Ecological News

A new report indicates that a class of pesticides linked to the deaths of bees may also be posing a risk to soil, water and grain-eating birds.

A multi-billion dollar proposal to plow a massive rival to the Panama Canal across the middle of Nicaragua was approved by the leftist-controlled National Assembly Thursday, capping a lightning-fast approval process that has provoked skepticism among shipping experts and concern among environmentalists.

Federal regulators have ordered Minnesota to impose more stringent limits on pollutants discharged into the state’s lakes and rivers, an unusual step that could threaten state authority to enforce the nation’s clean-water laws.

Bisphenol-A (BPA), which is found in many resins and plastics that people use everyday, has been linked to a number of health problems in animal studies. But now researchers fear it may also damage tooth enamel in humans.

Having just turned 30 - and feeling slightly disappointed that no one had said no! you cannot be that age - Andrea Gear decides it's time to take her skin care regime a bit more seriously....

Whether it’s swapping coffee for cocoa in Central America or bracing for drought in Sri Lanka with a return to ancient water storage systems, findings from a new report from the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) chart a path for farmers to adapt to climate shifts despite uncertainties about what growing conditions will look like decades from now. As this week's UN climate talks in Bonn continue to sideline a formal deal on agriculture, the study, Addressing uncertainty in adaptation planning for agriculture, which was published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences (PNAS), finds that the cloudy aspects of climate forecasts are no excuse for a paralysis in agriculture adaptation policies. "Climate projections will always have a degree of uncertainty, but we need to stop using uncertainty as a rationale for inaction," said Sonja Vermeulen, head of research at CCAFS and the lead author of the study. "Even when our knowledge is incomplete, we often have robust grounds for choosing best-bet adaptation actions and pathways, by building pragmatically on current capacities in agriculture and environmental management, and using projections to add detail and to test promising options against a range of scenarios."

Whether it’s swapping coffee for cocoa in Central America or bracing for drought in Sri Lanka with a return to ancient water storage systems, findings from a new report from the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) chart a path for farmers to adapt to climate shifts despite uncertainties about what growing conditions will look like decades from now. As this week's UN climate talks in Bonn continue to sideline a formal deal on agriculture, the study, Addressing uncertainty in adaptation planning for agriculture, which was published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences (PNAS), finds that the cloudy aspects of climate forecasts are no excuse for a paralysis in agriculture adaptation policies. "Climate projections will always have a degree of uncertainty, but we need to stop using uncertainty as a rationale for inaction," said Sonja Vermeulen, head of research at CCAFS and the lead author of the study. "Even when our knowledge is incomplete, we often have robust grounds for choosing best-bet adaptation actions and pathways, by building pragmatically on current capacities in agriculture and environmental management, and using projections to add detail and to test promising options against a range of scenarios."

Mayor Bloomberg and Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan launched Citi Bike, the nation's largest bike share system, on May 27, 2013. Photo by NYCStreets.

Former New York mayor Ed Koch envisioned bicycles as vehicles for the future, and in 1980 created experimental bike lanes in Manhattan on 6th and 7th Avenues where riders were protected from speeding traffic by asphalt barriers. It was unlike anything most Americans had ever seen—and some people roared their disapproval. Within weeks, the bike lanes were gone.

A lot of the criticism of New York’s bike share program is now coming from people in neighborhoods without racks who want them.

Twenty-seven years later, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and his transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan saw the growing ranks of bicyclists on the streets as a key component of 21st century transportation, and have built more than 285 miles of both protected and unprotected bike lanes. They had studied the success of similar projects in Copenhagen and the Netherlands and learned how to make projects more efficient and aesthetically pleasing.

These “green lanes” and pedestrian plazas were an immediate hit but ignited a small but noisy reaction from people unhappy about projects in their neighborhoods, including Bloomberg’s former transportation commissioner. Lawsuits were filed, while columnists with the conservative New York Post and sometimes-conservative New York Daily News thundered about the inconvenience to motorists and supposed dangers to pedestrians. New York magazine declared the situation a “Bikelash” on its cover.

Pressure mounted on Bloomberg to sack Sadik-Khan and rip out the bike lanes. Anthony Weiner, then a Congressman from Queens and mayoral hopeful, told Bloomberg in 2011 he would spend his first year as mayor attending “a bunch of ribbon cuttings tearing out your [expletive] bike lanes.” Bicyclists everywhere worried that progress toward safer streets in New York and around the continent would be slowed down.

Two years later, Sadik-Khan is still commissioner and the Department of Transportation continues to install bike lanes and pedestrian plazas across the city.

Two-thirds of New Yorkers call bike lanes a good idea in the most recent New York Times poll, compared to only 27 percent who oppose them. All of the major candidates to replace Bloomberg as mayor expressed support for bicycling at a recent forum, notes Paul Steely White, executive director of the local group Transportation Alternatives.

“Bike lanes are the new normal in New York,” White adds. “People in East Harlem are saying we want bike lanes like those in other parts of town.”

And now another of Bloomberg’s and Sadik-Khan’s big ideas to improve New York has hit the streets: the bike sharing system called Citi Bike, which is the largest in North America with 6,000 bikes available at 330 stations in Manhattan and Brooklyn. There was an inevitable reaction from neighbors when the racks went in on the their blocks, but a lot of the criticism is now coming from people in neighborhoods without Citibikes who want them .

Unfamiliar ideas like bike lanes always spark opposition—at first.

What rallied the public around bicycling? “It was a combination of things,” reports Ben Fried, who chronicled the debate as editor of Streetsblog, a web magazine covering transportation in New York. First, independent polls debunked the myth that New Yorkers disliked bike lanes. “Actually a strong majority from throughout the city supported them,” Fried told me.

Fried also credits neighborhood leaders and bicyclists with mobilizing grassroots support for bike lanes, both on the web and at public meetings. “In the end, politicians need to see that bike lanes are a win for them.”

Pressure for new biking facilities came also from business leaders who see better biking conditions as an asset for their companies. High-tech executives at 33 firms—including Foursquare, Meetup, and Tumblr—urged Bloomberg to implement the bike share system “as a way to attract and retain the investment and talent for New York City to remain competitive.” The Hearst Corporation recently announced it will pay employees’ cost to join the Citi Bikes program. “It’s a cool New York thing to do and good for fitness,” says Hearst spokesperson Lisa Bagley. “Our decision is driven by what are employees are interested in.”

Tim Blumenthal, president of PeopleForBikes and the sister Green Lane Project, stresses that “Bike issues need to framed in the context of what they mean to the city, not just what they mean to people who bike. In New York City, for example, more green lanes, better bikeway networks, and the new Citi Bike system will benefit all residents and visitors by reducing traffic, noise, and air pollution—making city life a little less frenetic for everyone.”

All this represents good news for cities coast-to-coast. “If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere,” says White, paraphrasing the old song “New York, New York.”

Other communities will no doubt face their own version of “bikelash,” but the high-profile debate in New York over bike lanes highlights two key assets of protected green lanes:

1. Bike lanes create safer streets for everyone. “It’s the safety stats that carried the day,” notes Ben Fried, editor of Streetsblog. “They’re pretty indisputable.” Crashes for drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists drop on average by 40 percent on streets with green lanes, and sometimes as much as 50 percent, according to a memorandum from Deputy New York Mayor Howard Wolfson. Bike lanes of every kind also lead to significantly fewer bicyclists riding on sidewalks, Fried notes.

2. Bike lanes are good for business. Shop owners are sometimes zealous opponents of bike lanes, which they claim will suffocate business by reducing traffic and eliminating parking. Yet businesses on 9th Avenue, the first major green lane in the city, saw a 49 percent rise in retail sales, compared to 3 percent across Manhattan as a whole, according to research by the New York City Department of Transportation. Another study of consumer patterns by researchers at Portland State University found that shoppers who arrive by bicycle spend 24 percent more at stores per month than those who drive.

Unfamiliar ideas like bike lanes always spark opposition—at first. “Pushback is inevitable,” Fried explains. “It doesn’t mean the project is flawed. Once it’s built, the constituency for it will grow.”

The issue isn’t simply a New York state of mind. Complaints about a “war on cars” have echoed around Seattle from a small but persistent chorus opposed to bike lanes. In response, the Cascade Bicycle Club commissioned a poll of Seattle voters (conducted by the independent research firm FM3 using a scientifically rigorous sample of 400 respondents), which found that 79 percent view bicyclists favorably, 73 percent want to see more protected green lanes, and 59 percent support “replacing roads and some on-street parking” to build green lanes.” Only 31 percent believe Seattle is “waging a war on cars.”

(Green lanes in Washington, D.C. have also been denounced as a “war on cars,” even though only one percent of D.C.’s roads are dedicated to bicyclists, according to computations by Washington City Paper reporter Aaron Wiener.)

In Chicago, there’s no organized opposition to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s vision of boosting the city’s economy by providing 100 miles of green lanes and 550 more of on-street bike lanes. More than 16 miles of green lanes were built in 2012. One project on the South Side’s historic Martin Luther King Drive, however, did raise aesthetic concerns, which were solved by shifting the protected green lane to a parallel street and adding buffered bike lanes (wide swaths of paint separating car traffic from bikes) to King Drive. The community engagement process around this issue resulted in neighbors forming the Bronzeville Bicycling Initiative to encourage more people to bike in this historically African-American community.

None of this stopped Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass from warning that the mayor’s plans “foreshadow the day that cars will be illegal.” He also targets “little bike people” as “free riders” who don’t pay to keep up the roads and as scofflaws who defy traffic laws.

Ron Burke of the Active Transportation Alliance sees “little bike people” as a compliment, noting “how little space we take up on the roadway, how little wear and tear we cause, and how little our facilities cost within the grand scheme of transportation spending.”

Burke agrees with Kass that bicyclists who endanger other people should be ticketed, but deconstructs his claim that motorists pay their own way on the streets. Between 24 and 38 percent of total road costs in Illinois are not covered by user fees such as gas taxes and vehicle stickers, even when you count federal funding as user fees, Burke explains, citing a study from the Environmental Law and Policy Center.

Kass is one of a number of commentators across the country who regularly target bikes and bicyclists. After New York Daily News columnist Denis Hamill wrote, “I hate bike lanes…they are steering some people like me to road rage” one reader responded “All I hear is an old man yelling, ‘Get Off My Lawn.’”

Jay Walljasper wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas and practical actions. writes, speaks and consults frequently about biking and other ways to improve our communities. His website: www.JayWalljasper.com

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According to new research, for nations that have outlying coral reefs, better land use of the mainland is crucial in order to prevent further damage to these ocean habitats. A recent study reveals important implications for Madagascan and Australian reefs based on deforestation scenarios.

According to new research, for nations that have outlying coral reefs, better land use of the mainland is crucial in order to prevent further damage to these ocean habitats. A recent study reveals important implications for Madagascan and Australian reefs based on deforestation scenarios.

Originally published in The Guardian.

Photo by Paxson Woelber.

"The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere just hit 400 parts per million," I told Alex, my 23-year-old son, as we were catching up on news.

"So that's it, huh?" he asked.

The news about the climate is daunting, but we don't have to wait for skeptics or politicians to get it.

I couldn't think what to say. Alex had just returned from college, a new graduate, ready to start his life as an adult. Like many members of his age group, Alex knows that 350 parts per million is the threshold for safe levels of carbon in the atmosphere. Pass that level and, climate scientists tell us, things get dicey: soils dry out, damaging food production. There is more frequent and more intense flooding, coastlines get inundated, species go extinct. Farming, which relies on predictable weather patterns, is disrupted, and dry land farming areas turn to desert. Forests die from new infestations and drought, and become more prone to monster fires.

Young people like Alex are coming of age in a world that's changing much faster than was predicted just a few years ago. Already, scenes of wildfires, floods, drought, and storms border on apocalyptic. And so far, temperatures have risen less than one degree centigrade.

So what does a young person do when confronted with a global climate crisis? What does anyone do?

Based on a roundtable discussion with young leaders and informal conversations with others of all ages, I've come to believe that these three steps are essential:

First, let this reality sink in. This is not the future we thought we would have. Young people, especially, have the right to be disappointed, angry, and fearful. It will take courage to face this new normal, especially when so many others remain disconnected from what's happening. By being mindful of your own emotions, you can experience fear or grief without being overwhelmed by those feelings. And by remaining alert to the way the climate crisis may show up in your life, you can be better prepared and more resilient.

There's controversy among some environmental leaders about whether to downplay the dangers for fear of frightening people or fostering nihilism. But if we are counting on the unique human genius for creative solutions, we need to be honest about the task at hand, and the consequences of inaction.

Second, take a stand. We may be too late to stop the climate from shifting, but we can likely stop the most catastrophic effects of climate change. People of all ages are stepping up to block extraction, transportation, and burning of fossil fuels and to challenge the clout of the fossil fuel lobby. Some are doing it to protect their community's water or air or their own health; others are motivated by concern for climate stability and the lives of generations to come. Here are some examples:

• President Obama has the power to stop the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would expedite further extraction of tar sands, an extraordinarily destructive form of energy. Around the United States, people are pressing the president to reject the pipeline and make good on his promise to take on the climate challenge.
• Fracking for natural gas has been sold as a climate-friendly alternative to coal and oil. It is not. Leakage of methane during extraction and shipment makes it as damaging to the climate as other fossil fuels, and it threatens precious groundwater supplies. Communities around the United States are joining up to block fracking.
• In the Pacific Northwest, young people, Native American tribes, and others are mobilizing to stop the rail transport of huge quantities of Wyoming Powder River Basin coal to Northwest seaports for export to Asia.
• Students and alumni are calling on colleges and universities to divest holdings in oil companies. While this might not immediately reduce the mammoth profits of these global corporations, it does help erode the legitimacy of this industry and therefore their claim on public subsidies and special benefits (like the right to use our atmosphere as a dumping ground).

Third, consider ways to replace the consumer-oriented, energy-intensive ways of life that are unaffordable both for many of our families and for the planet. Young people are especially are turning to finding satisfaction in what they contribute, the depth of friendships, and in personal development—rather than in "having stuff". Building relationships founded in trust and reciprocity increases quality of life and resilience today, and builds the foundation for the life-centered—rather than consumption-centered—world that can thrive within the constraints of a small planet.

The news about the climate is daunting, but we don't have to wait for skeptics or politicians to get it. We can act right now by getting real about what's happening, taking a stand to stop further damage to our climate, and working together to build a world that treasures the precious diversity of life on this planet – including human life today and in the future.

Sarah van Gelder wrote this article for The Guardian. Sarah is editor in chief at YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions.

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Researchers using NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have found that temperatures in the Martian atmosphere regularly rise and fall not just once each day, but twice. "We see a temperature maximum in the middle of the day, but we also see a temperature maximum a little after midnight," said Armin Kleinboehl of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who is the lead author of a new report on these findings. Temperatures swing by as much as 58 degrees Fahrenheit (32 kelvins) in this odd, twice-a-day pattern, as detected by the orbiter's Mars Climate Sounder instrument.

On May 31st, a landslide ruptured an oil pipeline in Ecuadorean Amazon, sending around 11,000 barrels of oil (420,000 gallons) into the Coca River. The oil pollution has since moved into the larger Napo River, which borders Yasuni National Park, and is currently heading downstream into Peru and Brazil. The spill has occurred in a region that is notorious for heavy oil production and decades of contamination, in addition to resistance and lawsuits by indigenous groups.

On May 31st, a landslide ruptured an oil pipeline in Ecuadorean Amazon, sending around 11,000 barrels of oil (420,000 gallons) into the Coca River. The oil pollution has since moved into the larger Napo River, which borders Yasuni National Park, and is currently heading downstream into Peru and Brazil. The spill has occurred in a region that is notorious for heavy oil production and decades of contamination, in addition to resistance and lawsuits by indigenous groups.

An explosion occurred at the Williams Olefins plant near Geismar, La., on Thursday morning, a Louisiana State Police Trooper confirmed. The facility annually produces approximately 1.3 billion pounds of ethylene and 90 million pounds of polymer grade propylene, and state police described the explosion as a "haz-mat incident."

While California lawmakers scramble to make drinking water a right, contamination in Monterey County, Calif., is getting worse. Testing shows nitrate levels exceed both state and federal standards.

Republicans on Wednesday warned new standards for smog emissions being pushed by the Environmental Protection Agency would be the most expensive regulations in history.

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee ranking member David Vitter (R-La.) is doing everything he can to hold up the nomination of Gina McCarthy as the next U.S. EPA administrator until she commits to lifting the "veil of secrecy".

Electronic cigarettes are the future, some argue. Cheaper, cleaner and cooler than smoking, "vaping" - using a vaporizer to inhale nicotine infused with exotic flavors ranging from pina colada to bubblegum - will spell the end of tobacco. But are they a cool alternative or a dangerous gateway?