Environmentalists have plenty of valid reasons to look forward to the end of the Bush administration, but when it's all said and done, there may well be a handful of environmental positives to weigh against the ecological damage it has wrought. Case in point: the president is proposing a ban on commercial fishing and mineral exploration on and around three large Pacific island chains. The Northern Mariana Islands, the Line Islands, and American Samoa are likely to be deemed protected areas, preserving a remote swath of extreme biodiversity that might otherwise be destroyed in our pursuit of food and energy.
Animals like migratory birds, sea turtles, and the scary-looking coconut crab (pictured) will benefit from the designation, which comes just two years after similar protections were placed on the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument (easy for you to say) represents the largest protected marine area in the world, but here's hoping it's just the beginning.
As far as tourism is concerned, larger islands like Saipan, Tinian, and Tutuila have plenty of fancy hotels with all the beachy amenities. The smaller Line Islands of Jarvis Island, Kingman Reef, and Palmyra Atoll, meanwhile, are uninhabited, but you can sail your yacht or luxury submarine close enough to take a dinghy to shore for a picnic.
Ever felt guilty for flying to your vacation because of all those carbon emissions your plane is pumping out? Unless you're Australian, there's no need. According to a recent Sydney Morning Herald opinion, because Australia's so far away from pretty much everywhere, and because Australians really love to travel, then Aussies who fly to Europe or America are really doing a pile of damage to the planet.
Scoffing Aussies might be sobered by this fact: A Sydney to London return trip emits about 9 tons of carbon dioxide per passenger, which is the same amount this passenger would use in two years of eating, driving, heating and air-conditioning at home.
Add to this the fact that you always bump into Australians wherever you travel overseas--they really are everywhere--and you can see the problem. Do Aussies have to start staying home now? Maybe. But wouldn't the bottom drop out of the global beer market if traveling Aussies weren't there to prop it up?
What a beach bummer: Hundreds of baby penguins have washed up on the famous sands of Rio de Janeiro, sparking a debate about how we might be affecting the livelihood of adorable fuzzy animals.
Typically some penguins every year get caught in currents off Patagonia and Antarctica and wind up dead hundreds of miles away, but this has been a particularly bad year for the Cute Overload crowd. Suspects include overfishing, which forces penguins to swim farther for their food, and immunity-damaging pollution, but it could also be the result of changing weather patterns at the Strait of Magellan.
Luckily, the Brazilian Coast Guard has been keeping a special watch on the coast, rescuing penguins and bringing them to Rio's Niteroi Zoo to recuperate.
That didn't take long. Just a couple weeks ago, Olympics officials and sailing enthusiasts were panicking about an algal attack off the coast of Qingdao.
But thanks to 20,000 "volunteers," the Yellow Sea is all cleaned up--at least so says the country's state-run media outlet. Officials also say that three sea barriers designed to hold back any further algal outbreaks have been set up around the waters designated for competition.
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?
