Sound the alarms! The Chinese city of Qingdao has come under algal attack--and the Olympics could be at risk! More than 30 percent of the waters designated for sailing contests off the coast of the city are inundated with thick enteromorpha prolifera. But the Chinese authorities have a way with getting people to "volunteer," and a reported 20,000 citizens have pitched in to clean up the Yellow Sea.
Agricultural run off is often the culprit when it comes to algal blooms, but Chinese officials told the state news agency that isn't the case this time. And they may not be lying! Blooms fueled by nitrates from fertilizers are usually red, and the stuff on the shores of Qingdao is bright green.
As the clean-up continues, the local Olympics Sailing Committee is planning a 30-mile-long fence to help keep the bloom at bay. The group says everything should be sorted by July 15; the games start on August 8.
But the latest Air NZ news is not quirky, but very green--and we like that too. Since last Thursday, Air New Zealand passengers have been able to buy carbon credits to offset the environmentally unfriendly effects of their journey.
Unfortunately the carbon offsets are only available to domestic passengers at the moment, but later this year will be rolled out for international passengers too. As an example, the offset for an Auckland to Los Angeles flight would cost around $70, in order to make up for the 2.9 tons of CO2 your share of the flight emits. Discounts available if you exhale less, of course.
Nepal-based Yeti Airlines has volunteered to clear away a mess of bottles and cans littering a town known as the Gateway to Mount Everest. The town of Lukla is home to Tenzing-Hillary Airport--perhaps the sketchiest in the world--and has apparently accumulated a lot of waste due to careless hikers and hotel owners.
A senior official at Yeti said the company hopes to clear away as much as 37,000 pounds of empty beer bottles alone! We suppose it probably takes a few drinks to talk yourself into climbing the world's highest peak.
Recovered bottles will be given to breweries to be reused or recycled. Airline officials are hoping their effort will raise awareness among both tourists and locals about the importance of preserving the local habitat. We're glad Yeti's doing this, but it's a tad depressing that the awe of the Himalayas hasn't been enough to drive that point home.
A giant reef in the South Pacific has gotten a major reprieve. The island nation of Kiribati has created the world's largest protected marine reserve, and it's about the size of California:
The Phoenix Islands Protected Area, covering 410,500 square kilometers, is one of the planet's last intact coral archipelagos and is threatened by over-fishing and climate change, [environmental] groups say.
It lies near the equator about half way between Fiji and Hawaii.
This new reserve is bigger than the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument west of Hawaii (137,797 square miles) and the Great Barrier Reef in Australia (345,000 sq km.)
The US-based group Conservation International, along with the New England Aquarium, is helping the Kiribati government to manage and fund the uninhabited area. A tough challenge for the reserve is coastal erosion, but the site is also overfished and thus the Kirbati government will need some money for surveillance.
So get out your wallets people! No, just kidding. We don't think this place is taking donations but we wonder... is it taking tourists?
We may think of it as one of the world's best, but the Galapagos National Park is in trouble. A boom in tourism to the islands--145,000 visitors dropped by in 2006 compared to 40,000 in 1990--is putting the delicate ecosystem at risk. That recently earned it a special spot on UNESCO's World Heritage list: as a site "in danger."
What does that mean? Non-native species are being introduced to the islands, big ships are detracting from the natural splendor and sport fishing is having an impact on wildlife below the water. And as more and more people come to the islands, there's a better chance that visitors will overwhelm the delicate balance that makes the islands special.
The president of the Galapagos Conservancy, which supports preservation projects in the islands, says her group isn't trying to discourage tourism but rather promote the area in a responsible way:
We have found that when tourists actually visit the Galapagos, they leave caring about it and wanting to support all conservation efforts.
As far back as 1992, the president of the Maldives, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, warned that his nation could end up under the ocean by the year 2100. After the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, the entire archipelago was underwater for minutes. And the Kyoto Protocol has done about, well, nothing to keep the Indian Ocean at bay.
So the Maldives built huge seawalls--at the expense of the islands' natural beauty. (Not high on our attractive natural wonders scale: concrete blocks.) As for beaches, the new strategy is to build artificial islands, like Hulhumale, where white sand is the norm and engineering staves off submersion.
Still, forging artificial atolls isn't cheap. Unless the Maldives can convince industrialized nations--which create most of the world's greenhouse gasses--to chip in some cash, the future of the island nation remains in doubt.
When your city is the namesake of an environmental protection and emissions control agreement, taking steps to save the planet must come naturally. The temples of Kyoto have become hypersensitive to global warming and have introduced some neat ways to reduce their energy use.
The Kodaiji Temple, for example, installed solar panels to store electricity which runs the night-time illumination. Other temples have replaced night lights with energy-efficient LED lamps. And Tenryuji Temple near Arashiyama in Kyoto has been clever enough to open earlier during summer so people can look around the temple longer using natural light.
Reduced lighting bills at these beautiful Japanese temples is a good start, but it's probably the lighting at those ever-luminous love hotels that they need to turn down a bit.
The famous Chinese Terracotta Army seems to be a sought after target for protesters and practical jokers alike. Last year in Xian, China a German student dressed in a terracotta soldier costume jumped into the pit of warriors, blending in for a few minutes until security guards nabbed him.
This time 'round it's an environmentally responsible father-of-two in England who's chosen to make a statement at the British Museum's exhibition of the terracotta statues. Martin Wyness put face masks on two of figures with the slogan "CO2 emission polluter" written on them--he's trying to say that China has a bit of a pollution problem.
Unfortunately for Mr. Wyness, some other museum-goers turned him in, and he's now been banned from the British Museum for life. But hey, his cause is getting a stack of publicity.
0 Comments - Add Yours
by pbb
