Climate change, ecology, nature, environment, eco-friendly politics, non-profit projects, human rights, preservation, wildlife... all that we care about.
Many laptop computers, mobile phones and other electronic equipment used around the world contain minerals mined in conflict zones such as the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Similar to the blood diamond scenario, which gained some attention from the 2006 Hollywood film of the same name, and more lately by Naomi Campbell’s well-publicized appearance in International Criminal [...]
The parliament of Catalonia voted to ban bullfighting in July, a move that enraged Spain’s bullfighting community and drew accusations of Catalan nationalist motivations rather than concern for animal welfare.
Well, plainly both nationalism and animal welfare played their parts in the ban – apparent by the fact that groups from both camps participated in the [...]
Today, a man entered the Discovery Channel Headquarters near Washington, D.C. and held 3 people hostage at gunpoint. The man also had canisters strapped to his body that were suspected to be explosives of some kind.
After several hours of negotiations, one thing led to another and the gunman ended up shot to death by the [...]
Several people were taken hostage at gunpoint today at the Discovery Channel’s headquarters in suburban Washington, D.C.
The man was wearing canisters strapped to his body; whether they actually pose a threat or not remains to be seen, but FBI bomb technicians and the SWAT team were on scene to deal with the problem. Despite the [...]
Early this morning Greenpeace activists occupied a Cairn Energy exploratory oil rig in the Arctic Ocean off of the coast of Greenland.
Four Greenpeace activists, who are also expert climbers, avoided Greenland police and the Danish navy to climb the rig and suspend themselves in tents. The activists’ behavior has caused a temporary shut down of [...]
Many think that the environmentalists are overstating the case, and that golf is hardly in the same league as the other pollutions strangling Japan.
In the wake of a summer that spawned harsh heat waves and forest fires in Europe; and catastrophic floods in China, Pakistan and elsewhere in Asia, climate debate is back in the news.
Debate about the significance or even existence of anthropogenic global warming featured prominently the headlines last winter during the UN climate conference in [...]
According to legislation passed in 2002 by the Social Democratic-Green Party coalition, all nuclear power stations in Germany are to be decommissioned by 2022.
However, according to a recent television interview, current German Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Christian Democratic Union plans to extend this deadline by another 10-15 years.
From a report in Deutsche Welle:
The chancellor, [...]
Poor BP. After the Deepwater Horizon mishap they have been tarred by their own brush, so to speak.
But lets face it, despite BP’s exceptionally bad safety record, it’s a bad brush all around; whether you’re a pelican in the Gulf of Mexico or a person living beside Alberta’s tar sands or in the Niger River [...]
The activists at the recent Climate Camp in Scotland have stirred up controversy and debate, at least in the little corner of the media that pays attention to climate change activism.
After a day of ‘climate action’ on Monday, during which several windows were broken at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) headquarters in Edinburgh, 12 Climate [...]
Environmental activists have been fighting to save Russia’s Khimki forest from plans to build a federal highway through it.
On Sunday a rock concert in protest of the highway plans was held in Moscow, attracting some 2,000 people. Police prevented sound equipment from entering the concert area, but well-known Russian rock singer and political critic Yuri [...]
The proposal by mining company Vedanta Resources to establish a bauxite mine on sacred indigenous land in India’s Orissa state has been rejected by the Indian Government.
The Dongria Kondh tribe live harmoniously with nature and are ecologically dependent on the Niyamgiri Hills in Orissa, where Vedanta – an Indian and British firm – have been [...]
The Greenpeace ship Esperanza is currently protesting deep sea oil drilling in the Arctic by UK firm Cairn Energy, the first company granted permission to drill in Greenland’s icy and environmentally sensitive waters.
Cairn Energy is also one of the targets of the recent Climate Camp protests in Edinburgh, where the company is based.
Greenpeace campaigner Leila [...]
Climate change activists stepped up their game and held a rash of demonstrations in Edinburgh, Scotland today.
Members of the activist group Climate Camp have been set up outside the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) global headquarters in Edinburgh since last week in order to protest the bank’s financing of the fossil fuel industry. But today [...]
In a bit of ‘News of the Weird’ meets environmental activism, a protester glued herself to a desk in the Royal Band of Scotland’s headquarters on Friday.
Hundreds of activists have been holding a Climate Camp outside of RBS headquarters, near Edinburgh Scotland in protest of the bank’s loans to fossil fuel companies, thereby facilitating climate [...]
To Canadian disappointment, a ban on the importation of seal products into the European Union was enacted yesterday. However, the European Commission stated that the ban does not apply to groups that have already filed court appeals, including 16 Inuit groups from Canada.
According to a report by the Associated Press, indigenous peoples of Greenland and [...]
The mismanagement of irrigation, compounded by drought and a drop in commodity prices, has spelled disaster for Australia’s most important agricultural region.
The waters of the Darling River and the massive Murray irrigate a region that produces almost half of Australia’s fresh produce. But the worst drought in over 100 years has plunged the Murray-Darling Basin [...]
In advance of a major UN meeting for the Convention on Biological Diversity, the organization’s secretary-general, Ahmed Djoghlaf, recently warned of the threats posed against the natural world – and life itself – by population growth, urbanization, agriculture and climate change.
Despite these increasing threats and an ongoing mass extinction in the natural world, which is [...]
Despite growing environmental awareness and energy efficiency measures, the developed world consumes more than ever. At the same time people in China and much of the developing world are adopting more energy intensive lifestyles.
So more cars and meat consumption in China, etc., combined a growing obsession for the latest consumable goods – like phones, cars [...]
Slavoj Zizek has kind of been carrying the torch for intellectual Marxists in recent years. He is both a polemic and entertaining figure – a true academic ‘rock star’. He also lectures in clear, understandable language unlike many academic types, though some of his scholarly writings can be pretty bewildering.
In the following video Zizek discusses [...]
The ‘greenest government ever’ is at it again.
The UK’s coalition government headed by Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy PM Nick Clegg has been cutting a lot of green programs and departments in the name of efficiency and belt-tightening.
Now they are shelving one of their own environmental plans to regulate coal and gas power plants, [...]
BP has agreed to pay $50.6m (€39.7m) in fines to US government’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for failing to rectify safety hazards after a 2005 explosion at a Texas City oil refinery killed 15 workers and injured 170.
BP already paid a $21.3m (€16.7m) record breaking fine to OSHA following the deadly 2005 explosion. [...]
Workers in China don’t just have to fight ruthless parent corporations, oppressive subcontractors and draconian labor laws. They also have our insatiable desire for newer, cheaper and more cutting edge goods to contend with.
Chinese factory workers, who build our mobile phones, laptop computers and plastic knickknacks, have long worked in conditions tantamount to slave labor. [...]
Record summer temperatures and drought have caused around 800 wildfires, which in turn covered Moscow in a cloud of poisonous smoke.
Now some 28 fires have reached parts of the Bryansk region of Russia, which is located near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine – site of the worst nuclear accident in history in [...]
Here is the new environmentally friendly podcast from Lloyd & Land to tantalize your eardrums and make your eye’s mist up from wistful memories of days gone by, before growth grew and noise pollution didn’t include so many bloody blips and bleeps.
The journey from Toughskins jeans and wholemeal doorsteps to Starbucks and Easter baskets full [...]
During a trip last month from the Portuguese capital of Lisbon to its second largest city Porto, in the north of the country, I noticed a lot of wind turbines dotting the landscape. I’m not the only one either.
The New York Times published a piece yesterday on Portugal’s green makeover. Wind, hydro, solar and wave [...]
The government of Spain’s electric vehicle scheme has so far failed to take off.
Spain’s plans to fill its roads with electric cars, which can top up at service stations and converted phone booths across the country, have hit a bump in the road. So far only 16 electric cars have been sold in Spain this [...]
As Russia’s crops wither and burn in record heat and wildfires, the oldest and first seed bank in the world is under threat.
Russia’s Pavlovsk agricultural station, located outside of St. Petersburg, was established in 1926 with the purpose of preserving plant diversity and breeding new crops in response to potential food crises.
During World War II’s [...]
Britain’s energy secretary Chris Huhne has lifted the ban on local authorities selling back surplus electricity into the national power grid.
The plan is to encourage local councils to generate their own renewable energy by installing solar panels and wind turbines on council owned property, including both homes and public buildings. Any extra electricity can be [...]
According to representatives of both poor and rich nations, there has been no progress at the climate talks held in Bonn, Germany this past week.
In fact there has been the opposite: regression and pessimism concerning potential progress. The EU climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard said she believes the negotiations have ‘gone backwards’.
From a BBC News report:
Unfortunately, [...]
