Three ways to view the spill’s progress: 1) Google Crisis center, with map data from NOAA and PBS live news feed showing the gushing oil, and 2) Paul Rademakers Google Earth representation of the oil spill, showing how it compares in size to Manhattan, London, Paris, etc, 3) New York Times”Tracking the Oil Spill in the Gulf“,map updated daily.
Archive for the 'Environment' Category
It seems that about 1/3 of Detroit has gone to seed. In the past fifty years, since they heyday of Motown, the population has dropped from 2 million, to less than a million. An article in the blog City Farmer discusses current serious interest in converting vacant land to urban farms. Another blog, Politics in the Zeros, also posted an article on this subject recently.
Here in Amsterdam, an astonishing film was shown at Arcam last week. Made In Detroit by Dutch documentary filmmakers Masha & Manfred Poppenk is about Ferguson Academy for for Young Women in Detroit, an alternative high school which teaches young teen mothers to farm on the schools own grounds, less than three kilometers from the city center. The farm includes an orchard, dairy, and bee hives, as well as organically grown crops which they sell at Detroit’s Eastern Market. It is a beautiful and thoughtfully made film. (Update: since posting a few hours ago, the film has been blocked pending right, permissions, etc…. hopefully it will be made available again soon.)
…Earth Hour 2009, Saturday, March 28, 8:30 PM. This global demonstration is a World Wildlife Fund initiative, and is being framed as a the world’s first global election. The UN Sec General, Ban Ki-Moon, announced UN participation in a new video. I’m spreading the word on the Zeeburgerkade!
Not news, but news to me is the ominous “trash vortex” illustrated in this Greenpeace animation. According to the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) 2006 report on Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Deep Waters (PDF), there are 46,000 pieces of marine litter for every square mile of ocean.
An amazing film, Garbage Island, presented in short segments on VBS, features Charles Moore, discoverer of the trash vortex, and founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, and enlightening explanations by Prof. Frederick vom Saal.
Earlier this summer, somewhere in Amsterdam, I happened upon some Greenpeace volunteers who were apparently training to board ships. It didn’t seem to be a covert operation, but not too many people were passing by that evening when I took this photo.
Healthyplanet.org is the brainchild of Dr. Mark Mulligan a Geography professor at Kings College in London. The site was announced in April, with the goal of allowing individuals and businesses to become “guardians” of the planet using a Google Maps or Earth interface. The maps display a layer of national parks and conservation areas all around the world, including a selection of parks which are designated “priority parks” (mainly in Africa) identified as globally important and in need of urgent funding. A potential guardian can zoom in to an area, select a 1 sq km section, make a donation and then create a pop-up plaque with a dedication. There are other ways that people are encouraged to participate “from their armchairs”, including mapping (coming soon, they say).
In its FAQs, Healthyplanet states that 90% of a donation goes to a fund set up for each park, and whenever that park has an “approved project”, the funds are transferred to the park. If, after time, there are no approved projects in the park, Healthyplanet will donate the funds to a priority park. This seems like a very nice concept, and innovative use of maps.
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