http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2014/11/18/obama-should-tie-keystone-pipeline-approval-bigger-environmental-goals/87Nha5jDzdP4OULPU21a8N/story.html

The house has already to sent the pipeline project to the president’s desk for approval. The Senate, once it’s under Republican control come January, will most likely vote in the pipelines favor as well.

Supporters like to say that the 1,179-mile expansion of the pipeline, which would carry tar sands oil from Canada to Texas, will create thousands of jobs. Opponents reply “it as an environmental disaster, suggesting that refining tar sands is incredibly toxic while raising the alarm that greenhouse gases will increase dramatically. Landowners along the proposed route worry about potential leaks”.

Obama will most likely veto the bill, with the notion that the goal should be to reduce emissions and boost energy efficiency, rather than block pipelines per se.

Over the past week, or so I have been really interested in US Drone policy because of a topic in another class and having watched the first episodes of the new season of Homeland that is centered around yet another drone attack that kills many Pakistani civilians. From both these I have been begun wondering does the drone program currently being implemented create the problem, or is it not necessarily the program and the problem lies deeper within the technology itself. After reading a few articles from the Huffington Post and a government document on Drone policy the problem may lie in both.

A major problem in US drone policy is that attacks do not need to be Whitehouse approved. This means military officials can act on instinct, which in many cases has resulted in the 2,400 deaths the program has accounted in the 5 years of its existence. The drones are good at taking out terrorist individuals, but high costs with regards to innocent life. For example the majority of people killed from drones in Pakistan are roughly between 416-987 innocent civilians, half of which is thought to be children. Furthermore, in most cases the drones killed more good people than bad people, which in large parts does more harm for society than good; killing innocent people only breeds more hate and anguish towards the United States, which in the long-run only enhances terrorist group power and continuity. A change in policy that makes more controls before a attack is done needs to be drafted because in my opinion a lack of inputs has resulted in many unnecessary attacks.

Another problem I see is the technology itself because it cuts out the intimacy and responsibility of warfare because the person carrying out the drone strike that kills 12 people is literally a hundred thousand miles away and therefore does not immediately have emotional registration for their actions; in some cases these attacks almost do not seem real and feel like a video game. There is definitely something wrong with treating human life as if it were a video game especially innocent lives.  In the longer run I think the US should move away from attacks and focus more on the surveillance aspect of drones, which in most cases have been applicable both globally and domestically. Using drones for only surveillance purposes is the necessary move because people deserve better.

https://news.vice.com/article/400-people-bury-their-heads-in-the-sand-to-protest-australian-prime-ministers-stance-on-climate-change?utm_source=vicenewstwitter

When your prime minister calls climate change science “crap” and you can’t beat him, you might as well join him… figuratively. Yes, 400 protesters buried their heads in sand this past Thursday on a beach in Sydney, Australia, highlighting the need for their leader to address climate change at the G20 summit held over the weekend in Brisbane.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120292/2014-g20-summit-obama-challenges-abbott-climate-change

If you read this follow up piece, you’ll see how the Summit did end up including climate change in the agenda, even focusing on donating funds to poorer countries dealing with climate change.

A huge climate denier, Prime Minister Abbott has called for heightened coal use, lessened goals for renewable resources, and wants to focus on the economy alone.

It’s time Abbott has taken his head out of the sand.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/11/10/363023227/solar-bike-path-opens-this-week-in-the-netherlands

Outside of Amsterdam in a town called Krommenie, crystalline silicon solar cells in durable casing will double as a bike path for citizens and solar panels to feed into the national energy grid. I don’t know, guys, northern Europe and Scandinavia sound pretty smart.

With years of testing, the panels have to be skid resistant and strong, yet translucent and dirt repellent to absorb sunlight. The first ever of its kind, the section laid down last week stretches for 230 feet. Although flat surfaces won’t be as efficient as panels on rooftops, the path should produce enough energy to run two or three households for a year.

There might be more like this coming our way! The article mentions a project based in Idaho called “Solar Roadways.”

In terms of recent readings, do you think technology like this has a place in a sustainable vision for the future?

http://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/environment-and-nature/20141027/activist-vandana-shiva-speaks-in-redlands-about-dangers-of-pesticides

Vandana Shiva is an environmental activist from India.  Her mission is to promote natural agricultural practices and environmental justice in India.  Shiva works against large multinational corporations that produce GMO and use large amounts of pesticides.  This article was about her visit to the Memorial Chapel at the University of Redland where she voiced her vision of a world that feeds everyone with food grown as nature intended.  Shiva’s Ph.D. thesis was on quantum physics, which is very complex but in Shiva’s own words is shows how the “world is not separate. Everything is interconnected.”

Shiva’s work connects to the reading we did about the environmental movement in India.  Shiva is trying to bring about environmental justice, especially to farmers and women.  Hopefully she can bring about change that will be helpful to the health of the people and the world.

A year, or two ago I remembered watching a 60 minutes piece on the growing issue of urban animal populations. The most interesting of these during the piece was the problem going on in India’s leopard population. Even with the lost of habitat space and food sources the leopard population has not shrunk and instead has adapted to many large urban landscapes. Furthermore, it is not uncommon to spot a leopard roaming the city at night in India. Obviously, this top predator has scared the population (for good reason) and now the Indian government is prepared to make a re-evaluative decision on the matter because the issue has resulted in many preventable injuries and deaths.

It’s a hard problem to swallow because its not the leopards fault for moving into our urban areas, but something needs to be done to curve the risks associated. A healthy, top predator population usually signals to scientists that an ecosystem is good and working, yet can this problem be resolved without hurting the the top of the ecosystem? My answer is that it cannot be and the leopards will be eventually hunted  because preserving human safety is the underlying topic here and human safety is always prioritized. (Below are two articles I read on recent examples of this urban problem)

The city of Meerut’s cat problem 

Leopard Populations already dwindling in India

I know this post is not related to the topic we are discussing in class but I came across this article when I was doing research for my paper. I think it is a great overview of the benefits and costs of fracking.

The article discusses Amwell Township in Southwest PA. The township is compromised of poor farmers who all hold second jobs to provide for their families. The average yearly income of the area is $18,000 a year.

Amwell sits on top of a Marcellus Shale bed. Starting in 2006, families were approached by gas companies to allow drilling on their land. It is a great deal for the families as they can make up to $500,000 for leasing their land plus a percentage of the royalties from the gas produced on their land.

However, the royalties start to die out after a couple of years and the gas is used up and the farmers still have to hold second jobs. And although the economic benefits are great, the health repercussions seen in the area are disgusting. Animals began dying, the air smells like rotten eggs, and children became sick with heavy metal poisoning. Stacey Haney is a mother of two kids who works as a nurse. After leasing her land, her dog died at age 1 1/2 years old,  and her son became extremely sick with elevated levels of arsenic. She had herself, and her daughter tested as well. Results showed levels of heavy metals in their blood. Their drinking water became black and smelled like rotten eggs. Every time she sent a complaint to the gas company, they denied the fact that they used those chemicals. They refused to provide her with fresh drinking water until she showed them the tests from her son and when Haney and others complained to the DEP it went unreceived.

The article is long but clearly demonstrates that although there is an economic benefit to hydrofracking, the health costs far outweigh the benefits. Until companies start paying attention to the health problems they are causing and find a way to make the process more safe, hydrofracking should be stopped.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/magazine/fracking-amwell-township.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/03/india-air-pollution-cutting-crop-yields-by-almost-half

Scientists have found that air pollution in India has become so severe that yields of crops are being cut by almost half. “While temperature’s gone up in the last three decades, the levels of smog and pollution have changed much more dramatically,” says Jennifer Burney, an environmental scientist at University of California, San Diego. Comparing crop yields in 2010 to what they would be expected to be if temperature, rainfall and pollution remained at their 1980 levels, the researchers showed that crop yields for wheat yields were as much as 50% lower. Researchers that looked for wheat and rice production alongside pollution data, concluded significant decreases in yield could be attributed to two air pollutants, black carbon and ground level ozone.

What does this mean for the future of Agriculture in our world?

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/5/a_big_win_for_climate_change

In a video clip of Lee Fang and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, last Tuesday’s elections are discussed in regards to what it means for climate change policy. With Republicans winning the Senate, leadership of certain committees will be in the hands of very serious climate change skeptics. Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe made a video for the climate denying think tank “The Heartland Institute” about how climate change is just rhetoric for Democrats to get elected; he will be in control of the environment committee. Senator Ron Johnson will control the homeland security and government reform committee, meanwhile Senator Ted Cruz may serve as head of the science sub committee within the commerce committee, which controls federal science research.

By placing climate change skeptics in important positions, there will be a lot of pressure on the EPA to rollback or delay proposed rules on carbon emissions, a push for exporting oil and Keystone XL, and a call for fracking. Although Democrats also accept campaign funding from fossil fuel industries and haven’t eliminated the idea of increased fracking, very conservative Republicans were elected. In other clips that Democracy Now has shown, Ralph Nader has called this era, “the most militaristic, corporatist, cruel, anti-worker, anti-consumer, anti-environment, anti-women, even anti-children programs of the Republican Party” and senator Bernie Sanders has said “The United States is on the verge of becoming an oligarchy.”

With a divided government and even more anti-environmentalists in place, how do you think the rest of the government will respond to these elections? How about the public?

“We don’t want to claim that we’re going to solve all of humanity’s problems,” cautioned Ferrari (a graphene researcher at University of Cambridge), “but we are in for a very interesting next ten years.”

This was the closing quote form an NBC article about this supposed miracle material called Graphene. From the article, “It makes batteries charge faster and last longer. It can detect light better than the best sensors. It could lead to flexible, impossibly thin touchscreens, super-strong composites and implantable electronics.” The article also reported that labs around the world are inventing things that use this material almost every day. What is the material? Its simply an almost two dimensional sheet of carbon arranged in hexagonal shapes.

It will be interesting to keep this material in the back of our minds as technologies press on into more and more innovative places. Apparently, the implications are huge, and the EU already has a billion dollar flagship program which hopes to roll out strong, conductive polymers in the next ten years, and then move from there.

Environmentally, this industry would have little to no impact simply because carbon is everywhere. With the heavy quote “We don’t want to claim we’re going to solve all of humanity’s problems,” one can’t help but imagine all the great this material could do.

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/wonder-material-graphene-just-getting-started-researchers-say-n236766