There Is More to Green Than Global Warming

(AlterNet.org: Environment) - We are facing crises of freshwater, food, deforestation, and ocean health. We need leadership in the protection of all our natural resources.

There is more to being green than the fight to stop global warming. All of our natural resources are in peril because of what we do and what that does to our planet. Yet, to hear the battle cry of environmentalists these days you’d think there’s only one war to be fought — over our energy supply and its consequences.

We are facing a fresh water crisis. We are facing a food crisis. We are facing a crisis over deforestation. And we are facing crises in our oceans. While carbon emissions from fossil fuels pollute the air, so does a lot of other stuff.

Now is the time to press for leadership in the protection of all our natural resources. We’ll have let an opportunity for a better planet — in this election of “change” — to pass us by if we just focus on the cause celebre that global warming is today.

We must increase our freshwater supply by about 20 percent by the year 2025 to meet world demand, and 90 cities still dump sewage into the Great Lakes, which supply water to 10 percent of the US population. The Lakes’ resource is so great, we are going to great lengths to protect it: Congress last week passed a law formally banning the export of water from the Great Lakes beyond its basin. The price of most food has doubled over the past year, forcing millions deeper into poverty and malnourishment. There is now six times as much plastic as zooplankton in parts of the Pacific Ocean, and 90 percent of the big fish on Earth have disappeared.

Meanwhile, we have an ever-increasing waste and electronic-waste burden on our hands. We each create twice as much trash per day as we did 40 years ago. The average size of our landfills has multiplied 25 times in that period as well. And our e-waste burden is so bad that we ship 80 percent of it overseas to countries with weak environmental standards. These countries in turn make products from our discards and ship them right back to us. (And we wonder how lead paint gets in toys.)

As well, up to 40 percent of global wood production is from illegal timber operations. Deforestation not only displaces people and endangers species, it is the second biggest cause of climate change. (It isn’t only fossil fuels that cause global warming.)

To be sure, an alternative energy supply is needed and important. But let’s not forget the importance of other environmental factors crucial to our health and well-being, not to mention the planet’s.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: AlterNet.org: Environment, Thomas Kostigen, Huffington Post, Oct. 3, 2008 ]

‘Land that never melts’ is melting: Erosion probed in Nunavut park

(CBC.ca) - Experts working with Parks Canada say flooding and erosion at Nunavut’s Auyuittuq National Park are related to a flood that hit the nearby hamlet of Pangnirtung in June.

The south end of the Baffin Island park has been closed to visitors since July 28, as a severely eroded moraine at Crater Lake has raised the risk of flash flooding into the Akshayuk Pass.

The partial closure means visitors cannot enter the park from Pangnirtung in the south. Park officials say they will decide in the next couple of days whether to reopen the south end.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: CBC.ca, August 6, 2008 ]

SHOCK CLAIM: NO ICE AT NORTH POLE THIS SUMMER !!!

It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year. The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.

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The Real Story Behind the Midwest Floods? Climate Change

Scientists acknowledge an uncomfortable fact long ignored by the media: global warming is the real cause of extreme weather like the Midwest floods.

The floodwaters are rising, swamping cities, breaching levees. Tens of thousands are displaced. Many are dead. No, I am not talking about Hurricane Katrina, but about the Midwest United States. As the floodwaters head south along the Mississippi, devastating communities one after another, the media are overflowing with televised images of the destruction.

While the TV meteorologists document “extreme weather” with their increasingly sophisticated toolbox, from Doppler radar to 3-D animated maps, the two words rarely uttered are its cause: global warming. I asked former Energy Department official Joseph Romm, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, about the disconnect:

READ MORE HERE [ Source: Alternet.org ]

Will the Tide on Capitol Hill Shift Enough on Global Warming to Ignite Real Change?

The debate over the Climate Security Act shows how the next Congress, and the next President, will address the most urgent issue facing us.

A day before Barack Obama clinched the Democratic presidential nomination, his colleagues in the Senate began preparing for the biggest global warming vote in Congressional history. America's Climate Security Act would for the first time impose large mandatory cuts on greenhouse gas emissions. The bill is not expected to become law, if only because of George Bush's promised veto. But the Senate debate could reveal a lot about how the next Congress and the next President, whether Obama or John McCain, will address the most urgent issue facing humanity.

In contrast to Bush, McCain and Obama recognize climate change as a top-priority threat that requires action now. Environmentally, Obama's proposals are stronger. The Democrat favors what science says is necessary: an 80 percent cut in emissions, from 1990 levels, by 2050. Obama would achieve this through a "cap and trade" system that sells corporations permits to emit greenhouse gases and then invests the revenue in green energy development and rebates to Americans hit with higher energy prices.

READ MORE HERE