Better to Lead the World
Despite Republican and business opposition, California continues to lead the nation in reducing carbon emissions. The moves
are being attacked by business interests, who apparently don’t realize that California has the world’s sixth largest economy,
with one of the fastest growth rates in the nation. California’s economy slots between Germany
and France – two nations with equally ambitious emission reduction programs.
California is already
on track to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
Now under legislation
signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, the state will ratchet up its fight
against climate change by launching an ambitious campaign to scale back
emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.
"This is big, and
I hope it sends a message across the country," Brown said.
California reduced
emissions by imposing limits on the carbon content of gasoline and diesel fuel,
promoting zero-emission electric vehicles, and introducing a cap-and-trade
system for polluters.
But not everyone
agrees. The two new laws signed by Brown faced fierce opposition from the
state's business community, including the oil industry, as well as from
Republicans.
Brown noted at the
signing ceremony that opponents are not going away. The San Francisco Chronicle
carried this quote: "There's powerful opposition," Brown said.
"These are real people with real bucks and real influence."
"THE CLOCK IS TICKING."
Without wild spaces,there can be no wildlife. And,
humans are destroying the planets wild spaces at an alarming rate.
The untouched wilderness on this planet is disappearing —
and disappearing fast. That's bad news, and not just because trees look nice:
we depend on vast swathes of pristine nature to support diverse forms of life,
to keep climate change at bay, and to ensure that local economies thrive. But
for all their importance, we're doing a pretty bad job ensuring wild places
stay wild, new research shows.
The problem with developing wild places is that ecosystems
operate as a whole: cut off parts of it, and who knows what could happen to the
rest. Nevertheless, since the 1990s, we've managed to carve away 10 percent of
the last untouched places on Earth, according to a study published today in the journal Current Biology. And that
came as a bit of a surprise.
Street Art and Nature
Two Swiss street artists are bringing the reality of environmental issues to buildings in urban areas. Great art with a powerful
message.
The immediacy of city
life can make it all too easy to think of environmental woes as being the
problems of faraway places. But two Switzerland-based street artists who call
themselves NEVERCREW make humanity’s fraught relationship with nature
impossible for urbanites to ignore.
Christian Rebecchi and
Pablo Togni have been working together since meeting 20 years ago at the Liceo
Artistico C.S.I.A., an art school in Lugano, Switzerland. And they’ve clearly
hit their stride. NEVERCREW has introduced its skillfully executed and unique
pieces, like oil-dipped polar bears and commodified whales, to walls in cities
around the world, including New Delhi; Belgrade, Serbia; Munich; Hamburg,
Germany; Manchester, England; and Rochester, New York. The artists recently
completed their latest paintings, a two-part series of a bear and a whale
trapped inside a plastic bottle, for the Vancouver Mural Festival and Denmark's
WE AArt Festival.
The duo’s recent
large-scale murals feature stunningly realistic mash-ups between wildlife and
industrial objects. The combination forces viewers to confront themes like
climate change, pollution, and the exploitation of natural resources—systems in
which we all participate, however unwittingly.
Indians Saving Wolves
In Idaho, an alliance
of sportsmen, ranchers, and lawmakers staunchly opposed to the wolf’s
reintroduction made sure that state lawmakers refused to aid any federal
program to re-establish the species. But Idaho’s balking left an opening for a
third party — in this case, the Nez Perce — to manage federal efforts to bring
the wolves back. Having already proved themselves in a trial role with the
United States Fish and Wildlife Service overseeing small tracts of forests on
reservation land, the Nez Perce tribal government seized this much larger
opportunity to manage resources on millions of acres of federal land outside
the borders of their reservation. Bureaucrats were dubious: One tribal wildlife
biologist mused that state lawmakers were whispering among themselves, “Give it
to them [the Nez Perce] — they just might fail.”
This was a success
story not only for the wolves, but also for the tribe, which recovered its own
identity as a steward of forests and wildlife. “There was an unusual kinship
between the Nez Perce and the wolf; each had been persecuted and driven off the
land. For the Nez Perce to help bring back the wolf offered a way for the tribe
to bring back itself,” writes Theodore Catton, a public historian who
specializes in research for the National Park Service, in American Indians and
National Forests.
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