The Rights of Nature is a global movement that views nature not as something that we own, but as something that has rights. There are many important parts of this movement, but one of the most important is water. It is said that water is likely to be the most pressing environmental concern of the next century.
On Friday, September 22, millions of young people around the globe walked out of school to protest the lack of action to reverse climate change. Led by 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, teenagers, children, and some adults added their voices to an ever-growing movement to hold governments and corporations accountable for their environmental destruction and demand that they make immediate changes to reverse the damage. A week later, more strikes drew similar crowds, some even larger. In New Zealand, an unprecedented 3.5% of the population took to the streets.
It comes in red, mustard and black, in sizes 6 up to 16; the Boohoo minidress is, according to the online retailer, "perfect for transitioning from day to play". It is not so much the styling and colour, but the price of the £5 dress which attracts thousands of the thriving retailer's U.K. customers to buy it.
The £5 dress epitomises a fast fashion industry that pumps hundreds of new collections onto the market in a short time at pocket money prices. On average, such dresses and other products are discarded by consumers after five weeks.
India's tallest rubbish mountain is on course to rise higher than the Taj Mahal in the next year, becoming a fetid symbol for what the UN considers the world's most polluted capital.
About 2,000 tons of garbage are dumped at Ghazipur each day. Taking up the area of more than 40 football pitches, Ghazipur rises by nearly 33ft (10m) a year. At its current rate, it will be taller than the iconic Taj in Agra, some 239ft (73m) high, in 2020.
When Addy Tritt was 25 years old, she went to her local Payless shoe store in Hays, Kansas, a few years ago. She didn’t intend to walk out with the last of the store’s inventory.
The store was going out of business and had slashed its prices. When the last 204 pairs of footwear dropped to $1 each, Tritt figured she could buy some and donate them somewhere.
“My pile just kept growing bigger and bigger,” said Tritt. She finally went up to the sales associate and asked, “Can you get me a deal on all of these shoes?”
It was only about 40 years ago that plastic bags became standard at U.S. grocery stores. This also made them standard in sewers, landfills, rivers and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. They clog drains and cause floods, litter landscapes and kill wildlife. The national movement to get rid of them is gaining steam, with more than 240 cities and counties passing laws that ban or tax them since 2007. But these bans may be hurting the environment more than helping it.
Imagine the impact individual organizations could make if they teamed up to solve the world's most intractable societal problems.
That new mindset took center stage in Copenhagen at the inaugural global innovation lab, UNLEASH. There, a thousand carefully chosen, young social entrepreneurs came together from across the world to develop innovative approaches to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
India is facing its worst-ever water crisis, a new report by a government advisory body has warned. The comprehensive study on the state of India's water warned of conflict and other related threats, including food security risks, unless actions are taken to restore water bodies.
New Zealand hasn't been walking the talk on climate risk, finds a sweeping new analysis of hundreds of annual reports and statements.
A steep decline in coral cover right across the Great Barrier Reef, off the coast of Queensland, Australia, is a phenomenon that “has not been observed in the historical record”, a new report by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) says.
“The predicted consequences of climate change include more powerful storms and more frequent and more intense bleaching events. Reefs in the northern section have lost about half their coral cover. The central section also sustained significant coral loss”. Total coral cover decreased from 22% in 2016 to 14% in 2018.
In the summer of 2019, French swimmer and anti-plastic campaigner Ben Lecomte swam through the giant floating rubbish mass known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
The exact size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is impossible to determine, but estimates put it anywhere from 700,000 to 15,000,000 km² (or the size of Texas to the size of Russia). The patch is caused by the North Pacific gyre—a circle of currents that keep plastic, waste and other pollution trapped. According to scientists, the Patch has been growing “exponentially” in recent years.
The Trump administration has announced a position on protecting migratory birds that is a drastic pullback from policies in force for the past 100 years.
In 1916, the U.S.A. and Great Britain signed the Migratory Bird Treaty, which became U.S. law in 1918. The measures protected more than 1,100 migratory bird species by making it illegal to pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill or sell live or dead birds, feathers, eggs, and nests, except as allowed by permit or regulated hunting.
After more than a decade working in tech, Kimbal Musk (brother of famous technologist Elon Musk) decided to lean into his true passion: local food. He now runs a chain of local food-focused restaurants called The Kitchen, as well as Big Green, a national nonprofit that builds educational gardens in public schools.
It seems like everyone is getting into blockchain these days. After all, companies claim to like "transparency", "security", and anything to do with the roller coaster ride that is Bitcoin. But consider this: Tuna.
There are now several blockchain-based projects that aim to stop illegal tuna fishing. The idea is that blockchain-verification would assure consumers and others that the fish were ethically sourced. Or maybe it's just PR, who knows.
What happens when the oil runs out?
We cannot go on using oil forever. We can do so for a few more decades - perhaps until 2070, then it will run out - or at least, there will be hardly any left.
At present, there is still plenty of oil under the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Engineers keep finding new sources of oil, but there are some unavoidable issues with fossil fuels which cannot be ignored.
In 2013, Volvo announced a potentially revolutionary approach to designing electric vehicles (EVs). It wanted to replace some of the steel body panels in its cars with carbon fiber composite materials that can store power like a battery.
The rechargeable panels would be composed of multiple layers of carbon fiber, which are insulated from each other by fiberglass inserts. The result is a structural component that can be charged like the battery.
The renewable energy future will arrive when installing new solar panels is cheaper than a comparable investment in coal, natural gas or other options. If you ask the World Economic Forum (WEF), the day has arrived.
