How to Kick-Start the 21st Century Eco-Economy

04/06/200707/08/2007 Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ECOLOGY, economics, ENVIRONMENT, Global Issues and Perspectives, Media, News, sustainability

Toward a Green Economy
By Stephen Leahy*

May 31 (IPS) – Humanity is facing historic and truly unprecedented challenges from climate change and the rapid decline of ecosystems that sustain life.

This article is final part of a three-part series published by IPS on natural capital and how future global prosperity and equity can be achieved through the preservation of ecosystems. See Part One: Like Enron, Earth Inc. Sliding Into Bankruptcy and Part Two: Global Warming is Real But I didn’t Do It

The 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) found that 83 percent of the planet’s natural systems are in serious decline or on the brink. Adding to this already dire situation are the twin pressures of population growth and increasingly consumptive lifestyles.

Global population is expected to soar from today’s 6.6 billion to 9 billion by 2050. Even though we crossed the point of sustainable use of natural resources in the mid-1980s, many of the 2.4 billion people living in China and India are striving mightily right now to approach the materialistic lifestyle of the average North American.

So how can we find our way around the global calamity the human race seems to be hurtling towards?

“Humanity needs a fundamentally new approach to managing the assets upon which we all depend,” said Janet Ranganathan, director of the People and Ecosystems programme at the World Resources Institute, an environmental group based in Washington.

“We need new ways of making decisions at all levels that fully value ecosystems and the services they provide us,” she said.

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Global Warming Is Real But I Didn’t Do It

01/06/200707/08/2007 Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, economics, ENVIRONMENT, Global Issues and Perspectives, News, Pollution and Toxics, sustainability

CLIMATE CHANGE:
Overcoming the Ostrich Effect
By Stephen Leahy

May 30 (IPS) – The vast majority of North Americans now declare that they want action on climate change. But whether people are truly willing to embrace “carbon-neutral” lifestyles — including giving up their gas-guzzling sports utility vehicles — remains an open question, say experts.

This article is part two of a three-part series published by IPS on natural capital and how future global prosperity and equity can be achieved through the preservation of ecosystems. See Part One: Like Enron, Earth Inc. Sliding Into Bankruptcy and Part Three: How to Kick-Start the 21st Century Eco-Economy

Scientists have made a strong case that the only way to stave off the worst impacts of climate change — floods, storms, wildfires, disease epidemics and sundry other unpleasant events — is by slashing greenhouse gas emissions a whopping 80 percent from the 1990 baseline by 2050. European policy-makers are already putting plans in place to meet that target.
North Americans, whose region is by far the worst polluter, are beginning to talk about reductions, but few understand the sweeping breadth of the changes needed to reach the 80 percent target.

“The American public’s awareness about global warming is extremely high, but that doesn’t mean very much,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of Strategic Initiatives at Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies

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US Generals Say Warming Poses Major Security Threat

19/05/200719/05/2007 Stephen Africa, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ENVIRONMENT, Global Issues and Perspectives, News

US Military Panel Calls Warming a Major Threat
By Stephen Leahy

May 15 (IPS) – Senior retired military officers in the United States are urging immediate action on climate change to avoid a massive upsurge in regional and global instability that could threaten their country’s security.

Climate change is a “threat multiplier”, said 11 retired three- and four-star U.S. generals and admirals who make up a military advisory board put together by the non-profit CNA Corporation. They warned Monday that many Asian, African and Middle Eastern nations could fail, opening the door for terrorists and drawing the U.S. into a variety of new conflicts.
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Destroying Canada’s Forests for America’s Oil

14/05/200702/01/2013 Stephen CANADA, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ECOLOGY, Energy, ENVIRONMENT, Forests, News, Pollution and Toxics, sustainability Alberta, Boreal Forest, Canada, Energy, Oil and Gas, oil sands, Taiga, tar sands

“Nowhere else in the world where this much money is being invested”

**REVISED** Oil Stains in the Boreal Forest:

The Environmental Cost of Canada’s Oil Sands

An eBook by Stephen Leahy

Oil Stains in the Boreal Forest is a 30-page eBook presenting a factual overview of the environmental impacts of pumping more than 1.1 million barrels of oil — 175 million litres (50 million gallons) — each day to thirsty US markets.

Based on a 4-part investigative journalism series, leading scientific and environmental experts along with industry officials are interviewed.

Recipe for making a make a gallon of gasoline from the oil sands:

burn 1500 cubic feet of natural gas
use up 700 litres of water
dig up two tonnes of earth and rock
dump 948 litres (250 gallons) of mine tailings

And that’s just the beginning – now the crude has to be processed.

Oil Stains in the Boreal Forest includes pictures of the destruction of virgin boreal forest, links to access additional information, and a peek at a new economic study that shows oil company profits are subsidized by not having to pay for their pollution.

Download your copy of the updated 2009 version 2.1 today for only $3.75
Oil Stains in the Boreal Forest: The Environmental Cost of Canada’s Oil Sands 2.1
eBook -Version 2.1 (2009) – full-color, 8 1/2 x 11″, 30 pages (14 mb pdf download)

Learn more about the author

Free Access to Every Species on the Planet

10/05/200710/05/2007 Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ENVIRONMENT, Science/Tech, WILDLIFE

A Web Page for Each of the World’s Creatures

By Stephen Leahy

May 10 (IPS) – Scientists launched a global initiative Thursday called the “Encyclopedia of Life” that will document the Earth’s 1.8 million known species and track the impacts of habitat loss and climate change.

The ambitious electronic encyclopedia will catalogue the details of every species thus far identified and put all this information on the Internet so anyone can access it.

“This will be a fantastic resource for the developing world,” said James Edwards, the new executive director of the Encyclopedia of Life project headquartered in Washington at the Smithsonian Institution.

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Can Capitalism Be Green?

07/05/200725/09/2007 Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ECOLOGY, economics, Energy, ENVIRONMENT, Global Issues and Perspectives, Multilingual Versions, News, sustainability , captialism, ecological footprint, green economics

Can Capitalism Be Green?

By Stephen Leahy

Experts say continuous economic growth, intrinsic to capitalism, is not viable on a planet with increasingly scarce natural resources.

May 7 (IPS/IFEJ) – Capitalism has proven to be environmentally and socially unsustainable, so future prosperity will have to come from a new economic model, say some experts. Just what this new model will look like is the subject of intense debate.

One current states that continuous growth can be environmentally compatible if clean and efficient technologies are adopted, and if economies stop producing material goods and move towards services. This is known as sustainable prosperity.

International agreements to fight global problems, like the thinning of the atmosphere’s ozone layer and climate change, used market principles to achieve compliance by the private sector.

But the problem is, “We are consuming 25 percent more than the Earth can give us each year,” says William Rees, of the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia.

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How to Lay the Foundations for a New World

21/04/200724/04/2007 Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, Culture, ENVIRONMENT, Global Issues and Perspectives

EARTH DAY: Happiness Is a Smaller Eco-Footprint

“… more children knew the characters of the video game Pokemon than could recognise an oak tree or an otter…”

By Stephen Leahy

Apr 21 (IPS) – Today’s children will live in a new world of climate change and greatly diminished natural resources, which may give way to a nightmarish reality, or it could give birth to a happier and lighter way of living on the Earth, say environmentalists.

The scientific evidence for environmental troubles — from rising sea levels to species extinction to desertification — sends a clear signal that we are running into the limits of spaceship Earth to support us as it has for millennia.

“This world is ending; we need to lay the foundations for a new world,” says Alice Klein, a magazine editor and documentary filmmaker in Toronto. “We have a great opportunity to make a better world,” she told IPS.

Klein’s film “Call of the Hummingbird“, to premiere on Earth Day — Apr. 22 — at Toronto’s Hot Docs film festival, tracks the 13 days when some 1,000 teachers, eco-activists, farmers, Mayans, Rastafarians, holistic health-workers, non-governmental organisation executives, student leaders from all over Latin America and a few from Europe and North America camped out together in central Brazil in 2005.

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Just Published: Oil Stains in the Boreal Forest

08/04/2007 Stephen CANADA, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ENVIRONMENT, News, Pollution and Toxics

Oil Stains in the Boreal Forest:
The Environmental Cost of Canada’s Oil Sands

A New eBook Available Here

Canada’s oil sands are the world’s largest industrial project easily visible from space. Some of the environmental impacts can also be seen from space but many more are invisible and unacknowledged in their entirety until now.

Oil Stains in the Boreal Forest offers a fast, factual overview of the environmental impacts of pumping more than 1.1 million barrels of oil — 175 million litres/50 million gallons — each day to thirsty US markets. Leading scientific and environmental experts along with industry officials are interviewed to provide the full story.

Oil Stains in the Boreal Forest includes pictures of the environmental destruction, hyperlinks for additional information, a bonus chart on The Real Cost of Tank of Oil Sands Gas and a new economic study that shows Oil Company profits are based on no-cost pollution.

Written by independent journalist Stephen Leahy who has been published in New Scientist, The London Sunday Times, Maclean’s Magazine, The Toronto Star, Wired News, Audubon, BBC Wildlife, and Canadian Geographic. Leahy is the science and environment correspondent for Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS), a wire service headquartered in Rome that covers global issues, and its Latin American affiliate,Tierramérica, located in Mexico City.

Oil Stains in the Boreal Forest – eBook – full-color, 8 1/2 x 11″, 28 page pdf (1.2 mb download) Special publication price $6.00

Passion Needed to Meet Climate Challenge

07/04/200709/04/2007 Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ENVIRONMENT, News

Climate Change: The Challenge of the Century?

By Stephen Leahy

Apr 6 (IPS) – Climate change is already altering the Arctic, sub-Saharan Africa, small islands and Asia’s river deltas, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported Friday in Brussels.

And these observed impacts will only increase and widen in the years to come, along with some nasty surprises as the human race’s global climate-altering experiment rapidly gains momentum.

Scientists and environmental activists say the overarching question — and the challenge of the century — is what will we do about it?

“The irritating thing is that we have all the tools at hand to limit climate change and save the world from the worst impacts,” said Lara Hansen, chief scientist of the World Wildlife Fund’s Global Climate Change Programme.

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New eBook on Enviromental Impacts of Canada’s Oil Sands

03/04/200708/04/2007 Stephen CANADA, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ENVIRONMENT, News, Pollution and Toxics, WILDLIFE

Now Available:

Oil Stains in the Boreal Forest:
The Environmental Cost of Canada’s Oil Sands

A new eBook by Stephen Leahy

Oil Stains in the Boreal Forest includes pictures of the environmental destruction, hyperlinks for additional information, a bonus chart on The Real Cost of Tank of Oil Sands Gas and a new economic study that shows Oil Company profits are based on no-cost pollution. (special publication price $6.00)