• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Environmental Issues

Local BBC ran a piece the other night where they were asking people in Rochester, Kent about what would have the most impact on climate change. They were asked to rank a list of actions. It must have been edited but very few, if any put "Have one fewer child" at the top of the list. IIRC top four were have one fewer child, get rid of the car, don't travel by air, get an electric car. going vegan was bottom but at least one put it top. The idea that children will grow, become consumers and probably have more children was according to the reporter factored in to the list. Amazed that so many seemed blind to it. As Heinz Wolff said "Until you address the population issue the rest is eyewash."
 
And it wouldnt exactly be hardship, would it?

Many people would be better off.
 
We had a year where nobody went out. Nobody drove anywhere or flew anywhere. People isolated in their homes, lived pretty frugally and energy usage from non-essential shops and entertainment venues was reduced to basically zero.

As a perfect global experiment, where’s the data on all that then?
What difference did it make?
 
Local BBC ran a piece the other night where they were asking people in Rochester, Kent about what would have the most impact on climate change. They were asked to rank a list of actions. It must have been edited but very few, if any put "Have one fewer child" at the top of the list. IIRC top four were have one fewer child, get rid of the car, don't travel by air, get an electric car. going vegan was bottom but at least one put it top. The idea that children will grow, become consumers and probably have more children was according to the reporter factored in to the list. Amazed that so many seemed blind to it. As Heinz Wolff said "Until you address the population issue the rest is eyewash."
Modern western countries already have fewer children per family for various reasons. I think this depends on if you are looking at 1-2 children vs having a huge family of 4+. So, it's rather relative. It's not really a good option for a survey question.
 
A valid point but seeing as folk (for better or worse) seem to admire our lifestyle, we could set a good example.

Analogue Boy, you are so very correct; the experiment was made, and couldn't have been bettered if it had been planned. (and indeed would have been impossible to perform)

We learned people want to go back to the old, stressful, life.
 
A valid point but seeing as folk (for better or worse) seem to admire our lifestyle, we could set a good example.

Analogue Boy, you are so very correct; the experiment was made, and couldn't have been bettered if it had been planned. (and indeed would have been impossible to perform)

We learned people want to go back to the old, stressful, life.
I doubt that the research for a local BBC South East report was that rigorous! What surprised me was the people didn't seem to
Modern western countries already have fewer children per family for various reasons. I think this depends on if you are looking at 1-2 children vs having a huge family of 4+. So, it's rather relative. It's not really a good option for a survey question.
Fair point and I doubt that the research for a local BBC report was that rigorous! I am constantly surprised that poulation is hardly ever mentioned in relation to climate change and therefore doesn't register as an issue with the public.
There are other factors with going vegetarian as well as we in the West are now used to out of season veg being flown in from everywhere (generally tastes like ***** compared to seasonal produce as well) How many veggies in North Europe will be happy with seasonal winter fare for four months? So this can't be divorced from air miles.
I thought that bison actually produce less methane than cattle and someone had an idea of farming them instead.
While I'm rambling on I agree that we should do everything we can to cut emissions I also think that we should continue to explore other causes of climate change: the shift in the equinoxes, solar cycles, effect of melting ice caps on ocean currents, etc. About 20 years ago I heard a researcher saying that the climate was all over the place for a couple of hundred years before the last glaciation, if that was true, why? Surely we should be looking at every possible cause.
 
While the BBC keeps covering the climate crisis to the point of overkill, there’s a clue that generally, we’re either not interested or switching off. Maybe due the continuous attempts to hammer home the message.

After Cop26 and demos in Glasgow the most read articles on BBC tonight are…

1636225211332.jpeg


Incidentally… if we’re at a minute to midnight, what did the previous COPs actually achieve and why should we think anything will be different after this one?
 
Last edited:
Survey yesterday said three quarters of Britons are "very worried" about climate change. Presumably the other quarter are the environmental anti-vaxxer equivalent. 80% said they had changed their lifestyle to go greener.

I can think of one reason people aren't reading the news stories: they're bloody scary.
 
Where will they sleep?

I know, anywhere they damn well please.
 
gah! forgotten the name, tip of my tongue. What are the flying ones with pointy heads? Wanna one of them! NOW! :twothumbs:
 
If you give me the flying dinosaurs then I will organise nappies :)
 
Mercury poisoning from goldmines.

At first glance, the Amazon rainforest of Peru’s Los Amigos Conservation Concession might seem like a pristine wilderness.

Brightly colored birds flit through the jungle. A dense canopy of trees echoes with the cries of howler monkeys. Jaguars pad quietly through the shadows. Giant otters swim in Cocha Lobo Lake. But the forest is hiding a toxic secret: It is tainted by mercury at levels as high as those found in industrial regions in China, according to new research.

The mercury is the product of hundreds of illegal, small-scale gold mines, and is leaving its poisonous fingerprint in forest wildlife. “These forests … are receiving an enormous load of mercury, and the mercury is indeed entering into the food web,” says biogeochemist Jackie Gerson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the research as a Ph.D. student at Duke University. The new study, the first to describe such effects anywhere in the world, is another strand in the growing web of evidence that connects mining to mercury pollution in rivers, fish, and forests.

Gold mining has recently outstripped coal burning as the world’s single largest source of airborne mercury pollution, annually releasing as much as 1000 tons of the potent brain and reproductive poison into the atmosphere. Using mercury to extract gold is a miner’s dream: The cheap, liquid metal, when mixed with a slurry of water and raw ore, binds with the precious gold. Miners then heat the globs of mercury and gold until the mercury burns off, floating away as a vapor.

In Peru, the technology has helped small-scale miners transform more than 100,000 hectares of jungle along the remote Madre de Dios River into a moonscape: The water-filled pits and mounds of rocks are visible from the International Space Station.

https://www.science.org/content/article/illegal-gold-mines-flood-amazon-forests-toxic-mercury
 
Caves saved by cavers.

A judge in Mexico has ordered the temporary suspension of works on a stretch of the Maya train project, citing a lack of environmental permits.

The project to build a railroad in the Yucatán Peninsula is President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's flagship infrastructure programme. But cavers warn that it threatens caverns dating back millions of years.

The judge ordered works to be halted until studies could be carried out about the works' environmental impact.

Cavers had joined forces with environmentalists to bring the case to court last month. They argued that a change in the route of the train line linking the tourist hotspots of Cancún and Tulum, known as Section 5, would harm the jungle it will now run through and the network of caves which lies beneath it.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-61139129
 
Activists who defeated miners win environmental award.

Two indigenous activists from Ecuador who successfully fought against mining on their ancestral lands have won an international environmental prize.

Alex Lucitante and Alexandra Narváez were awarded the Goldman Prize, which recognises grassroots activism. They used drones and camera traps to document mining on their land. Their evidence was crucial in securing a legal victory which resulted in 79,000 acres of rainforest being protected from gold mining.

Alex Lucitante, 29, and Alexandra Narváez, 32, are part of the Cofán community, a 1,200-strong indigenous group which has lived in the tropical forest of north-eastern Ecuador for centuries. Alexandra is a founding member and the first woman to join "La Guardia", a group of 25 volunteers which patrols the area. t was members of La Guardia who in 2017 first came across heavy machinery on their land along the banks of the Aguarico River, Alex Lucitante told the BBC.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-61510336
 
Berta Cáceres, the Honduran indigenous and environmental rights campaigner, has been murdered, barely a week after she was threatened for opposing a hydroelectric project.

Her death prompted international outrage at the murderous treatment of campaigners in Honduras, as well as a flood of tributes to a prominent and courageous defender of the natural world.

The co-founder of the Council of Indigenous Peoples of Honduras (Copinh) was shot dead by gunmen who entered her home in La Esperanza at around 1am on Thursday. Some reports say there were two killers; others suggest 11. They escaped without being identified, after also wounding her brother.

Police told local media the killings occurred during an attempted robbery, but the family said they had no doubt it was an assassination prompted by Cáceres’s high-profile campaigns against dams, illegal loggers and plantation owners.

“I have no doubt that she has been killed because of her struggle and that soldiers and people from the dam are responsible, I am sure of that. I hold the government responsible,” her 84-year-old mother said on radio Globo at 6.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...eres-murder-enivronment-activist-human-rights

Justice at last as the apex of the pyramid of killers is reached. It's rarely the action of lone locals or fishermen when environmental activists and journalists are murdered.

A court in Honduras has sentenced a former energy executive to more than 22 years in jail over the murder of an environmental activist in 2016.

Berta Cáceres led protests against the Agua Zarca hydro-electric dam project before being shot dead in her home. The court ruled that Roberto David Castillo, whose company had been awarded the contract, had planned the murder and hired the gunmen. Seven others have been convicted for their role in the killing.

Castillo is the former president of Honduran power company, Desa, and was once an army intelligence officer. The court found he used his military contacts and paid informants to coordinate and plan the murder of the high profile activist, who was awarded the prestigious Goldman Prize in 2015 for her role in stopping the building of the dam.

Cáceres had faced years of threats over her opposition to the dam project which was being run by Castillo's company. The dam would have flooded large areas of land and cut off the supply of water, food and medicine for hundreds of the indigenous Lenca people in western Honduras.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-61875394
 
The UN has warned the world that a huge environmental problem is about to happen.

The largest nuclear reactor in Europe located in Ukraine is not correctly being serviced by the invading Russia.

The UN has warned that a nuclear melt down or an nuclear explosion will badly affect the world.
 
More warnings from the UN have been ignored as Russian shelling of a Ukraine nuclear plant has badly damaged the water intake valve.

The UN is predicting a nuclear disaster in the making.
 
Last edited:
More warnings from the UN have been ignored as Russian shelling of a Ukraine nuclear plant has badly damaged the water intake valve.

The UN is predicting a nuclear disaster in the making.

The Russians have also been accused of turning it into a military base. It's unlikely that they're shelling it. as well.
 
The University of Stockholm declared that there is no rain water anywhere on the planet earth that is safe to drink.

“ Forever chemicals “ like polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS and PFOA cause cancer and is even found at the earth’s poles.
 
The countries called the G-7 have issued an “ urgent” warning to Russia.

Please let Ukraine help set the nuclear plant right before a massive nuclear disaster happens.

The Ukrainian nuclear plant under Russia is not being kept up so a melt down will make a huge area radioactive.
 
Back
Top