Mental health, public health, global health. New and interesting developments in technology and the arts. Meditation research. And occasionally cute animals.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Price Tags Needed for Gulf of Mexico’s Ecology
Of all the inadequacies revealed by the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, maybe none is as fundamental as the failure of companies, markets and government to put a price tag on natural assets.
From deep-sea fishing grounds to shallow-water nurseries to hurricane-blunting wetlands, multiple Gulf ecosystems have demonstrable utilitarian and economic value. Yet except for one think tank, nobody has tried to calculate that value.
Chevron’s new greenwashing/CSR campaign is absolutely fantastic. I cannot think of any other advertising campaign that so clearly demonstrates environmental cover-up and social distortion than this degenerate PoS.
Last month, Chevron was ordered to pay a record $8.6 billion for environmental damages from its drilling in Ecuador. The company was found guilty of dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon river. Billions. Over decades, until the 1990s. It destroyed the lives of thousands of people - including children. Over 30,000 Ecuadorians brought suit agains the company, accusing it of ruining huge swaths of pristine rain forests and Amazonian rivers, and causing countless deaths from toxic illnesses.
Nearly a dozen federal acts regulate and control how oil is drilled, processed, sold, and disposed of in the United States. This is because oil is a known carcinogen that harms human health and physical environments and systems. Ecuador does not have the capacity to regulate the oil industry, and Chevron (and it’s per-merger companies) moved in for a cheap drill.
The evidence against Chevron is indisputable; Chevron’s response, vile and utterly disgusting.
Yet, the company will get off the hook by playing the victim, counter suing Ecuador under, of all things, RICO and extortion by none other than Ecuador.
Instead of settling the case, and championing taking the moral highground, Chevron’s new campaign is an obvious diversion, a blatant cover up to get the public to take their eyes off the ball.
This campaign is an example of how low companies will go to buy their way out of actual malfeasance. Out of the blue, and just after a record lawsuit, Chevron suddenly supports small businesses, educates girls in math, and donates to AIDS research?
You know what Chevron, f*ck you. F*CK. YOU.
This Is Informative, You Should Watch It of the Day: To promote the launch of “Population 7 Billion” — a 7-part series on global population — National Geographic put out this short promo which aims to put the world’s ever-growing population in perspective.
[vvv.]
(Source: thedailywhat)
Why the Gulf Oil Spill Isn't Going Away
In early August, a high-level U.S. government official asserted that more than three-quarters of the oil from the Gulf spill was “gone”—based on preliminary National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates. Since then a fiery backlash has erupted from independent scientists who have been tracking and studying the spill.
“The oil budget NOAA came out with was just a joke, a fairy tale scenario,” said Samantha Joye, a marine biogeochemist from the University of Georgia and one of the first researchers to detect and measure the deep plumes of oil. “I understand why people want it to disappear, but who in their right mind would believe that? It makes absolutely no sense.”
Mining the Truth on Coal
No matter how bad coal might be for the planet, the conventional wisdom is that there is so much of it underground that the world’s leading fuel for electricity will continue to dominate the energy scene unless global action is taken on climate change.
But what if conventional wisdom is wrong?
A Fuel That Doesn’t Go to Waste
In the ultimate “closed loop” energy project, a garbage truck fleet near San Francisco runs on the methane produced by decomposing landfill trash.
US food waste worth more than offshore drilling
MORE energy is wasted in the perfectly edible food discarded by people in the US each year than is extracted annually from the oil and gas reserves off the nation’s coastlines.
Life-Altering Energy Conversion Machine of the Day: From Japan’s Blest Corporation comes a revolutionary Mr. Fusion-like device capable of returning plastic material back to its original form: Oil.
From OurWorld:
Blest’s conversion technology is very safe because it uses a temperature controlling electric heater rather than flame. The machines are able to process polyethylene, polystyrene and polypropylene (numbers 2-4) but not PET bottles (number 1). The result is a crude gas that can fuel things like generators or stoves and, when refined, can even be pumped into a car, a boat or motorbike. One kilogram of plastic produces almost one liter of oil. To convert that amount takes about 1 kilowatt of electricity, which is approximately ¥20 or 20 cents’ worth.
[noob.us.]
Intriguing, though I would withhold high praise until a few other questions are answered. For example, what are the byproducts, and how safe/harmful are they to people and the environment? This sounds amazing at face value, but that’s a fairly important question to answer. The fact that it wasn’t addressed makes me suspicious. After all, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Algae-Powered Latro Lamp Transforms CO2 Into Light | Inhabitat
“Designer Mike Thompson has created an incredible living lamp that is powered by algae! The Latro Lamp derives energy from an algae chamber that requires just sunlight, CO2, and water to operate. Stick the lamp outside, breathe into it, and voila, you’ve created your own bio battery-powered living lamp.”
via (hippieflavor)
Portrait of a BP Executive.
Impacts of Climate Change Extend to Human Health
While much of the research into the health effects of climate shifts has focused on developing nations, the new analysis argues that the United States is already suffering the effects of rising seas, changes in patterns of flooding and drought, heat waves, shifts in the strength of hurricanes and storms and worsening air quality.
“As the recent pandemic of H1N1 virus has shown us, diseases do not respect international boundaries,” the report says. “Climate change can be a driver for disease migration, but even so, such diseases do not represent the broadest range of possible, or even likely, human health effects of climate change.”
Virus Harnesses Light to Split Water
MIT’s Angela Belcher, has engineered a virus so that it captures light energy and uses it to catalyze the splitting of water, a first step in a possible new way to generate hydrogen for fuel cells.
