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China is growing a lot of trees: Here's why that news might not be as great you might think 
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The Leuser ecosystem in northern Sumatra is home to some of the world's rarest and best-loved animals. Thanks to a new government moratorium on land clearing, conservationists have enjoyed a big win.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Some positive news that shows we can make conservation efforts work, even for tough problems.
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The contractor managing the nuclear weapons laboratory at Los Alamos, N.M., was slapped with a $57-million reduction in its fees for 2014, largely due to a costly nuclear waste accident last year.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Absolutely amazing! I never thought I would see the day when the department of energy would actually discipline nuclear contractors in any real way for performance failures. Unbelievable. Clearly a step in the right direction and a step to properly internalizing the externalities associated with fission-based weapons and power plants.
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The long-distance relocation of nuisance animals may appear to benefit both people and wildlife, but often the animals end up dead. Research suggests such human/animal conflicts are best solved with short-distance relocations instead.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
This is interesting. The problem with shorter relocation distances is the increased possibility that the critter will return to the same spot.
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The majority of chemicals commonly used by industry have had little or no safety testing.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
So where are the libertarians here? Still think we should completely dispense with regulations? If so you get tanks in West Virginia, two miles up river from your main water supply for the core of the state, which have had no inspections for more than 20 years, and are packed full of a substance we have no full bioreactivity data for. Oh and the "leaks" flowed across the soil surface down into the river. Great that no one even thought this warrented visual inspection (or even the wall repair identified some time ago.
What wonderful due diligence.
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Design by Andrew J. Nilsen
PIRatE Lab's insight:
As I have gotten older and more experienced in the ways of the world, I have come to realize that before we can truly tackle environmental problems and management challenges, we need to first have either 1) outright physical might and dominance (i.e. not the best approach) or 2) a stable and just system of laws and policies that are founded on Lockean principals.
When we have corruption and cronyism, we can never really achieve the progress we may work so hard and long for in our oceans, land, and air. I have also found that we here in the States are used to thinking of these concepts of corrupt governments as applying to the developing world (such as our current conservation challenges in Turkey…see here for the latest twist). This example of corruption above and undue influence peddling in San Francisco (see also this story) and the many examples from across the country (such as USC silencing public disclosure of its real estate transactions, Los Angeles’s Department of Water and Power’s Unions apparently embezzling millions of dollars from the public as the price for their not striking, and New Orleans’s Mayor feeling that natural disaster recovery is his own ticket to graft) are key to stay abreast of. While these topics may seem far removed from those of us working in the field for responsible management and stewardship of our natural resources, we cannot afford to allow such vice to go unchecked. At the heart of such unjust behavior is an inability to maintain the public trust and being able to go forward with our progress for planet and people alike.
We need only look to the lack of confidence in the U.S. Congress and associated disenchantment with government’s ability to tackle major issues to see the erosive power of corruption.
PIRatE Lab's curator insight,
December 28, 2013 5:44 PM
As I have gotten older and more experienced in the ways of the world, I have come to realize that before we can truly tackle environmental problems and management challenges, we need to first have either 1) outright physical might and dominance (i.e. not the best approach) or 2) a stable and just system of laws and policies that are founded on Lockean principals and democratic sunlight.
When we have corruption and cronyism, we can never really achieve the progress we may work so hard and long for in our oceans, land, and air. I have also found that we here in the States are used to thinking of these concepts of corrupt governments as applying to the developing world (such as our current conservation challenges in Turkey…see here for the latest twist). This example of corruption above and undue influence peddling in San Francisco (see also this story) and the many examples from across the country (such as USC silencing public disclosure of its real estate transactions, Los Angeles’s Department of Water and Power’s Unions apparently embezzling millions of dollars from the public as the price for their not striking, and New Orleans’s Mayor feeling that natural disaster recovery is his own ticket to graft) are key to stay abreast of. While these topics may seem far removed from those of us working in the field for responsible management and stewardship of our natural resources, we cannot afford to allow such vice to go unchecked. At the heart of such unjust behavior is an inability to maintain the public trust and being able to go forward with our progress for planet and people alike.
We need only look to the lack of confidence in the U.S. Congress and associated disenchantment with government’s ability to tackle major issues to see the erosive power of corruption. |
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From
www
The rangers’ jobs are difficult, to be sure. But sometimes the work is even harder on their wives.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
We all depend on our support networks, wherever we are around the world and whatever tasks we do. So much is put on the shoulders of not only our shoulders, but of our entire family and social networks.
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Governments, religious leaders and business talk up the Paris Agreement on climate change, but record temperatures hint at huge ambition deficit
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Governments, religious leaders and business talk up the Paris Agreement on climate change, but record temperatures hint at huge ambition deficit. The World Bank, IMF and OECD coalesced around a challenge to price 50% of carbon emissions by 2050. That initiative was backed by the leaders of six countries: Germany, France, Canada, China, Ethiopia and Mexico.
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This is a nice little info graphic which might have some utility/good images for folks making outreach presentations.
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The danger in failing to understand our place in nature is that nature will just move on without us.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
This is a point that some do not seem to get; life will not be ending on our planet anytime soon. The management challenges we are facing are essentially going to determine the ability of our society to persist in a manner we are familiar with/comfortable with. Life will go on (albeit in with a vast reduction in eukaryotic diversity) with us.
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An indigenous reserve in Brazil's Amazon region has been attacked in the latest incident of violence in the region. Farmers and loggers set fire to houses in the reserve located in the town of Manicore, in Amazonas state.
Via Jacqueline Keeler, pdeppisch
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Protected Areas are increasingly under assault across the globe. We have seen this in Turkey, in central Africa, in South America, and Southeast Asia. If these Protected Areas exist either only on paper (i.e. Paper Parks) or are so weakly enforced as to amount to no protection to the peoples and ecosystems purportedly being "protected," do we in fact have protection?
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