Think again!  Check out this video!  Found here.

It seems that in the upcoming Wiwa v. Shell trial, the judge had Wiwa remove the video from its website. Don’t let this short documentary about murder and human rights abuses be silenced. Please share it on blogs, Facebook, and other places!

Here on Earthascope, when we talk about dirty sources of fuel, we’re usually talking about the environmental impact, which in turn, is having, and increasingly will, impact humans.

In this case, Shell’s drilling of oil directly and dramatically impacted a people, environmental impact aside.

This coming week, I will be posting an article by Earthascope’s very first guest writer, Dan Harrison, from EnviroGadget.com!  We are excited to feature his work on our site.  We also wanted to let our readers know that as a way to bring new voices to the discussion we host here, we will strive to bring more guest writers as time goes on.

I would encourage readers to visit Dan Harrison’s blog, EnviroGadget, as well as Low Power PCs.  His work is focused on gadgets and tech that can help users to use less of our finite resources.  I applaud his efforts and would enjoy having him back on Earthascope for future posts!

With that, I would like to open the door to other contributors who may want to get involved with writing stories here on Earthascope.  Please simply contact us and let us know that you are interested.

Check out for Dan’s guest post, Great Gadgets for your Eco-Friendly Kitchen, which features three green gadgets for your home!  Coming up here on Earthascope next Monday!

Green Life Project is a weekly series of posts highlighting one change for readers to make in their life in order to gradually green their lives.

This week’s Green Life Project action item is to pick up one piece of litter each day.  

Oh, and after this week, continue the good habit.  

Simple?  Yes!  Easy?  Maybe not for all of us.

Picking up a piece of litter (or many pieces) was something taught to me by my parents, and even more so, that littering itself was, “bad.”  My dad used to take a bucket to pick up litter along the road of our very rural property, which always included beer bottles, food wrappers, and cigarettes.

But over the last few years, I have rarely picked up litter, my squeamishness about “dirty” garbage getting the better of me.  I also feel watchful eyes on me, as if it’s something to be embarrassed about.  I’ve gotten over both of these and have begun to pick up the errant bottle or plastic bag here and there and either recycle, or, at the very least, throw it into the garbage.  Some days I miss, and some days I pick up several pieces to make up the difference.

I realize that while this is a simple act, for many possible reasons, it may not be that, “easy” for all of us to perform.  For the vast majority of us, I consider them excuses to be overcome, and let me from here explain why picking up a piece of garbage everyday can make for a much cleaner planet.  I realize we will all miss days — I know I have — but try to do one per day and I know that you’ll often double up on other days.

I read this opinion piece on The Huffington Post this week and found it especially intriguing.  Sure, $3 million is a lot to you and I, but they say it is enough to endow a research center and, by association, the preservation of a green space?  Wow!

From that piece:

So, how do we ensure that these treasures survive to inspire our descendants and teach them about the many-layered complexities of life? A permanent research presence goes a long way towards protecting a parcel of nature in perpetuity, while simultaneously building a better understanding of that parcel. Terborgh and Sinclair both estimate that it would cost a minimum of $3 million to endow their respective field stations, forever. In Peru, the revenue flowing from such an endowment would pay the salaries of two permanent scientific directors and cover the scant operating costs of the rustic station. In Tanzania, the goal is to underwrite the training and permanent presence of additional Tanzanian scientists, spreading the sense of stewardship of the country’s living assets.

Okay, so where does such money come from?  Well, I worked for the advancement office for my college while in school, and we handled endowments as alums and others donated different sums of money for professorships.  Schools and other non-profits alike have a development or advancement office, charged with bringing in both small and large donations for the institutions.  Typically, $1 million or more would endow a chair for a professorship, which meant that a professor who earned the title would be given extra resources, assistants, equipment, etcetera, to carry out teaching and research in a specific field, using the interest from the endowment each year for expenses.

Imagine all of the fresh food you can buy at your local farmers' market!

Green Life Project is a weekly series of posts highlighting one change for readers to make in their life in order to gradually green their lives.

Your farmer’s market may not yet be chock full of produce, as it is early in the growing season for most markets.  For example, two weekends ago, we found purple asparagus, but not much else.  However, I picked up some potted herbs, scoped out and even sampled some different items.  Farmers’ markets have the added benefit of delicious food that you can eat on the spot and opportunities abound for seeing friends or meeting new people.

Investors have given the needed boost Thames Estuary’s, “London Array,” a plan to build 175 wind turbines offshore in its first phase, according to The Guardian.

From the story:

The prime minister, Gordon Brown, described the London Array as a “flagship project” in the drive to cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. Environmental groups also broadly welcomed the project although they warned that much more needs to be done to encourage the growth of the offshore wind industry. Nick Rau at Friends of the Earth said the decision to go ahead with the project showed that renewables were becoming “major league”.

Major league, indeed!  Britain is apparently thinking on a grand scale for wind projects:

The scheme is part of the second round of offshore wind farms that have been given consent, which together with the first phase would generate 8GW of power when they are fully built, although many of the projects have stalled because of the economic climate. Bids are in for a third round of nine sites off the coast of Britain, which would add an additional 25GW. If all the proposed wind farms were built, they would together generate 33GW, meeting 25% of the electricity demand in Britain.

That’s right: 25%!  Britain has about 60 million people, which is approximately 20% of that of the U.S.  But that’s no excuse for dragging our heals over here in the States — we have a lot more available coastline for projects and should take advantage of the technology that is available here and now.  

Still, some say that the British are not coming fast enough:

One of the most oft recommended ways to reduce your energy consumption is to begin using compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs.  We have recommended this purchase both in the Greener Under Twenty and in the Green Life Project series.  

Many will bring up that the bulbs contain mercury, which is true.  However, they can be recycled at more and more places, including Home Depot stores.  And even if they don’t make it to the recycling center, which is bad, because they should go there, there is still less mercury being emitted by coal-fired power plants due each bulb replacing a less efficient incandescent bulb.

So, they’re much more efficient and can be recycled, taking away that mercury complaint, which makes this seem as if it might be a no-brainer.  Not so fast.  It’s not so simple!

Light emitting diodes (LEDs) have been touted recently as another contender for replacing our lights.  They are even more efficient than CFL bulbs, however are much more expensive than CFLs which are usually more expensive than incandescent bulbs.

Plus, Matthew Phillips sent me this story from the Times of London (‘Green’ Lightbulbs Poison Workers) last week, which highlights workers being poisoned due to working with the mercury in the bulbs in factories in China.  

According to several news outlets, including the Chicago Sun Times, The Huffington Post, The New York Times, and USA Today, in a turn for the good, the City of Chicago has voted to ban the use of bisphenol-A (BPA) in baby bottles and sippy cups, to take effect on January 31, 2010.  

This is great news for those of us with strong concerns about BPA, which hardens plastics often used in baby bottles, water bottles, and even in the lining of many of our canned goods.  Canada banned it last year and the U.S. should follow suit and ban this as a step toward reducing the amount of plastics products humans absorb through food consumption.  Grave concerns abound regarding BPA and at the very least, the EPA should test it out for safety.

Let’s hope New York City and California follow suit, hopefully with stronger bans on products that come into contact with food and water.

Here is a fact sheet from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) regarding BPA.  

The Fact Sheet is not as harsh on BPA as, say, the wikipedia entry, which says in part, “Bisphenol A has low acute toxicity, with an oral LD50 of 3250 mg/kg in rats,[9] but it is an endocrine disruptor.[10][11] Low doses of bisphenol A can mimic the body’s own hormones, possibly causing negative health effects.[12] There is thus concern that long term low dose exposure to bisphenol A may induce chronic toxicity in humans.[13][14][15]“

That’s right, “endocrine disruptor”.  But it gets better:

The U.S. citizenry is again gaining interest in what they are eating and for various reasons.  Some are interested in the financial benefits of starting your own garden, others are concerned about their health, and many are concerned about the negative impact most of our agricultural and grocery industries are having on our environment.  

So, although I have not yet seen the film, Food, Inc., which features the likes of Michael Pollan (who, by the way, I get to hear speak at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago next Monday), it seems to focus on many of the problems with our food industry, most specifically, its production.

Check out the trailer below and let me know what you think!

We’ve discussed climate change deniers on here before.  But two Mondays ago, the column from the New York Time’s Paul Krugman (Princeton Professor and Nobel Prize winner in economics) takes on a different breed: those who say it’ll, “cost too much,” to do anything about climate change.  These folks deny the cost-effectiveness of action (usually while ignoring or downplaying the costs of inaction).

Before telling you more about the column, let me just say that I have a great deal of respect and admiration for this columnist.  Krugman is no ideologue — though his blog is titled, “Conscience of a Liberal,” he is no hardline Democrat — meaning, he has no problem coming out and saying when a Democrat has been or is wrong.  He has been a tough critic of President Obama, both during the election and after.  But that didn’t stop Obama from having him over for dinner within the last week, along with another Nobel prize winning-critic, economist, Joseph Stiglitz.  Obama’s a unique case of someone welcoming the outside perspective.

I was first introduced to Krugman’s work over four years ago by one of my professors in a public policy course I took as an undergraduate.  I have since followed his twice-weekly column in the New York Times.  I once fortunately received word that he was giving a talk about the economics of healthcare and was able to attend, during which he said that that was what he expected to chiefly write about while at the New York Times.  And while he covers it remarkably well, he thankfully does not stick to it.