Environment

The movie Avatar has been a huge hit.  It’s full of messages about beauty, belonging, and balance — which are in short supply on Earth.  People are enchanted.  There are a lot of underlying messages that are getting missed, however.  Let’s take a look…

Remember that the economy is a subset of the environment, because the environment contains all life on Earth.  Without a healthy environment, the economy cannot be healthy either.  Conversely, when people’s needs are met, they have more ability to protect the environment, whereas hungry people tend to ravage it.

This article discusses some fascinating discoveries of new species in the world’s oceans.  And we’ve barely scratched under the surface!

Consider the implication of endangered species … and how we treat them after our hard work raises their numbers to something heatlhy.

Here is an article about the economy of small island nations and how that influences both politics and climate change.

The following article looks at climate change and weather.  In particular it examines the extreme snowfall in Washington, D.C.  While climate change deniers claim this as evidence against global warming, in reality the weather is subject to variation — but as climate change progresses, extreme weather events become more common.  That includes droughts and floods, hurricanes and tornados, heat waves and blizzards.  The atmosphere simply becomes less stable and less predictable and less pleasant to live in.

This article discusses the ups and downs of biomass as it applies to forests. Applied thoughtfully, this technology could have some promise.  The timber industry is not planning to apply it “thoughtfully.”

The following article explores more examples of climate change denial.

This article examines some scientific information about why Earth has a habitable temperature, compared to Venus (too hot) or Mars (too cold).