TreeHugger Picks: State of the TH Union
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA on 02. 1.06
After listening to the supposed "State of the Union" here in the US last night, we paused our dilligent TreeHugging to wonder exactly where the state of the TreeHugger Union stood these days. Much like the televised version last night, we've got the good, the bad and the ugly.
The Good:
1) More and more people in the US are discovering that public transportation is the way to go, and on top of that, bicycle sales are exploding. More bicycles than cars were sold in the US last year.
2) A report found that wind turbines don't harm migratory birds as much as we may have first thought, and that the renewable energy that can be produced by such turbines can reduce poverty.
3) On the greenhouse gas emission front, Europe reported to be ahead of Kyoto Protocol standards, and Sweden will be oil-free in 2020!
The Bad
1) The air inside cars is actually worse than the air around cyclists and pedestrians on the side of the road.
2) Producing oil from tar sands creates two or three times more greenhouse gases than producing conventional oil.
3) Despite regulations and watchdog groups, illegal logging continues to happen, this time in Canada.
The Ugly
1) Wherever we are in the peak-oil matrix, we have less of it to tide us over that we originally thought.
2) Current levels of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere are higher now than at any time in the past 650,000 years.
3) The ozone hole over the Antarctic isn't going away, and will be around for at least another 60 years.
TH Eco-Action: Bridging Cultures Through Design - RISD Design Students Go To Guatamala.
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Did you miss the part where Bush pushed for a reduced dependance on foreign oil, and broader investment in renewable technologies? (If so, you've been missing it for the last six years too.) Let's put the logic back into ecological, and leave the political hackery up to the Cindy Sheehan's.
"reduced dependance on foreign oil" mean more drilling in ANWAR.
and "broader investment in renewable technologies" means more investment in nuclear power (not that that's 100% bad. it's just that it has several issues)
Also, keep in mind that all this is supposed to happen over 20 years time(after the peak if you're an early topper), every state of the union has mentioned reducing foreign oil, and with no help from kyoto.
Hopefully the acronym ANWAR was a play on the word WAR because Arctic National Wildlife Refuge......has no first letter A. Plus in ANWR caribou in spring can lose as much as a pint of blood a day to mosquitos. So allowing enviromentalist watched companies to drill in the -45 weather with no sunshine on ice-pack roads just isnt totally destructive-if at all-to the birds who live there only in summer. It will take some time to become "free" of oil so having our own supply isn't a bad idea. Just not focusing more energy on reducing dependancy is.