I can think of a couple of hundred reasons to drive a car instead of walk, bike, or inline skate.

Pollution, smution…

In Madrid, Spain, protesters stripped down and rode naked on bicycles to protest against the expansion of automobile use instead of riding a bike.

I’m only seeing the backside in these pix, but from what I do see, I am not that interested in what’s up front.

But, then again, I’d like to get a talking to from some of these protesters.

In the meantime, I am somewhat inclined to keep driving depending on who might ride naked to try and stop me.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe for updates to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting and please do come back!

photo by vr2006

With 1.8 million cars counting for 75-percent of the air pollution, Madrid is one of Spain’s most polluted cities. Recently the City Hall announced that their official vehicles will “turn green” by 2011 using clean fuels like bio-diesel, ethanol, natural gas or even running on electricity. Madrid also joined the BEST (BioEthanol for Sustainable Transport) European project to promote the use of ethanol in cars and is going to make agreements with taxi companies to offer them road tax discounts if they will turn green, too.

Such decisions could make people realize that something has to be done if we want a cleaner air. We can start with our cars.

via AutoBlogGreen

During a research voyage to the Bering Sea in the summer of 2007 the guys at Greenpeace came out with an interesting discovery. A new species of sponge was found in the depths of the underwater canyons (Pribilof Canyon), a unique habitat that we don’t know much about except that fishing methods like bottom trawling may destroy it. They named the “new” sponge Aaptos kanuux from the Unungan word that means heart (kanuux).

Apart from the discovery, George Pletnikoff, Greenpeace USA’s Alaska Office Oceans Campaigner and a native of the Unungan communities on the Pribilof Islands warned that the deep waters are at risk because of overfishing and if these canyons won’t be able to pump the much needed nutrients such an ecosystem may fail and the life of people depending on these waters could be in jeopardy.

“We know so little about the seas around us and far less about the open oceans. This amazing discovery underscores the need for the UN to establish a global network of marine reserves and to stop the current free-for-all whereby habitats and species are being destroyed before scientists have even had a chance to give them names,” said Richard Page, an oceans campaigner for Greenpeace International.

There must be something we can do to protect marine life: “if we want fish tomorrow we need marine reserves now“.

It’s beautiful down there, check out this video.

Source

This year’s G8 Summit will be hosted on the island of Hokkaido in Japan. One of the most interesting gatherings will be the climate change summit on July 9, where 16 leading countries - the Group of Eight plus Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, South Africa and Mexico - are invited to attend.

The countries mentioned above are responsible for more than 80 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions. Talks will include carbon dioxide emission targets by 2020,  and rumors say this year’s summit is going to be the largest in history.

Source

The first time I’ve been in Italy I was amazed by so many scooters. Old, new, it doesn’t matter because you see them in different colors at every corner. I even heard people calling Rome as the scooter-capital of Europe.

A classic Vespa scooter. Photo by the-spidernet

But there seems to be a problem. The Italian government is keen on keeping a healthier air in their cities and one of the measures they are taking is paying owners to change their old scooters with new ones. Obviously the 2-stroke engine emits much more harmful pollutants than a new generation 4-stroke model and add the fact that there’s no catalyst and you have a big polluter.

This is why authorities will offer a 300 Euro bonus when buy a new scooter and ditch your old one. Of course, if you live in Italy.

Source

Charles Moore is an oceanographer that spent over a decade investigating the Pacific Ocean. On February 23 he returned from a 5 weeks successful research voyage with terrifying results. Apparently a “garbage island” twice the size of the United States located, located between California, Hawaii and Japan is full of plastics and is held in place by underwater currents.

Warning Sign for Water Quality - picture by Heal the Bay

The samples Moore took from the 2.5 million square miles plastic dump showed that there’s 6 times more plastic than plankton. It’s a a fivefold increase in the amount of plastic between 1997 and 2007. The most common things found are consumer leftovers like plastic bags, bottles and their caps, fast food wrappers or toys.

As GreenTechBlog mentions this kind of pollution can cause damage in many ways. Millions of fish and birds die ever year because they consider plastic as food or we could be faced with an accelerating global warming because the CO2-sucking plankton may not grow naturally anymore. Another important effect is that marine life could be contaminated with PCBs and other toxins plastic contains.

Plastic pollution is a serious problem but considering the size of it Moore said that there’s no technological solution to clean the ocean life. The Pacific plastic dump is unfixable he said so the only thing we can do is to prevent from adding more.