Political Diamonds

I did a little shopping last week for some household goods, and found out a little later the same day while browsing the news, that a couple of my purchases were potentially toxic. Not something I expected from shower curtain liners.

The curtains I picked up were made with polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic, and are the kind targeted by a study on shower curtains from the Center for Health, Environment & Justice, the Washington Toxics Coalition, citizens’ group People for Puget sound, the Toxic Free Legacy Coalition, and the Work Group for Safe Markets.

Published four years late and without public review, pursuant to a court order, the United States government has issued a 271 page long report on the impacts of global warming to the country.

The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in The United States is from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research as part of the US Global Change Research Program.

The New York Times notes in Under Pressure, White House Issues Climate Change Report that:

If you’re interested in the health of the Earth, and the many species that live here, a new report, proposed by the German government at a meeting of environment ministers of the G8 countries and the five major newly industrialising countries that took place in Potsdam in March 2007 is worth spending some significant time reading through.

The purpose of the study was to:

….evaluate the costs of the loss of biodiversity and the associated decline in ecosystem services worldwide, and compare them with the costs of effective conservation and sustainable use. It is intended that it will sharpen awareness of the value of biodiversity and ecosystem services and facilitate the development of cost-effective policy responses, notably by preparing a ‘valuation toolkit’.

Educational games that help you learn, while helping others in need?

It sounds like a good idea, and these are sites that are worth exploring, and spending some time at.

Free Rice is a vocabulary game that presents a word, and four multiple choice definitions for that word. Choose the correct definition, and the site will donate 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program.

There is a video on the World Food Program site of the first consignment of rice bought with funds raised through FreeRice, dated January 18, 2008, feeding refugees from Myanmar sheltering in Bangladesh.

A five day long protest, from May 19th to May 23rd, took place this week by more than 600 Brazilian Amazon Indians and environmental activists over a proposed hydroelectric dam on the Xingu River, in the Brazilian Amazon.

The protesters gathered to attempt to keep the Belo Monte Dam from being developed.  The dam would directly impact hundreds of indigenous people on the Xingu and Bacajá rivers, and displace more than 16,000 people.

A video from the Real News Network provides more details:

15,000 to be displaced by proposed Amazon dam

The Convention on Biological Diversity has been meeting this week in Bonn, Germany.

The Convention was a treaty originally signed by 150 government leaders during the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, and targets three goals:

• The conservation of biological diversity,
• The sustainable use of its components, and;
• The fair and equitable sharing of the benefits from the use of genetic resources.

Biological diversity, also known as biodiversity, is a term describing the variety of life on Earth, and the natural patterns formed by that variety.

It appears that noise pollution may have a more devastating impact upon the environment that we’ve imagined.

Researcher Bernie Krause has been recording the sounds of the world, without human sounds included, for over 40 years, and he’s finding it difficult to find places that aren’t contaminated by the noise of people any more.

And the impact of that noise may cause serious problems for some species.

A post at MetaEfficient describes efforts by Costa Rica (Costa Rica Is 99% Powered By Renewable Energy) to be the first completely carbon neutral country.

The effort isn’t completely without controversy. In reaching that goal, new damns may need to be constructed. MetaEfficient tells us:

Costa Rica is a country rich with renewable energy. In fact, it gets about 99% of all its electrical energy from clean sources, and it’s aiming to be the first country to become carbon neutral (more about that below). Some of Costa Rica’s energy sources include geothermal energy, the burning of sugarcane waste and other biomass, solar and wind energy. However, the largest source of energy is hydroelectricity — its hydroelectric dams provide more than 82% of the country’s electricity.

I was first introduced to the idea of Fair Trade a few years back when a nearby store opened, selling Fair Trade clothing, crafts, coffee, and chocolate. I’ve discovered since then that the term “Fair Trade” refers to a few different concepts.

There’s a Fair Trade certification, run in the US by TransFair USA.

Fair Trade certification is a market-based model benefiting over a million farmers and farm workers in 58 developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. When a consumer buys something with a Fair Trade label, they are making sure that the makers and growers of these products are getting a fair wage for their efforts.

I just ran into BookMooch, which is a community focusing on exchanging used books.

You can register with the site, and put up a list of books that you are willing to send to someone, and books that you are interested in receiving. There’s no cost to join, but you do have to pay to ship the books that you send out.

When you give someone a book, you earn a point, which can be redeemed for any book that you want from anyone else at BookMooch. Once you’ve finished reading the book, you can keep it, or to put it back up in BookMooch for someone else to read.