The Monthly Planet Newsletter

15/02/2008

Monthly Planet

Volume IV Issue I Green Project Newsletter February 15, 2007

Monthly Planet

Volume IV Issue I Green Project Newsletter February 15, 2007

Having A Whale Of A Time
Dr. Wayne J. Clark

Dear Mom,

We left Japan last November (2007) and arrived in the Southern Ocean in late December. We had some time to ourselves for a while – the ocean is so big it took quite a while for the Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd vessels to find us ?. That’s good because they are really interfering with our important scientific work. Just to let you know – our important scientific work is on whales. We want to study over a thousand whales this time and the best way for us to do the research is to kill them. What’s really neat this time is that besides the 900 small minke whales and 50 fin whales, we intend to kill 50 humpback whales. We have not killed these since the 1980’s because they were almost extinct by then.

What happened is that some annoying people who called themselves Greenpeace started interfering with Soviet commercial whaling ships in 1975 by using small inflatable (and fast!) dinghies called ‘zodiacs’ and placing themselves between the harpoons and the whales. These people are their kamikaze, their ‘divine wind’. The poor whalers had to fire their explosive harpoons over the zodiacs to get at the whales. Unfortunately these Greenpeace people filmed this, including when the explosive harpoons entered the whales and exploded and turned the sea red, and gave the film to TV stations. People all over the world watching TV did not like this so there was an international moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986 – but a few countries, including Japan, are still allowed to kill whales for scientific purposes.

These Greenpeace people…apparently they were formed initially from a community of activists in Vancouver, Canada, including the famous Bob Hunter who died in 2007, the Quaker pacifists Irving and Dorothy Strasmich/Stowe, former Canadian RAF pilot Ben Metcalf and his wife Dorothy, and Quaker pacifists/Sierra Club members Jim and Marie Bohlen. Their first interference was with American nuclear weapon testing off the coast of Alaska in 1971. They got that stopped, and looked for something new to do – hence the anti-whaling! Damn hippies.
Anyway, Greenpeace eventually found us in their boat ‘Esperanza’, closely followed by a boat called ‘Steve Irwin’ from another activist group – Sea Shepherd. Apparently Steve Irwin was some kind of Australian celebrity . Here’s a map:

These Sea Shepherd people are a bit worrying. They were originally part of Greenpeace but split off in 1977 since they thought Greenpeace were not pro-active enough. They are quite militant in their protection of the oceans. Believe it or not, 2 of them boarded one of our boats!!! A British guy called Giles Lane, and his colleague and Australian Benjamin Potts boarded the Yushin Maru. We held on to them for a few days – some people said we kidnapped them and assaulted them, but we didn’t – then handed them over to an Australian Customs vessel. Oh yeah, we found out that Australia had been following us too! Apparently a court in Sydney had declared the whale hunt illegal and ordered us to stop. We didn’t of course, but the Australians took some pictures and gave them to the world’s media. They said one of the pictures showed that we had killed a mother and her calf. We said the small one was not a calf, just a small whale.

Hope you like the photos,

Having a Whale of a Time!

Your Son,

Ichiro
(First Mate, Yushin Maru, Japanese whaling fleet)

PS: We have changed our minds about the 50 humpback whales – we’ll leave them alone…this time…

The World’s First All Green City

A city with zero carbon emissions, zero waste, and zero vehicles sounds like something from a Star Wars movie, much less a concept in our lifetime. But in early February, Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, announced plans to build the planet’s first non-pollutant city. Masdar City, named for the clean energy corporation Masdar Initiative established to develop and commercialize clean energy technology, will be a six-square kilometer city on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, a place well known for its high carbon footprint and oil businesses.

Masdar City will cost over $22 billion and take roughly 10 years to build. It will include housing for 50,000 residents and 1,500 businesses that are scheduled to move there in 2009.

The structure of the city will reflect innovative ways to conserve energy, as well as new models for transportation and water efficiency. It will be placed nearby the sea to take advantage of the cool sea breezes. Buildings will reflect local architecture and will be objects for channeling cooler air from the Gulf and deflecting the warmer air emanating from the desert.

The World’s First All Green City

A city with zero carbon emissions, zero waste, and zero vehicles sounds like something from a Star Wars movie, much less a concept in our lifetime. But in early February, Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, announced plans to build the planet’s first non-pollutant city. Masdar City, named for the clean energy corporation Masdar Initiative established to develop and commercialize clean energy technology, will be a six-square kilometer city on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, a place well known for its high carbon footprint and oil businesses.

Masdar City will cost over $22 billion and take roughly 10 years to build. It will include housing for 50,000 residents and 1,500 businesses that are scheduled to move there in 2009.

The structure of the city will reflect innovative ways to conserve energy, as well as new models for transportation and water efficiency. It will be placed nearby the sea to take advantage of the cool sea breezes. Buildings will reflect local architecture and will be objects for channeling cooler air from the Gulf and deflecting the warmer air emanating from the desert.

In place of cars, an electric light-rail system will be built to provide access to all major areas, including Abu Dhabi’s airport and main business centers.

Masdar City will be mostly powered by clean solar and wind energy plants. Homes will have solar canopies on the roofs to power individual residences. Water will come from a desalination plant along the Gulf, expected to be 80% more efficient than other plants of its kind. Wastewater will be channeled into filters to be purified and recycled for biological use in plants that will serve as bio-fuels.

The city will be home to the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, which investors are hoping will draw in academics and scientists from all over the world.

Abu Dhabi will invest $4 billion into this plan and projects a further investment of $20 billion from other cities and corporations.

Leave It To The Germans

Feast your eyes on the brand new E-126, the world’s largest wind turbine recently installed in Emden Germany. Standing at 135m the E-126 is as tall as the London Eye and can power more than 5,000 European homes. That’s 20m kWh per annum. Wow!

Water House Restaurant Opens

You do your damnedest to recycle (but who really has room in their shoe box of a kitchen for one f-ing dustbin, let alone three?). An easier way to ease your eco-conscience: take a meal at Water House, the new sister eatery of Acorn House, which opens for breakfast, lunch and dinner today. Perched on the bank of a North London canal, Water House aims to be the greenest, most ethical and community-focused restaurant in London.
Fitted with sustainable materials and a solar-panelled roof, the space uses renewable hydro-electricity. Kitchen waste is compostable, while the menu is written on a board for all to see, thus saving paper. Expect locally sourced (of course) dishes like mozzarella bruschetta, steamed cod with smoked brandade and bittersweet chocolate tart with black pepper ice cream. Eco-conscious?
This place is wide awake!

Taken From Daily Candy 12 February 2008.

Planeteer Award

The Planeteer Award will be given to a Green Project member who stands out through continuous involvement in our activities and events.
How it works: Members will be awarded points for each event they participate in. The member with the highest amount of points wins.

Points are allocated on the following basis:

Meetings: 10 points (per meeting)
Movie Nights: 10 points (per night)
Trips: 20 points (per trip)
Wandle River Clean-Up: 40 points (per clean-up)
Bake Sales: 20 points (for baking/volunteering)
Monthly Planet: 30 points (for each article that’s written and published)
Recycling: 40 points (per semester)
Other: 10 points (subject to change)

It is therefore up to you who wins this award… Try your best, and you might become this semester’s most outstanding Planeteer!!!

Animal Corner

You might not think it but these tiny butterflies, you remember the ones you used to grow from caterpillars or watch in the grass, are actually an endangered species. The Monarch butterfly known as Danaus plexippus are named for a Greek myth in which the daughters of Danaus, the King of Libya run away to Greece to avoid marriage to their odious cousins. Their long and ardous journey from Libya to Greece is reminscent of the migration path of the Monarch butterfly.

The adult Monarch butterfly lives for only 4-5 weeks. However, every year in autumn one generation of butterflies is born which lives for up to seven or eight months. This special generation of butterflies migrate from the US and Canada all the way down to the center of Mexico. With a wingspan of barely four inches and weighing less then half an ounce the journey of these beautiful creatures is a dangerous one. After reaching Mexico this generation known as the Methuselah generation begin their journey north to the United States. Once there the Methuselah generation lays their eggs. The new generation, which is a normal one with a life span of only a few weeks, must now make their way back, over several generations, to their original home.

But these butterfles, like so many other endangered species are losing their hibernation habitats and their food sources. Work is being done by the World Wildlife Foundation to conserve the Monarch butterflies wintering hibernation sites. Another issue is climate change as differences in temperature affect their mating patterns.

Environmental Tip of the Week

Most of you may already know about it, or have heard about it but how many of you actually do it ??? Instead of using endless plastic bags, try taking a reusable bag made of cloth instead to your local grocery store. They are more comfortable, easier to carry and they are infinitely more fashionable for those of us that are stylistically minded. Of course there will be those odd unexpected trips to the market and you’ve forgotten you’re grocery bag, but try to get a small one that can fit in your purse or one that can also double as a tote bag for everyday life. Then those unexpected trips can still be green and fashionable !

Cartoon of the Week

Link to this page: http://www.richmond.ac.uk/n/444.aspx