Home/Articles in: Pollution
Articles in: Pollution
Pollution, Aug 16th, 2011,
The oil leak in the North Sea, which was discovered by Shell last Monday – but not announced until Friday – has been mostly staunched, according to the UK government. Yet another, albeit much smaller, leak has been found stemming from the same offshore platform and it is spilling some 2 barrels of crude oil per day. The second leak is proving difficult to stop, according to Shell, due to its ‘awkward’ positioning. Last Monday’s oil spill is already being called the worst to occur in UK waters in the last 10 years. From an article in the Independent: An…
Tags: Greenpeace, leak, North Sea, oil, Shell, spill
Health, Pollution, Aug 15th, 2011,
Hydraulic fracturing is the controversial practice of extracting natural gas from shale rock by drilling, planting explosives and then pumping vast amounts of water and chemicals into the rock to open up gas deposits. Commonly referred to as ‘fracking’, domestic hydraulic fracturing is being touted by governments and fossil fuel corporations in several countries as being cheaper, safer and more climate-friendly than oil or coal extraction, as well as less dependent on the instability of international markets and political situations than other fossil fuels. But fracking is not without its environmental or human health concerns. From BBC News: Much of…
Tags: Canada, concerns, fracking, gas, hydraulic fracturing, New Brunswick, water
Pollution, Aug 12th, 2011,
Earlier today Shell reported an oil spill at its Gannet Alpha platform about 180 km from Aberdeen close to the U.K. shore at the North Sea. Although the leak has been partially contained, some leakage of unknown volume is still going on. The amount of oil that already leaked into the North Sea is also still unclear. The leak was discovered by an unmanned submarine after an oil sheen had been observed in the area. Following this find, Shell immediately removed the pressure of the pipeline, and started taking further steps to isolate the leak. The local Maritime and Coastguard…
Tags: Gannet Alpha platform, Gannet Alpha spill, north sea oil spill shell, oil spill, Shell, shell oil spill
Pollution, Aug 8th, 2011,
Lest we forget, Nigeria’s Ogoniland region is still poisoned and ecologically damaged by 50 years of unsafe, irresponsible oil drilling practices. A new UN study (paid for by the Shell and the Nigerian government) puts the damage to the area, located on the Niger Delta, at levels even worse than previously thought. Clean up could cost $1bn and take 30 years to complete. Meanwhile the local fishing community has seen their livelihood suffer and health issues linked to environmental toxicity plague residents. Drinking water is contaminated, with some areas experiencing benzene levels at 900 times acceptable levels. From BBC News:…
Tags: Niger Delta, Nigeria, Ogoniland, oil, Shell, spills
Climate Change, Health, Pollution, Jul 29th, 2011,
What you eat can affect the environment in greatly varying degrees. Different foods have different ecological footprints in terms of greenhouse gases, land use, water, pesticides, fuel consumption, etc. A recent US study estimated the environmental footprints of various types of food – with some interesting results. Lamb and beef were found to have by far the largest eco-footprints per kilo, followed by cheese, pork, farmed salmon and turkey; continuing in a more-or-less gradual slope towards tomatoes and lentils, which rounded out the bottom of the list. The study does not give very extensive information on the different ecological footprints…
Tags: dairy, ecological footprint, environmental footprint, farms, food, meat, study
Health, Politics, Pollution, Jul 25th, 2011,
New York City’s long-serving mayor Michael Bloomberg has a history of highlighting the “public health” aspects of political issues: tobacco, trans-fats, handguns and now coal. Far from a leftist, the pro-business, social liberal, mega-rich philanthropist and media tycoon is neither George Soros nor Silvio Berlusconi, but he’s got a few things in common with both. Bloomberg, once a Democrat, then a Republican and now an Independent, has come out hard against coal. But his latest move is not a political power play – it’s a charitable donation to the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. A cool $50 million (€35m) charitable…
Tags: Bloomberg, coal, Health, Mayor, New York, NY, Pollution
Pollution, Videos & Documentaries, Jul 19th, 2011,
From London fog to LA smog, citizens groups are up in arms over air quality in the big city. In the 80s Los Angeles was famous for its smog, caused by endless highways choked with the exhaust of millions of cars. Like the Missing Persons song says, “nobody walks in LA”. Apparently everyone has asthma instead. Things have gotten better since the heady 80s and emissions standards have become stricter, but LA is still really smoggy. One study even found that air pollution kills more people in the region than even auto accidents. Los Angeles is the smoggiest region in…
Tags: LA, london, Los Angeles, Pollution, Smog
Pollution, Videos & Documentaries, Jul 13th, 2011,
Nike, Abercrombie & Fitch, Adidas, Puma, Calvin Klein, Converse, Cortefiel, H&M and Lacoste are among the global megabrands named in a new Greenpeace report on hazardous river pollution by the garment industry in China. Since 1995 China has been the world’s largest exporter of textiles, attracting Western and Japanese brands to manufacture there due to cheap labor and lax regulations. Even when major international brands have self-imposed regulations on how their garments are produced, such rules are harder to monitor when outsourced to firms in other countries. Youngor Group, the Chinese company linked to the international firms, uses chemical dyes…
Tags: Adidas, brands, China, Converse, garment, Greenpeace, H&M, Nike, Pollution, Puma, river, textiles
Pollution, Jul 11th, 2011,
The world’s beaches are covered in filth. Not to sound alarmist – or heaven forbid, put someone off their well-deserved beach holiday – but reports from around the globe (or glob) show that beaches everywhere are in an increasingly dire state. We’ve already found out that our oceans are facing ‘catastrophic’ conditions, but that shouldn’t spoil a bit of fun, sun, surf and sand, should it? Problem is, many of those beaches we associate with a nice day out in Mother Nature’s splendor are awash with chemicals and human waste (shit). Look what the LA Times has to say about…
Tags: beaches, California, filth, Guernsey, Pollution, staph, waste
Green living, Pollution, Science & Technology, Jul 8th, 2011,
All around us we see giant trucks every day. They are each hauling something different, but they also have 2 things in common. First, our society needs these trucks and the goods they are hauling to keep up our day to day lives. And second, for every mile these trucks drive they leave behind them a carbon footprint. The transport industry is one of the biggest contributors to CO2 emissions around the world. While every sector is working to make its own improvements, when it comes to reducing the damage of commercial trucking, it seems that collaborative partnerships are turning…
Tags: carbon offset, green efforts in the transport industry, green transport strategies, TerraPass, transport industry, transport marketplace, uShip, uShip.com
Green living, Pollution, Science & Technology, Jun 29th, 2011,
Top Ten list? Several years ago, you might have been able to create a Top Three list of new green cars only by stretching the definition of the term quite a bit. Today, though, a Top Ten list rolls right off the manufacturers’ press releases without having to fiddle with the definition of green, which here we define as an eco-friendly car with city mileage of at least 28 MPG. #10 on this year’s list is the brand-new 2012 Ford Focus, 28 MPG in the city and 38 MPG on the highway — this excellent fuel economy alone qualifies this…
Tags: eco-friendly cars, electric cars, environment911, environment911.org, top ten green cars, top ten of eco-friendly cars
Climate Change, Green living, Pollution, Science & Technology, Jun 23rd, 2011,
Ethanol is a fuel alternative that is derived from the fermenting and distilling of starch crops like corn, switch grass, sugar beets, sugar cane and barley. As a fuel source, it is quite credible. It is renewable in that it comes from the crops that we already grow and have been growing for years. Also, in ethanol only engines the power is much greater than a gasoline-powered car. And testing does indicate there is a much lower emission of greenhouse gas. The down side to this fuel is that it is expensive to produce and ship. It is projected that…
Tags: alternative fuels, biodiesel, compressed air powering vehicles, eco-friendly driving, electric vehicles, ethanol, gasoline
Climate Change, Pollution, Wildlife & Flora, Jun 21st, 2011,
“Shocking”, “unprecedented”, “catastrophic” – some of the words being used to describe the state of the Earth’s oceans and where things are headed, in light of a new study by Ipso, the International Programme on the State of the Ocean. Factors such as overfishing, massive agricultural and chemical pollution, warming temperatures and acidification due climate change are combining to cause mass extinction in the Earth’s oceans. Marine scientists believe these factors are working in tandem to create conditions seen in previous mass extinctions. From the Guardian: In recent years, human effects on the oceans have increased significantly. Overfishing has cut…
Tags: agricultural pollution, emissions, extinction, ipso, ocean acidification, oceans, overfishing, plastic, report, study
Climate Change, Health, Pollution, Jun 15th, 2011,
The dirty, low-tech burning of fossil fuels, wood and other biomass produces poisonous pollution and “short-lived climate forcers”, mainly black carbon, methane and ground-level ozone. Black carbon (soot) from sources such as crop burning, dirty diesel engines and simple coal or wood burning stoves causes cardio-pulmonary diseases and low birth weight. UN figures put deaths due to indoor smoke from cooking stoves alone at 1.9 million per year – mostly women and children in developing countries. A study from the University of Delaware states that soot from diesel freight ships contributes to 60,000 deaths from lung disease every year. Ground-level…
Tags: biomass, black carbon, coal, diesel, ground-level ozone, Health, methane, soot, stoves
Green living, Pollution, Science & Technology, Jun 7th, 2011,
Before understanding why eco-friendly alternatives to air purifiers are needed, you should know a thing or two about air purifiers and indoor air pollution. Air purifiers are used to rid the indoor air of pollutants. You will be surprised to learn that indoor air is heavily polluted by a variety of sources – chemicals used in furniture, fumes from cooking fuel, outdoor air pollutants, tobacco smoke, asbestos coated insulation, pesticides and more. The pollutants in the indoor air keep accumulating leading to health problems over a period of time. Now, to clear the indoor air, people use air purifiers. The…
Tags: Air Pollution, air purifiers, eco-friendly air purifiers, eco-friendly alternatives to air purifiers, houseplants, ozone air purifier
Health, Pollution, May 30th, 2011,
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to only eat meat that he kills with his own hands. For most softies in the rich, developed world this would mean becoming a vegetarian by default. Unlike exceptions such as Ted Nugent and other rugged hunter-fisher types, we are either too squeamish, too lazy or in some cases too compassionate to kill our own food. We’d prefer to forgo such barbarism and hard work, pop a tofu burger in the microwave and watch TV. But the CEO of Facebook (in case you haven’t noticed) is not like most of us. If we are…
Tags: Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, meat, vegetarian
Green living, Pollution, May 26th, 2011,
In not-so-olden times London used to be known as “the Big Smoke” due to all the coal fires that befouled its air and choked its inhabitants. Coal produced the famous London fog, which in reality wasn’t fog at all. A “Pea souper” was a particularly ghastly kind of yellowish smog that belched from the city’s chimneys. Less metaphorical was the Great Smog of 1952, when a combination of cold weather, winds and pollutants created the worst air pollution in the history of the UK, causing as many as 12,000 deaths. The Great Smog was soon followed by the Clean…
Tags: big smoke, charging points, coal, electric cars, Green Party, london, London Fog, scheme, UK
Politics, Pollution, May 24th, 2011,
Four major power companies warned that the post-Fukujima backlash against nuclear power in Germany country could result in future winter blackouts. These blackouts would ostensibly occur if Germany decides to decommission all its nuclear power stations. The companies claim that solar and wind power could not meet demand in the case of insufficiently windy or sunny weather. Chancellor Angela Merkel recently signaled she would support closing all of Germany’s 17 nuclear power stations by 2022. Seven nuclear power stations have been off-grid ever since Merkel announced in the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima disaster a “three-month moratorium” on her controversial…
Tags: blackouts, earthquake, Fukushima, Germany, Green Party, japan, Merkel, nuclear, plants, power, reactors, tsunami
Pollution, Videos & Documentaries, May 20th, 2011,
As the Philippines moves forward in cleaner energy production and away from power sourced from oil and coal, the streets of its capital city, Manila, are choked with emissions from diesel and petrol-burning vehicles. According to the Global Energy Network Institute (GENI) recent years have seen the Philippines experience a sharp rise in the production of energy from hydro and natural gas, and especially from geothermal and other renewable sources. At the same time, power generated from coal and oil peaked and began a somewhat steady decline during the last decade (though figures are only shown up to 2005). What’s…
Tags: coal, electric, energy, jeepney, Manilla, oil, Philippines, Pollution, power
Climate Change, Pollution, Videos & Documentaries, May 17th, 2011,
Back in the 80s Morrissey wrote the lyrics to the Smiths song “Meat is Murder”, while KRS-1 called meat eating suicide or “self-murder” in the BDP track “My Philosophy”. These thoughtful musicians were talking about cruelty and spirituality. They were coming from emotional and philosophical standpoints, but today their words ring true in ever more complex ways. Doctors, dieticians, climate and environmental scientists, and researchers from across the gamut of the physical, natural and engineering sciences are discovering more and more how the human diet affects the health of not only our bodies, but that of our planet. Factory farming,…
Tags: climate, dairy, documentary, film, meat, meat is murder, planeat, trailer, vegetarianism
Page 5 of 14« First«...34567...10...»Last »
