Global and Local Environmental Issues

[lady_forever]

Originally Posted by Red Phoenix

hehe, u deserved it lol

u know, i was born like everybody else with this free spirit of throwing stuff on the floor

but since i was 16, i have never threw anything out in the public on the floor

i keep it with me regardless how annoying and uncomfortable it is until i find a garbage can, and oh lord does it take a while to find a garbage can just like u find water in the desert..

but i do it, i just do it, cuz in my head i know that i am not an animal, i am a human being, i dont litter in my bed nor do i do it on the sidewalk.

and sure, i got countless friends who preach about 'look at that garbage here!' and litter themselves

but let me tell u, do i make their miserable lives a living hell if i catch them hypocrites littering in front of me.. hehe

i make them as uncomfortable as that 80 year old lady did to u and i make sure they remember it so as to not easily repeat it, at least not in front of me hehe

but now with the beach, it's even more of an insult, it's clearly destroying beauty and 'swimming in it'

Thank you for higlighting the point where u said do i throw litters in my home or bed.thus u ought to respect outside,sidewalks beaches wherever u go ...This is what i keep telling my students and i guess when kids are taught to respect the envirnment they will look after it..i wish they assign days for youth to clean either beaches or public gardens or whatever this will teach elders too to respect the land they live in

[SeekNirvana]

Originally Posted by Red Phoenix

(btw the answer is simple, just dont throw garbage around ppl unless u r crazy!)

Tax it.
Give tax credits for cleaning.

[Red Phoenix]

Originally Posted by SeekNirvana

Tax it.
Give tax credits for cleaning.

can u elaborate more about this ?

[SeekNirvana]

Originally Posted by Red Phoenix

can u elaborate more about this ?

There's a bunch of assumptions that are clearly not true in Lebanon's case. The most important of them is that law is applied.

First things first, the government needs to have enough legitimacy to make bold moves.

But basically, if you have a well-structured tax law that is applied, you can increase government ['s - hopefully good -] influence on many social and economical issues. Taking for example this topic, you can have a government-subsidized cleaning program for the main coastal areas paid by taxpayers' money.

To encourage private initiative by corporations, government can give corporate tax credit for initiatives that tackle this subject. It's a pretty generic framework used in developed countries to incite private initiative on many social issues.

[Orion]

Iraq's drought: Eden drying out
By Hugh Sykes
BBC News, Baghdad



The Garden of Eden is in danger of turning into a dustbowl. The legendary Eden was in Mesopotamia, the land between two rivers - the Tigris and the Euphrates. For hundreds of miles between their lower reaches there is fabulously fertile farmland.

But it's hardly rained in Iraq for more than two years, the river levels have dropped by half in some places, and farmland is drying out.

The drought is having a devastating effect on Iraq's most renowned export after oil - its dates.

Iraq used to produce three-quarters of the world's entire date crop every year. Now, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran export more dates than Iraq.

At a date farm in Baghdad - near the city centre - it all seems lush and lyrical.

There's a strong smell of fresh mint in the air. Herbs, and vegetables like Jew's Mallow, are grown between the trees; their roots fix nitrogen in the soil, which helps to nourish the palms with natural fertiliser.

But the dates are not well.

The plantation is farmed by two brothers with warm smiles - Idris and Sarieh Alaa ad-Din. They say the drought is so bad they only get dates every two years now.

From their 1,500 palm trees, they tell me they used to collect up to 50 tonnes of dates every harvest every year - last year they only got 30 tonnes.

They have had no harvest at all this year.

Since 2007, Iraq has had a lot less than half its normal rainfall. This has had another effect on the date harvest - rain cleans the trees, and washes away pests that degrade the crop. Now the insects thrive, and the trees suffer.

Idris and Sarieh say the last time there was any serious rain here was six months ago.

Falling river level

Flowing through Baghdad near the date plantation, the River Tigris is shrinking away from its banks.

Ducks still quack contentedly. White Egrets cluster by deep green bulrushes that move gently in a warm breeze. A kingfisher plops into the water and re-emerges with a small fish and flies rapidly away.

But the Tigris is ailing.

A friendly, moustachioed, middle-aged policeman gave me a glass of tea, chatted about better days and then walked down the embankment steps to show me how high the river used to reach just six years ago - half way up the steps.

There are wide patches of dry earth between the Tigris and the embankment. Abandoned boats lie high and dry where the water level used to be. Sandbanks which were once under the surface now stretch high above it.

The Tigris - and the Euphrates to the west - are 50% to 70% lower than they were 10 years ago.

At the National Centre for Water Management in Baghdad, senior engineer Zuhair Hassan Ahmed showed me graphs recording the levels of the two rivers over the past 10 years.

The "water year" starts in October. The hand-drawn lines for 2008 and 2009, for the Tigris and the Euphrates, confirm that their levels are well below the mean.

And Mr Ahmed explains that drought in Iraq is only part of the problem. The shortage of water for each river, he tells me, is caused mainly by lack of rain and snowmelt in the mountains of Turkey where the rivers rise.

Another factor is a series of dams on the Euphrates in Turkey and Syria, reducing flow before the river enters Iraq.

Turkey has recently agreed to increase the flow, but Zuhair Ahmed fears it may not be enough.

Multiple threats

There is also a vicious circle. Hardly any rain means farmland turns to dust.

Baghdad used to expect to endure about eight serious dust storms a year. Now there are more than 30 storms that turn the air of the capital orange.

In southern Iraq, river flow is so sluggish that salt water from the Gulf has reached further upstream, making it hard to supply safe drinking water to Basra.

And, near Basra city, the drought is hampering attempts to re-flood the vast marshes that were drained by Saddam Hussein's regime.

The traveller and author Wilfred Thesiger wrote tenderly about that community in The Marsh Arabs:

"Canoes moving in procession down a waterway, the setting sun seen crimson through the smoke of burning reedbeds, narrow waterways that wound still deeper into the Marshes ... reed houses built upon water, black dripping buffaloes ... stars reflected in dark water, the croaking of frogs, the stillness of a world that never knew an engine."

It's not like that any more.

One Iraqi agriculture specialist says the shortage of rainfall and river water have created "a real serious disaster".

[fado]

Muhozi has added you as a friend: Ugandan gorillas join Facebook as part of online fundraiser
Sat Sep 26, 11:30 AM



By Godfrey Olukya, The Associated Press


KAMPALA, Uganda - He's hairy, his table manners are atrocious, and he wants to be your friend on Facebook.


No, it's not the ex-boyfriend. It's Muhozi, an endangered Ugandan mountain gorilla, who's appearing online as part of a fundraising program the Ugandan Wildlife Authority launched Saturday to help save the species.


Around 340 mountain gorillas - nearly half of the 740 remaining worldwide - live in Uganda's lush Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park and 40 more live in another Ugandan reserve. The rest live in the Virunga mountain range, which stretches from Uganda into Rwanda and the war-ravaged Congo.


Despite their size - a male silverback can reach over 7 feet (2.1 metres) and weigh 400 pounds (180 kilogram) - the gorillas are threatened by poachers who kill them for meat, farmers and charcoal-burners who encroach on their habitat, and the indiscriminate bullets of rebels on the run. They must be protected by rangers with automatic rifles.


The Wildlife Authority is hoping that fans will befriend a gorilla on Facebook or MySpace or follow it on Twitter in return for a minimum donation of $1. The money will be used to hire extra rangers to protect the gorillas and safeguard their habitat.

In return, gorilla friends will receive regular updates about their chosen gorilla, have their gorilla's picture on their home page and receive gorilla trivia - like the fact that the name is derived from a Greek word, gorillai, meaning "hairy women."

Wildlife Authority spokeswoman Lilian Nsubuga said she hoped the program would give people who could not afford to travel to Uganda themselves the chance to feel closer to the animals.


About 10,500 tourists visit Uganda each year to see the gorillas. An entry permit for the park is $500 per person. Last year Uganda earned $600 million through tourism and more than 90 per cent of the money was from gorilla tourism.


"Why visit Rome to see ruins or Egypt to see mere piles of stones called pyramids, yet you can go to Bwindi and see your next of kin?" asked Uganda's Minister of Tourism, Kahinda Otafiire, pointing out that gorillas share more than 95 per cent of their DNA with humans.


Thomas Slater, the director of the gorilla Web site, said Internet users would be able to befriend any individual from one of seven groups habituated to human contacts.


"You will be able to learn more concerning the particular gorilla, its character, family and relationships," he said.


-


On the Net:


Friend a Gorilla





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Source: Muhozi has added you as a friend: Ugandan gorillas join Facebook as part of online fundraiser - Yahoo! Canada News


What a great idea, hopefully many of you will befriend this cute gorilla

[Dry Ice]

“The man in the Cube” is a project organized by The League of Independent Activists – IndyACT aiming to raise global urgency on the critical dangers of global warming and to urge world leaders to take fast and effective action against climate change in Copenhagen this year.

‘The man in the cube’ (Rami Eid) represents “the last man on earth” enduring a fierce struggle for survival against climate change effects. He will be living in the a transparent cube on Ein El-Mreyseh for 3 days starting 16 October 2009.

The “last man” simulates the possibility of a dim future for mankind where we failed to act against climate change when we had the chance.

The Man in the Cube

[Dry Ice]

[Dry Ice]

[fado]

Originally Posted by Dry Ice

This guy is totally confused lol He is probably thinking "what the hell is Hybrid?"

I really hope that Lebanese people start thinking green, most of them dont even know what recycling is