Blogs & Ecology

A "blue cruise" near the Marmaris coast. Photo by Sarp Koknar via flickr.

There's trouble in paradise, at least the part of it around the popular vacation town of Marmaris, on Turkey's western Mediterranean coast. Long struggling to keep development in check, residents have had up to here with new plans to expand the area's port and mining operations. A local environmental organization recently issued an SOS: "That’s enough. Do not let Marmaris fade away."
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It's Dangerous Being Green in India
It can be dangerous to fight polluters. This story reminds me of many others that I've read in a book called "The War Against the Greens".

Photo credit: StoptheMegaDairy.org via earthfirst

Photo by Pip Starr from Flickr

pic:ecosalonIt goes against the grain to write about America’s new president as if he sets the tone for the rest of the world – how often do we ask ourselves what difference the leaders of New Zealand, Denmark, Germany or Iceland, for instance, will make to us all? But you have to give credit where credit is due and kudos to the American public for electing Barack Obama!

But what can we expect from Obama’s environmental direction, and can he be held accountable to his campaign promises?

British air pollution advice video from 1947

Just as a reminder that the type of persistent and deadly air pollution that currently plagues many places in China once happened elsewhere as well (one which I hope most TreeHugger readers don’t need...), I’d like to point your attention in the direction of a New York Times ...

Image courtesy of Age Healthy

Photo courtesy of Sustainable Design Update

Image from marinephotobank

Satellite image of İmralı Island via Google Maps

photo: Josh Chin

Many TreeHugger readers probably know the now-familiar sobering statistics regarding the nature of China’s economic rise and its toll on the environment: 14,000 new cars on the roads each day, 52,000 miles of roadways under construction, 70% of electricity generated from coal, a new coal-fired electric plant coming online nearly every week; 75% of China’s urban residents breathe polluted air which kills 750,000 people annually; 20% of water used in in urban China lost to leaky pipes. Grim stuff even with the best of spin.

Carbon Capture and Sequestration, known as CCS, has given the power industry a great ‘out’ when it comes to curbing greenhouse gas emissions – just collect carbon at big sources and force it back into the earth!

Vattenfall, Sweden's state-owned power utility has embraced CSS and has opened a pilot plant in Germany, where it runs a number of coal-fired plants - 64 percent of its generation is from brown coal in Germany, just one percent from renewables (and it has zero coal-fired plants in Sweden).

Instead of funding tree planting in Indonesia, wind farms in China or methane capture right here at home, S.F.-based Village Green (of "Green My Vino" fame) is trying a different route - selling directly to consumers permits from the fledgling carbon cap and trade market just starting up in the U.S. Northeastern states.

Buy a permit, rip it up