Dalai Lama inquired.

"No, this is about the world."

"Okay," the Dalai Lama said, preparing to answer. "Now, I am always sharing with people that the problems we are facing today are very difficult to solve. An entire generation has been brought up with a certain mentality, with a certain way of life. So when we think about the future, how to build healthy humanity, we really have to think about how we create a new generation of citizens with a different kind of mind-set. Here education really is the key. Christianity has wonderful teachings, so does Buddhism, but these teachings and approaches are not sufficient.

"Now secular education is universal. So now we must include in formal education of our youth some teaching of compassion and basic ethics, not on the basis of religious belief but on the basis of scientific findings and our common sense and our universal experience. Just complaining about the present situation is not much help. It is very difficult to deal with our current world crises because of our basic mentality. As you mentioned, your father was usually a very good man, but when he was drunk he behaved badly. Today I think many human beings are drunk. They have too many negative emotions like greed, fear, and anger dominating their minds. So they act like drunk people.

"The only way out of this drunken stupor is to educate children about the value of compassion and the value of applying our mind. We need a long-term approach rooted in a vision to address our collective global challenges. This would require a fundamental shift in human consciousness, something only education is best suited to achieve. Time never waits. So I think it is very important that we start now. Then maybe the new generation will be in a position to solve these global problems in their lifetime. We, the elder generation, have created a lot of problems in the twentieth century. The generations of the twenty-first century will have to find the solutions for them."

"I mean, people are fundamentally compassionate," the Archbishop said, coming back to one of his core points.

The Dalai Lama jumped in. "Yes. That is the basis of our hope."

"I am speaking," the Archbishop shot back, playfully.

The Dalai Lama laughed.

"Even the most selfish person," the Archbishop continued, "must have a modicum of compassion for his family. So we're not speaking about something alien. We are saying that we have discovered that we are interdependent."

"Actually, Archbishop," I said, trying to bring our focus back to the topic, "this question is for people who feel that interdependence profoundly and are so compassionate that it makes them world-sick and heartsick. This person wants to know how she can find joy in her life while there are so many who are suffering."

"Yes. Very good," he said, looking down and reflecting on the question. "As an old man, I can say: Start where you are, and realize that you are not meant on your own to resolve all of these massive problems. Do what you can. It seems so obvious. And you will be surprised, actually, at how it can get to be catching.

"There are very many, many people--I mean, my heart leaps with joy at discovering the number of people--who care. How many people walked in New York City for the environment? I
mean, it was incredible. Nobody was going to pay them anything. But there they were in droves. There are many, many people who care. And you will be surprised when you begin to say, Well, I would like to do something relating to the aged. You will be surprised at the number people who come forward and want to help. Why are there so many NGOs? I mean, it is people who say, We want to make a better world. We don't have to be so negative.

"Hey, remember you are not alone, and you do not need to finish the work. It takes time, but we are learning, we are growing, we are becoming the people we want to be. It helps no one if you sacrifice your joy because others are suffering. We people who care must be attractive, must be filled with joy, so that others recognize that caring, that helping and being generous are not a burden, they are a joy. Give the world your love, your service, your healing, but you can also give it your joy. This, too, is a great gift."

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post to mark the occasion of the one-year anniversary of the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, or, officially, "Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development"). The SDGs represent an historic agreement -- a wide-ranging roadmap to sustainability covering 17 goals and 169 targets -- but stakeholders must also be held accountable for their commitments. To see all the posts in the series, visit here.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

gaia

1474642286000

gaia

%feed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/georgianne-nienaber/sacred-burial-grounds-sol_b_12152790.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
Sacred Burial Grounds Sold To Dakota Access Pipeline

Water and sacred land protectors near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota are facing a formidable foe. Months of prayerful and peaceful protest have come under additional assault with the sale of private land adjoining the protest area to Dakota Access LLC. The Dakota Access Pipeline now owns the Cannonball Ranch, where there are known and unknown burial grounds. This puts additional mapping of spiritual sites essential to tribal identity in jeopardy. Adding to the insult and uncertainty, there is a 1500-foot easement on either side of the property, according to protest spokespeople.

In an emotional appeal yesterday at the Protecting Native Land and Resources, Rejecting North Dakota Pipeline Forum, Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II invoked the memory of Sitting Bull as he pleading for a future that includes clean water for future generations.

Sitting Bull came from Standing Rock and one the most famous quotes that he has is, "Let's put our minds together and see what we can build for our children." So today as this is the topic, something that guides us in our decision-making as leaders: We are putting our minds together so that the kids, the ones not yet born, have something better than what we have today.

Gate blocking entrance to Cannonball Ranch construction area

At the same forum, Archambault broke the news that the Cannonball Ranch was sold to the pipeline company.

So the owner of the Cannonball Ranch, where we're demonstrating, what we're protecting, has now been sold to the pipeline company so it's really disturbing to me because the intention is all wrong. Without having any further review and without understanding what the process was... it's not fair. It's not right and the company is going to try to move forward without any consideration of tribes.

This move by DAPL interests is more than unfair, especially since the Sioux Nation has followed the letter of the law in opposing this assault on their safety and sovereignty. Prayers have been met with attack dogs, blockades re-routing traffic routes to the reservation, low flying planes constantly buzzing the encampments of the water protectors, and the militarization of roads by the National Guard.

The whole world is watching, but will goodwill overcome the deep pockets of DAPL interests?

This week, the Tribal Chairman spoke before a United Nations human rights forum in Geneva Switzerland. Archambault addressed the 49-member Council in a brief testimony where he asked "all parties to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline."

Sovereign rights established by treaty are ignored on a daily basis. The courts have failed the Sioux Nation.

The land sale explains in part why the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has issued a gag order that comes from the Washington D.C. Headquarters, according to a source we spoke to at Corps headquarters.

Last week the Corps issued a Special Use Permit to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. In somewhat obtuse language the press release said the permit "allows the Tribe to gather to engage in a lawful free speech demonstration on Federal lands designated in the permit.

The "special permit" issued to the tribe for assembly and free speech on the south side of the Cannonball River, but not the north side where the main camp is established, now makes sense. The permit cited vague "grazing rights," but it seems clear now that the Corps knew about the imminent land sale and the easement.

In another "fait accompli" similar to the bulldozing of ancestral gravesites, DAPL has signed the papers and transferred the money. Another worthless "treaty" with the People, fraught with trickery, can now be added to the misery inflicted upon the Sioux Nation.

Constant emails and phone calls to the press officer in charge of inquiries regarding the special permit have gone unanswered. Phone messages left for personnel in other departments go unreturned. It seems the gag order remains in full effect.

Photos by Georgianne Nienaber

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

gaia

1474628075000

science

%feed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/researchgate/these-researchers-want-yo_b_12150298.html?utm_hp_ref=science&ir=Science
These researchers want you to mail them your gut bacteria

"2016-09-23-1474625521-500743-MicrobiomedataondisplayattheUCSanDiegoQualcommInstituteUCSanDiego2.jpg"

_{UC San Diego}

Most of the DNA in your body isn't yours; it belongs to the bacteria that comprise your personal microbiome. This bacterial make-up has significant health implications, but which factors determine our gut bacteria, and how the microbiome in turn impacts our heath, is not yet fully understood. That will require a lot of data, and the American Gut Project has come up with a novel way to collect it: a participant-funded citizen science program, through which thousands of volunteers have already mailed in samples of their gut, mouth, or skin microbiomes. Researchers Embriette Hyde and Rob Knight tell us more.

Want to receive updates on this project? Follow it on ResearchGate.

ResearchGate: What is the American Gut Project?

Embriette Hyde and Rob Knight: The American Gut Project is one of the largest crowdsourced citizen science projects in existence today. Established late 2012, the goal of the project is to build a comprehensive map of the human microbiome, enabling researchers to identify bad and good areas on the map, and promote research to determine how to move people from the bad to the good areas. We are open to anyone in the world, and our 8500+ participants have sent us over 10,000 samples and contributed nearly $2 million to cover the cost of processing, sequencing, and analyzing those samples. We are completely open source, which means that all of our protocols for sample processing, sequencing, and analysis, as well as the data, are open and freely available to anyone. Participants know exactly what we've done with their sample and can dig deeper into their data if they want, and a handful have. Other research groups can also access the data and use it in their own research.

RG: How did you come up with this idea?

Hyde and Knight: In 2012, Jeff Leach approached me with the idea that we could open up some of the tools developed for the Human Microbiome Project to anyone who was interested. I thought it was a crazy idea, but not so crazy that we shouldn't try it out. And clearly, in retrospect we're all glad that we did! The project has greatly enhanced the public's ability to participate in human microbiome science.

RG: Why is it important to collect data on gut microbiomes?

Hyde and Knight: If you compare the number of genes encoded by your own human DNA to the number of genes encoded by the DNA of the microbes that live in your gut, you'll quickly realize that you are a supraorganism carrying only about one percent human genetic information and 99 percent microbial genetic information. Those microbial gene products are not sitting by silently. In fact, we know they do really important things for us, such as break down plant polysaccharides that our human cells cannot, produce vitamins that we can't get from our diet, inform appropriate maturation of our immune system, and fight off pathogens. In the past decade, dozens of research groups have identified associations between the gut microbiome and countless health and disease states from inflammatory bowel disease to obesity to autism. If we want to improve human health, we need to treat humans as the supraorganism that they are, and determine how our microbiomes interact with us in health and disease.

RG: What exactly happens with the samples when you get them?

Hyde and Knight: When the samples arrive in the lab, we scan the barcode on the sample tube, which will tell us if the participant has signed their consent form and completed all of the required steps for us to begin sample processing. If all is good, one of the swab tips is then cut off with sterile scissors into a 96-well plate containing other samples--one sample per well. This plate is then stored at -20C to protect the sample. Once 90 samples are on the plate--the other wells are "blanks" to ensure our process is clean and accurate--the plate is passed off to a liquid handling robot that adds in buffers and other formulations for extracting the DNA from the sample. We then use polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify a region of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene (variable region 4), which enables us to profile the bacterial community present. These "amplicons" are then sequenced, and after sequencing, run through a series of computational steps to provide us-and the participants-with information about what is in the sample. We quality control the sequences to ensure only the highest quality sequences are included in the analyses, and then align those sequences against a reference database, which enables us to taxonomically classify the different bacteria present in the sample. We can then apply several statistical and visualization techniques to compare samples to one another and look for connections between the bacterial community and, say, diet type or disease state.

RG: What have you learned so far? Any surprises?

Hyde and Knight: Some of the strongest associations are with the country you live in, the number of types of plants you eat in a typical week, and how much sleep you get each night. We've also noticed that exercise frequency, alcohol consumption, and the number of bowel movements one makes in a day are also linked to microbiome diversity.

RG: How does the fact that these samples were collected at home by untrained participants affect your ability to use the resulting data?

Hyde and Knight: One of the biggest factors affecting samples is the fact that some bacteria do grow while the sample is in the mail. We have compared American Gut samples to several quality control and storage condition microbiome studies to identify the bacteria that grow in transit. We then remove those sequences from every sample before we move forward with analysis and produce results.

The sample collection itself isn't hard, and if someone has done it wrong (i.e. put the swab between their butt-cheeks instead of swabbing used toilet paper as instructed) we can tell when we see the data. The other factor that we have to deal with is the honesty of our participants because all of the data are self-reported. For example, we either see a link between the microbiome and exercise, or between the microbiome and lying about exercise. We hope to resolve this by working with athletes who are more closely monitored. We can try to validate some of the answers, for example by using the Food Frequency Questionnaire that participants can opt to complete.

RG: What do you think motivates people to participate?

Hyde and Knight: I believe the motivations are varied. Some people seriously take on the citizen scientist role and want to do all they can to help move our research forward. Others are just curious about what is living inside of them. Many have a serious disease and therefore are incredibly personally motivated to help scientists learn new things about that disease that may help find a treatment. Regardless of the motivation, all of our participants are helping us to achieve the same goal, and the project is a success because of their support and enthusiasm.

RG: How does the American Gut Project differ from other investigations of the human microbiome?

Hyde and Knight: American Gut is different from other microbiome research studies both in terms of operation and scope. Because it is crowdsourced citizen science, there is no official government funding directly associated with the project. While some collaborators have clinched grant money to support microbiome sequencing of their participants and we can receive charitable donations, the vast majority of monies come from the participants themselves. We also immediately release the data as soon as we have them. This is unique because most research data are not made available until after a publication is released. We are also one of the largest, if not the largest, human microbiome study in existence with over 10,000 samples from over 8500 people living in 35 countries!

RG: What are your plans moving forward?

Hyde and Knight: We will continue collecting samples until interest wanes, which we don't anticipate happening in the near future. We're working toward expanding our geographical reach even further by establishing additional aggregation sites in other countries. We're also nurturing current collaborations and building new ones to reach out to specific cohorts, such as student athletes, people suffering from inflammatory bowel diseases, fermented foods consumers, cancer patients, and babies and their nurses, among many others. The microbiome has some type of association with nearly every health and disease state that you can imagine, and we'd love for American Gut to be instrumental in furthering microbiome research in as many of those states as possible! It's important for people to remember that at the moment, microbiome analysis is still very much research. Some day we hope it will lead to FDA-approved tests for specific diseases, and our participants are helping bring that day closer.

This interview originally appeared on ResearchGate News.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

science

1474624543000

astronomy

%feed
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond/~3/N-F7nie_muo/todays-galaxy-insight-weirdness-of-the-higgs-boson-a-dead-end-or-a-gateway-to-another-universe.html
Today's 'Galaxy' Insight --Weirdness of the Higgs Boson: "A Dead End or Gateway to Another Universe"

“Whatever we find out, that is what nature chose,” Kyle Cranmer, a physics professor at New York University, told Brian Resnick at VOX. "It's a good attitude to have when your field yields great disappointments."

For most of 2015, evidence was suggesting that CERN's Large Hadron Collider had found a new subatomic particle, which would be a discovery surpassing even the LHC's discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, and perhaps the most significant advance since Einstein's theory of relativity. The Large Hadron Collider's 750 GeV diphoton bump registered at least one unambiguous conclusion the LHC physicists believed: they'd found something new. In the showers of proton collision byproducts that occurred during the 2015 run of CERN's ATLAS and CMS experiments, it seemed there was a new particle.

But, nature had other plans, in August, CERN reported that the evidence for the new particle, what at first looked like a promising “bump” in the data, indicating the presence of a particle with a unique mass, was just noise, that the 2016 data failed to replicate the bump, indicating that the earlier observations were just statistical fluctuations. This has resulted in a general let down shared by many researchers in high-energy physics: The LHC managed to bag the Higgs boson, but as for bagging supersymmetry, a New Physics, the presence of a particle or interaction so-far unknown it appears nature wasn't co-operating.

“It would be a profound discovery to find that we're not going to see anything else,” Cranmer says, suggesting that supersymmetry isn't the answer, and theoretical physicists will have to go back to the drawing board to figure out how to solve the mysteries left open by the standard model.

“If we're all coming up empty, we would have to question our fundamental assumptions,” Sarah Demers, a Yale physicist, tells me. “Which is something we're trying to do all the time, but that would really force us.”

An alternative possibility is that the the answers do exist, but they exist in a different universe. If the LHC can't find answers to questions like “why is the Higgs so light?” scientists might grow to accept a more speculative out-of-the-box idea where there are tons of universes all existing parallel to one another. It could be that “in most of [the universes], the Higgs boson is really heavy, and in only in very unusual universes [like our own] is the Higgs boson so light that life can form,” Cranmer says.

Basically: On the scale of our single universe, it might not make sense for the Higgs to be light. But if you put it together with all the other possible universes, the math might check out.

The problem with this theory is that if heavier Higgs bosons exist in different universes, there's no possible way to observe them. “Which is why a lot of people hate it, because they consider it to be anti-science,” Cranmer says. “It might be impossible to test.”

Way back in 2012, scientists hailed the doscovery of the Higgs, speculating that it could one day make light speed travel possible by "un-massing" objects or allow huge items to be launched into space by "switching off" the Higgs. CERN physicist Albert de Roeck likened it to the discovery of electricity, when he said humanity could never have imagined its future applications.

"What's really important for the Higgs is that it explains how the world could be the way that it is in the first millionth of a second in the Big Bang," de Roeck told AFP. "Can we apply it to something? At this moment my imagination is too small to do that."

Physicist Ray Volkas said "almost everybody" was hoping that, rather than fitting the so-called Standard Model of physics -- a theory explaining how particles fit together in the Universe -- the Higgs boson would prove to be "something a bit different".

"If that was the case that would point to all sorts of new physics, physics that might have something to do with dark matter," he said, referring to the hypothetical invisible matter thought to make up much of the universe.

Maybe the secret is hiding in Nature, awaiting its discovery.

The image at the top of the page shows γ-rays emitted from the Galactic Center, giving the LHC a firm target in its hunt for dark matter. (A. Mellinger, CMU; T. Linden, Univ. of Chicago/NASA Goddard)

The Daily Galaxy via Motherboard and Vox --read more of Brian Resnick's post here.

Supersymmetry? --"Standard Model of the Universe Fails to Explain Dark Matter or Dark Energy"

New CERN LHC Experiments --"Predict a Boson Beyond the Higgs That Could Unlock Clues to Existence of Dark Matter"

"Beyond the God Particle" --China to Trump CERN's LHC: Twice the Size and Seven Times as Powerful

astronomy

1474624534000

astronomy

%feed
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond/~3/ieBhVxowD9A/lost-in-the-cosmos-universe-shown-to-be-same-in-any-direction.html
"Lost in the Cosmos" --Universe Shown to Be Same In Any Direction

Looking out into the night sky, we see a clumpy universe: planets orbit stars in solar systems and stars are grouped into galaxies, which in turn form enormous galaxy clusters. But cosmologists assume this effect is only local: that if we look on sufficiently large scales, the universe is actually uniform.

The vast majority of calculations made about our universe start with this assumption: that the universe is broadly the same, whatever your position and in whichever direction you look. "We find overwhelming evidence that the universe is the same in all direction," says physicist Stephen Feeney at London'd Imperial College, who worked with a team led by Daniela Saadeh at University College London to search for patterns in the observed CMB. The results, published today in the journal Physical Review Letters, show that none were a match, and that the universe is most likely directionless.

If, however, the universe was stretching preferentially in one direction, or spinning about an axis in a similar way to the Earth rotating, this fundamental assumption, and all the calculations that hinge on it, would be wrong.

Now, scientists from University College London and Imperial College London have put this assumption through its most stringent test yet and found only a 1 in 121,000 chance that the universe is not the same in all directions.

To do this, they used maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation: the oldest light in the universe created shortly after the Big Bang. The maps were produced using measurements of the CMB taken between 2009 and 2013 by the European Space Agency's Planck satellite, providing a picture of the intensity and, for the first time, polarisation (in essence, the orientation) of the CMB across the whole sky.

Previously, scientists had looked for patterns in the CMB map that might hint at a rotating universe. The new study considered the widest possible range of universes with preferred directions or spins and determined what patterns these would create in the CMB.

A universe spinning about an axis, for example, would create spiral patterns, whereas a universe expanding at different speeds along different axes would create elongated hot and cold spots

Four parts of a map of the universe, each showing a different pattern:

Dr Feeney said: “This work is important because it tests one of the fundamental assumptions on which almost all cosmological calculations are based: that the universe is the same in every direction. If this assumption is wrong, and our universe spins or stretches in one direction more than another, we'd have to rethink our basic picture of the universe.

“We have put this assumption to its most exacting examination yet, testing for a huge variety of spinning and stretching universes that have never been considered before. When we compare these predictions to the Planck satellite's latest measurements, we find overwhelming evidence that the universe is the same in all directions.”

Lead author Daniela Saadeh from University College London added: “You can never rule it out completely, but we now calculate the odds that the universe prefers one direction over another at just 1 in 121,000. We're very glad that our work vindicates what most cosmologists assume. For now, cosmology is safe.”

The work was kindly supported by the Perren Fund, IMPACT fund, Royal Astronomical Society, Science and Technology Facilities Council, Royal Society, European Research Council, and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

‘How isotropic is the Universe?' by D. Saadeh, S. M. Feeney, A. Pontzen, H. V. Peiris and J. D. McEwen, is published in Physical Review Letters

The Daily Galaxy via Imperial College London

Image credit top of page static.srcdn.com

"Gravity May Answer Last Great Unknown in Standard Model of Physics"

First Stars Younger Than Thought --"May Impact Understanding Dark Components of the Universe"

ESA's Gaia Satellite --Unveils a Stunning 3-D Map of Our Milky Way Galaxy

ESA Releases First Images of Philae on Comet

Infant Galaxy Clusters --"May Reveal Role of Dark Matter in Shaping the Universe"

astronomy

1474624524000

astronomy

%feed
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond/~3/BJaa491Y_H4/ocean-fossils-in-antarcticas-mountains-point-to-potential-dramatic-rises-in-sea-levels.html
Ocean Fossils in Antarctica's Mountains Point to Potential Dramatic Rises in Sea Levels

Tiny ocean fossils distributed widely across rock surfaces in the Transantarctic Mountains point to the potential for a substantial rise in global sea levels under conditions of continued global warming, according to a new study.

The study, led by Northern Illinois University geologist Reed Scherer, indicates the massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) has a history of instability during ancient warm periods and could be vulnerable to significant retreat and partial collapse induced by future climate change. The EAIS is the world's largest ice sheet and most significant player in potential sea-level rise.

The evidence is in the microscopic ocean fossils, known as diatoms, the researchers say.
For decades, scientists have been embroiled in a heated debate over how the diatoms, which were first discovered in the 1980s, became incorporated into the "Sirius Group," a series of glacial sedimentary rocks exposed along the Transantarctic Mountains.

One group of scientists argued that the diatoms accumulated in a marine basin after ice sheet retreat and later, after it got much colder, were moved by the growing glaciers to the mountains. This interpretation suggested a dramatic retreat of the ice sheet between 3 million and 4.5 million years ago, during warm periods of the Pliocene Epoch. But other scientists contended the ice sheet remained stable for at least the past 5 million years, arguing that the diatoms were carried by the wind and deposited atop older sediments.

The new study, published Sept. 20, in Nature Communications, suggests that both sides were partially right and partially wrong—the ice sheet did retreat, and the wind did carry the diatoms.

Using sophisticated ice sheet and climate models, Scherer and colleagues found the ice sheet experienced a series of retreats and re-advances during the Pliocene warm periods, but the retreats were not as dramatic as some scientists earlier suggested. They were significant enough to uncover bays of open seawater in the Aurora and Wilkes basins, with conditions ripe for production of copious amounts of plankton diatoms.

But the retreat removed the weight of the ice, allowing previously submerged land strewn with diatoms to rise above sea level over the next few thousand years. Cyclonic winds then sent plumes of diatoms airborne, depositing them across the Transantarctic Mountains.

"The computer models indicate that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet retreated during the Pliocene by some 300 miles into the interior of East Antarctica," Scherer said, adding that most of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet also disappeared. "So our findings indicate the Sirius diatoms were windblown, but they came from areas of reduced ice in East Antarctica, where extensive diatom-rich lands became exposed to the air."

The Antarctic ice cap holds the majority of the world's fresh water, and a substantial melting and retreat of the ice sheet in the future would result in raised sea levels, with devastating consequences for the world's coastal regions.

"During certain intervals of Pliocene warmth, the sea level could have been as much as 75 feet higher than it is now," Scherer said.

"The rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuel has now elevated the concentration to 400 parts per million, matching for the first time the levels of the warm Pliocene," he added. "This makes the old debate about whether the ice sheet was notably smaller than it is now more relevant than ever."

Models used for the research were developed by co-authors David Pollard of Pennsylvania State University and Robert M. DeConto of the University of Massachusetts.

"The question is always how quickly could sea levels rise, and we're probably looking at several hundred years into the future before reaching a peak high that matches the Pliocene, but the problem of progressive sea-level rise is already upon us," Scherer said. "The DeConto/Pollard models assume we continue to burn fossil fuels at the current pace. If we make improvements for the better, ice sheet reduction could be significantly delayed. We'd still have a problem, but we could keep the sea-level rise small and slow."

The new research represents the first published study on the Sirius fossils that presents data directly related to or indicative of East Antarctic Ice Sheet thickness during the Pliocene.

"This latest work, together with other recent ice sheet modeling studies by DeConto and Pollard, clearly demonstrates the sensitivity of modern ice sheets to warming," Scherer said. "No model is ever perfect, but these scientists use sophisticated physics and the latest data to produce atmospheric and ice models that are truly state-of-the-art, providing a picture of the past and glimpse into our future."

"This is another piece of a jigsaw puzzle that the community is rapidly putting together, and which appears to show that the ice sheets are more sensitive to warming than we had hoped," said climate scientist Richard Alley. "If humans continue to warm the climate, we are likely to commit to large and perhaps rapid sea-level rise that could be very costly. No one piece of the puzzle shows this, but as they fit together, the picture is becoming clearer."

The Daily Galaxy via Northern Illinois University

Asteroid Impact 3.3 Billion Years Ago "Dwarfed the Dinosaur-Extinction Event" (Thanksgiving Holiday Feature)

Rocky Planet with a 3-Day Orbit --"Only 21 Light-Years Away"

NASA's Virtual Planetary Laboratory --A New "Systems" Approach to the Search for Alien Life

astronomy

1474610409000

gaia

%feed
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2016/09/23/fighting-wildlife-crime-rangers-face-serious-dangers-video/
Fighting Wildlife Crime: Rangers Face Serious Dangers (Video)

There are many challenges rangers face, says Fyson Suwedi, in this video. A Senior Assistant Parks and Wildlife Officer in Malawi's Lengwe National Park, he should know. “Poachers look at rangers as obstacles. They can do anything to make sure they get what they want. They can kill the rangers,” he says.

Suwedi points to a scar on his arm as proof of what can happen. “That's where one poacher thew an axe and it hurt me,” he explains.

Poachers also kill the animals the rangers are trying to protect. “This happens especially when the poacher injures the animal,” he says. Animals do not differentiate between the ranger and the poacher, [and for the rangers, that is] another source of danger. “I lost a very good friend of mine,” Suwedi tells. “He was killed by a buffalo that was injured. The love for the work..it's like a gift. You cannot work without any challenges. We still work, even when we lose our friends,” Suwedi says.

Fighting Wildlife Crime on the Front Lines

This video interview with Fyson Suwedi is part of a series of interviews with the unsung heroes fighting wildlife crime on the front lines. Journalist and National Geographic Fellow Bryan Christy uses investigative journalism to expose illegal wildlife trafficking around the globe. He introduces the interview series in the video below:

Watch more videos in this series>>

Law enforcement officials from Africa recently participated in a global seminar and training summit in Washington, D.C., focusing on sharing intelligence, ideas and other collaboration. Read more about this below. Follow the link for a more comprehensive briefing.

"NG2-227-1854-X2-590x394" — Photograph by David Claypool

Uniting Against Organized Wildlife Crime

Law enforcement agencies, NGOs, and business leaders gathered from across the world in Washington recently to share information and expertise and organize a concerted strategy to combat the global scourge of wildlife trafficking.

The unprecedented collaboration was heralded at the National Geographic Society's headquarters on Tuesday, at an event held against the backdrop of recent news of a catastrophic plunge in the last wild populations of African elephants and other species. The meeting also set the stage for CITES CoP17, a conference in Johannesburg at the end of this month that will bring more than a hundred governments together to review the planet's biggest wildlife challenges and opportunities.

Be Informed, Get the Full briefing »

More About National Geographic's Contributions to Fighting Wildlife Crime

National Geographic Society

Saving Big Cats: Around the world, trophy hunting, habitat loss, and conflict with humans are putting big cats at great risk. See what we're doing to help.
A Voice for Elephants: Elephants may be large, heavy and thick-skinned, but they are being threatened with extinction in the wild by poaching for their ivory, and by human impact on their habitats. “A Voice for Elephants” is a resource for information about this critical species, a forum for discussion, and a rally point for those who want to stand with them.

National Geographic Media

The National Geographic Special Investigations Unit (SIU) is dedicated to shining light on commercial-scale exploitation of wildlife and other valued resources, identifying weaknesses in national and international efforts to protect wildlife, and empowering institutions and individuals working for a better world. Stories cover a range of human activity, from crime to heroism. You can find all of the SIU's stories at Wildlife Watch.

gaia

1474600762000

science

%feed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-d-shaw/cannabis-and-cancer_b_12119642.html?utm_hp_ref=science&ir=Science
Cannabis And Cancer

With ever-increasing costs of conventional healthcare, and continuing issues with insurance coverage, alternative medicine is growing in popularity. Inasmuch as it is still officially denigrated, cannabis is about as "alternative" as it gets.

This, despite no shortage of historic references to cannabis, or its extract marijuana (prepared from the dried and crushed flowers and leaves of the plant) as to its medicinal effects. Chinese Emperors Fu Hsi (2900 BC) and Shen Nung (2700 BC) are said to have touted its healing effects. Some authorities claim that the anointing oil in Exodus 30:22-25 contained cannabis, and that "cane" is a mistranslation from the original Hebrew (1450 BC). Getting more into modern times, marijuana was added to the US Pharmacopeia in 1850, and its use is indicated for an astonishingly diverse litany of illnesses.

According to this PDQ Review from the National Cancer Institute, and referring to this illustration, cannabis may lessen the progression of cancer cells. It also alleviates pain, lowers inflammation and decreases anxiety.

An oft-cited study from 1996 on mice and rats suggested that cannabinoids (any of various chemical constituents of cannabis) may have a protective effect against the development of hepatic adenoma tumors and hepatocellular carcinoma. The study also noted decreased incidences of benign tumors in other organs (mammary gland, uterus, pituitary, testis, and pancreas).

A review article (2006)—appearing in the British Journal of Pharmacology—entitled "Cannabinoids and cancer: pros and cons of an antitumour strategy" listed few cons, and displayed a largely positive picture:

Cannabinoids have the advantage of being well tolerated in animal studies and they do not present the generalized toxic effects of most conventional chemotherapeutic agents. Cannabinoids selectively affect tumor cells more than their nontransformed counterparts that might even be protected from cell death. Even if further in vivo research is required to clarify [their] action in cancer and especially to test their effectiveness in patients, the cannabinoid system represents a promising target for cancer treatment.

As to the palliative aspects of Cannabis during cancer treatment, the official version of things is... curious. According to a recent document from PubMed Health...

Several controlled clinical trials have been performed, and meta-analyses of these support a beneficial effect of cannabinoids (dronabinol and nabilone) on chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (N/V) compared with placebo. Both dronabinol and nabilone are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the prevention or treatment of chemotherapy-induced N/V in cancer patients.

Thus, the FDA has approved two drugs, which are nothing more than synthetic versions of chemicals in cannabis. In addition to the anti-nausea/vomiting properties, dronabinol is used to treat loss of appetite in people with AIDS. Analgesic properties are also claimed for both drugs.

However, owing to the bizarre stigmatization of cannabis, and the difficulty in obtaining proper clearance to study it in clinical settings, there is only a limited amount of published research available on the palliative properties of the source plant itself. Yet, anecdotal evidence of its effects is widely disseminated.

The website Surviving Mesothelioma offers inspiring stories of several people who have survived this rare form of cancer. The disease develops from cells of the mesothelium, a membrane that protects the body's major internal organs and allows them freedom of movement (for example, lung contractions). The five-year survival rate is poor—at nine percent or less—and has not improved much over the last 30 years.

The chronicle of Andy Ashcraft is quite compelling. He was diagnosed with late stage pleural mesothelioma in 2010, and given three months to a year. Far from being resigned to this fate, Andy and his wife investigated and embarked on alternative therapies, including cannabis oil. Six years later, alive and well, he really has beaten the odds, and is another one of those "anecdotal" cases of an alternative approach success.

The stigmatization of cannabis is fading, but it won't come easy. After all, lining up on the other side are Big Pharma and Big Law Enforcement. But if a therapy works, and it costs less...

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

science

1474598726000

gaia

%feed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gay-browne/landscaping-for-life_b_12144392.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
Landscaping for Life

"2016-09-23-1474596080-5300299-image11.jpeg"

After five years of watching the drought in California get worse and worse, I like everyone else, have given up hope of rain. This has prompted me to take on the project of re-landscaping my home to make it drought tolerant.

In order to prepare for the uncertain future, it required me to rethink how and what was planted in my yard so as to maximize what little rainfall there is. Rainwater harvesting should be the first thought, not an afterthought.

While I know enough about water conservation and sustainability to know the importance of the choices of shrubbery and how everything is supposed to be laid out, I was feeling overwhelmed and knew I needed help. So, I reached out to my good friend Scout who is a landscape designer and owner of Lush Leaf Landscape Design and is now pursuing her dream and degree in Environmental Horticulture at Santa Barbara City College.

Scout is the type of woman who can handle anything with ease and grace all the while looking like she just stepped out of the pages of a New York fashion magazine. Her trademark style is unmistakable and effortlessly executed whether it's a dinner she's cooking or designing a garden.

Within an hour of walking around our yard, she had me looking at the project much differently and convinced me it was indeed possible to transform the gray hard-packed soil of our property into something that was once again beautiful as well as environmentally friendly. She recommended that we build the yard landscape around rain water.

The first step was to bring in Fred Hunter from Dreamscape, a landscape design, installation, and maintenance company that specializes in green landscape design and sustainable, organic gardening.

Fred received his degree in Environment, Population and Organismic Biology from the University of Colorado in Boulder. He told me that it was in learning to garden in the severe drought of the eighties that his passion was born that inspired him to study permaculture design at Santa Barbara City College later. It was there he decided that the focus of Dreamscape would be on greywater and rainwater harvesting. Today he is one of the founders of the Sweetwater Collaborative, a non-profit dedicated to raising awareness of water-wise landscaping practices and is considered one of the leading experts in drought tolerant landscapes.

Fred began to educate me as to how to create water beds in the garden that store rainwater and release it as it is needed. While some trees need supplemental water, if the infrastructure is created a mature tree can capture rainwater in the aquifer. Shaded landscapes retain soil moisture, so trees with greater canopies are better choices. Some like the Silver Dollar Gum Eucalyptus are more resilient and use less water.

A water-wise rain garden can stimulate beneficial insect populations through habitat and plant biodiversity. Rain gardens that include an artfully constructed creek bed can move water from gutter downspouts into rainwater infiltration systems. By leveraging our personal watersheds around the home such as rooftops, a meager annual rainfall can sustain a drought tolerant garden. The result is aesthetically pleasing at the same time as it facilitates biodiversity and habitat creation. As Andy Lipkis, President and Founder of Tree People suggest, we need to take actions that work with nature both in the short term and long term.

Going through this process has taught me more than how to design a green and sustainable landscape. In the conversations with Fred and Scout and in my research, I realized that the way we were talking about designing in the garden was really a metaphor for life.

We live on a planet with almost 7.5 billion people. We have limited land that can be used to farm. We have limited access to water we can drink and have pushed the boundaries of clean air. It is imperative that we learn to work with the resources that we have and develop new technologies to maximize and value their efficiencies so that we can not only sustain ourselves, but thrive as a planet and together grow our community of green hearts.

Scout and I taking a hike ;)

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

gaia

1474598724000

gaia

%feed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-peknik/is-that-rabbit-fever-i-smell_b_12120290.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
Is That Rabbit Fever I Smell?
There had been only one serial death mystery brewing on Albuquerque's west side in late summer, but now there seems to be two. The first one is a string of dead dogs on the west side of Albuquerque. According to KOAT news, more than forty dogs on the west side have been found dead by their owners in the last month, and several others have been reported sick. Symptoms included lethargy, lack of appetite, liver failure, kidney failure, weakness, and no interest in drinking water.

The second mystery may or may not be related to the first. Last Saturday, this commentator, who lives on the west side, found a dead adult rabbit in a public walkway during a walk in his neighborhood with his beagle Ruby. Knowing about the dog deaths and that plague and other diseases carried by rodents are present in the Land of Enchantment, he carefully bagged the cottontail, enshrined it in a closed container, and reported it to 311 who sent it on to Albuquerque's Environmental Health department.

When he got connected to city urban biologist Nick Peterson and told him about the poor rabbit, Nick was concerned enough to come to my house right away to fetch it to see if it could have died from tularemia (also called "rabbit fever"), which he said exists in Albuquerque, mostly in the foothills and the bosque on the east side of the river. But he said, presumably because of the spate of dog deaths, he would like to examine the deceased to make sure that tularemia has not crossed the river.

Item: the New Mexico Department of Health has confirmed 10 cases of plague and 19 cases of tularemia (also called "rabbit fever") in dogs and cats ("higher than average") this year in Bernalillo, Los Alamos, Rio Arriba, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Taos and Torrance counties.

Item: Plague and tularemia are bacterial diseases of rodents and rabbits. Human contraction of plague is generally from flea bites, while human contraction of tularemia is from deer fly bites, Department of Health veterinarian Dr. Paul Ettestad. These illnesses also can be transmitted by direct contact with infected animals, including pets.

Item: "We are seeing recent die-offs of rabbits in several areas of New Mexico from both plague and tularemia," Department of Health veterinarian Dr. Paul Ettestad recently announced; in 2013, the New Mexico Department of Health announced that cases of tularemia, a potentially serious disease carried by rodents, ticks and fleas, were on the rise and had been found in several locations around the state. two cats and one dog from Santa Fe County, a dog from Los Alamos County and a cat from Torrance County

Item: However, what is most alarming is in July the City of Albuquerque Environmental Health Department, the New Mexico Department of Health, and the Bernalillo County Health Protection Section confirmed two cases of human tularemia in Bernalillo County. One of the individuals was likely infected in the bosque, Albuquerque's huge urban woodlands. They are a 74-year-old man and a 71-year-old woman. The woman is currently hospitalized but is improving, while the man has recovered. It is believed the illness was the result of a bite from an infected deer fly.

Item: Symptoms of plague and tularemia in humans are similar and include sudden onset of fever, chills, headache, weakness, swollen lymph nodes and possible infection at the bite site.

What is uncertain at this time is the reason for the deaths of the dogs (and the rabbit). When that is determined by the city's urban biologist, this commentator will report that.

Seedpods to Carry About
• Will Rogers:"If there are no dogs in heaven, then when I die, I want to go where they went. "
• John Steinbeck: " Tell about what we're gonna have in the garden and about the rabbits in the cages...Tell about that George." -Lennie in Of Mice and Men
• Aldo Leopold:"There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot."

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

gaia

1474598721000

gaia

%feed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephanie-feldstein/we-dont-need-another-bill_b_12144462.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
We Don't Need Another Billion People to Solve Climate Change
It shouldn't come as a surprise that the work of Travis Rieder and his colleagues on Population Engineering is getting a lot of airtime. NPR picked it up. Rieder himself has commented on the impact he, somewhat unwittingly, made. We at the Center for Biological Diversity even wrote about it. It's one of those topics that is as fascinating as it is terrifying. And in the pro-natalist world we live in, suggesting people have fewer children and that babies are part of the problem is a taboo that borders on offensive.

But Sam Mulopulos's Climate Change Requires Innovative Solutions, Not Population Control really takes the cake for missing the point. His hive mind argument claims that, rather than limit the number of people, we should be tapping that collective knowledge to solve climate change and, not only that, celebrate growing population as the solution. After all, according to this theory, more people equals more minds, and more ideas equals the solution to climate change.

There are three big reasons that logic doesn't work quite work out:

More people equals more emissions.

It could be the biggest coincidence that while human population has grown faster in the past fifty years than any other point in the history of our species, global temperature is also the highest it's been in the same time period. It could be a coincidence, but the majority of scientists agree that it isn't. Climate change is driven by human activities. Human activities, it should come as no surprise, are driven by human population. Therefore, the more of us, especially those of us in developed nations that consume many times more resources than other nations, the greater the threat to the environment.
Climate change is here - and so are the solutions.

We're already seeing the consequences of climate change in the form of extreme weather, droughts and melting ice caps. And if we don't do something about it right now, additional dangerous consequences are not only possible but likely to impact our future and our children's futures, as well as the future of countless other species we share the planet with. In other words, we can't wait for the babies born today to grow up in the hopes that some of them may come up with the magical mix of solutions to the climate crisis. And we don't need to - we already know how to curb emissions, for example by switching to a fully renewable, just energy system and shifting a more plant-based diet that reduces greenhouse gases caused by animal agriculture and food waste. We don't suffer from a lack of ideas to solve the climate crisis, but from a lack of leadership and vision from decision-makers and industry.

Worse still, climate change is having the greatest impact on people who aren't creating the problem and who often have the least access to resources, including reproductive healthcare. This is especially egregious since population growth makes it even harder for vulnerable communities to adapt to the pressures of a changing climate and environment. Instead of focusing on flooding the free market with ideas, let's use the ones we have create a world where everyone has a chance to thrive.
We aren't the only species on the planet.

Sure, Malthus was wrong. Really wrong. And classist and racist. Let's not give that guy any awards. But that doesn't change the fact that, even though we've used technology to save our ever-multiplying butts in the past, A) we can't count on that in the future, B) for the nearly one billion people who don't have food security, fears over famine are still a real threat and C) the food solutions we've come up with come at a steep cost to other species.

Wild plants and animals are facing the crunch of our growing human population. Worldwide 12 percent of mammals, 12 percent of birds, 31 percent of reptiles, 30 percent of amphibians and 37 percent of fish are threatened with extinction. And 99 percent of currently threatened species are at risk from human activities, primarily those driving habitat loss, climate change and the introduction of invasive species. Most biologists agree that we have entered the planet's sixth mass extinction event, with animals and plants going extinct at the fastest rate since dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

Mulopulos did get one thing right: We have a lot of big problems and we need many minds working to solve them. But that doesn't mean we need more minds. We need to make sure that the 7.4 billion people already here have the education and empowerment to help determine to future of the planet.

That means improving access to contraception and education for women and girls, which has been shown to lower fertility rates and improve lives (especially for women), and using mainstream media and discontinuing incentives (such as tax breaks) to encourage people to have fewer children without ever forcing anyone to not have the children they want, if they want them. In fact, unlike the specter of coercion often raised by those opposed to addressing population growth, none of these solutions are forcing anyone to do anything. They're about expanding rights and increasing opportunity so everyone has a say in solving these problems.

We need to come at the climate crisis from all sides, including how population pressure makes it harder for any solutions to work. Advocating for a brake check on our growing human population has to be part of the answer along with changing consumption patterns and addressing waste, trading fossil fuels for renewable energy like distributed solar and rethinking how and what we eat. We can start with removing the policy barriers that are making it harder for people and communities to institute the solutions to climate change we've already thought up.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

gaia

1474594270000

gaia

%feed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dereck-joubert/consume-or-conserve-now-t_b_12104406.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
Consume Or Conserve? Now That Is The Question
The Convention of International Trade in Animals (CITES) is the organization that monitors, restricts or allows and licenses trade in animals. Within days now, world wildlife experts will be gathering in Johannesburg at the CoP 17 meeting, the event that determines the next round of changes in status. In reality it is a sideshow of what species will be tipped to go extinct next and who has the political clout to win the battle for (or against) these 35,000 species.

It is here that the major hunting lobbies fight for the right to shoot lions, (despite them being down in population number by 95% over the last 60 years) and polar bears (now back open to be hunted, despite their desperate lives on melting icecaps).

There seem to be three species that deserve our attention right now, the three pillars of Africa: lions, elephants and rhinos. Each is in trouble. Next week we hope that sanity, and not politics, will prevail. I wonder if this age of consuming of wildlife will ever be over.

Stopping the killing of these animals for sport seems like a good way to reduce the destruction. Many hunters will tell you that it is all about conservation. Sadly the argument has more holes in it than Cecil the Lion, with less than 0.27% of the average hunting country's GDP coming from hunting, and even then little or nothing going back to conservation or to the surrounding communities. 'Sport' hunting is probably responsible for about ¼ of the annual decline in lions alone. This is something we can stop. And we should. The hunting era is over.

But what is the next era?

On September 22nd, World Rhino Day, the two African rhino species may well be even more pivotal in determining what that next era is. Rhinos are trapped in a political quagmire where the world is pretty unanimous that killing rhinos to chop off their horns, to grind up into powder and mix with miscellaneous other things, from cow hooves to latex, to cure cancer is probably an awful idea. But there is a market for this rubbish. Poaching has increased phenomenally over the past 10 years. Just a decade ago Africa lost 6 rhinos a year. In 2014 that official number was up to 1,215. Then governments with high poaching decided to stop releasing figures but to say that the good news is that the 'increase in poaching was decreasing.' That is not a very comforting statement, especially when a 'decrease in the increase' of poaching may well be because of a decline in rhinos and they are now hard to find. Easy right? Ban it, shut it down.

Well a faction of, largely white farmers in South Africa argue that they have been successful in raising rhinos and they want to farm their horns. The argument then takes a turn. Some want to sell the horns to the East to fund conservation, others say it is their right to farm and sell no matter what. (The latter are more honest.) In fact, this is an argument that won in the Constitutional court in South Africa. Now Mr. De Beer can sell his horns to Mr. Claasens, but no one is sure what the end use will be because no one in the world, outside of China, Vietnam and Thailand thinks it is useful for anything at all. It isn't. There is strong evidence that consuming animal products like this could contaminate you, and there is nothing like a good dose of TB or Brucellosis or some other exotic disease to dampen your libido, not heighten it (as reported in the case of rhino horn!)

While this debate is going on people like the infamous Mr. Nivara, in Mozambique continue to operate into South Africa with relative impunity with organized poaching rings consisting of bands of three men: a shooter, a porter and a runner/water carrier.

The cost of horn on the streets of Vietnam is now over $108,000 a kg, that is worth three times what gold is (and cocaine.) A poaching unit receives about 8-12% of that, so the take home income is still a lot higher than an honest job in the Mozambique town of Masingier, where many live. It is in these dark markets of the world that the poaching and rhino trades carry on.

If we lift that ban on rhino horn the market suddenly gets a lot bigger and swells to nearly 2 billion people. The last rhinos (24,000) are never going to be able to produce this amount of legal horn, so the surge of demand will drown our wild rhinos in a short time. The gathering next week will send a signal to the world and to the poachers and traders. It will be a similar message that was delivered years go, when CITES agreed to allow some ivory trade. In advance of the announcement, just on rumor of it, ivory poaching soared and we saw ivory poaching increase to a scale where we now lose nearly 100 elephants a day and ivory prices increased 10 fold virtually overnight. This is a balance between risk and reward. If we increase the reward (making it legal, pushing prices up) we make it a lot more attractive to poachers. On the other hand, if we increase the risk, and reduce the reward, that is the formula for killing poaching and reducing the threat to these endangered species.

One way to do that is to move rhinos to greater protection. And that is what we are doing right now with Rhinos Without Borders, moving 100 rhinos to Botswana where the protection is bordering on severe. In fact, there is a shoot to kill policy on poachers, and while we will all see increased poaching levels everywhere in Africa, it is still the safest and most protected place in Africa. Moving rhinos and distributing the DNA from prior bottleneck situations in their past is a great and very well accepted conservation method, but mostly this is about actually doing something rather than standing by and hanging our heads in collective shame as the rhinos, these lumbering, almost dinosaur-like giants walk their way into extinction. I am not sure that there should be an international body for trading in animals come to think of it. Hasn't that era of trade come and gone as well?

Link to the Great Plains donation site: https://gopro-greatplains.charity.org/

All photos: (c)Beverly Joubert

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

gaia

1474591249000

gaia

%feed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/audra-rundle/10-easy-family-changes-to_b_12100958.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
10 Easy Family Changes Toward Waste Reduction
Do you ever think about where things go after you throw them away? Really think about it? Do you picture an overflowing landfill, imagine the accompanying nauseating stench, or think about how unnatural and scary the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is?

I have been thinking about these things since college when I first really learned about them. At the time, it scared the hell out of me and immediately started making personal changes to do my part to not contribute to more garbage in this world. Over time, however, I fell out of many of those practices, as I got caught up in the hullabaloo of work, starting a family, hobbies - life! - I convinced myself that I "deserved a break" and it was okay to take the easy route and use disposable things on a daily basis. Although it was shoved into a corner of my mind, the guilt of it all remained - looming. Finally, I read Bea Johnson's book, Zero Waste Home, and received the swift kick in the rear back to action that I have been needing.

I imagine I had the same thoughts most people would have if considering making some changes - even if they are for a healthier lifestyle. I worried it would be hard to give some conveniences up, hard to remember everything when headed to the grocery store, hard to explain to my young children why we are making some changes, hard to explain to my friends and family without feeling silly or perhaps judged, and, of course, I worried it would somehow end up being expensive.

Nearly two months into our efforts of reducing waste, however, I am pleasantly surprised at the outcome. It has been far easier than I imagined - and we have saved money. Here are 10 changes my family has made that were relatively simple and have been permanently adopted into our lifestyles:

1. Vinegar and baking soda - the cure-alls! How have we been duped by marketers into believing it is necessary to buy a separate bottle for each cleaning task in our home? A simple mixture of 2/3 white vinegar to 1/3 water in a spray bottle will clean anything from your kitchen, to the bathroom, to the windows. Vinegar includes no added chemicals and kills 99.9% of germs, so it is absolutely no health threat to your family. Less than $10 will buy a reusable spray bottle and gallon jug of vinegar.

2. Bring my own bags - everywhere! People seem to be catching onto the idea of bringing their own bags to the grocery store, but why stop there? Why not bring those same canvas bags to Target and the drug store?

My family also bought a pack of eco bags for our produce and reuse those each week, rather than taking five or so plastic bags each time to wrap our wet or loose produce in. Every family using "just a few" plastic bags each week very quickly adds up to a LOT of plastic - much of which ends up in a landfill.

3. Reusable cups - Each member of the family has his or her own reusable cup, so we all agreed to adopt the rule: If you forget your cup, you are out of luck. In other words, be responsible for a single cup; if you forget your cup, then you do not buy the desired drink. There have been a few days where I really felt I shot myself in the foot on this one. It is easy to forget things when you are bustling around in the morning trying to wrangle kids into the car, and I forgot my cup on a number of occasions. Still, I (begrudgingly) stuck to the rule and by the time I got home and made my own cup of coffee, I felt better for having made the right choice. Saving $4 per cup of joe helped ease the pain too.

4. Think Compost: I am embarrassed to say that it was not until making these conscious changes that I realized the futility of caring about what I bought and threw away - or even put into the recycling bin - when I use plastic bags to line the cans. I can fill garbage bags will all the compostable stuff I want, but it is not going to fully compost any time soon while tied tight in a plastic bag. We switched to compostable bags for about a dollar more per box.

I also learned that more than just food scraps can be composted. I now empty the dust pan, my stray hairs from my brush, and the dryer lint into the compost bin. The change has been as simple as remembering to put things in one bin instead of the other.

5. Jars for food storage. I love this change the most. Not only does it look nice in the pantry, but we are wasting less food. Instead of things falling behind packaging or getting lost in the dark corners of our pantry, our snack choices are always right there, fully visible through the glass, reminding us they are ready to be enjoyed.

An unexpected side-effect of this is also that we have been snacking healthier, as we now fill our jars (directly in the store) in the bulk section, and the choices there tend to be healthier with fewer, if any, preservatives. (Granted, we skip the bulk candy section.)

6. Metal razor. When I thought about why I buy disposable razors over and over, I could not come up with a good answer. What a waste of money, time, and resources! They work for a few months and then go to a landfill. Instead, I spent about $30 to get a stainless steel razor with replaceable blades. So long as I keep the blade clean and dry between uses, it will last 5-6 months, then I simply replace only the blade. That is a lot less going to a landfill than an entire razor.

7. Showering smarter. I put a simple 3-gallon bucket in our shower to catch the water that falls while we wait for it to warm up. Why send all that down the drain? Instead, I empty it every couple of days into our garden or other plants around the house. I also started turning the water off when shaving and soaping up. It just ran down the drain during that time anyway, so why waste it?

8. Thoughtful clothing. I went through my and my childrens' closet making a cutthroat clothing selection. We all had more clothes than we needed. If we did not wear it on a regular basis, it was removed and donated, so people who need those items and will put them to good use could access them. Each of our clothing selection ended up being halved. A great after-effect is that this also helped organize the closets and make it far easier to see our clothing, know what we have, and decide what to wear each morning. What parent does not love a good morning time saver?

9. Junk mail. You do not want it anyway, right? Think of how much mail goes directly from your mailbox to your recycle bin, not even opened. Multiple that by all the houses in your neighborhood, county, State, and you get my drift - it is an unsettling waste of paper and resources to deliver it just to turn around and pick it back up to recycle.

I went online to CatalogChoice.org and opted out of receiving any catalogs at all. For all the pre-sorted junk mail we get daily, I have started writing on it "Rejected. Return to sender. Take me off your mailing list" and just leaving it in the mailbox for the mailman to return to whomever sent it. Over time, this should at least reduce the amount of junk mail we receive. Every paper helps.

The remaining mail I receive now goes in a designated box in my kitchen. I save paper with blank sides and envelopes to write my grocery lists on or let my children draw and color on. Brightly colored ads are saved for my girls to practice their scissor skills with and do other arts and crafts with. Since we also got rid of our wrapping paper, they use some ads and old color book pages to wrap gifts well.

10. Gifts. I expected his to be the hardest part of our changes, particularly worrying about how my children (nearing 5 and 3) would take it. I did not want them to think they would not be receiving gifts for birthdays and holidays anymore, but I did want them to understand that gifts come in all forms - not just material things from stores - and these "other forms" are what we will be focusing on more. I suggested we have some gifts for the holidays this year be in the form of experiences. We came up with fun ideas and they are excited for those times to come.

We also got rid of all of our wrapping paper and have fun coming up with alternative ways to wrap gifts that used biodegradable, reusable, or perhaps no wrapping at all. Because I sew, our favorite solution is to dip into my fabric stash and use that as wrapping (held shut with cooking twine). After the gift is opened, the fabric can simply be returned to the stash to either be used to wrap the next gift or sewn into something else.

Finally, knowing we cannot completely control the incoming gifts from others, I started the conversation with them about picking a certainly number of agreed-upon gifts to keep, and donating the rest. Thus far, they are on board with this idea. My nearly-5-year-old is particularly excited to donate to another child in need.

Focusing on waste reduction in our household has been an adventure, but I have not felt for a single moment that it was not worth the effort and time. Like any change, it gets easier and more natural each day. I love teaching my children to be more responsible humans, doing whatever they can to show respect to themselves, others, and the planet. We only get one life, so why would we do anything other than try to live it out best each day?

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

gaia

1474584329000

gaia

%feed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-emerson/cruise-ships-and-icebergs_b_12093802.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
Cruise Ships And Icebergs Should Not Mix; The Arctic Is Not Ice-Free
Fortunately, a few days ago, the cruise ship, Crystal Serenity, docked safely in New York having passed through the Northwest Passage, the first ever by a traditional cruise ship without an ice-strengthened hull. Its transit through the Arctic created considerable media interest. But it also leaves in its wake a tidal wave of misinformation about the current condition of the Arctic and its melting glaciers. What has been missed is a titanic problem: icebergs, more of them, and larger than ever before.

Icebergs created potentially very hazardous conditions for the safety of the passengers aboard the ship, whose capacity is more than 1,700. Crystal Serenity sailed through an area often carpeted with hull-piercing blocks of sea ice and massive icebergs. If an accident occurred and rescue was required, the U.S. is down to one operational icebreaker, the kind of vessel that can safely get to a damaged or ice-trapped ship. Rescue might have had to be done by Canadian or Russian vessels. The Arctic Ocean is remote and treacherous.

Unfortunately, the theme of many media stories about this passage was an "increasingly ice-free Arctic." Today the Arctic is far from ice-free, a term usually defined as less than 10 percent ice coverage. Satellite imaging proves at least one-third of the Arctic Ocean is still ice-covered, even now in September at its annual minimum.

"2016-09-20-1474332268-502230-seaiceevent.PNG"

The very misleading--and dangerous--wrong assumption is that as the glaciers melt that the region will become increasingly ice-free. As John Englander points out in his bestselling book, High Tide On Main Street: Rising Sea Level and the Coming Coastal Crisis, which was recently selected by Politico as one of the fifty most important books, the opposite is true. As the Arctic melts and opens up, luring cargo and cruise ships, there will be a greater risk and more opportunities for a collision with icebergs than ever before. Even having an escort ship, as did the Crystal Serenity, does not solve the problem, as the huge blocks can "bounce" back colliding into the hull.

"2016-09-20-1474332425-2002897-icebreakerhealy.PNG"

The different forms of ice can be confusing, so it is worth clarifying the terms. Glaciers are the slow-moving "rivers" of ice on land, from Alaska, across Canada, Russia, Greenland and Norway that work their way to the sea. When they move past the supporting land, they break off, or "calve" into icebergs, the huge floating structures of freshwater, with 90% hidden below the surface. As the glaciers warm and speed up their journey to sea, they create more icebergs, which is likely to increase for decades as the warming continues and intensifies.

Somewhat different, the floating sea icethat has surrounded the North Pole for millions of years is mostly made from saltwater and does not ride as high as icebergs. That sea ice is thinning and breaking up into huge blocks that become a rubble field described as "pack ice," smaller than icebergs. Icebergs and pack ice can shift unpredictably, blocking restricted passages, often in just a matter of hours. And this ice can trap a ship or tear the hull apart if it is not built specifically as "ice-strengthened."

For example, glaciers in Greenland are spewing out more giant icebergs than ever, as the increased warming melts and speeds up the glaciers "calving"-- a term used to describe the breaking off of large massive chunks of ice that become icebergs. As Greenland continues to melt, which it's doing at a speed far faster than any of the computer modeling predicted, the production of icebergs will actually increase. But the melting of Greenland will not only create more icebergs, it will ultimately raise global sea levels. If all the ice on Greenland melted, which it is doing at an alarmingly fast pace, it will raise the level of the planet's seas by more than twenty feet.

This year, 2016, is already on track to become the third year in a row with the highest temperatures in recorded history, which began in 1880. Most disturbing is that the heat distribution is such that the high Arctic is even warmer, causing the ice to melt quicker and the glaciers to spawn more and more icebergs.

A few weeks ago, John Englander, the renowned oceanographer and former CEO for The Cousteau Society and The International SeaKeepers Society, stood on Jacobshavn Glacier with the head of the U.S. Coast Guard, Admiral Paul Zukunft, Senator Angus King (D-ME) Co-Chair of the Arctic Caucus, and leaders from the Joint Arctic Command (Denmark) surveying this collapsing glacier and the huge icebergs that it is spawning. The Jacobshavn Glacier is believed to be the glacier that calved the iceberg that sank the Titanic in 1912.

"2016-09-20-1474332495-7107450-jacobshavnglacier.PNG"

As Mr. Englander reported, "I was shocked by what I saw since last visiting Greenland in 2007; the ice sheet has melted far quicker than I could have imagined. And there is a fine gravel powder, which has been pulverized by the grinding ice sheet for thousands of years, carpeting the ice turning it dark gray, further speeding up the melting." (For further information about Greenland.)

Although we need to move quickly to implement renewable energy sources and create other methods to try to slow down the dire consequences of this warming, the immediate need is to begin to create and adopt specific plans to adapt to the inevitable impact that sea level rise will have on our economy and the viability of many of our coastal cities and towns and tourist destinations. To do this, we must understand the facts about sea level rise.

And so it is critically important that the public, the taxpayers, understand the facts and the urgent nature of the adaptation required--and its cost. For example, The US Coast Guard needs several additional icebreakers and other ice-strengthened ships if it is to have the capability to ensure the safety of lives and vessels--like the Crystal Serenity--as well as other missions to monitor the fast-changing conditions and to enforce various laws and regulations for the safety of all.

And it will need to adapt may of its bases to the rise of the seas.

The U.S. Congress and coastal states like Florida, California North Carolina would be prudent to assemble without delay bi-partisan committees staffed by engineers, architects, economists, urban planners, climate scientists et al to identify the local and specific vulnerabilities and the adaptations that will be necessary to keep people safe. The highest priority should include estimating the costs so that funding can be budgeted. Proper adaptation will ultimately require trillions and trillions of dollars.

I am relieved that the Crystal Serenity's passengers and crew are safe. And I urge the media to focus on the facts, not the romance of the Northwest Passage and the Arctic. As icebergs become more numerous and pose a greater danger to ships of all sizes and shapes, there will be no romance in a tragedy that could be avoided if the facts were known.

"2016-09-20-1474332606-547106-fjord.PNG"

Peter Emerson's avocation for over four decades has been ocean exploration and ocean policy. He was certified by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) as an aquanaut and has "saturated" in the world's only underwater scientific laboratory, the Aquarius. Peter worked closely with Captain Cousteau and John Englander, with whom he continues to collaborate. President Carter appointed Peter to the National Committee for Oceans and Atmosphere.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

gaia

1474584325000

gaia

%feed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-bill-van-bonn/sea-otter-awareness-week-_b_12106654.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
Sea Otter Awareness Week: Seeing Healthy Otters at Shedd Aquarium
When you hear or read the term "marine mammal," chances are you think immediately of a sleek dolphin, or a graceful whale. But not all marine mammals are of the hairless variety. Sea otters, like the five we have here at Shedd Aquarium in fact, set the record for hairiness! Sea otters have more hairs per square inch on their body surface than any other known animal.

Their hair is one of the amazing ways they have adapted to living in the cold ocean waters where they are found. Many other characteristics contribute to the remarkable nature of otters, and as the head veterinarian charged with their care at Shedd, I often get questions about them and what it is like to work with them as patients in my care.

"2016-09-20-1474396754-5731067-Image4.jpg"

Sea otters celebrate Sea Otter Awareness Week at Shedd with special enrichment treats.

With Sea Otter Awareness Week upon us, I think it's a fantastic time to talk about what goes into keeping these adorable and small (well, relatively small, they can grow up to 90 pounds!) animals healthy.

What sort of patients are otters? How do they receive a physical examination? What sorts of tests do you do and what do the results reveal?

When sea otters are babies, especially like the rescues at Shedd, they require almost constant assistance and are somewhat able to be handled by their caretakers without much special equipment or uniforms.

But that changes fast. As soon as they start taking solid foods, they start using their formidable teeth and aren't afraid to use them. They have very strong jaws and teeth adapted for cracking open shellfish, clams and urchins.

So, when we need to examine a sea otter, we take careful precautions when handling them. Then comes a thorough full body inspection. We listen to their heart, lungs and gastro-intestinal sounds with a stethoscope, feel for masses or asymmetry in their abdomens, any evidence of arthritis in their joints and anything else that may feel out of the ordinary.

We will usually also take blood samples or use X-rays to take images of internal organs. These tools give us huge amounts of valuable information about how their organs are working.

What are key take-aways and common findings from the examinations?

Most often our animals get a 'clean bill of health' after their routine assessments. However, on occasion, we will find things like mites that like to live in their noses. These are very common in otters, and almost every wild otter is home to a population of these mites.

As the animals age we also often see tartar accumulating on their teeth, and they need to have them cleaned and polished just like a dental hygienist does for a human's teeth! We sometimes see other age related issues from time-to-time, like cataracts or tumors.

The information we are able to gain from lab tests done on the blood samples we collect is very helpful to biologists in the field that are focused on understanding otter health and the impacts of environmental change on otter health. Many of our otters have contributed to studies comparing gene function of otters in the wild affected by becoming covered in oil to animals in human care that are genetically related but have never been exposed to oil. These important studies can only be done by carefully evaluating animals in our care and have resulted in multiple scientific publications advancing our understanding of what it takes to care for these animals wherever they live.

[For those interested, see for example Bowen et al., (including Van Bonn) 2012. Gene transcription in sea otters (Enhydra lutris); development of a diagnostic tool for sea otter and ecosystem health. Molecular Ecology Resources Vol. 12 pp. 67-74]

We've heard that orphan baby otters require 24-hour care. Why is that and what does it look like?

It's true, when rescued otters are very young and should still be nursing milk from their mothers, they require round-the-clock care when they arrive at Shedd. This is because in nature they nurse almost non-stop! It's the same for orphaned otters. Otters have very high metabolic rates which means they burn a lot of calories very quickly. Burning calories produces heat, which is another way otters stay warm in the cold oceans. The quickly growing baby otters mean they need to burn even more calories, which means feeding them often.

When still sucklings at Shedd, they receive a milk replacement designed to mimic mother's milk. As they get older they will then slowly transition to solid foods like clams, crabs, shrimps and urchins.
Orphaned otters also take a while to figure out how to care for their specialized coats of hair. In the wild, mothers help clean and condition the baby's fur by grooming them as they ride on mom's belly. Here at the aquarium, our trainers serve as surrogate moms, and do the grooming and conditioning which also requires around-the-clock care.

Once in a while, like any new baby, we might see one get a little colicky and gassy, and may require a little anti-gas medication which usually takes care of it. And fortunately, there are no diapers to change!

How can I learn more about sea otters living at Shedd and in the wild?

While animals in human care help us learn so much about the species, there is plenty more to be done to care for otters in the wild. During Sea Otter Awareness Week, it's vital to note the threats faced by sea otters on the west coast, particularly those caused by warming ocean temperatures that are a result of El Nino. While Shedd has dedicated resources toward rescue and rehab in that area, there is plenty everyone can do to keep their populations from further threats, which you can read about here.

Bill Van Bonn, DVM, is Shedd Aquarium's vice president of animal health. With more than 25 years of clinical veterinary experience, Dr. Van Bonn strengthens the aquarium's established animal care and health expertise, overseeing its diverse aquatic medicine initiatives as well as furthering innovative veterinary science at Shedd. Dr. Van Bonn specializes in preventive medicine and enhanced clinical veterinary services for aquatic animals, with a focus on marine mammals. At Shedd, he focuses on providing top-quality care and applying his knowledge of animal health to conservation of their counterparts in the wild. He also oversees the aquarium's Microbiome Project.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

gaia

1474581335000

gaia

%feed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ellis-hunnes/outright-disregard-for-li_b_12065180.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
Disregard for Life in Taiji

"2016-09-17-1474146814-4427664-sDOLPHINsmall.jpg"

Image Credit: Huffington Post Images

Some 50-60 years ago, marine-mammal amusement parks first began displaying cetaceans - namely killer whales and their smaller dolphin cousins. Many of these parks started in the United States and North America. Basically, we westerners began the plague, the hunt for dolphins.

Today, we are finally starting to see the wrongs of our ways. We are finally starting to understand the depth and breadth of dolphin intelligence, family structures, their likeness to us.

Unfortunately, this understanding seems to be too little too late. Now the rest of the world wants in on the money making scheme that is dolphin captivity.

From September 1 to end of February, I tune into the Dolphin Project's and Seashepherd's twitter, facebook, and livestream feeds every day. To see the images and to hear the words of the Dolphin Project's Cove Monitor Daniela about what she's seeing in the cove right now, as Dolphins are forced to give up their lives for our amusement, is not only disturbingly sad, but beyond evil.

Just recently, 42 bottlenose dolphins were taken captive, the remaining 40 or so juveniles released with little chance for survival, and at the same time 15-20 pilot whales were netted in the cove, without access to food, water, or freedom for 4 days. They were terrified, huddling together, weakened, innocent, awaiting their prescribed fate - a painful death for the large ones, and a dump-into-the ocean for two babies who will surely die without their pod.

The fisherman and trainers laugh about this - for them, it's a big pay day.

But, this is no laughing matter.

To take a free-living animal and remove it from everything it has ever known, for greed is inexcusable, immoral, unethical, and displays the very worst of mankind.

If I sound angry about the situation, it is because I am. Anger is a great motivator to want to do something, to educate, to inform those who have no idea what is going on.

The injustice of the situation cannot be understated. Hundreds of dolphins are captured every year in these hunts. Hundreds die and are unaccounted for. Others become slaves to the captive, entertainment industry. Suffering traumas, pain, and a lifetime of cacophony or starvation. Others are straight-up murdered.

If this were truly an historical or cultural tradition, they would not hide their faces, they would not hide behind tarps, they would not hide period. They would be proud to show off their tradition. But they do hide.

We know enough about dolphins now to know that they are intelligent, emotional, family-oriented creatures. We know that they have conversations, even though scientists seem to equivocate on this issue.

Just because I don't understand what two Japanese men are saying to each other doesn't mean they're not having a conversation. So, why would we be so naïve and egregiously arrogant to think dolphins don't have conversations with each other, just because we don't understand them?

To see the livestreams and images of dolphin and pilot whale families surrounding their young, behaving as we would in a similar situation, is not only sad, but it is cruel, beyond any shadow of a doubt. Anyone who thinks otherwise either doesn't have a heart, or has one so filled with hate, that this is all they know to do with it.

No creature (animal or human) should ever endure this type of stress, pain, suffering, or death. It shouldn't be us or them. We CAN live in harmony if we just let them be. Their only fault, was using a migration route that has been used by their ancestors for hundreds of thousands of years.

Their only fault was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. As I write this, I have to believe that the lives of the dolphins and pilot whales in the cove right now will not be in vain.

Share, share this with everyone you know. Take the pledge to not see any dolphin shows. Do you part to help stop these egregious displays of domination.

Twitter: recipe4survival
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RecipeForSurvival/
Planet Experts: http://www.planetexperts.com/author/danahunnes/

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

gaia

1474581330000

gaia

%feed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-pruett/standing-with-standing-ro_b_12048806.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
Standing With Standing Rock and Sacred Stone Camp
"Resistance to high-risk extreme extraction is building a global, grassroots, and broad-based network the likes of which the environmental movement has never seen." Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything (2014)

Credits: Sacred Stone Camp Facebook Page

Something extraordinary and unprecedented is happening within the environmental movement. The epicenter of this "Earth"-quake is Sacred Stone Camp on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota.

For some time, a small group of Standing Rock Lakota ("Sioux") has gathered on the banks of the Cannon Ball River to protest the continued development of the "black serpent": the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). When and if completed, the 1200-mile, 30-inch-diameter pipeline will transport daily 500,000 barrels of crude oil from the Bakken Oil Reserve to Patoka, Illinois, where it will then be shipped to processing facilities.

Proponents of the pipeline tout the "efficiency" and "safety" of pipelines relative to oil transport via truck and rail. Opponents, principally residents of Standing Rock Reservation and other reservations along the DAPL's proposed route, hold that pipeline construction threatens sacred ancestral lands, and that the pipeline itself -- prone to eventual leaks, like all pipelines -- threatens precious water resources all along its route, particularly the Missouri River, the nation's longest.

Given that the developing conglomerate -- Energy Transfer Partners -- has nearly four billion dollars at stake, expect a fierce fight. Indeed, on Labor-Day weekend, the developer's private security guards were caught on Democracy Now! video unleashing attack dogs and pepper spray on protestors. The video went viral, mobilizing resistance. North Dakota's governor, Jack Dalrymple, has since called in the National Guard, and an arrest warrant is out for journalist Amy Goodman, who reported the event.

It's a David and Goliath struggle, but the odds just might be on David. In a short time, Sacred Stone Camp has grown from seven teepees into a semi-permanent camp of several thousand men, women, and children. Two hundred fifty tribes from across North (and South!) American have joined the protest in solidarity. A GoFundMe website has collected nearly $700,000 to support the camp's needs. Last week solidarity protests sprung up in dozens of cities across America, among them Phoenix, Boulder, Richmond, Sacramento, San Francisco, Denver, New York, Albany, Washington, and Kansas City.

"There are moments in history that can heal the past and the future. This is a healing moment. It's extraordinary." Carolyn Raffensperger, environmental activist (The Guardian, September 12, 2016)

What we are witnessing is the solidification of Blockadia, Naomi Klein's term for the environmental resistance movement. Here's a front-line post from Blockadia by "Tim."

"I just returned from the Sacred Stone camp and it was one of the most powerful events of my life. I am a non-native white man from Connecticut with a backpack full of camera gear and a drone to document the event. I had no idea of how or if I would be welcomed by the Tribal members. Let me tell you, from the moment I set foot on that sacred land I was welcomed with open arms and open hearts . . . . These are quite frankly the best people I have ever met. Their connection to Mother Earth, their ancestors, and their community was something that truly left me in awe."

As Blockadia unites groups that were once separate, it becomes an irresistible force. In New York, Black Lives Matter (#BlackLivesMatter) has joined #NoDAPL in the long overdue recognition that the struggles of African Americans and Native Americans are fundamentally conjoined. The same mentality that would poison the water in Flint, Michigan, to save a few municipal bucks, is hell-bent on profiting from oil and gas extraction that is jeopardizing water resources on Native lands, and in truth, nationwide. In some cities, Dreamers have also joined the resistance, as the social-justice and environmental movements begin to link arms, heeding the call of Pope Francis.

From the chapter "Blockadia" in Naomi Klein's environmental blockbuster This Changes Everything:

"What unites Blockadia . . . is the fact that the people at the forefront -- packing local council meetings, marching in capital cities, being hauled off in police vans, even putting their bodies between the earth-movers and earth -- do not look much like your typical activist, nor do the people in one Blockadia site resemble those in another. Rather, they each look like the places where they live, and they look like everyone: the local shop owners, the university professors, the high-school students, the grandmothers."

"2016-09-16-1474044300-9032132-cropped.jpg"

Credits: Ruth Jost, Harrisonburg, Virginia

On Tuesday, September 14, I attended a sympathy protest in my locale: Harrisonburg, Virginia, a rural college town of 50,000 residents. The protest -- which set up a symbolic teepee on the town's courthouse square -- drew one-hundred people, astounding for a city our size. Sure enough, as Klein suggests above, these protestors are salt-of-the-earth citizens: Mennonites, Quakers, and all manner of people of faith; children, high school students, and college students; professors from area universities; parents; grandmothers and grandfathers; a Central American Dreamer and an indigenous South-American shaman; lawyers and doctors; home-builders and activists; a homeless blogger and indefatigable truth-teller, and a few of the city's well-heeled.

What unites us is simple: a love of the Earth and a love for the peoples of the Earth. Both are jeopardized by the fossil-fuel industry's profit-driven insistence on business as usual at a time when atmospheric carbon is choking-off the very life-support systems of the planet.

Our best science tells us that the preponderance of fossil fuels must remain in the ground if we are to have any chance of stabilizing the climate and preserving a viable future.

When historians of the future -- assuming humankind has one -- write of the upheavals and transitions of the twenty-first century, the world's indigenous peoples will be the heroes and heroines who, on the front lines of Blockadia, led the fight to preserve a livable planet.

May Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit, bless them -- and all those who stand in solidarity with them.

Mitakuye oyasin!

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

gaia

1474575815000

gaia

%feed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-tucker/how-we-stop-the-bulldozer_b_12019836.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
How We Stop The Bulldozers Destroying Our Earth
We have put the fate of our earth's endangered species in the hands of profit-driven international organizations at the expense of our planet. To protect our future, we have to change this.

What's encouraging is that we can.

Last week, prayer groups globally of all cultures united with the Sioux Nation, doing ceremony to protect Standing Rock in South Dakota where the oil pipeline crisis revolved around water - sacred to Life on this planet. From the heart of White Lion territories in South Africa, I joined them, too. To many, myself included, President Obama's intervention on 9/9 came as the answer to those prayers.

It stopped the bulldozers. But they haven't backtracked. Yet.

What is now becoming clear is that the combination of heartfelt prayer for the earth and mass action in protest at her destruction can bring a turnaround.

Clearly, this combination of love and outrage - when people start to feel their hearts again and take action accordingly - that will radically change our world in our near future.

It is not blind activism, but courageous heartfelt commitment to protect the earth and shift the consumerist paradigm that is destroying her.

A year ago, an event occurred that sparked this kind of mass mobilization. The senseless brutal trophy killing of Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe by a Minnesota dentist, Walter Palmer, touched the hearts of millions worldwide who demanded accountability from our politicians. The CECIL Bill was the result.

Public outrage brought about this change in legislation, and Cecil's sacrifice helped pass a bill that could serve all endangered species: Conserving Eco-systems by Ceasing the Importation of Large (CECIL) Animal Trophies Act.

It did so by activating the hearts of humanity.

This kind of heart activation is the beginning of the turnaround for our earth and her restoration.

It's a reminder that in our battle to save the planet, what happens to water in South Dakota and lions in Zimbabwe are interconnected in a delicate web of planetary consciousness.

Water, like land, is the foundation of eco-systems. Earth needs water to germinate the seeds on which survival and sustainability depend, all the way up the food chain to the very apex of the pyramid of life: the predators, or so-called "Capstone Species".

While water and soil are the foundation of the food chain, lions are the apex predators. In Nature, the role of the apex animal at the tip of the pyramid is to maintain the balance and health of the whole. Lions regulate the prey species, which feed upon the fauna which feed upon the flora, which in turn draws life from water and soil. This fundamental ecological principle is called "Trophic Cascading."

In short, lions play an absolutely fundamental role in protecting eco-systems, while eco-systems support all life on this planet, including our own.

If eco-systems collapse, our systems will also collapse. Conversely, the good news is that by restoring the capstone species - lions, bears, wolves, whales - to the eco-system, we restore balance and order across all interdependent species all the way down the trophic levels to the rivers. Yellowstone Park proved this principle in their wolf reintroduction.

As a critically urgent imperative, we need to ensure our human systems and legislation support these all-important eco-systems. To ensure the survival of Mother Earth, the oil pipelines that grease the global consumerist machine killing her have to go - along with those brutal structures, the conservation bodies that purport to be protecting her.

As I write this, the world's two top conservation entities, IUCN and CITES, are convening to decide the fate of our wildlife.

If we care about our future, it's critical that we understand the brutal yet shaky logic on which these global entities make their policy decisions.

Who are these authorities? Who appointed them? Who pays them? Who funds their decisions? And most importantly, based on profit and trade, what authority do they have to determine what species is or isn't protected?

CITES (Convention for the International Trade of Endangered Species) has vast power over the future of our earth. Firstly, we should note the word "Trade" - rather than "Protection" - of Endangered Species, as this is the principle on which their decision-making turns. Secondly, the notion of separating species from their eco-systems and classifying them 'protected' or not, as the case may be, is fundamentally flawed - adopting pseudo-scientific jargon to create seeming legitimacy. As any true ecologist knows, all components of an eco-system are entirely interdependent.

Under the guise of saving our endangered species, CITES has maintained and legitimized a killing industry, and contributed to the dramatically declining numbers of many animals on the brink of extinction. Why? Because CITES is a commercial model controlled by trade considerations and managed by bureaucratic entities.

CITES works according to a treaty between countries. Government representatives meet every 4 years to determine how species will be traded across international borders. CITES determines international legislation of trade in a given species by categorizing it according to what is considered it's "endangered status." It lists species according to three appendices: Appendix I, II or III, depending on what is deemed its vulnerability to extinction.

Significantly, there is no category for NO TRADE of Endangered Species.

Cross-border trade in endangered species is a given - it is just about numbers, and numbers are influenced by vested interests with secondary consideration given to the plight of the animals or the consequence to eco-systems. If we understand anything about the workings of our planet, it is firstly, that ALL species are essential to the health and vitality of the planet as a whole. Secondly, species and eco-systems are geographically specific, so the concept of cross-border relocation of species is profoundly misguided and extremely dangerous. Profit over environment is at the core of the convention, and the planet is hostage to the decisions it takes.

Is CITES doing a good job of protecting our endangered natural heritage?

The statistics speak for themselves. The extinction of species has never been more precarious.

Take lions, for example. The most sought-after trophy animal on the planet. Lions, the King of Animals, are at the forefront of the notorious international killing industry. Their numbers in the wild have plummeted 80% in 50 years, yet escalated astronomically in captivity. There's been an estimated 300% increase in dead lion exports in the last 10 years. And perhaps the worst statistic of all: Today, there are more lions in cages than in the wild.

In this cynical industry, lion killing is directly linked to lion cub petting. It's a production line in which this iconic species is commercially bred for the bullet. First, handled by international tourists as baby lions in a merciless but lucrative hug-and-kill industry, which makes dead trophies out of Africa's last surviving kings and queens - wild or tamed.

According to these statistics, lions will be extinct in the wild in our lifetimes - and the for-profit model on which CITES bases its policies cannot save them.

These illegitimate structures have to be dismantled, and redesigned. There is no rational reason for these organizations to have the power to determine how many animals can legitimately be killed and traded. The fate of our earth's species must be in the hands of those wisdom keepers who uphold not only sacred sites, but all of Nature as sacrosanct. Those who recognize that all species are essential to the health and vitality of the planet as a whole.

Lions are currently listed as CITES Appendix II. In the lead-up to CITES, West Africa has been motivating for up-listing lions to Appendix I for greater protection due to critically low numbers, while South Africa has been motivating for down-listing lions from Appendix II to Appendix III, affording them virtually no protective status at all. South Africa's argument is based on their view that the wild lion population in this region is "stable" and can therefore sustain increased trophy hunting levels. However, the numbers they put forward are artificially boosted due to lions bred in captivity for trading and hunting purposes.

Firstly, this logic is inaccurate. South Africa has one of only five viable wild lion populations in the world, the Kruger to Canyons Biosphere; and the future of the lions here is by no means stable or secure. Due to wide-spread TB, Panthera leo in the Kruger risks an entire population crash.

Secondly, as already explained, this kind of thinking is dangerous to the planetary eco-system - apex predators are essential to the presence of diverse wildlife in ways we are only beginning to rediscover.

Finally, this logic is unethical. Treating the King of Animals as a commodity to be bred for blood money should be rightly understood as sacrilege - along with polluting water as the source of life and other criminal acts of ecocide. If we have any trouble understanding this, we should all be looking to the indigenous wisdom keepers and Mother Nature herself for urgent redemption.

In the commercial model of wildlife, lions have no rights to freedom or dignity. The King is treated as little more than a canned product with a price on its head, hence the name "Canned Lion Hunting" coined by the Cook Report (a British investigative TV program) when this malpractice was exposed way back in 1997.

Although this abominable industry was first brought to the attention of the world two decades ago, CITES has done nothing to curb its aggressive escalation in the intervening period. In fact, the opposite: what was a handful of disreputable mafia-type operators then, has escalated now into a massive cross-border killing industry. Hundreds of lion breeding facilities have been established, and thousands of captive bred lions are being commercially bred for the bullet.

The only argument for keeping and breeding lions under such abusive conditions is gross material greed. There is no conservation value. For ecological and genetic reasons, there is virtually zero probability of these captive-bred predators ever returning to the eco-system. Commoditizing lions is contrary to any concept of true and responsible custodianship of our earth.

At the same time as the South Dakota nations were uniting to protect their waters, the World Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) was announcing a motion to prohibit Canned Hunting of lions. Credit for this dates back to the mass public outrage that took place after CECIL's killing and to dedicated efforts by conservationists uniting to drive more humane policies forward.

However, as with Standing Rock, the bulldozers may have been halted. But they're not retreating. Yet.

We will not achieve the turnaround for our earth as long as we fail to see that the IUCN and other leading conservation entities, including CITES, WWF and the US Fish & Wildlife Service, are basing their conservation logic on exploitation rather than reverence.

The very basis of their arguments remain unsound:

"If it pays, it stays."

Pause for a moment and question: Is that sensible conservation logic?

If Nature doesn't stay, we'll all pay.

Yet, I have attended numerous world congresses where this illogical logic reigns.

When it comes to lions, you'll hear an extension of the same rationale:

"Kill one lion to save five."

This is not sound thinking. Nor can it be, as long as the IUCN remains largely funded by Safari Club International, the world's biggest trophy hunting outfitter.

Einstein reminds us that we cannot solve a problem without changing the mind-set that created the problem. As long as profit drives our motives, we are on a losing battle for our earth.

We forget that there has always been another way.

With the re-emergence of the indigenous nations and their leadership demanding sanctity for our planet, we cannot be oblivious any longer. We urgently need to reassemble our council of wisdom keepers and eco-system experts, and ensure that the power to affect transformation is handed over into their authority to protect our earth and its sacred places.

Currently, along with CITES, the IUCN is considered the world's main authority on the conservation status of species, with their Red List of Threatened Species providing an equivalent index of endangered species to CITES appendices - in similar reductionist scientific classifications. It's time we start questioning their legitimacy.

The IUCN's objectives seem honorable, in principle: "To convey the urgency of conservation issues to the public and policy makers, as well as help the international community to try to reduce species extinction."

But when it comes to actual implementation, the IUCN is programmed into materialistic, exploitative rationale, classifying species according to reductionist science as part of a consciousness of dominion, ego and control. And profit-driven once again. They condemn illegal poaching while upholding legalized trophy hunting of endangered animals, as if these self-serving malpractices weren't two sides of the same commercialized coin.

The original ways of earth governance upheld by indigenous tribes who have offered us a model of true custodianship of our earth, are entirely dismissed as naïve and primitive. In the old indigenous model, any extraction from the earth, whether plant or animal, was done with the greatest reverence, economy of scale, and ecological preservation of life.

While the IUCN's constitution pays lip-service to First Nations tribes and their age-old conservation principles, when it comes to actual policy these indigenous wisdom keepers are conveniently side-lined. In the IUCN world congresses I have attended, First Nations leaders are literally marginalized and may be found at the fringes of the convention centers, holding sacred ceremonies in honor of the earth, over which the policy makers walk "roughshod."

Driven by cold-hearted commercial objectives, these so-called authorities are ill-equipped to understand the critical importance of these ceremonies: deep reverential honorings which are capable of shifting the consumerist paradigm into one of true relationship with Creation.

So, who are the bulldozers in this story?

The old exploitative model of "dominion over nature" must go. Along with the so-called authorities who benefit from it at the expense of our planet.

In traditional Africa, and among the tribal authorities with whom I work closely, the Lion is revered in his rightful place as the king of animals. For this reason, the majority of African countries have outlawed commercial trophy hunting as a brutal relic of colonial exploitation. States that have held to a ban on lion trophy hunting for many years, such as Botswana and Kenya, have shown that conservation strategies based on non-commercial trophy hunting do work.

Yet the IUCN's approach to lion conservation over the past two decades has been to intimidate African countries to follow their paradigm of international pro-trade, pro-trophy hunting.

The old ways of indigenous peoples who revered Nature as a sacred heritage, for which we are accountable to the Creator, have been destroyed by this need and greed model. In both CITES and the IUCN, the protected status of Panthera leo and other precious species has been manipulated to accommodate trophy hunting interests in Western markets and a rampant trade in lion bones and parts to Eastern Markets.

If you are on the side of Nature, and her sanctity as a living flourishing heritage, you won't find help in these bureaucratic corridors.

In 2009, at Wild9 Congress in Mexico, indigenous leaders from different tribes helped me drive a resolution to have the White Lions protected by all appropriate bodies by international law. These rare animals are regarded as a sacred living heritage by the indigenous peoples with whom I work. Along with the occurrence of the White Bison and other "spirit animals," they are honored as sacred across all tribes. 54 countries were represented in that Resolution.

Following this Resolution, my goal was to identify those "appropriate bodies" to protect this genetic rarity intrinsic not only to the biodiversity of its region, but as indigenous wisdom keepers know, to the health and restoration of the planetary system as a whole. CITES? IUCN? Could I rely on help and protection here? No efforts have been spared, including ground-breaking genetic research, parliamentary presentation, persistent engagement at global forums as well as in policy-making, yet the White Lions have been deliberately left off any protected species list. The status quo is that there is still no law to protect these critically endangered rarities from being erased from the Earth.

On the contrary, appallingly, White Lions are now #1 on the trophy hunter's hit-list.

Given that money drives votes in CITES, in whose pockets are these authorities?

No pockets deeper than Safari Club International, which operates out of the comfort and glitz of Las Vegas, wheeling and dealing in Africa's wild animal trophies.

As for our best efforts to protect lions by motivating "motions" that they be raised to CITES I, Safari Club International goes so far as stating brazenly on their Home Page:

"To help all hunters understand the significance of this issue, SCI provides the following ... questions and answers.
Q: What is CITES Appendix I?
A: Appendix I includes species threatened with extinction. Trade in Appendix I species is permitted only in exceptional circumstances. Generally speaking, commercial trade is prohibited, but trade for personal use may be allowed. Trade in hunting trophies may be allowed because it is for personal use."

Lions for "personal use?"

Clearly, whatever CITES decides, Safari Club International knows it's business as usual.

In the face of this kind of madness, whether CITES shifts the Appendices up or down is simply moving deckchairs around the Titanic.

As a matter of critical urgency, we have to stop these illegitimate bodies from nose-diving the rest of us into its inevitable collision course with disaster.

The South Dakota oil pipeline crisis is an urgent reminder that the fate of the earth should be returned to the hands of it's true stewards, those humble caretakers who understand the intelligence of eco-systems and the intricate, interdependent web of life.

Each of us can potentially be such a steward. But not until we have removed the unsound paradigm that is killing our earth. Which includes stopping the US government from executing 50,000 wild horses to make way for the super-sized beef burger industry - one of the most relentless components of that killing machine.

As today's history is showing, we can achieve transformation of our human systems to bring them into communion with eco-systems - through a powerful combination of prayer and protest.

And then, together, let us start to build a true authority governed by eco-systems experts of different disciplines and a Council of Indigenous Elders giving voice to all species, who will ensure our earth is treated with the love and respect she has always deserved.

UPDATE

Under worldwide pressure, the IUCN has emerged from its convention with a motion to prohibit Canned Hunting and a motion to protect Sacred Sites.

Clearly, Standing Rock represents a turning point for Sacred Sites just as Cecil did for lions at this time last year. But it is only the beginning of rewriting the story.

To be in alignment with true ecological principles, the IUCN would have to review their misguided classification of the White Lions, the White Buffalo, and the other sacred "spirit animals" known to indigenous wisdom keepers as indicator species of climate change. The IUCN would also have to withdraw their uninformed classification of these genetic rarities as having "no conservation value." Indigenous wisdom keepers, such as Sioux leader, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, 19th Generation Keeper of the White Buffalo prophecies, have long understood that these sacred animals are intrinsically connected to sacred sites, to restoration of eco-systems, and the great web of interconnected life on this planet.

Going forward, the IUCN will need to pay attention not only to people's protests at the destruction of our planet, but also to the prayers of those elders who recognize the sanctity of life and natural creation.

The One United Roar Talent Challenge honors elders and offers youth a chance to Roar for Lions. Entries close on World Peace Day (21 Sept) and winners announced at opening of CITES (24 Sept). Learn more at www.OneUnitedRoar.org.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

gaia

1474572350000

gaia

%feed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-watts-2/mayors-will-play-their-pa_b_12140334.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
Mayors Will Play Their Part in Delivering on the Paris Agreement
During Climate Week NYC and the UN General Assembly in New York this week, the international community marks the ratification of the Paris Agreement by 60 countries. It now seems likely that the Paris Agreement will enter into force before the next major gathering of the UN on this issue, COP22 in Marrakesh. Nation states remain committed to delivering on their ambition to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius - and cities have a key role to play, as partners to nations and regions, as innovators, and as leaders.

For nearly two decades, the United Nations' international climate change negotiations were largely diplomatic affairs, punctuated by prominent heads of state offering ambitious rhetoric that remained largely that. And yet even as these conversations stagnated, a revolution was underway at the local level.

Mayors in cities around the world realized that they increasingly commanded the world's capital - both economic and human - and their decisions held global significance - especially when it came to climate change. Through collaboration, swapping ideas and the sharing of technical expertise, city leaders began making sustainable decisions that also benefited the local economy and protected the long-term health of their citizens.

It is because of this proven track record of success that cities had a critical role to play at the COP21 climate negotiations in Paris last year, which many in the international climate community heralded as the last chance for an international climate agreement under the UN process.

In the lead-up to COP21, cities began to receive global recognition for not only committing to climate action, but also providing tangible examples of successful solutions. As countries began to announce their INDC commitments in anticipation of COP21, cities developed the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Emissions, a parallel measurement and reporting framework based on the same methodology used by the IPCC. Under the Compact of Mayors - which will merge with the Covenant of Mayors in January to become the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy - cities began making their own data-driven commitments, measuring their results and tracking progress.

By the time of the negotiations last year, hundreds of mayors had formally joined the effort. U.N. Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change Michael R. Bloomberg and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo convened more than 1,000 mayors, local representatives and community leaders at the Climate Summit for Local Leaders, making a powerful statement about city support for an international climate agreement. Indeed, it was subnational actors that helped provide much-needed cover for national governments to forge the ambitious international Paris Climate Agreement, which seeks to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Cities continue to be a bright spot in the global climate conversation, implementing solutions on the ground and enabling greater and more ambitious action by their national governments.

After the international mobilization for climate action that characterised much of 2015, nations turned to the challenging task of building the policies, programmes and investments needed to achieve their intended commitments. And mayors turned quietly back to what they had been doing all along: making sound economic and environmental decisions that best served their constituents. C40 celebrates some of the most innovative of these projects each year at the annual C40 Cities Awards, which will be held this December in Mexico City.

Of course, mayors' hard work is far from complete. C40 research shows that fully one third of the world's remaining safe carbon budget could be determined by urban policy decisions made before 2020. With help from networks like C40, cities are continuing to accelerate climate action and pursue more ambitious climate goals. Though cities certainly face barriers - particularly with respect to financing urban sustainability projects - C40 and our partners are devising pathways to overcome them, through mechanisms like the Financing Sustainable Cities Initiative and the C40 Finance Facility, which could unlock up to $1 billion worth of sustainable infrastructure in cities across low and middle-income countries by 2020.

And increasingly, mayors are looking beyond environmental and economic health to become champions of social inclusivity. C40 Chair and Mayor of Rio de Janeiro Eduardo Paes, for instance, used the Olympic Games as an opportunity to revitalize blighted neighbourhoods, expand services to underserved communities and connect the city's periphery with its centre through smart, transit-oriented development.

C40 Chair-Elect and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, Mexico City Mayor Miguel Mancera, Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon and other mayors around the world are declaring car-free days in their cities' iconic avenues, creating accessible temporary public parks open to all citizens. Women mayors in particular are becoming champions of their gender, expanding education opportunities and making cities safer places for women and girls.

For nations, the next step forward is for enough countries to formally ratify the Paris Agreement to ensure it comes into effect as soon as possible, ideally within the year. For mayors, the next major step is the biannual C40 Mayors Summit 2016, the world's foremost gathering of political, business and intellectual leaders focused on forging a resilient, low carbon urban future.

This year, the C40 Mayors Summit will be held in Mexico City exactly one year after COP21, and will offer mayors of the world's largest and most influential cities the opportunity to collaborate directly with elected officials at all levels of government, prominent NGO leaders, executives from Fortune 500 companies and - perhaps most important - each other.

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post to mark the occasion of the one-year anniversary of the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, or, officially, "Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development"). The SDGs represent an historic agreement -- a wide-ranging roadmap to sustainability covering 17 goals and 169 targets -- but stakeholders must also be held accountable for their commitments. To see all the posts in the series, visit here.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

gaia

1474572341000

gaia

%feed
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2016/09/22/cameras-reveal-the-secret-lives-of-a-mountain-lion-family-filmmaker-qa-with-sharon-negri/
Cameras Reveal the Secret Lives of a Mountain Lion Family: Filmmaker Q&A with Sharon Negri

From Persecution to Coexistence: An Image Makeover for America's Lion

Article by Rucha Chitnis

This summer, America woke up to the unequivocally endearing footage of five mountain lion kittens born in the Santa Susana Mountains, just north of Los Angeles. They made national headlines. “They nailed their Hollywood-area debut with adorable hisses, deep blue eyes and darling little claws,” wrote Karin Brulliard in the Washington Post.

This rousing reception is atypical for mountain lions in the United States, who have been in dire need of a new publicist. “When mountain lions make the news, it's typically for train-wreck coverage,” observed Dr. Rick Hopkins, a conservation biologist in California. “Most people have strong feelings about large predators,” he said. Sharon Negri, director of WildFutures, who has devoted the past 30 years to the protection of these big cats, concurs. “This fearsome portrayal of America's apex predator as solitary, vicious killers has also beset the animal with unfounded misconceptions,” she says.

Negri is acutely aware of the power of narrative and how it has led to the demonization and persecution of mountain lions throughout their range. This year, she produced a short video, “The Secret Life of Mountain Lions,” to give the public an intimate view of these secretive animals to debunk myths and shift perceptions. The video features rare footage caught by motion-triggered cameras in mountain lion dens and feeding sites, among other locations, by Panthera's Teton Cougar Project. The star of the video is a mountain lion female, F 61, who has given birth to three kittens. But the odds are stacked against survival. Narrated by bear biologist and wildlife filmmaker Chris Morgan, the video reveals the social and family bonds of mountain lions and how these are crucial for their long-term survival. Negri believes in the power of film to educate the American public and build understanding and empathy for animals for their long-term conservation.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that at least 66,665 cougars were killed between 1907 and 1978. Seen as dangerous predators to be eliminated from the landscape, they were hunted, trapped, and shot in many regions to extinction. While 14 states in the U.S. have legalized hunting of mountain lions, California led the charge to give full protection to the cats, while allocating $30 million a year for critical wildlife habitat through a landmark 1990 initiative. Negri played a pivotal role in mobilizing volunteers and the public to pass this initiative. We asked Negri more about this work and her video.

What led you to produce “The Secret Life of Mountain Lions”?

I produced this video to counter the negative narrative about mountain lions as solitary, vicious killers and show the public a more accurate nature of these amazing animals.

To give you a bit of context, the mountain lion has over 30 recognized names. The scientific name, Puma concolor, means “cat of a single color.” But it could have easily been called the cat of many names. They have the largest geographic distribution of any terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere.

Their range spans 28 countries—from … North America to the tip of South America. This wide range has enabled this large cat to interact with many different people and cultures. Many people led to many opinions and attitudes and many misunderstandings about the very nature of this secretive cat. Early colonists viewed this large predator as threat to livestock, game, and personal safety, and prior to the 1960s they were considered vermin and thousands were trapped, poisoned, and shot for bounties. Today those perceptions still persist.

After working to change policy and management for lions, I was inspired by Jane Goodall's remarks a few years ago where someone asked her about the value of videos. She said that animal videos can shift public perceptions and attitudes, but first you must connect to the hearts of people. When I saw Panthera's extraordinary remote-camera footage in the wild of a mountain lion mother and her relationship with her kittens, I knew we had the potential to enable people to really connect with the beauty of these animals, change their perceptions, and ultimately inspire them to take action to advance their conservation.

What led you to advocate for mountain lion conservation efforts in California?

I always had a love of nature, animals, and wild places from a very early age. During the ‘60s, when my father was a legislator, I first began my interest to right those things I knew to be wrong. When I was in Africa in 1983, I was struck and saddened by the senseless slaughter of elephants and was considering how I might work to stop [it]. When I returned to the states, I learned that a bill was moving through the California legislature to open a hunting season on mountain lions for the first time since the bounty era in the ‘60s despite the fact they were guessing the population of lions and failed to look at the impact a hunting season would have on their population.

Had the legislation passed, it would have allowed hunters to chase these animals with a pack of hounds up a tree and shoot them at point blank for merely a trophy on their wall. The clear lack of science and the ethical issue of hunting a large carnivore for sport led me to work to improve how these animals are managed and protected.

What was the public perception about mountain lions in California during that time?

I met with thousands of citizens over the course of three years and learned that most knew they may never see a mountain lion in the wild, but they wanted to know they were there living wild and free on the landscape. Public opinion polls at the time told us that the majority of the public believed shooting these animals for fun was repugnant and believed these animals to be an important part of our natural heritage deserving protection. In 1990, the public overwhelmingly passed a ballot initiative that permanently banned sport hunting of mountain lions in California and allocated $30 million a year for 30 years for critical wildlife habitat. During the campaign, hundreds of newspaper editorials and local governments from around the state came out in favor of protecting the big cats.

Is there a tipping point in the public support of mountain lions as evidenced in the favor of P22, the Los Angeles cougar who is co-habiting an urban area?

Yes, there has been a huge wave of public support building for these American icons. The response has been truly amazing. My guess is that part of the growing interest and support for P22 is that this animal's struggle to survive may not be all that different than our own. P22 is isolated on an island surrounded by a mass of human population. He is struggling to survive in the same way so many of us are—we want freedom to roam and be safe from poisons and persecution. Thanks to the media, people from all over the world read about and saw pictures of P22—both when he was healthy and after he was poisoned. The pictures of his emaciated body were heart-wrenching. It is truly a tribute to this animal's resilience and perseverance to live that he not only recovered from being poisoned but managed to cross eight lanes of highway to find a mate. The public fascination with and response to P22 has given me hope that perhaps we can coexist with our urban wildlife neighbors.

What do you think the national impact of the video has been?

The impact has been overwhelmingly positive. Historically, this animal has been one of the most misunderstood and misperceived of the large predators. Thanks to the researchers and their hidden cameras, we are now able to debunk the myths and preconceived notions about these animals by reaching thousands of people with videos and social media.

Jane Goodall was right when she said that videos can change the attitudes and perceptions of people about animals. In an online survey for “The Secret Life of Mountain Lions,” 98 percent of respondents said that the video was effective in revealing the importance of family bonds of big cats for their long-term survival, and 85 percent of survey respondents said they learned something new about mountain lions. Survey respondents were most surprised to learn that mountain lion mothers adopted orphaned kittens, had strong family bonds, and that kittens were able to share meals peacefully with their parents. Jane Goodall said that once we understand, we can truly care, and then are we more likely to take action. We know that thousands of viewers have turned to the website to learn more and take action. The ability to reach millions of people online and raise awareness about new discoveries about these amazing animals' behavior and plight, and to have them take action on their behalf—I think this is the real impact of the video.

What is needed for the long-term conservation of mountain lions throughout their range?

Scientists agree that loss of habitat and excessive hunting are the major threats to mountain lion populations. While the mountain lion is considered one of the most adaptable of the large carnivores, it is also vulnerable to extinction. Extinction rates for large carnivores are one of the highest in the world. In the U.S., mountain lions were eliminated from the entire eastern half of North America only 200 years after colonization, leaving only a remnant population in Florida. Add the impact of hunting, and these animals are getting slammed. Recent compiled data show that in the past decade, sport hunters killed 29,000 mountain lions in the U.S. alone.

It will take government agencies, scientists, conservation groups, hunters, fishers, and everyday citizens coming together to address these threats and ensure we have large connected lands for these and other animals to thrive. The bottom line is we can't wait until a mountain lion population is on the brink of extinction before we take action. Given the complexity and intensity of issues facing wildlife, from climate change to loss of habitat, we will need to work together if these animals are going to be part of our natural heritage long into the future. I am hopeful this is already beginning to happen, but much more is needed.

National Geographic's Short Film Showcase

The Short Film Showcase spotlights exceptional short videos created by filmmakers from around the web and selected by National Geographic editors. We look for work that affirms National Geographic's belief in the power of science, exploration, and storytelling to change the world. The filmmakers created the content presented, and the opinions expressed are their own, not those of National Geographic Partners.

Know of a great short film that should be part of our Showcase? Email SFS@ngs.org to submit a video for consideration. See more from National Geographic's Short Film Showcase at documentary.com

#shortfilmshowcase @natgeo

gaia

1474568748000

gaia

%feed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timdonaghy2/oil-finance-101-what-ever_b_12140004.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
Oil Finance 101: What Every Climate Activist Needs to Know
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) dropped a bombshell on ExxonMobil yesterday. News reports revealed yesterday that the SEC is investigating the oil company's balance sheets and how efforts to solve climate change might impact the company's bottom line.

ExxonMobil and its allies have been furiously trying to wave away the mounting stack of official investigations into what Exxon knew and said about climate change, so this latest investigation must have come as a severe disappointment to them.

"Right now Exxon is betting everything it has on the failure of the world to solve the climate crisis; the SEC has a chance to expose how weak Exxon's hand really is." -Annie Leonard, Executive Director of Greenpeace USA

The Wall Street Journal reported that the SEC investigation is a "far-reaching" look not just into how ExxonMobil currently values its assets, but also "what would happen to Exxon under a scenario envisioned by last year's Paris climate talks -- if greenhouse gas emissions were reduced 80% by 2050."

What the SEC is describing is a "stress test" for fossil fuel companies to measure their profitability in a world where we successfully limit global warming.

If the report is true, it could be a big deal for the climate, and climate activists everywhere.

The first thing to understand about oil companies is that their value in the marketplace is largely determined by the value of their proven reserves, i.e. the oil and gas that companies have already discovered but haven't pumped out of the ground.

Since these companies are constantly selling oil and gas, they also have to be constantly finding new reserves in order to maintain that storehouse. A company that each year finds (or acquires) as much oil and gas as they sell is considered by Wall Street to be in strong financial health. A company that is not able to replace its reserves will decline and eventually go out of business.

The hard truth that fossil fuel investors must grapple with is that we already have way too many reserves.

In order to limit global warming to 2 degrees C we will have to leave the majority of existing fossil fuel reserves in the ground -- to say nothing of new discoveries.

Even burning the reserves we have is enough to push us over the limit.

What's more, for us to have even a 50-50 chance of keeping warming under 2 degrees, demand for oil will have to peak in the next few years and then decline rapidly. In contrast, ExxonMobil's annual Energy Outlook reports confidently predict that demand for oil will grow continuously over the next several decades. The gulf between these two visions of our future is stark:

Chart comparing the IEA's 450 scenario (red line) with ExxonMobil's estimate (blue line) for world oil demand from 2014 to 2040 (in units of millions of barrels of oil per day). The IEA 450 scenario gives a 50% chance of limiting global warming to 2 degrees C. Data: IEA World Energy Outlook 2015 (Figure 3.1), ExxonMobil Energy Outlook 2016 (p. 72). Protesters courtesy of the climate justice movement.

The difference between the red path and the blue path is the difference between a safe climate and one careening out of control -- but it also represents a massive amount of profits that oil companies would have to give up. All of this shows that the current business model of oil and gas companies is simply incompatible with a stable climate and a healthy planet.

Exxon and other oil companies may be betting the farm on climate disaster, but they are also stacking the deck, paying the dealers, and (when all else fails) bluffing.

Oil companies know perfectly well that their profits will be significantly curtailed by serious action to address climate change -- and they have known this for decades. Multiple investigations by Inside Climate News, the Los Angeles Times and the Center for International Environmental Law have all uncovered evidence that scientists working for Exxon, and other oil companies, knew the risks of climate change decades ago.

Despite this knowledge, the oil companies mounted a sophisticated campaign of climate denial that has successfully delayed action on climate change for years, while carbon accumulated in the atmosphere and Exxon's profits soared.

These revelations have in turn sparked investigations into whether Exxon managers committed fraud in its statements to the public or its investors. Both the New York and Massachusetts Attorneys General have opened investigations into what Exxon knew and when they knew it.The SEC investigation should give new momentum to those inquiries, while expanding their scope from what #ExxonKnew to what Exxon knows.

The SEC's stress test is not likely to go well for Exxon or other oil companies.

If the Paris climate goals are met then it is likely that many of the assets Exxon includes on its balance sheet will become "stranded."

A stranded asset is one that cannot be produced due to falling oil demand, or a high carbon price, or other climate policies that limit the amount of fossil fuels we can combust. Because the oil industry works on very long investment timescales and high upfront costs, any decisions we make today about where to invest our money will have a profound influence on what our energy mix looks like in future decades.

In a climate safe world, Exxon looks like a lousy investment. And we need to make sure Exxon can't keep holding back our renewable energy future over oil and gas that can't be burnt. We can do that by demanding comprehensive investigations at the highest levels of government.

Tell the Department of Justice to join the SEC and investigate Exxon!

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

gaia

1474562131000

gaia

%feed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jake-schmidt/momentum-builds-for-montr_b_12138508.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
Momentum Builds for Montreal Protocol to be Big Climate Win
What if I told you the world could take one action this year that would shave off a half a degree Celsius of warming from our overheating planet? Would world leaders seize that opportunity and do everything in their power to leave their citizens a chance of a safer world with less devastating impacts from climate change? Leaders have a chance when they meet in Kigali, Rwanda next month to secure a phase-down of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) under the Montreal Protocol. Countries around the world have helped to create much stronger momentum for such an agreement with their new announcements at an event in New York today.

Here is what countries just announced.

105 countries send a clear signal that they want a strong agreement to significantly cut future HFC growth this year. Capable of avoiding warming of up to 0.5°C by 2100, an agreement on HFCs is critical to upholding the Paris Agreement's ambition of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C. Countries are already converging on a phasedown schedule for developed countries, likely to start in 2019. The timing for the phasedown schedule of developing countries is under serious debate, with widely divergent proposals. The Africa Group, Pacific Island countries, leading Latin American and Caribbean countries, the U.S., European Union, Japan, and other developed countries have the most ambitious proposal, with a freeze on HFC use for developing countries to begin in 2021. India, seeking to continue HFC growth for another 15 years, is proposing a freeze in 2031. The 10-year gap between leading and lagging proposals makes a major environmental difference: waiting for the developing countries to freeze in 2031, would allow at least 33 billion extra CO2-eq tons of HFC use--equal to world's CO2 output for an entire year.

With this statement, 105 countries have sent a powerful signal that they want an agreement this year under the Montreal Protocol that: "includes an early first reduction step for non-Article 5 parties [developed countries], an early freeze date for Article 5 parties [developing countries], and an ambitious phasedown schedule for all parties". The countries in support of this statement are a diverse group: the major developed countries (such as the U.S., European Union, and Japan), leading developing countries (such as Argentina, Mexico, South Korea, Colombia, Chile, and Uruguay), and some of the most vulnerable countries in the world (such as all of the Africa Group and all of the Pacific Island nations). Will any country want to stand against this diverse group of countries including some of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change?

Developed countries put forward significant money to aid countries in making the urgent transition. The developed countries have signaled that are prepared to adopt a Montreal Protocol agreement where they mobilize significant finance to assist developing countries in making the transition towards coolants that have less of an impact on the climate system. This is the proven recipe of the Montreal Protocol, where developed countries have successfully contributed billions of dollars to the Multilateral Fund (MLF) of the Montreal Protocol.

To help start that transition early, major governments and private foundations have promised $80 million in new "prompt start" funding to assist developing countries. Leading developed countries have pledged $27 million for investments next year to the MLF "if an ambitious HFC amendment is adopted at the October 2016 Meeting of the Parties with a sufficiently early freeze date for Article 5 parties [developing countries] to warrant fast-start support for implementation". On top of that 19 philanthropists announced their intent to provide $53 million to developing countries to support improvements in energy efficiency, including those that can occur when companies phase-down HFCs. This new funding will help developing countries make early transitions and take advantage of the energy efficiency savings by an early transition. Studies have shown that the energy efficiency benefits enabled by a smart HFC phase-down could provide significant climate benefits. For example, for a large country like India, a switch to lower-global warming potential (GWP) room ACs with energy efficiency improvements could offer a 15% energy savings over a business-as-usual.

It is critical that developed countries mobilize additional finance to help developing countries with the transition that will occur with aggressive phase-down schedules that will hopefully be agreed next month. Developing countries should insist on this as a part of the final Montreal Protocol agreement.

Major companies and subnational governments show their support for an aggressive Montreal Protocol agreement. More than 500 major global companies and associations outlined that they want an aggressive phase-down of HFCs this year. This includes such name brand companies as Aveda, Ben & Jerry's, The Chemours Company, Daikin, Dell, Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), Gap, General Mills, Godrej Group, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Honeywell, Ingersoll Rand, Johnson Controls, Microsoft, Nike, Red Bull, Unilever, and many more. These companies are showing that they are fully behind efforts to secure the biggest climate win this year and put the world on a safer trajectory to achieve the climate targets agreed to in the Paris Agreement. The announcement includes over 100 state, provincial, and city leaders from around the world. As the statement says: "we declare our intent to work to reduce the use and emissions of high-global-warming-potential HFCs and transition over time to more sustainable alternatives in a manner that maintains or increases energy efficiency".

---

Following on the heels of the successful Paris Agreement, a strong HFC phasedown amendment under the Montreal Protocol could show which leaders want to be on the right side of history. The announcements by over 100 companies, major funders, and key companies helps to build momentum to achieve a Montreal Protocol agreement this year that will leave a safer future for our children and grandchildren.

Let's hope all countries rise to the top and secure an agreement worthy of praise.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

gaia

Design schools fail to cultivate a love of language

Everyone thinks they can write

Bad writing is bad thinking written down

Writers write, designers design, and that's that

Interesting words need “boring” design

How to do it

Mozilla shortlisted four logos in its rebrand project

The visual identity for UEFA Euro 2020 was revealed

The creative industries were invited to share views on the impact of Brexit

Oculus Rift launched in the UK

Concepts were created for supposedly comfier train seats

Don't go to church on Sunday ... by Justin Rosenberg

"Don't go to church on Sunday Don't get on my knees to pray Don't memorize the books of the Bible I got my own special way ..." - Tom Waits

Sleep by Felix Russell-Saw

Sleep www.frsphoto.co www.instagram.com/felixrussellsaw

family ties by Sebastian Luczywo

Cormorant Fisherman by the Li River II by Shan Huang

Found a different pose of this awesome cormorant fisherman.. Posted this on Instagram couple weeks ago but the large format here should be much better for viewing. Hope you Enjoy! You can also find my other works on INSTAGRAM and FACEBOOK

‘You'd swear a horse did it,' says appalled retailer

Reg poll fills C4's empty tent issue

Whichever way you look it's all exactly the same, boffins confirm

Also told: ‘Don't look at France... it's a nightmare'

bled XLI by roblfc1892 roberto pavic

winter sunset at bled, slovenia... winter is coming :-)... All images are © copyright roblfc1892 - roberto pavic. You may NOT use, replicate, manipulate, or modify this image. roblfc1892 - roberto pavic © All Rights Reserved

Plain Tiger Airport .. by Mustafa Öztürk

37.jpg by inckorea21

The autumn by Георгий Чернядьев (Georgy Chernyadyev)

Paid lessons retouching. Live and video tutorials my retouching techniques and toning in Photoshop and Lightroom Join me on My Facebook Page And Follow My Instagram Join me on My VKontakte Page

Be Still by William Patino

In-between running workshops, it was nice to get lost in the midst of some of NZ's lesser known peaks.

He'll get a year on ice to think about why that was such a bad idea to delay takeoff

Watch more videos in this series>>

Uniting Against Organized Wildlife Crime

More About National Geographic's Contributions to Fighting Wildlife Crime

And that's just one of last night's Ig Nobel Prizes

Pulikali 2016 | Thrissur Kerala by Ravikanth Kurma

Check out the complete photo story here: http://ift.tt/2dcHAbe

The crush series by Karen Khachaturov

Link:
Embed: