News
Weekly Linkfest – Edition 14
Welcome to round fourteen of our Weekly Linkfest, where we share the good, the bad, the ugly and the just plain interesting from what we’ve seen this week.
I would greatly appreciate readers getting involved in this weekly linkfest. Please email editor (at) permaculturenews.org with links (and ideally a summary sentence outlining the key point of each link) to noteworthy articles and news reports on the internet.
Off we go:
Good News (coz we all need it):
- The BBC covers permaculture again. See also.
- Wild food crop relatives to be ‘rescued’. Scientists have announced a plan to collect and store the wild plant relatives of essential food crops, including wheat, rice, and potatoes.
- New Study Shows Walkable Neighborhoods Make People Happier. See also.
- End of Suburbia Director to Launch ResilientCITY – the Future of Our Cities (Video).
- Community Supported Beer: Cooperative Brewing, Baking and Farming for Local Economies.
- West African farmers have succeeded in cutting the use of toxic pesticides, increasing yields and incomes and diversifying farming systems as a result of an international project promoting sustainable farming practices.
- Permaculture is more relevant than ever!
- Protecting the Amazon Rainforest: Extensive Inventory Forms Basis for Legislation Governing When Trees in the Brazilian Rainforests Can Be Logged.
- Restoration Activities Speed Seagrass Recovery in the Florida Keys.
- Fish Thought to Be Extinct for 70 Years Rediscovered.
- GM Cotton Fails – Insect Pests Thriving on Indian Plants When They Should Be Dead.
- TED Talk: Systems of Sharing About to Revolutionize Consumerism.
- Matchmaking for Vegetables. A new website lets gardeners find partners with whom to swap their excess produce.
- Plastic Bag Ban Starts in New Year in Italy.
- New tropical mistletoe just in time for Christmas – one of many new discoveries from Kew this year.
- A video describing Lands Council’s plans to store water in Washington State, with beavers!
- Carbon-Neutral Sail-Powered Cargo Ships Scheduled to Return to European Waters in 2012.
- New book! The Post-Carbon Reader. The Post Carbon Institute has gathered 29 of the world’s leading experts to point the way to a more resilient, just, and sustainable world. The Post-Carbon Reader is a comprehensive, in-depth examination of the inter-connected sustainability crises humanity now faces.
- Frogs across Australia and the US may be recovering from a fungal disease that has devastated populations around the world.
- New species of lemur discovered in Madagascar.
- Polar bears can be saved by emissions cuts, study says.
- Russian tiger team hails success. How a team in Russia is working to prevent critically endangered Amur tigers from being killed in "human-tiger conflicts".
Bad News (coz we need to understand the challenges if we’re to design our way out of them):
- Global Rivers Emit Three Times IPCC Estimates of Greenhouse Gas Nitrous Oxide. Biologists have demonstrated that streams and rivers receiving nitrogen from urban and agricultural land uses are a significant source of nitrous oxide to the atmosphere. Nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas, is a chemical compound with the
formula N2O, and as a greenhouse gas it’s 300 times stronger than CO2. See also. - USDA Recommends "Coexistence" with Monsanto: We Say Hell No!
- West Australia: GM Canola Contaminates Organic Farm.
- Monsanto to fight GM contaminated organic farmer.
- Coming Soon: Bayer’s Newest Brand of Genetically Modified Rice.
- Bayer also lobbied EPA to allow bee-toxic pesticide.
- Viruses and the GM Insect "Flying Vaccine" Solution. While it is generally clear, even to the relatively uninformed, that government and corporations have become one and the same; the extent to which this is the case is still largely unknown amongst the general public. Likewise, the extent to which this merger is affecting public health is also not widely known.
- Commission dismisses petition on GM foods ban.
- Farming the Future: GM Crops Recommended as Key Part of Obama’s "Evergreen Revolution".
- Destruction of GM sugar beet crops delayed.
- Pesticidal Proteins (Bt) From GM Corn Plants Are Now Common In Midwest Streams.
- GE Mosquitoes Soon to be Released in Malaysia.
- Unique Orangutan Reintroduction Project Under Imminent Threat. A Sumatran rainforest named a global priority for tigers and home to a unique orangutan rescue project is targeted for clearcutting by one of the world’s largest paper suppliers. See also.
- Entire Dolphin Families Dying in Fishing Nets.
- Ocean Acidification Changes Nitrogen Cycling in World Seas.
- Chinese-backed Kenyan ‘super port’ could devastate UNESCO island.
- England’s controversial forest sale could attract biofuel energy companies. Is this what we call green energy, to burn our biodiversity?
- Hygiene Hypothesis linked to depression. Rates of depression in younger people have steadily grown to outnumber rates of depression in older populations and researchers think it may be because of a loss of healthy bacteria contributing to an inflammatory response in the brain.
- Drug-Resistant Genes Spread among Bacteria.
- Poisoning drives vulture decline in Masai Mara, Kenya.
- Earthworms Absorb Discarded Copper Nanomaterials Present in Soil.
- Biomagnification of Nanomaterials in Simple Food Chain Demonstrated. Are nanoparticles the next big polluter of nature? It seems like they can accumulate up in the food chain just like chemicals. I find it frightening.
- Long-Lasting Chemicals Threaten the Environment and Human Health.
- Free toys with Happy Meals lure children into eating junk food.
- Beekeeper Who Leaked EPA Documents: "I Don’t Think We Can Survive This Winter."
- How Hard Are We Pushing the Land? Plant Consumption Rising Significantly as Population Grows and Economies Develop. See also.
- Carbon trading tempts firms to make greenhouse gas.
- City Lights Spike Air Pollution.
- Iran’s Lake Urmia Is Drying Up Fast.
- Creativity Can Lessen Leader Image — College students viewed people with innovative ideas as having less leadership potential than those whose thinking remained in the box. This doesn’t prove good for the future. If there is something we need to solve today’s problems, creativity is definitely one of them.
- Highway Approved for Moscow’s Khimki Forest. And I who believed Russia was proud to be a railroad nation?
- Botswana president in racist outburst against Kalahari Bushmen. For tens of thousands of years Kalahari Bushman tribes have lived in the deserts of southern Africa. But the Botswana government is determined to put an end to their ability to live off the land and has cut off their water supply.
- Double ‘green energy’ threat to Borneo tribes’ rainforest.
- Fog That Nourishes California Redwoods Is Declining. If the northern California coast gets less fog, the state’s iconic redwoods may be in trouble.
- American Southwest Could Face 60-Year Drought.
- FOXLEAKS: Fox boss ordered staff to cast doubt on climate science.
- PHOTOS: "Alarming" Amazon Drought — River Hits New Low.
- Effects of El Niño Land South Pacific Reef Fish in Hot Water.
- Shark finning continues despite EU ban, says report.
- Alaska’s Choice: Salmon or Gold. If built, a huge mine would transform Alaska’s Bristol Bay region, possibly jeopardizing the world’s richest sockeye salmon fishery. See also.
- New Obama Offshore Oil Plan Sacrifices Polar Bear Habitat. Oil development in the Chukchi Sea, home to America’s polar bears, remains a dangerous proposition because no technologies exist to clean up oil spills in icy waters.
- Beware the Treehuggers! Just in time for the holidays, a coalition of Christian conservative groups has issued an "explosive new 12-part DVD series" detailing the dangers of environmentalism. "Resisting the Green Dragon" explains how caring about future of the natural world is really an attempt to "push evangelicals to embrace anti-Christian environmental views." Their goal is of course to mix permaculture with New Age, to make it easy for them to reject our message without feeling guilt. They use the same tactic for denying climate change; in every second article from the climate sceptics I hear the claim that global warming is a new religion.
- Blooming Jellyfish in Northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean: Over-Fishing, Warming Waters to Blame.
- Grassland butterflies in steep decline across Europe. Why not make yourself a polyculture lawn?
- DOA Confiscating Raw Milk in Minnesota (Video.)
- Cows Do Not Belong in Fields, apparently.A Nocton Dairies representative told a BBC Radio Humberside interview that he sincerely believes cows do not belong in fields. I think somebody better show him A Moving Message from the Cows.
- WikiLeaks cables: Shell’s grip on Nigerian state revealed.
- EARTH: Trade imbalance, America exports emissions to China.
- Studies Prove That Thousands Of Babies Are Dying From Vaccine Induced Cot Death.
- "Super-Toxic" Rat Poison Kills Owls.
- Non-native species cost ‘British economy £1.7bn’.
- Killer Alien Weed May Threaten Biggest Animal Migration — Toxic invader can kill native plants, animals in Kenya.
- Globalization Burdens Future Generations With Biological Invasions, Study Finds.
- Fluoride In Water Linked To Lower IQ In Children.
Just plain interesting or odd (coz we’re curious creatures):
- After all the bad news above I think we better get a good laugh before we keep on. Reporter can’t stop laughing!! (subtitles)
- You Are What Your Father Ate, Too: Paternal Diet Affects Lipid Metabolizing Genes in Offspring, Research Suggests.
- Children Who Don’t Like Fruit and Vegetables Are 13 Times More Likely to Be Constipated.
- Do Breast-Fed Baby Boys Grow Into Better Students?
- Increased Consumption of Folic Acid Can Reduce Birth Defects but May Also Be Associated With Colorectal Cancer.
- Peer-reviewed journal says airport security measure won’t work. Physicists who led the development of today’s most sophisticated medical imaging technology believe the federal government’s X-rated airport X-ray scanners are useless.
- New book! Dirty Electricity: Electrification and the Diseases of Civilization. See also.
- Urban Farming, Community Resilience and the Death of the Motor Industry in Detroit (Video).
- Whose Forests? In Mexico, communities own and manage their own forests, a proven method for reducing deforestation.
- And Now Presenting: Amazing Satellite Images Of The Ghost Cities Of China.
- Human Powered Snow Vehicle. Is this the post peak oil vehicle for wintertime? Maybe a little slow to chase reindeers? Anyway, I love it! For you down in Australia this might be a better peak oil choice?
- Does Equality Increase Status Spending? People are happier when goods are more equally distributed, but equality makes people want to spend more to get ahead of their neighbors, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.
- Hand powered drilling tools and machines.
- Wind Turbines Help Crops by Channelling Beneficial Breezes Over Nearby Plants.
- How Plants Counteract Against the Shade of Larger Neighbours.
- Planet 100 Presents: Examining Environmental Toxins (Video News).
- Whistling Caterpillar Scares Birds. See video.
- Dust mites ‘swarm’ around houses.
- How Pollinators Sculpt Flowers. For the past 10 years, José María Gómez and Francisco Perfectti of the University of Granada have used complex geometric analysis to study how insect pollinators influence the evolution of flower shape.
- Saving the Honeybees, One Hive at a Time (Video).
- The crucial role cities can play in protecting the honeybee.
- Displaying dramatic flashes of colour with its feathers, this bird turns the forest into its own personal disco.
- Incredible New Species Discovered in 2010 (Slideshow).
- Why So Many Animals Evolved to Masturbate.
- Membership in Many Groups Leads to Quick Recovery from Physical Challenges.
- Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness.
- The Price of Coal in China: Can China Fuel Growth without Warming the World? See also this + this. In addition are coal power plants the main source of mercury pollution through the world! Today the amount of mercury in the biosphere is 10 times higher than in pre-industrial times.
- The toughest job in the world? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change seeks its first communications chief.