A Picture is Worth… Gasoline Consumption Per Day

A Picture is Worth… Gasoline Consumption Per Day: ”

In light of the Clinton-McCain gas tax holiday proposal I think this statistic (shown after the jump) from the Economist and BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2005 should be highlighted.

The image shows gasoline consumption per day around the world. It shows that the USA is consuming more gasoline than 20 other countries do together, every day.

If there is anyone that should get tax cuts it’s the people who buy small and fuel-efficient vehicles. Or even better, the people who use public transportation instead.

Related: Clinton-McCain gas tax holiday slammed as bad idea

Older entries:
- A Picture is Worth… Albatross Carcass
- A Picture is Worth… Car, bus or bicycle?

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(Via Green Blog.)

Are Polar Bears On A Deathwatch?

Are Polar Bears On A Deathwatch?: ”

Everybody take along look at the picture below, and prepare yourself to mist up a little bit when Coca-Cola begins running their annual wintertime commercials…

Image from sabinche

The World Wildlife Fund has declared that polar bears will be extinct by 2050 unless the Canadian government can lead the world in drastic action.

Canada, which has 2/3 of the world’s polar bear population inside of its borders, is obviously in a hard spot- they have to try to reign in the human hunting against the bears, even as climate change drives them into greater contact with human populations. On top of that of course is climate change, which is progressively removing the sea ice that the bears thrive on.

The WWF report highlights that Canada is about to sell off a bear habitat on June 2nd to the oil company who supplies the highest bid; an imperative is laid at the state to issue guidelines for protecting the bears and their habitat even as the exploration goes on. Without it, they claim, the bears have exhibited a willingness to walk all the way to Russia, or travel hundreds of miles inland in search of safe habitats and food.

Environmental Graffiti is up for four bloggers’ choice awards. You can vote for us for best entertainment blog, best blog of all time, best geek blog and best animal blogger.

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Post from Environmental Graffiti: environmental news blog.

Are Polar Bears On A Deathwatch?

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(Via Environmental News Blog | Environmental Graffiti.)

Orang-utans swing into action to stop Dove destroying rainforests for palm oil

Orang-utans swing into action to stop Dove destroying rainforests for palm oil: ”

Today, we’re launching the next stage in our
campaign to protect the rainforests of Indonesia from the expansion of the
palm oil industry. Our volunteers, dressed as orang-utans, are currently climbing
over the London
headquarters of the company behind Dove, which uses palm oil as one of its
ingredients. Our latest research shows that Unilever, the makers of Dove, is
buying palm oil from companies that are destroying valuable rainforest and
peatland areas, which is bad news not only for the millions of people who depend
on them for their way of life and endangered species such as the orang-utan,
but also for the global climate.

Right now, four ‘orang-utans’ are perched on a
balcony at Unilever’s headquarters in London,
telling passers-by why Dove is responsible for the devastation happening in South East Asia. Down below on the road, a giant
billboard mounted on a truck parked below apes (sorry) Dove’s Campaign for Real
Beauty advertising campaign, and huge speakers are playing jungle noises at top
volume. Meanwhile, at a Unilever factory at Port Sunlight near Liverpool, sixty volunteers (many in orang-utan cosutmes)
have overrun the premises, decorating the front entrace with a huge banner. The
factory makes Persil, which also contains palm oil.

Write to Patrick Cescau, group chief
executive, and tell Unilever to clean up its act.

Why Dove and Unilever? For a start, Unilever
is one of the largest users of palm oil in the world, funnelling up to one in
every 20 litres produced from Indonesia into some of the many well-known brands
it owns. This one fact means Unilever has a huge influence on the way palm oil
is made.

And being chair of the Roundtable on
Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), Unilever has even more clout. The RSPO is a group
of retailers, manufacturers and
suppliers whose aim is create standards for the production of sustainable palm
oil. But as things are, it’s little more than a greenwashing operation because card-carrying members of the RSPO continue
to be involved in the destruction of Indonesia’s rainforests. The RSPO has developed a certification scheme, but
as yet not a drop of certified oil is available, six years after the scheme was
set up. Even when certified palm oil becomes available later this year, there is nothing to prevent certified palm oil
being blended with non-certified palm oil. This will make it impossible for
RSPO members to guarantee that their palm oil does not come from recently
deforested areas. Just ask Unilever.

This
was documented in the Cooking the Climate report we produced last November and
Unilever featured prominently, but since then we’ve collected fresh evidence of
Unilever’s role in deforestation. Our latest report, How Unilever’s Palm Oil Suppliers Are Burning Up Borneo, details how some of Unilever’s key palm oil suppliers -
Sinar Mas, Wilmar, Sime Darby and IOI among them – are devastating forest and
peatland areas in Central Kalimantan. Not only are millions of people who live
in or rely on the forests for their survival being put at risk, but as these
areas are destroyed many endangered species are at even greater risk of
extinction, including Sumatran tigers, Javan rhinoceroses and orang-utans.

There are also devastating consequences for
the climate. As the forests and tropical peatlands of Indonesia are destroyed and
converted into oil palm plantations, huge volumes of greenhouse gases are
released, accelerating climate change. Indonesia is the third largest
emitter of these gases in the world, in large part due to the destruction of
its forests at the hands of the palm oil industry.

This is not great going for a company that
paints itself as green and responsible: Unilever’s website makes a great deal
of its efforts to be both environmentally and socially responsible, but when it
comes to palm oil the reality is very different.

We want Unilever to clean up its act, not just
with the palm oil it uses in Dove but in all its products. To start the ball
rolling, we’ve devised a three-point action plan for Unilever to follow:

1. support an immediate moratorium on the
   destruction of rainforest and peatland areas in Indonesia to grow palm oil;
2. stop trading with palm oil suppliers who are
   involved in this destruction;
3. pressure the RSPO to also support a moratorium.

Last year, we threw a spotlight on the
environmental catastrophe unfolding in Indonesia; now we’re at Unilever’s
doorstep, demanding that the company uses its power and influence to help bring
the devastation to an end. That’s why we’re currently swinging around on various
buildings up and down the country, but we also need your help.

Two years ago, we asked you to persuade
McDonald’s to stop buying soya grown in newly deforested areas of the Amazon,
and it worked, so we’d like you to do the same with Unilever.

Write to Patrick Cescau, group chief
executive, and tell Unilever to clean up its act, and we also have some snazzy banners for your website.

“

(Via Greenpeace UK RSS.)

The Oldest Tree In The World: 9,950 Years Put In Perspective

The Oldest Tree In The World: 9,950 Years Put In Perspective: ”

This tree is apparently 9,550 years old; well, more appropriately, not the tree itself, but the root system, which has obviously supported several different incarnations of this tree.

Not the tree. Pretty, though. From trondia

However, since our average lifespan is far south of 100 years, we can’t really gain an appropriate perspective on how old this rather well-worn Norway Spruce actually is. The following statistics may help. At 9,950 years old, this tree was:

• ‘Born’ at the end of the last ice age.
• 4,450 years old when the Bristlecone Pines in California had that new-car smell. The Bristlecones were previously accepted to be the oldest living things.
• 4,972 years old when the Great Pyramid at Giza was completed, 2500 B.C./B.C.E.
• 6,585 years old when the first temple (Solomon’s) of Israel was completed in 957 B.C.E.
• 6,789 years old when the Roman Empire was founded in 753 B.C./B.C.E.
• 8,018 years old when Rome was sacked in 476 A.D./C.E.
• 9,035 years old when Columbus set out on his (everybody thought) doomed voyage of 1492
• 9,347 years old when Nelson was making a name for himself at Trafalgar in 1805, and
• 9,487 years old when the first atomic bombs were detonated in 1945

To be perfectly clear, this tree is older than recorded human history, which only reaches as far back as 2800 B.C.E. The oldest person on the planet-124-year old Zabani Khakimova of Chechnya- has been in existence for 1.29 percent of this tree’s lifespan. Yikes.

Environmental Graffiti is up for four bloggers’ choice awards. You can vote for us for best entertainment blog, best blog of all time, best geek blog and best animal blogger.

If you want to find out all the latest news on the environment, why not subscribe to our RSS feed? We’ll even throw in a free album.

Post from Environmental Graffiti: environmental news blog.

The Oldest Tree In The World: 9,950 Years Put In Perspective

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(Via Environmental News Blog | Environmental Graffiti.)

Greens call for immediate suspension of ‘false solution’ biofuel target ahead of RTFO launch on 15 April (14th Apr 2008)

Greens call for immediate suspension of ‘false solution’ biofuel target ahead of RTFO launch on 15 April (14th Apr 2008): “Dr Caroline Lucas MEP: UK and EU biofuel policy is ‘misguided and irresponsible’.”

Biofuels suck…..

(Via Green Party – One World. One Chance. Vote Green. – News (Sumary Feed).)

Greener Driving Practices

Motorists could save themselves up to £100 a year and reduce their impact on the environment by adopting more eco-friendly driving practices, the RAC said today.

The RAC has come up with the following tips to help improve fuel efficiency and reduce cars’ impact on the environment:

• Pump up to cut down. Under-inflated tyres create more resistance when the car is moving, meaning that engines have to work harder, so more fuel is used and more emissions produced.
• Less clutter means less CO2. A full boot adds weight and therefore increases the load on your engine. Remove clutter to save fuel.
• Driving at an appropriate speed reduces CO2. Not only does staying at or within the speed limit increase driver safety, it also reduces CO2 emissions and saves money on petrol costs.
• Less stopping and starting means less CO2. Anticipating traffic flow can reduce the need to start and stop engines.
• Over-revving accelerates emissions. Modern car engines are designed to be efficient from the moment they are switched on, so revving up like a Formula 1 car in pole position only wastes fuel and increases engine wear.
• Idling is wasting fuel. If you’re likely to be at a standstill for more than three minutes, switch off the engine.
• Don’t get lost. Don’t waste fuel by going the wrong way – plan your route before leaving.

Some really good tips here, although getting lost might be a hard one to always guarantee !

Origina Article

Polar Bears Threatened

The sale of licences to drill for oil and gas rights in Alaska will threaten the future of the region’s polar bears, conservationists warned today.

The oil and gas rights to drill in 29.4m acres in the Chukchi sea, which were made available by the US government’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) yesterday, have attracted record bids of $2.66bn from the likes of Shell and ConocoPhillips.

The MMS believes that up to 15bn barrels of recoverable oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves lie beneath the Chukchi Sea, which lies between Alaska and Siberia.

But environmentalists say too little is known about the possible impact of drilling on populations of polar bears and walrus in the area.

The WWF says the Chukchi Sea is a critical habitat for polar bears, walrus, whales, seals, and migratory birds, and that the auctioning of the “prime” polar bear habitat will threaten the region’s populations. It is also experiencing some of the most rapid loss of sea ice in the world due to climate change.

“The technology to effectively contain and clean up oil spills does not currently exist and this oil lease is a disaster waiting to happen,” said James Leaton, the oil and gas policy adviser for WWF UK.

“It’s also unacceptable that oil companies and the US government are effectively seeking to make a profit from the potential demise of a species,” he added.

The WWF says that the US interior secretary, Dirk Kempthorne, has ignored repeated requests from the American public, Arctic communities and conservation groups to delay or withdraw the lease sale until there is a better understanding of its potential impact on Arctic wildlife and habitats.

The WWF and another group, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), also allege that the US Fish and Wildlife Services has delayed its final decision on whether polar bears will be listed as an endangered species to allow the sale to proceed without further controversy.

The listing, which would have had an impact upon the release of the leases, would have recognised the grave threat to polar bears from loss of sea ice and habitats due to global warming.

Brendan Frazier, IFAW’s US spokesman, said: “An endangered listing can affect the sell-off of the oil drilling rights.

“The authorities would have to get approval through the Fish and Wildlife Service to conduct drilling if there is an endangered species that inhabits the area.”

American legislators have proposed listing the polar bear as “threatened”, but that did not go far enough, said IFAW.

“A ‘threatened’ listing leaves open the possibility for exemptions and doesn’t shut loopholes, such as the one that allows Americans to trophy-hunt for polar bears in Canada and bring their heads and hides back to the US,” said Mr Frazier.

“Selling off our natural heritage to the highest bidder is a sad spectacle and represents a step backwards in our efforts to save the Arctic and polar bears for future generations,” said Carter Roberts, the president and CEO of World Wildlife Fund US.

The MMS announced its intention to sell oil and gas leases in the Chukchi Sea in early January, and bidding opened yesterday.

The highest bid received for the sale was $105,304,581, submitted by Shell. Other bidding companies included ConocoPhillips, StatoilHydro, NACRA, Repsol, ENI and Iona Energy.

Alaska native groups and environmentalists are already fighting Shell’s plans to drill on acreage in the adjacent Beaufort Sea.

Shell had planned to drill four wells on its Sivulliq prospect during the summer of 2007 but was blocked by a court challenge to its environmental permits.

Oil production from the Chukchi sea is at least a decade away, MMS officials said, citing the need for an undersea pipeline to connect the remote area with the Trans Alaska Pipeline.

Original Article

Human Powered Gym

Wow, this is a great idea…!

French inventor Lucien Gambarota and Wharton grad and entrepreneur Doug Woodring are bringing clean, sustainable energy to the gym using good old-fashioned manpower.

The two have joined forces with Hong Kong’s California Fitness, a subsidiary of 24 Hour Fitness Worldwide, to launch a revolutionary concept in which energy burned off by exercisers is diverted and converted to power lighting fixtures, while excess energy is stored in a battery.

The gym’s 13 step, cycling and cross-training machines in the “Powered by YOU” program are popular with members

Full Story Here

Leave it off

Britons are being asked to “leave it off” later this month, to show that cutting home energy use can have an impact on climate change.

During E-Day, which begins on 27 February, people will be asked to switch off electrical items not in use.

The National Grid will assess what difference it makes to electricity consumption, and power companies will offer support for home insulation.

“We’re all using electricity, but we tend to have very little idea about how the amount we’re using goes up and down,” said Matt Prescott, the scientist and climate campaigner who developed Planet Relief and then E-Day.

“There are a million-and-one things you could be thinking about in relation to curbing climate change; but let’s focus here on how the choices we make affect energy use, and try to take some small basic steps in everyday life,” he told BBC News.

Full Story