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There are many people (you likely know one or two yourself) who will occasionally have brilliant ideas to help one or another of the planet’s big problems. There is a severe dividing line, though, between those who have such ideas and those who actually set out to implement them.
Environment Archive
Toxins in the Home: Pollution from Inside
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The bad news is there are thousands to tens of thousands of chemicals inside the average home that are linked to diseases. The good news is they can be dealt with relatively swiftly and easily—if you know what they are and where to find them. So advises a new book with the unlikely title of Slow Death by Rubber Duck, a revealing look at indoor pollution, which spent 16 weeks on the bestseller lists in its home country of Canada and is now enjoying great reviews and climbing sales in the US and other countries. Through this work, authors Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie set out to assist consumers in living healthier everyday lives by ridding themselves of home-based toxins.
Soil Remineralization and Climate Change
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As one might imagine, climate change is an issue absorbing much of the world’s attention at the moment. As witness to this fact, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP15, recently took place in Copenhagen, Denmark, and was attended by UN delegates from around the world as well as by many world leaders—including President Obama.
John Todd: Ecology from 40,000 Feet
| A polluted canal in Fuzhou, China, was transformed with the help of John Todd Ecological Design (shown above left and right), using 12,000 plants composed of 20 native species, to achieve water quality and become a recreational destination for the city’s residents. Above center is the South Burlington, Vermont, Eco-Machine, which is actually a sewage-treatment facility designed to process 80,000 gallons of waste daily. |
“When we’re flying at 40,000 feet and we look down, we see a marvelous amount of innovation in agriculture, environmental restoration, green architecture, in systems design and in renewable energy development,” Dr. John Todd tells Organic Connections. “The news on the ground has never been richer, more diverse or in some respects more global. There probably isn’t a continent on which we don’t have something happening, and that just wasn’t the case 20 years ago.” Read the rest of this feature »
From War Machine to Clean Energy
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It’s the kind of thing that many of us keep hoping will happen: A device funded by the government for the purpose of forwarding the war machine becomes repurposed for a totally peaceful function that contributes to the survival of all. For the trillions that have been spent on destruction, it’s nice to know that at least a fraction of this money eventually led to something that benefits civilization.
Nanotechnology: The Secret You Can’t See
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For any of us old Star Trek fans, the prefix nano- might be familiar. In that case, it was applied to nanobots, extremely tiny bits of high technology that could invade a body or a computer with extreme ease due to their size. The prefix actually means “billionth”—a nanometer, for example, would be one billionth of a meter, and one inch would equal 25,400,000 of them.
Bringing Trash Collection under Control
You’ve probably seen—and sometimes averted your eyes from—the overflowing trash receptacles that appear around public parks, on city streets and in amusement parks. You have perhaps also wondered how much fuel gets wasted by the diesel trucks that must come around to collect trash from these receptacles, and what might be done to reduce the plentiful foul emissions spewing from those vehicles. Read the rest of this feature »
SEER Centre: Scotland’s Remineralized Oasis
If you were to choose a place to plant your dream vegetable garden, it would probably not be in the foothills of the Grampian Mountains in Strathardle, Perthshire, Scotland. The upland site is infertile, acidic and exposed to severe weather. Around 85 percent of Scotland is classified by the European Union as a “less-favoured area” for farming, and this region, plagued by lifeless, silty soil and boulders, falls right into that category. Read the rest of this feature »
Getting to the Truth of Pesticides
There have been numerous concerns about pesticides and how many of them make it into food. As an example, a study conducted in 2008 in Seattle, and published on the Environmental Health Perspectives website, found traces of organophosphates—a group of pesticides that have been indicated in animal studies to affect brain development and behavior—in local Mercer Island produce. Read the rest of this feature »
