Kids for Earth

Perhaps you’ve heard of the meeting the Maldives government held… underwater. Because if Climate Change continues at this rate, a lot more of Maldive’s meetings will be underwater. In fact, a lot more of the country will be underwater.

If temperatures rise just 2 degrees Celsius, the Maldives will be underwater. The U.N believes that the Maldive ‘sandbanks’ could be completely submerged by 2100. That may seem like lots of time, but in fact, 81 years isn’t a whole lot of breathing space; to keep the planet at a safe temperature, we need to drop to 350 parts of CO2 per million. Right now, we’re hovering at 400. Thats bad, because if we hit 450, scientists predict we’ll have hit a ‘tipping point’.

Even now, Maldives is feeling the effects of global warming; in a country relying on the fishing industry, they have had bad catches for the last 4 years, and the rising sea water has already forced some people to move.

Maldives is receiving funding from other companies to build flood barriers around the islands, and hope to receive $10 000 000 (thats 10 million) annually by 2012.

In the film ‘Madagascar’, the shots show an island rich in vegetation, with a huge jungle, complete with exotic flowers.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the image Madagascar is painting for itself. Every day, between 100 and 200 rare rosewood trees are cut down. The thing is, only a fraction of the wood is exported. Lots of it is just kept in Madagascar until export authorizations can be gained. Timber traders extract up to $800,000 worth of timber. They are pillaging Madagascar. Also, rare plants and animals are trafficked, the pets mainly for Asia’s exotic pet market.

Now that Madagascar’s eco-tourism industry is failing, some reports are accusing the forestry administration of playing a role in the trafficking.

All of this plundering has led to nearly 90% of the unique ecology of the world’s 4th largest island to be destroyed.

The government is being called to place ebony and rosewood under the protection of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

Italy can now muster 700.7 megawatts of solar electricity, as opposed to 650 megawatts last month. They have 56,285 photovoltaic cells (thats solar cells), about 3,000 more than last month. That’s impressive.

Italy want 900 megawatts of power by the end of the year, and it’s possible they hit 1,200 megawatts by summer 2010.

Thats’s incredible when you consider that in 2007, there were 22 megawatts of power being produced from solar power in Italy. That was when the government gave one of the most generous incentive plans in Europe.

Officials said there would be 1,500 megawatts of power produced by solar panels in 2010.

We have destroyed 4/5 of the world’s forests. That means only 1/5 remains. I think that even by our standards, thats bad. Luckily, a recent study by GPFLR (which includes the WWF, Britain’s Forestry Commission and International Union for Conservation of Nature) showed that an area bigger than Canada could be restored. They raised the previous estimates of how much forest could be restored from 850 million hectares to 1 billion hectares. That’s 6% of all the land on the world.

The thing is, like lots of aspects on the environment, we need to act now. And we aren’t. In fact, in the climate summit in Copenhagen in less than two weeks, many people are afraid forests are going to be on the bottom of a long list of climate change issues.

But according to research, restoring forests could remove 70 gigatonnnes of greenhouses gases. Thats 70,000,000,000,000 kilograms of greenhouse gases. The problem is, more forests are being lost than there are forests being restored; in the 5 years between 2000 and 2005, we lost 7 million hectares of forest.

Here’s the question: do you make one hectare of land as productive as possible, or do you need more land?

On November 24th, Norway opened its very first osmotic plant. Do you know what an osmotic power plant is? Neither did I, seeing as Norway’s first also happened to be the world’s first.

An osmotic power plant works by (hold on, this is complicated) ‘exploiting the hydrostatic pressure created when fresh water passes through a special membrane into salt water’ (thanks TreeHugger for the explanation). Basically, energy is gained from the difference in salinity of salt and freshwater.

There is one downside to this: the ‘waste’ water may not be what the species in the habitat the water is released into are best adapted for. Basically, you could be releasing salt water into a freshwater environment, or vice-versa.

The current power plant provides enough electricity to power a coffee machine. Hopefully, Norway will have commercial plants by 2015.

During 2001, in Malawi, Africa, there was a famine. Many crops failed, and food and money became difficult to come by. William Kamkwambi was one of the first people to drop out of the school because it was too expensive.

Not wanting to lead the same life as other farmers, with failing crops, William went to the local library to study science.

But enough of me talking: let William Kamkwamba tell his story:

Maybe I’m missing out on something, but if a 14 year old without access to a computer can make a windmill, I’ll need a very good reason to convince me why all of us can’t.

If each of us powered just 4 lights in our house (maybe more, if they’re energy saving!) we could save a whole lot of energy.

Why not?

Are you an elephant?
If so, watch out; more and more illegal hunters could be out to get your tusks.

In fact, you should be particularly scared if you live in a country with poor law enforcement, because evidence shows thats where the killing goes. And if you live in Congo, Thailand, or Nigeria, consider moving, because those are the three countries most hit by this illegal trade.

Nearly 20 years ago, the trading of ivory was banned. But today, a WWF study has found that 38 000 elephants in Africa die annually due to this illegal trade. Thats more than a hundred elephants every day. If we continue at this rate, we’ll have killed the biggest land mammal by 2025.

There are two arguments to how these numbers can be lowered;

Some people say ‘legalize ivory trade!’ This way, countries with lots of elephants could sell ivory, whilst countries without many elephants could replenish their herds.

Others say ‘Don’t sell ivory!’ They argue selling any amount of ivory sends the wrong idea, and if we legalize it it will only get worse.

Says Robbie Marshland, the director of ‘International Fund for Animal Welfare’:  ”Sadly, the truth is that ivory trade anywhere is a threat to elephants everywhere.”

Personally, I agree with the ‘Don’t sell ivory’ group; if we legalize it, and realize its not doing any good, the number of elephants killed will take much longer to drop down than if we enforce the ban.

If you’ve ever been to a grocery store, you’ll have noticed that fruits aren’t individually packaged; you pick out the ones you want, and but them in your bag (don’t forget to pay!).

That’s the great thing about fruits: they come with a skin, which means they don’t require packaging. We had that figured out, and it worked petty well. Until 7-Eleven decided that, to double the banana’s shelf life, they would wrap them in plastic.

The only way to make this environmentally sound is if the CO2 released when making and disposing of the plastic in an environmentally sound way is less than disposing of the unsold, biodegradable bananas. But just look at how much plastic is used.

7-Eleven did ask their supplier, Fresh Del Monte, to come up with a biodegradable plastic wrapper. Maybe they missed the yellow one that’s already on the banana?

I really wonder what was going through their minds when they came up with this: “in addition to transporting bananas all the way from tropical countries, how else could we use more energy to sell the bananas?”

Honestly.

The world clock is something Poodwaddle.com set up, and it measures everything that happens. Its like one of those phrases, that say: every 3 seconds, we lose a hectare of rainforest.

Only better.

It may seem a bit off topic to put this on the blog, but its programs like this that are going to help raise awareness about the environment. I mean, I had it on the ‘now’ for 26 mins (‘now’ restarts the clock from when you press it) and in that time, a species was extinct!

The world clock makes it all the more real, and may be an incentive for people to be more environmentally aware.

And its not all about the environment; there are counters for the amount of US crimes, even for the amount of spam emails sent!

This world clock can tell us exactly how many forest hectares are lost in the time it takes you to read this post.

It can be downloaded at http://www.poodwaddle.com/clocks2.htm

Global Warming is being taken seriously. As if to prove the point, Green Hawks (formerly Night Hawks) are now the first pro sports team to go green.

During their press conference on the 18th November, They promised to make basketballs made of recycled materials, and a court made of bamboo, and kits made of recycled materials.

Even before their first match, they have been called ‘the pride of Montgomery country’.

The Green Hawks have also switched to eco-friendly sponsors, such as Honest Tea, Sweet Green and CarbonFund.org .