Showing posts with label Environment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Environment. Show all posts

Friday, October 6, 2017

Our Rivers Are Dying




Ganga, Krishna, Narmada, Kaveri – many of our great rivers are depleting fast. If we do not act now, the legacy we hand over to the next generation will be one of conflict and deprivation. These rivers nurtured and nourished us for thousands of years. It is time we nurture and nourish them back to health.


Saving Our Rivers


The simplest solution to rejuvenate India’s rivers is to maintain a minimum of one kilometer tree cover on riversides.
Forest trees can be planted on government land and tree-based agriculture brought in on farm land. This will ensure our rivers are fed throughout the year by the moist soil. This will also reduce floods, drought and soil loss, and increase farmers’ incomes. Learn More

What you can do…


Your missed call will help in the creation of a positive river policy to revive our rivers. Find out how

Send Us Your Ideas

We welcome all environmental scientists, experts and practitioners to contribute their knowledge and expertise towards creating a roadmap to rejuvenate our depleting rivers and save our country’s lifelines.
We look forward to receiving your suggestions at Ideas@RallyForRivers.org
content courtesy : sadhguru.org

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Pope Francis stresses 'right to environment' in UN speech


Pope Francis has urged a large gathering of world leaders at the United Nations in New York to respect humanity's "right to the environment".
He also called on financial agencies not to subject countries to "oppressive lending systems" that worsen poverty.
In an allusion to the Church's teachings on sexual minorities, he called for respect for the "natural difference between man and woman".
He went on to visit the 11 September memorial for a multi-faith service.
After a silent prayer, the pontiff met relatives of some of the victims of the attack in 2001.
Pope Francis later visited a Catholic school in the heavily Hispanic New York neighbourhood of East Harlem.
The crowd in the gym of Our Lady Queen of Angels School included more than 100 immigrants, who greeted Francis with songs.
One eyewitness wrote on Twitter: "He's (Pope) having a blast in Harlem. Big smile. #PopeinNYC".

'Ideological colonisation'

In a wide-ranging speech at the UN, the Pope said the universe was "the fruit of a loving decision by the Creator" and that humanity "is not authorised to abuse it, much less to destroy it."
He said he hoped a forthcoming summit on climate change in Paris would produce a "fundamental and effective agreement".
He addressed topics including girls' education and drug trafficking. He welcomed the deal between Iran and world powers on its nuclear deal, calling it "proof of the potential of political goodwill".
He also condemned "ideological colonisation by the imposition of anomalous models and lifestyles which are alien to people's identity" in what was understood as a reference to Western support for gay and transgender rights in other countries.

At a memorial service at the September 11 Memorial Museum, he prayed for those killed in the attacks and for healing for their relatives.

Catholics in America:

  • 80 million baptised as Catholics
  • Six of the nine Supreme Court justices are Catholic
  • 31% of the US Congress (22% general population)
  • One Catholic president (JFK) and one vice-president (Joe Biden) in the history of the US
  • Six Catholic Republicans running for 2016 presidential nomination, the most ever
Source: New York Times

About 80,000 people are expected to watch the procession as he makes his way to Mass at Madison Square Garden on Friday night.
Nearly 20,000 are set to attend the service at the major sporting and concert arena.
Thousands lined Fifth Avenue on Thursday evening as the Argentine pontiff made his way to St Patrick's Cathedral for evening prayers.
The Pope arrived in New York from Washington, where he delivered the first-ever papal address to the US Congress.
In the speech, he urged a humane response to migrants, an end to the death penalty and better treatment of the poor and disadvantaged.
Next he will go to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he will speak in front of Independence Hall and celebrate Mass at a Catholic families' rally.
content courtesy : BBC

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Canada ranks #2 for most LEED buildings


Though LEED is not the world’s only green building rating system, it is the most widely used and recognized. Thus it is no small thing that, for the second year in a row, Canada is #2 for LEED building in the World.
Most Certified Projects
Canada has the highest gross square meters (GSM) of LEED certified space internationally (ie outside of the United States) and the highest number of certified and registered projects (4,735).
European nations did poorly, with Germany placing #7 and Sweden #11, because the LEED program originates in the United States.
“(This) does not take into consideration other green building standards or rating systems. We cannot comment on which country leads the world in terms of overall emissions reductions,” explained Mark Hutchinson, Director of Green Building Programs for the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC).
Canada’s LEED Accomplishments
Canada has been a leader in the green building movement since 2005. Some of its LEED accomplishments include:
  •  Energy Savings of 4,230,206 eMWh which is enough to power 143,533 homes in Canada for a full year.
  • 822,731 CO2e tonne reduction in greenhouse gas emissions which equates to taking 155,526 cars off the road for a year.
  • Water savings totalling over 8.7 billion litres, the equivalent of 3,505 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
  • Recycling over 1.1 million tones of construction/demolition waste which represents 348,691 garbage truck loads.
  •  Installing 157,309 square metres of green roofs, or an area the size of 104 NHL hock rinks. This reducing the urban heat island effect and mitigates storm water flows in urban areas.
Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia lead the nation in terms of LEED projects, with 962, 439 and 407 respectively.
Five of the more notable projects certified in Canada during 2014 are:
• Vancouver, British Columbia: Van Dusen Botanical Garden, LEED Platinum
• St. John, New Brunswick: The City of St. John Police Headquarters, LEED Gold
• Toronto, Ontario: WaterPark Place, LEED Platinum (first Canadian project to earn LEED Platinum through the CaGBC’s recertification program)
• Calgary, Alberta: Bow Valley Square, LEED Gold
• Quebec City, Quebec: Place TELUS / TELUS House, LEED Gold.”
Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia lead the nation in terms of LEED projects, with 962, 439 and 407 respectively.

Continue reading at enn

content Courtesy : enn

Thursday, July 9, 2015

How reusable bags change shopping decisions



Taking reusable bags to the supermarket can help identify the environmentally friendly shopper but a new study has now discovered the products they are more likely to buy.

New research in the Journal of Marketing reveals unsurprisingly that shoppers who take their own bags are more likely to purchase organic food – and more surprisingly, junk food as well.

The study describes: "Grocery store shoppers who bring their own bags are more likely to purchase healthy food. But those same shoppers often feel virtuous, because they are acting in an environmentally responsible way.

“That feeling easily persuades them that, because they are being good to the environment, they should treat themselves to cookies or potato chips or some other product with lots of fat, salt, or sugar."

The study by Uma R. Karmarkar of Harvard University and Bryan Bollinger of Duke University is one of the first to demonstrate that bringing reusable grocery bags causes significant changes in food purchasing behaviour.

The authors collected loyalty cardholder data from a single location of a major grocery chain in California between May 2005 and March 2007. They compared the same shoppers on trips for which they brought their own bags with trips for which they did not.

Participants were also recruited online from a national pool and were randomly assigned one of two situations: bringing their own bags or not bringing their own bags. Depending on the situation, participants were presented with a certain scenario and a floorplan of the grocery store and were asked to list the ten items they were most likely to purchase on the trip.

The researchers found that when shoppers brought their own bags, they were more likely to purchase organic foods. At the same time, bringing one's own bags also increased the likelihood that the shopper would purchase junk food. And both results were slightly less likely when the shopper had young children: parents have to balance their own purchasing preferences with competing motivations arising from their role as parents.

Content Courtecy :enn

If someone were to set up a telephone booth sized box on your street filled with unwanted items — such as books, toys and small knick knacks, perhaps — and then topped it off with a “Free” sign, what do you think would happen?

If Switzerland is any indication, passersby turned salvagers and recyclers would appear out of nowhere, sifting their way through other people’s unwanted discards, thinking up ways to put their newfound discoveries to good (re)use. Some would even add their own unwanted items to the box.

Neighborhood exchange boxes have helped Geneva, Switzerland reuse 32 tons of goods thus far thanks to a program called BOÃŽTES D’ÉCHANGE ENTRE VOISINS–A box for exchange between neighbors. But can it work in other cities?

Started in 2011, people leave items that they do not want, and take items that they do want. It’s that simple.

Or is it?

The environmental benefits of increasing reuse are obvious, but from the project creator’s perspective, there’s more to the Neighbourhood Exchange Box program than just going green.

It’s also part urban art and part social experiment, providers of unusual opportunities to create social and cultural links between people in a neighborhood.

The program page explains:

Neighbourhood Exchange Box is a project which explores reciprocity between neighbours. It brings a new impulse into the neighbourhood and a sense of belonging and involvement to the local community by prompting opportunities of exchange and contact.

Behind it all is Happy City Lab, founded by Dan Acher, an “artivist” from Geneva focused on creating happy cities.

Most of us know by now that reducing and reusing are part of the answer to what our planet needs more of, so instead the program toils over questions like:

Nowadays, whilst most of our interactions depend on money, is it still possible to establish a completely disinterested form of exchange, without even knowing who the beneficiary is? Is it possible to extend such a project to the scale of a whole town? That of a region? A country? Further?


Content Courtecy :enn

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

What is Biogas & How Do We Make It? INFOGRAPHIC


Biogas systems provide economic, energy, and environmental benefits for farms, businesses, and communities. These systems enable the capture and use of methane while also addressing waste management and nutrient recovery needs, finds the Biogas Opportunities Roadmap, released by the Obama Administration.
If its full potential was realized, a cost-effective biogas industry could produce enough energy from the livestock sector to power 1 million average American homes.

Biogas is primarily a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide produced by the bacterial decomposition of organic materials in the absence of oxygen. Depending on the source of organic matter, biogas typically contains 50-70% methane, 30-40% carbon dioxide, and trace amounts of other constituents, such as hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen, nitrogen, and siloxanes.

Methane is both a potent greenhouse gas and a valuable source of energy. Today, methane accounts for nearly 9% of domestic greenhouse gas emissions. Thirty six percent of these emissions come from the agricultural sector, equivalent to over 200 million tons of carbon pollution. While methane’s lifetime in the atmosphere is much shorter than carbon dioxide, it is more efficient at trapping radiation. Pound for pound, the comparative impact of methane on climate change is over 20 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period.

This Biogas Opportunities Roadmap builds on progress made to date to identify voluntary actions that can be taken to reduce methane emissions through the use of biogas systems and outlines strategies to overcome barriers to a robust biogas industry in the United States. It supports the U.S. dairy industry’s voluntary 2008 goal to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2020.

Learn more:
Check out a fact sheet about the Biogas Opportunities Roadmap.

Content Courtesy: 1sun4all

Sunday, July 27, 2014

India's forest cover is on the up – but are the numbers too good to be true?


Forest cover in India increased by 5871 sq km (2266 sq miles) between 2010 and 2012.

That’s the cheery headline news from the State of the Forest Report 2013 released this month by India’s environment minister, Prakash Javadekar. The findings appear to mark a turnaround from the previous survey, which had found a marginal decline in forests.

But the fine print reveals a less rosy picture. The bulk of the increase in forest cover – about 3800 sq km – was in just one state, the report shows, and is partly attributed to a correction in previous survey data.

In fact, India may be losing quality forests. Dense forests are degrading into scrub or sparsely covered forest areas in many states, says the report. “Moderately dense” forest cover – areas with a tree canopy density of between 40-70% – shrank by 1991 sq km in the two-year period, while “open forests” with less than 40% canopy increased by 7831 sq km.

Another potential worry: the Himalayan northeastern region, which holds one-fourth of the country’s forests, has seen a small decline of 627 sq km in forest cover.

India’s total forest cover now stands at 697,898 sq km or 21.23% of the country’s area. That’s well short of the official goal to get cover up to 30% of land area (in February, the government approved a £4.46m project to increase forest area).

Yet there’s been an overall rising trend in the recorded forest cover over the past decade – no mean feat given the dramatic acceleration in economic development in the same period.

This upward trend seems far-fetched to many conservationists, however. One environmental watchdog group, the Environment Impact and Assessment Resource and Response Centre, noted that an average of 135 hectares (333 acres) of forest land a day was given over for power, mining and other development projects last year. The group expressed dismay at the environment minister’s suggestion that degraded or open forests should be harvested to reduce wood imports.

Both conservationists and scientists have long questioned the Indian forest survey’s accuracy and methods. They’ve argued that the survey relies too heavily on low-resolution satellite imagery, which fails to capture small-scale deforestation, and that the definition of forest used by the report is too broad to be meaningful.

The forest cover data does not, for instance, distinguish between tree species, land use or ownership. A paper published in May by scientists led by NH Ravindranath of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore suggested that an almost seven-million-hectare recorded increase in forest cover between 1997 and 2011 could be accounted for by an increase in commercial plantations.

India could be potentially over-reporting the forest cover by including many plantation categories and fruit orchards…. Even the inclusion of plantations of Eucalyptus, Casuarina, Poplar, etc. under forest cover is questionable from a conservation perspective. India also could be potentially under-reporting deforestation by reporting only the gross forest area and changes at the national and state level, which may mask any forest loss, if the rate of afforestation is higher than deforestation rates.

With India seeking to tap international climate funds for afforestation, “there is need for a new approach to monitoring and reporting of forest area to meet the challenges of forest conservation, research and reporting to UN agencies,” the authors said.

Forest officials too have criticised the survey methods. In 2012, a joint director at the Forest Survey of India, which prepares the report, took on his own organisation when he flagged the discrepancy between the official forest data for the northeastern state of Meghalaya, which showed an increase in cover, and what he saw happening on the ground: forests being destroyed by illegal mills and mining.

Mining in this green, resource-rich region continues to be a concern. A recent report by India’s Comptroller and Auditor General found only one of 16 limestone mining licenses in the state of Meghalaya had obtained environmental clearances. “[T]he forest department has no idea as to whether the mining lease areas it granted forest clearance fall within forest area,” the report said.

Content Courtersy: theguardian

Monday, July 21, 2014

Safeguarding Our Future Water & Energy Systems-INFOGRAPHIC


As the Energy Department pursues our important mission areas of climate change, energy security and environmental responsibility, we must take into account dynamic interactions among our energy system, the population, the economy, other infrastructure systems and natural resources. One crucial interaction is that between our present-day energy and water systems, reports the DOE.

The interdependencies between our water and energy systems are clear — and becoming more prominent. Water is used in all phases of energy production and electricity generation, and energy is required to extract, convey and deliver water, and to treat wastewaters prior to their return to the environment.

The Energy Department’s new report – The Water-Energy Nexus: Challenges and Opportunities – examines this interaction, and lays out several technical and operational challenges at local, regional and national scales. The report notes that water scarcity, variability and uncertainty are becoming more prevalent, potentially leading to vulnerabilities within the U.S. energy system. Changes brought on by population growth, technological advances and policy developments are increasing the urgency for informed action.

When severe drought affected more than a third of the United States in 2012, limited water availability constrained the operation of some power plants and other energy production infrastructure. When Hurricane Sandy struck that same year, we saw firsthand the major problems that arise when vital water infrastructure and facilities lose power.

And the recent boom in domestic unconventional oil and gas development, brought on by hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, has added complexity to the national dialogue about the relationship between energy and water resources.

What’s more, the effects of climate change only amplify the need to manage our interdependent water and energy systems more mindfully. As the release of the third U.S. National Climate Assessment made clear last month, climate change is affecting every region of the United States and key sectors across our economy.

Even as the Energy Department is taking strong steps to cut carbon pollution and work with our international partners to build a more sustainable energy future, we must prepare for the effects of climate change we are already seeing.

The Energy Department’s longstanding leadership in modeling and technology research and development makes it uniquely suited to meet the national need for data-driven and empirical solutions to address these challenges. This report is just the beginning.

The Department of Energy looks forward to working with our partners, including other federal agencies, state and local governments, members of Congress, foreign governments, private industry, academic institutions, non-governmental organizations, and citizens, to develop and pursue a shared vision of more resilient coupled energy-water systems.

This integration and collaboration will enable more effective research, development and deployment of key technologies, harmonization of policies where warranted, shared datasets, informed decision-making, and robust public dialogue.

A key part of that dialogue is our ongoing meetings to gather public comment on the Quadrennial Energy Review (QER), a four-year process to identify key threats, risks and opportunities for U.S. energy and climate security.

 Last week in San Francisco, Dr. John Holdren — Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy — led a discussion with regional stakeholders about the water-energy nexus and lessons learned that could be applied broadly across this issue area. Future opportunities to provide input to the QER process remain.

Content Courtesy: energy.gov

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Tips To Save Money & Save Energy in New Energy Saver Guide


Saving energy is a win for not only your wallet but also the environment. To help you make the most efficient choices in your home and on the road, the Energy Department recently updated its popular booklet Energy Saver: Tips on Saving Money and Energy at Home, reports Nicole Harrison for the DOE.

Updated Energy Saver Guide Helps You Save Energy and Money at Home

The latest version of the guide includes updated statistics and recommendations for 2014 — all designed to help you make smart decisions about improving your home’s comfort and lowering your energy use. Some of the tips are simple to do. Others require more effort and investment but promise big savings over the years.

The Energy Saver guide teaches you which systems and appliances in your home account for most of your energy bills and how you can reduce the costs to both you and the environment. There is also a section on transportation with driving tips to help you save money at the pump. Learn about the average energy usage and costs at home and on the road, then try out our tips to save energy and money.

There are a couple of ways to get your hands on the updated Energy Saver guide:

Download the updated PDF
Order hard copies in bulk or
Download the first-ever Energy Saver guide e-book.

Find out more about saving energy and money at home on the Energy Saver website. You can also check out these new do-it-yourself energy-saving projects:

Insulate Hot Water Pipes for Energy Savings
Lower Water Heating Temperature
Insulate Your Water Heater Tank
How to Seal Air Leaks with Caulk
How to Weatherstrip Double-Hung (or Sash) Windows
Install Exterior Storm Windows With Low-E Coating

Content Courtesy: 1sun4all

Saturday, July 5, 2014

Reducing Carbon Pollution Makes Us All Healthier-INFOGRAPHIC

A new proposed rule by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) called the Clean Power Plan, will set the first-ever national carbon emissions limits for our country’s existing power plants. Find out how reducing carbon pollution will make Americans healthier in the new infographic from WhiteHouse.Gov.

Limiting the Carbon Emissions from Power Plants Will Make Americans Healthier. Here’s How:
Infographic courtesy of WhiteHouse.Gov

Power plants currently churn out about 40 percent of the carbon pollution in the air we breathe, and contribute to hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks and thousands of heart attacks.

And even though we limit the amount of toxic chemicals like mercury, sulfur, and arsenic that power plants can put in our air and water, there are no national limits on the carbon pollution they can release.

As President Obama said in his weekly address on Saturday,

It’s not smart, it’s not safe, and it doesn’t make sense. –President Obama

That’s why today, at the President’s direction, the EPA is taking steps to change that with a proposal that will set the first-ever national carbon pollution limits for our country’s existing power plants.

Content Courtesy: 1sun4all.com