Greenpeace UK blogs

More cracks appearing in nuclear waste plans

jamie — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:41:23 +0000

Some unsettling news appeared in the Independent over the weekend, which revealed that an Environment Agency report has said that containers at Sellafield (where most of the UK's waste is stored) may not be as stable as was thought. The document effectively destroys Britain's already shaky disposal plans just as ministers are preparing an expansion of nuclear power.

It shows that many containers storing this radioactive waste are made of second-rate materials, handled carelessly, and are liable to corrode. Through a combination of slip-shod management and lacklustre construction, 40 per cent of the containers are expected to fail, quite possibly before a long-term storage area can be built and sealed. And according to present plans, that may not happen for around 500 years. More details on Nuclear Reaction.

And speaking of waste, there's an interesting interview on the website of energy and metals information broker Platts.com with the guy who used to head up the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM). In it, Professor Gordon MacKerron (now director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex) airs his doubts over many aspects of the government's nuclear fetish.

Significantly, he suggests that ministers are getting muddled when figuring out what to do with nuclear waste: there's the stuff that already exists and needs dealing with, and then there's the stuff that will be produced by any new power stations. As there's currently no solution to disposing of radioactive waste anywhere in the world, mixing up the two quite separate issues (MacKerron says) just makes it a lot more complicated - an issue being deliberately ignored by our government which is attempting to justify its pro-nuclear agenda.

Watch the interview to hear what else McKerron has to say about new nuclear power stations (you may need to dig around in the archive if they've published another interview in the meantime).

Carrotmob - organising consumers for good

bex — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:09:00 +0000

Carrotmob is taking an interesting approach to harnessing consumer power (via Making Waves):

Best Green Blogs 2008

bex — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 14:04:54 +0000

Jim Jay over at The Daily (Maybe) has published his Best Green Blogs for 2008 and it turns out we've made it to number nine. Blimey.

From that eminent list, a People's Choice winner will be decided by, um, the choice of the people. When I voted (ahem), we were coming fourth, so if you like the blog please get stuck in (you can vote at the end of this blog post).

As Jim Jay points out, the green blogosphere is picking up both in quantity and quality. Which can only be a good thing. And which makes it especially cockle warming to know that somebody thinks we're getting something right.

If you're new to these parts by the way, we took the plunge and started blogging about 18 months ago, when we moved over to the lovely Drupal and started being much freer with our copyright. Like, I suspect, most organisational bloggers, we've had a big old learning curve - sometimes bumpy, sometimes smooth, mostly fun.

I'm not sure where we are on that curve right now (is there an end?) but this seems like a good time to ask what you think of our blog - whether you're a supporter, a regular reader, a blogger or just passing through. What's worked, and what really hasn't? What would you like to read that we're not writing about? What would you like to read less of? Would you be interested in guest bloggers from other blogs? Should we encourage more debate? Start a blogger's resource centre like Greenpeace International's? We can't promise to do it all, but we might well do some of them - and we'll be dead interested in what you say.

In the meantime, have a good browse of these Top Green Blogs:

1. Two Doctors
2. Bean Sprouts
3.Green Girls Global
4. Kitchen Witch
5. Ruscombe Green
6. Peter Tatchell
7. Barkingside 21
8. Earthpal
9. Greenpeace UK
10. Stuart's Big Green Spot
11. Flesh is grass
12. Gaian Economics
13. Johnny Void
14. Coventry Green Party
15. Jenny Jones
16. Philobiblon
17. Ecostreet
18. Hippy Shopper
19. Transition Culture
20. Alice in Blogland

And then use the power of your mouse for good (or just to boost our egos, if you prefer):

Wall-E + Kleenex = Iron-E

jamie — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:33:36 +0000

I haven't seen Wall-E yet (Joss tells me it's very good) but it sounds like a cross between Happy Feet and Silent Running - cute creatures and incredible animation bundled up with an environmental message. Now while the intentions of the film makers may have been to push the notion of a cleaner, greener world, the companies sitting between us and them seem to have other ideas and Wall-E is being used to sell all manner of less-than-green products.

In the US, one of these is Kleenex which currently has the little robot appearing on its boxes. As Kimberly-Clark, the company that makes Kleenex, is clearcutting forests to make it, Greenpeace USA thought this was a little odd. In fact, they thought it was the height of iron-e. So, with the help of political cartoonist Mark Fiore, they produced this spoof video.

I still want to see the real thing, though.

Star Wars starting wars again...

saunvedan — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 12:40:11 +0000

NATO and Russia facing off, plans for star wars causing political ructions – its almost like the 80’s all over again. Without the ra-ra skirts. Which can only be a good thing.

So finally Poland has signed an agreement to host part of the US missile defence system on its soil. With just parliamentary approval to leap (and a supportive parliament in place) it seems the US's Son of Star Wars dreams have advanced apace.

In return for hosting ten US missile interceptors the ex communist, now NATO, country gets 100 US troops stationed on its soil, US patriot missiles and ‘assistance in modernising its military’ and (ahem) help with ‘responding to the threats of the 21st century’.

Russia has reacted with predictable fury to US missiles being placed 115 miles from its border. General Anatoly Nogovitsyn has warned that the deal "could not go unpunished" and the newspapers have made much of the (militarily unsurprising) fact that hosting US missiles on its border puts Poland on Russia’s list of nuclear missile targets.

The fury is predictable because Russia has repeatedly stated its opposition to plans for both Poland and Czech Republic to host part of the planned US system. And the creeping expansion of NATO up to its borders (seen most recently through the lense of conflict in Georgia) is clearly another aggravating factor in the mix. For context - imagine the US response if Russia announced a military partnership with say Mexico and moved in their missiles.

The US claims that the system has nothing to do with threatening Russia its all about taking down missiles from ‘rogue states’ like Iran (though a few years back I guess the topline would be Iraq). Russia doesn’t buy that argument and sees it as a move against their military power.

Don’t let all the political development fool you into thinking that the Son of Star Wars system is actually working though, despite some $100 billion having been spent on missile defences over the past 20 years.

More fundamentally – putting the technical arguments aside – history shows that the more you build defences to neutralising enemy weapons, the more your opponents will develop new weapons and technologies to evade them. As Jacques Chirac put it ‘''ever since men began waging war, you will see that there's a permanent race between sword and shield. The sword always wins. The more improvements that are made to the shield, the more improvements are made to the sword.''

Who wins? Er, the arms companies like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing that build both the weapons and the defence systems - the Polish and Czech systems alone seem set to bring some $4 billion into their coffers over the next few years. Who loses? Everyone else.

This isn't a done deal though - as a US press release issued yesterday by Congresswoman Tauscher, Chair of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, reminded people. The fact is that under US law Congress requires an independent assessment of the missile defence system which proves that the system can work under operationally realistic conditions before any deployment to Europe goes ahead.

The repeated failures of system tests and its massive costs should give us all hope that star wars and the notion of a cold war revival can once again be kicked back into the realm of arms companies' fantasies.

Meanwhile, public opposition to the building of a star wars radar remains strong in the Czech Republic. Their PM has signed a deal with the US but it still has to get through a hostile parliament. You can become a citizen of Peaceland – a notional state set up by the Czech arm of Greenpeace. And don’t forget the UK’s complicity in the Star Wars programme through allowing use of the Menwith Hill and Fylindales bases in Yorkshire - more here.

Deep Green: The dispossessed of Diego Garcia

jamie — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:37:15 +0000

Here's the latest in the Deep Green column from Rex Weyler -author, journalist, ecologist and long-time Greenpeace trouble-maker. The opinions here are his own, and you can sign up to get the column by email every month.

The dispossessed

In 1969, Marie Aimee took her two children for medical treatment, a six-day voyage across the Indian Ocean from their home on Diego Garcia island to Port Louis, Mauritius. Her husband, Dervillie Permal, stayed behind to work at a coconut oil factory and tend the family garden and animals.

After visiting the doctor and picking up supplies in Port Louis, Marie and her children arrived at the quay for the trip home. However, a British Government agent refused to allow them onto the boat, stranding Marie and her children in Mauritius. Throughout the following weeks, other marooned islanders appeared, congregating in a local slum, living in boxes or tin shacks. Two years later, Marie's husband arrived in Port Louis with one small bag and a chilling story.

Environmentalists are sometimes accused of caring more about animals than people, an idea refuted by countless actions protecting human victims of industrial and military disasters. The 1970s Greenpeace campaign to stop nuclear testing in the South Pacific, for example, included support for the displaced and irradiated innocents of Rongelap Island. More recently, in March 2008, two former Greenpeace skippers - Jon Castle and Peter Bouquet, both from the original Rainbow Warrior crew - sailed into the lagoon of Diego Garcia, to protest the treatment of dispossessed islanders, including Marie Aimee and her descendants.

Real estate, ocean view

Diego Garcia island sits in the Chagos Archipelago, east of the Seychelles, 1000 nautical miles south of India. In the eighteenth century, French Navy ships marooned lepers on the island and later established coconut plantations worked by slaves.

The British seized the islands in 1815, eventually converted the slaves to indentured labourers, and imported peasant workers from India and Mauritius. Marie and her husband are descendants of these workers. They are the Chagossians.

By the twentieth century, around 2000 Chagossians lived modest but pleasant lives on Diego Garcia, under the dominion of British colonists and military officers. The islanders worked on the coconut plantations, maintained family gardens, raised chickens, and ate lobster and fish from the bountiful lagoon. Their children grew healthy on the rich diet, attended schools, and played in the marine paradise.

In 1961, American military officers arrived, looking for a suitable US bomber base in the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia, with its protected coral lagoon and clear, long-range radio reception appeared perfect. One problem, however, persisted. The Americans desired privacy, and did not want indigenous inhabitants near their base.

Britain paid its own colony of Mauritius £3 million for unrestricted rights to the Chagos Archipelago and formed the "British Indian Ocean Territory" (BIOT) among the islands. Their first legal act, "BIOT Ordinance No. 1: Compulsory Acquisition of Land," presumed the authority to confiscate land deemed necessary for British or American security.

In 1966, Britain granted the US a 50-year lease on the island, for US$1 per year, plus a one-off payment of US$14 million (£5 million at the time, a neat profit on their real estate investment). The US delivered the payment in trade, in the form of Polaris nuclear submarine missiles.

Pet cemetery

Documents later released under court order by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) described islanders as "Tarzans and Men Fridays" with "little aptitude for anything except growing coconuts." The FCO promised Americans that deportations could be "timed to attract the least attention," leaving "no indigenous population except seagulls."

When Richard Nixon became US president in 1969 he handed the Diego Garcia portfolio to his protégé, 32-year-old law school dropout Donald Rumsfeld. British officers, on behalf of their American clients, closed coconut plantations, putting people out of work. They lured families to Mauritius with free holidays, barred them from returning, and made no provisions for stranded islanders such as Marie Aimee and her children.

In 1971, armed soldiers seized the island. They ordered Marie's husband, Dervillie Permal, to leave immediately allowing him to take only the possessions he carried on his way home from work. British troops burned homes, killed livestock, and corralled some 800 dogs, including family pets, into an abandoned coconut oil plantation building. They converted the building into a gas chamber by attaching vehicle exhaust pipes and executed the dogs in full view of weeping families.

The soldiers herded distraught islanders, traumatized men and women, onto ships. Marie Therese Mein, now 68, suffered a miscarriage on the six-day slave-ship style voyage, and Christian Simon, 28, overcome by despair, threw himself into the sea.

In Port Louis, Permal met his wife Marie in the city slum, where they begged for food and menial jobs. Many Chagossians fell victim to alcoholism, drugs, and prostitution. Their children were mocked and humiliated at local schools. Meanwhile, on Diego Garcia, British officers handed the depopulated island paradise to Mr. Rumsfeld and the American generals.

Footprint Freedom

Diego Garcia island is now the largest US military base outside the United States, with arsenals, bunkers, and hangers for B2 stealth bombers. The once-rich lagoon is now an oily harbour for some 30 warships. B52 Bombing raids depart from Diego Garcia for Iraq and Afghanistan, bombing more peasant people to secure America's access to oil fields and pipeline routes.

The 1450 US soldiers, 2000 civilian contractors, and 50 British soldiers entertain themselves with a windsurfer club, yacht club, fishing tours, and an annual "Miss Diego Garcia" beauty contest. US military personnel refer to their 6,000 global bases as America's "footprint," and Diego Garcia has been branded "Footprint Freedom."

At the heart of Footprint Freedom sits a detention and interrogation centre that the local soldiers refer to as "Camp Justice," exposed by Scottish MP Alex Salmon and confirmed by US general Barry McCaffrey and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Donald Rumsfield - architect of the final solution to the island's indigenous problem and Iraq War planner - admits that the US holds "ghost detainees" at these "extraordinary rendition" camps.

In 2002, during the planning of the Iraq War, the US brought prisoner Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi to Diego Garcia on the USS Bataan. According to the London human rights group, Reprieve, Al-Libi was tortured into "admitting" that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and worked with al-Qaida, the two erroneous pretenses that Rumsfeld and George Bush used to launch the oil wars. According to a Council of Europe investigation, Diego Garcia's "Camp Justice" is a primary interrogation centre for "high-value detainees."

The Rule of Law

The story of Diego Garcia Island is the story of industrialized, militarized western world gone mad, the rich and powerful subjugating the landscape and the most defenseless people on Earth. The dispossessed Chagossian people, however, struggle back.

In 2003, they filed a lawsuit in the United States against Rumsfeld and others instrumental in seizing Diego Garcia, including US Vice President Dick Cheney, US ambassador Anne Armstrong, Lawrence Eagleburger, and Halliburton, the corporation they run that held the construction contract for the base. These defendants faced charges of kidnapping, genocide, torture, and degrading treatment of innocent people. The US Supreme Court refused to hear the case, and the US media virtually ignored the story.

In Britain, however, the Chagossian people have won three High Court decisions against the British Government, confirming that the expulsions were unlawful and that the right to a homeland represents a "fundamental liberty" under British and International law. The Governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have appealed these rulings, but the case now stands before the British House of Lords, with a decision expected in October.

In July of this year a committee of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland ruled that Britain "should ensure that the Chagos islanders can exercise their right to return to their territory [and] should investigate allegations related to transit through its territory of rendition flights."

British authorities arrested Jon Castle and Peter Bouquet in the Diego Garcia lagoon and seized their boat, Musichana. Another former Greenpeace activist from the 1970s peace vessel Fri and the Rainbow Warrior, Martini Gotje, provides updates at The People's Navy. The UK Chagos Support Association posts legal updates. On 21 August an open International Conference, "The Fate of the Chagossians," commenced at VU University Amsterdam, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology.

The case of the Chagossians exposes the pretense of industrial civilization. Leaders of rich nations proclaim freedom and democracy, yet most peasant people and all environments in the world remain under relentless assault. Indigenous people in India, Africa, China, Tibet, Canada, the US, Brazil, Argentina, and throughout the western hemisphere, have been dispossessed from sustainable lives in forests, prairies, or islands and driven into urban slums in the name of economic progress. There exists an eternal link between the industrial and military destruction of the environment and the assault on the poorest people of the world.

You may respond to "Deep Green" columns at my Ecolog, where I post portions of this column and dialogue with readers.

John West - still in denial?

jossc — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:26:31 +0000

We already know that John West's website contains plenty of corporate puffery. After all, this is the company that claims to "only purchase fish which is caught with no harm to the marine environment" but which came a dismal last in our sustainability league table of tinned tuna brands. Yes, John West truly is John Worst on tinned tuna.

Their response to our criticism? Rather than tackling the issues, John West have opted for total denial that the use of purse-seining with fish aggregation devices (FADs) is a problem.

Perhaps the company should take a look at a press release (pdf) from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Western Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Council from April of this year, concluding that "bycatch of sensitive species groups, including sea turtles, seabirds, marine mammals and sharks, in purse seine and pelagic longline fisheries, and bycatch of juvenile and undersized tunas in purse seine fisheries, is problematic. Relatively little progress has been made to resolve the bycatch of sharks and whales in both longline and purse seine fisheries, sea turtles in purse seine fisheries, and juvenile/undersized tunas in purse seine fisheries."

John West's response also implies that the company aren't particularly interested in the fate of the world's sharks. A bit of a shame given that, according to the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, who look at just one tuna fishing area, the eastern Pacific Ocean, 31,409 sharks were caught up in purse seine fishing on tuna fishing trips during 2007 (pdf), most dying as a result.

On the same web page, John West claims to be "totally transparent in its approach" and say that they are "still seeking contact" with Greenpeace in order "to gain clarity". As it happens, on the same day as the Tinned Tuna League Table rated John West the least sustainable in the UK, we wrote to the company inviting them to participate in discussions with Greenpeace at their earliest convenience, with phone, email and postal contacts enclosed. In the ten days since, this has been John West's only response:

We think the person you hear on the message is that of Adolfo Valsecchi, the chief executive officer of MW Brands, the private equity group that owns John West, but they didn't identify themselves. Whoever the caller was, he left no number and never phoned back. So much for John West seeking contact with us!

Links for 2008-08-21 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Plan for anaerobic digesters in every town to recycle leftovers
Waste-disposal units designed to turn leftover food into electricity and fertiliser could be built around every town and city as part of a scheme being considered by ministers.
Environmentalists target snack food makers over palm oil use
Oeros and Cheez-Its are under attack in the US for containing palm oil.

Sticky, noisy and remarkable: working in the Amazon jungle

james — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:09:53 +0000

I've just returned from a two week trip to Greenpeace's Amazon office where we were discussing future plans to protect the rainforest. The office is based in a city called Manaus which, despite its position in the heart of the jungle, is far from a provincial backwater - with over two million people the city keeps up a frenetic pace, despite the baking equatorial sun and exhausting levels of humidity.

The job that our campaigners, logistics experts and policy thinkers are doing to protect the Amazon biome is simply inspirational. Many of them have made real sacrifices to work there, moving away from family and friends and the giant cities of Brazil in order to work at the front line of climate and forest protection.

Sao Paulo, a city of 20 million people, is close to many of their hearts, but lies on the coast just under 4,000 kilometres away. Fighting for the protection of the Amazon basin, its rivers and biodiversity is more than just a day job, it requires a commitment to an entirely different way of life.

View Larger Map

Running a Greenpeace office in such an environment isn't easy. For a start, there are real issues of security to consider, which means a 24-hour guard must be employed look over the gates of the office. The heavy duty vehicles that campaigners use for field research and actions are fitted with bullet proofed glass - not to stop people actually shooting at them, apparently, but at least to protect against a wayward baseball bat or brick.

In many ways, the Amazon remains a 21st century version of the wild west, a frontier where criminals and organised rackets are often more powerful than the local police force. The large logging companies that rule this part of the world employ some pretty heavy handed tactics, and many are openly hostile to organisations like Greenpeace.

The fact that this does not deter our staff from taking direct action and confronting environmental crimes all over the country is remarkable. Many have been threatened, or involved in the kind of incident that would force most of us to think twice about continuing our work. Most remain in the office until after the day has ended, eating together and discussing a proposed change to the Brazilian forest law until well into the sticky, noisy night. A few come to Greenpeace from the heart of the establishment, having worked for the Brazilian environment ministry before their frustrations with the system become too powerful to ignore.

Listen to an interview with Agnaldo Almeida, logistics co-ordinator in our Manaus office, about the challenges of working in the Amazon.

The situation in the Amazon is complex, and negotiating campaigns that cover enormous sectors like logging, cattle ranching and soya production isn't easy. The Brazilian government has only recently begun to recognise the importance of preserving the Amazon for the world's climate.

What happens in the Amazon rainforest will affect us all, such is the importance of the region as a gigantic climate thermostat. This single rainforest dictates future weather events across entire continents. With just one year left before the world decides on a successor to the Kyoto treaty, we need to make sure governments across the world realise that preserving forests is more valuable than destroying them.

On this trip I became convinced that international concern is hugely important in adding political pressure and bringing about real change in Brazil. The work that Greenpeace does in the UK - our actions, reports and campaigning - are vital to the success of our office over there in Manaus. We must continue to support this work and our friends in the jungle, because the Amazon rainforest must be protected.

More from my trip to the Amazon very soon.

Greenpeace podcast: Coal gets the boot at Climate Camp

jamie — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:12:24 +0000

Slightly later than planned (blame summer holidays and technical snaffus) but in the latest edition of our podcast we take a trip to the recent Climate Camp. Somewhere in the region of two thousand people pitched up for ten days in the shadow of Kingsnorth power station in Kent, where plans to build a new coal-fired plant are afoot - with climate change in mind, this is probably not the wisest thing to do.

In between helping with activities like shifting hay bales and washing up, we talked to some of the other people from all over the country to find out what brought them to the camp. We also caught up with Dave Douglas of the National Union of Mineworkers who was there with Arthur Scargill to get involved in the debate, plus we hear from Jim Footner, one of our campaigners working on the issue, to find out why a coal-powered future is unrealistic.

Download this podcast

You can also listen to it right now - just click the play button below.

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Links for 2008-08-20 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Urban Mining: The Hunt For Rare Metals
How to recycle electronics, the Japanese way.
Google buries $10m in underground power
The internet overlord pumps cash into a new philnathropic green energy venture.

Links for 2008-08-19 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Maasai 'can fight climate change'
Nomadic tribes have skills which can help the whole continent cope with climate change, according to Oxfam.
Jatropha cultivation for biodiesel to be expanded in India
Millions of acres of waste ground are being eyed up for jatropha plantations by the government of Uttar Pradesh.

Some good news for Indonesia's rainforests

saunvedan — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:33:59 +0000

The Governor of the province of Riau on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia has pledged to halt deforestation, which could help protect Riau's vast peatlands and forests that store 14.6 billion tonnes of carbon. Just to give you an estimate of what that figure means, it's the equivalent of an entire year's greenhouse gas emissions for the entire planet. Moreover, aside from being an important carbon store, this area is also important for biodiversity and critical for the people that depend upon these forests for their survival.

There are many causes of forest destruction here - from palm oil and timber to pulp and paper. We are urging that Riau's moratorium will stay in place until a permanent law can be passed.

Meanwhile, we are currently focusing our efforts on a halt on any further expansion of the palm oil industry in Indonesia and the wider region. We are lobbying for a proposal to halt such destruction to be accepted at the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, which meets in November.

If Riau's stance is an indication of things to come, then we'll definitely have more good news to write about.

Links for 2008-08-15 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

China takes a lead on renewable energy
A recent report named China as the world's leading producer of renewable energy

Links for 2008-08-13 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Complaint upheld over Shell advert
The ASA will announce today that it has upheld a complaint against Shell by WWF, the environmental charity, about the oil company's claims that oil sands in Canada were a "sustainable" energy source.
Charles warns GM farming will end in ecological disaster
In an outspoken assault on GM crops, Prince Charles accused unnamed "gigantic corporations" of "conducting a gigantic experiment with nature, and the whole of humanity, which has gone seriously wrong".
Amazon rainforest threatened by new wave of oil and gas exploration
With over 35 multinational companies racing to tap into oil and gas reserves situated in peak biodiversity spots, conservationists urge an environmental impact assessment
IPCC 'wrong' on logging threat to climate
The new work suggests that the role of untouched temperate forest as either a carbon sink – or a carbon emitter, if the forest is logged – should be upgraded, and carbon accounting models should be altered.
India goes mega-solar

Links for 2008-08-08 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The nuclear ‘renaissance’: who benefits?

Links for 2008-08-07 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Brazil may restrict ethanol plants in wetlands
More and more 'stuffs: what can you do without?
Consumption spreads faster today than it did in the past - a handy graph shows how.
Map shows front lines of Arctic carve-up