Transparency: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (from Good Magazine)

very interesting...
Transparency: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (from Good Magazine)

I also posted a video about it a while back - posting.

National Geographic's Strange Days on Planet Earth: Plastic Plague

Another interesting (and equally frightening) video about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch:
Any parents with young babies, soon-to-be parents, and sometime-in-the-future parents definitely need to watch this...


Thanks to the anonymous person who sent this!

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Interesting video about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch - a "massive stew of unwanted waste" estimated to be twice the size of Texas, floating in Pacific Ocean...

The price we are all paying for China's focus on economic growth.

The New York Times has published an eight part series titled, "Choking on Growth", about China's pollution crisis.

I just finished the last episode titled "In China, Farming Fish in Toxic Waters". The article and video are pretty alarming.

Here are some highlights:

"China produces about 70 percent of the farmed fish in the world, harvested at thousands of giant factory-style farms that extend along the entire eastern seaboard of the country."

"More than half of the rivers in China are too polluted to serve as a source of drinking water."

"The nearby Dongzhang Reservoir, a water source for agriculture and more than 700,000 people, was recently rated level 5, near the bottom of the government scale, unfit for fish farming, swimming or even contact with the human body."

"This is one of the solutions to the water crisis in China: to seek out virgin territory and essentially start the cycle all over again. And that worries scientists, who say aquaculture in China is not just a victim of water pollution but a culprit with a severe environmental legacy."

Still want to eat that shrimp, catfish, unagi (eel), or tilapia?!?

The 11th Hour

Went to an advanced screening of "The 11th Hour".

The film is a documentary about climate change and how humans are (largely) responsible for causing it.

Here are the main points:

• The Earth is very sick
• Ecosystem is out of balance
• Climate change caused by:
  
• Humans
• Rapid population increase
  
• Rapid increase in greenhouse gas emission
  
• Excess consumption
• Waste
  
• Reliance on fossil fuels
• We have the technology today to greatly reduce carbon emissions
• Primary problem today is government/big oil/lack of public awareness
• Time is running out, we need to do something
  

My thoughts:

• The film is very U.S.-centric. It's true that the US is the biggest consuming nation and is very behind in its environmental practices, although this is very much an international problem. China is a huge concern - growth is out of control (and they have surpassed the U.S. in carbon emissions).
  
• The film presents this bleak situation but then doesn't argue strongly enough for a call to action.
• The movie presents so much information and is somewhat difficult to follow. I preferred "An Inconvenient Truth".

My recommendation:
Be aware of the situation. Educate yourself. Do something.

Doing our part to save the planet

A few weeks ago, I was reading Good Magazine and came across an article titled "Number Crunching", featuring a series of photos by photographer Chris Jordan. Here's one of the pictures from the series:

(photo from chrisjordan.com)

The picture shows 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every 5 seconds! There is another picture in the series showing 2 million plastic bottles, the number used in the US every 5 minutes! These numbers are just insane...

FYI - here's a great article from Fast Company about the bottled water industry: link

Here's what Patty and I are doing to try to help out:

• bought a nylon reusable bag for our groceries
• whenever possible, we drink filtered water (from the fridge) instead of bottled water
• installed desert landscaping to minimize water use -> grass requires a ton of water to maintain
• installed solar landscaping lights
  
• replaced about half the bulbs in our house with CFLs
• replace the air filter for our air conditioning on a regular basis
• installed ceiling fans and raised the setting on our AC to 87 degrees (I know that sounds pretty warm, but with the fans it's comfortable)
• purchased a front-loading washing machine -> front-loaders use about 40-60% less water and 30-50% less electricity compared to regular washers; they also use about 75% less detergent
  
• recycle whenever possible
• maintain the air pressure in our cars -> proper pressure maximizes the mileage of your vehicle and tires plus it's safer

What are you doing? We'd love to hear your ideas...