Who cares about Wall Street financial crash
Posted on | February 10, 2009 | No Comments
As much as I hate to think of the environment as something at our service instead of being precious for its intrinsic value, I have to admit I am glad when economists come up with calculations showing that environment conservation is even convenient from a purely economical point of view. The whole idea is that human well-being is dependent upon ecosystem services which are provided by nature for free, and that I have discussed already in a previous post. There have been several reports pointing out the economical costs of biodiversity loss, and although most of them are quite alarming, after a couple of years they all prove to have underestimated the effects.
One example is the famous Read more
Am I ready to give up my steak to save the planet?
Posted on | February 9, 2009 | No Comments
I have asked myself this very question so many times, trying to avoid to really look for an answer. I have been knowing for a long time that beef production is strictly related to release of greenhouse gases. It is actually hard not to know that, when many of the most prominent environmentalists are vegetarian and keep telling us that reducing meet consumption can significantly reduce the emission of CO2 equivalent in the atmosphere. Although I am certainly not a heavy consumer of red meat, I feel sort of guilty for I have been trying to ignore the issue, keeping myself uninformed about the extent of the problem. It is however harder and harder to keep doing it, when people of the caliber of Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the IPCC, who received the Nobel Peace Price in 2007 together with Al Gore, also a known vegetarian, has repeatedly urged us to change our lifestyle and not to eat meat. So, when the February issue of the Scientific American magazine got in my mailbox, the article The greenhouse hamburger by Nathan Fiala, caught my attention. Read more
Tags: carbon dioxide > ecological footprint > meat
One hour without light to tell the world that we do care
Posted on | February 3, 2009 | No Comments
There is a given feeling of euphoria, since Barack Obama won the presidential election in USA. American citizens have high expectations for their 44th president, but even people living on this side of the ocean have some, at least regarding a certain degree of engagement toward critical questions such as sustainability, decreased CO2 emissions and global warming from the nation that is leading the exploitation of Mother Earth. And since any kind of engagement will be better that the void that there is now, there is even a good chance that something will really happen. Scientists and researcher all over the planet agree upon the need for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and many governments have already agreed that there is a need for a new deal to be signed before The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. One possible date is December 2009, when representatives from 180 countries will meet at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Read more
Tags: carbon dioxide > climate change > Earth > Environment > global warming > Kyoto protocol > lights