Song for Jasmine

For the eco-minded individual, March is a good month. There are events of all shapes and sizes that you can take part in. Here are a few of them.

The biggest event this month will undoubtedly be Earth Hour. It takes place at 8:30 pm local-time on Saturday 27th, wherever you are in the world. Participating is simple, sign up on the website (so they can know how many people take part) and then, when the time comes, just turn off your lights for an hour. The idea is not to save electricity, one hour of lighting won’t make that much difference to anything. No, the idea is to show your support for solid action in favour of tackling climate change. There’s more information on the Earth Hour FAQ, if you’re interested.

Last year, hundreds of millions of people worldwide took part. Towns, cities, and major landmarks across the globe darkened to show their support for action to tackle climate-change. The fact that world leaders let us down in Copenhagen in December only makes it all the more important that we send the message loud and clear once more. So go on, sign up, switch off, and do something different in the dark for an hour!

If you’re in Canada, there’s another event that might interest you. March 11th has been declared Bottled Water Free Day.

This has been organised by the Canadian Federation of Students, the Sierra Youth Coalition and the Polaris Institute. Their aim is simple, they want to encourage people to pledge to stop drinking bottled water.

Why? Because bottled water represents a great deal of plastic and fuel used to transport water that is no better than tap water – and often is tap water – so that people can pay 1000 times as much as it would cost them to take it from the tap. The bottles leach chemicals into the water, which is not good, and then they often end up in landfill instead of being recycled, which is also not good.

If you’d like to know more, take a look at the video, or click on the logo above to go to the Bottled Water Free Day site.

On this side of the pond, there’s the next edition of Semaine sans pesticides (Week without pesticides) coming up, March 20-30. Pesticides are used so heavily these days that people in developed countries are contaminated from birth, which can’t be good. Take a look at the protective gear this guy is wearing in order to spray that stuff on your food!

There are ever-growing numbers of organic farmers out there, so healthier food is becoming more and more available, which is a good thing. For that matter, you can grow your own vegetables organically with little effort, so it’s quite possible to get off the pesticides. It would be great if more farmers took the organic route!

Semaine sans pesticides is a growing event, with participation from all over the world, though most of the events are in France. Why not check out their map and see if there’s something of interest near you. You can turn up and show your support, or simply find out more about the pesticides on your plate.

On a smaller scale, if you’re in Ferney-Voltaire on Monday 29th, drop in to the Cafe du Soleil (14 Grand Rue) at 8pm. The association Eco-pratique will be meeting to discuss reducing electricity consumption, swapping personal experience and ideas. If you’re in the area, drop in and join the fun!

France is just coming out of a heatwave at the moment. Whenever I think of a heatwave, two things come to mind. The first is the film ‘Grumpy Old Men‘, with Jack lemmon and Walther Matthau. The film starts with the classic Irving Berlin song “We’re having a heatwave”, while they’re bundled up against the snow and ice. We were singing that a lot this winter.

The second thing that comes to mind is the heatwave of 2003, though that was far worse than this one. That one killed tens of thousands of people across Europe, I’m not sure this one has caused any extra deaths yet?

Even if it’s not as strong as the one six years ago, this has still been an unpleasantly hot time. A large part of the south of France has been under yellow or orange alert, meaning that people have been advised to take extra precautions against the heat. Things like staying out of the sun, drinking plenty of water, avoiding strenuous activity in the hotter part of the day. I’ve been playing it safe, and avoiding exerting myself altogether. The only exception has been to water the plants on the terrace. Come to think of it, that’s been hard work, they have needed a lot of water every day this past week!

Several measures were imposed in France to help people cope with the heatwave, from the small-scale to industrial. In some areas, exterior painting with solvent-based paints, and use of petrol-driven garden equipment was banned, while the heatwave ran its course. Industries were told to reduce the amount of pollution they produce, and car-drivers were ordered to reduce speed by 20 mph on major roads, for the same reason. Since the pollution from these sources is made worse by the strong sunlight, this is particularly important at times like this.

But what about when it isn’t so hot? Doesn’t pollution from all these sources matter then? It might be worse in a heatwave, but pollution from cars is dangerous at any time. What if people drove slower all the time, so they always produced less pollution? That’s something easy that we can all do. You can reduce your own contribution to pollution quite a bit that way, and save yourself some money in the process.

Last summer, when petrol prices were high, drivers in France reduced their consumption by 15%. Curiously, that drop in petrol consumption continued into September, even after the price of of petrol came back down again. I don’t know if that trend continues today, I hope so, but I haven’t been able to find out anything.

I know from my own experience that you can save a lot of your fuel costs just by driving gently, and anticipating changes in the traffic around you. My car is 18 years old, but I get on average 48 MPG (UK gallons, that’s 40 MPG in US gallons, or 5.90 l/100km) by driving gently. According to the US government, that’s almost the same as a 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid.

I track my fuel consumption at Fuelly.com, you can find me there among the Opel Astras. Fuelly is very easy to use, whenever you fill your petrol tank you just note the mileage, date, and amount of fuel, then enter it into fuelly and it does the maths for you. It’s a great way to see how much petrol you really are using, and to compare yourself with other people. I can see there that, compared to Honda Civic Hybrids that people have registered, I actually get better mileage than one third of them. That’s not bad for such an old car!

You might think that it’s not worth much effort conserving petrol in an old car, but that’s not true. It’s actually easier to make good gains from an older car than from a newer one. Why? Because MPG is a deceptive quantity, and it’s more instructive to think about the amount of petrol it takes to travel a given distance (Gallons Per Mile, or GPM), instead. The more petrol you use to start with, the easier it is to improve, so drivers of older cars can make bigger gains.

For example, if your car does 20 MPG, you need 5 gallons of petrol to travel 100 miles. If you can improve your mileage by 5 MPG, to 25 MPG, you need only 4 gallons of petrol to travel that same 100 miles. You save one gallon. If your car did 40 MPG instead, you would have needed only 2.5 gallons to travel that same 100 miles in the first place. To make a saving of one gallon with that car, you would have to improve your mileage to 67 MPG, an increase of 27 MPG, not 5. Small savings on high-consumption make a big difference.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t buy an economical car if you can afford it, certainly you should. But if you can’t afford to replace your old banger, you can avoid wasting a lot of money just by paying attention to the way you drive. Why don’t you try it, you might enjoy it? Unless you have money to burn, reducing petrol consumption is a winner all round.

Next Monday, June 8th, is World Oceans Day. At the risk of turning this blog into a diary of global eco-events, I’d like to draw your attention to it.

The idea to have a world-day for the oceans came in 1992 from Canada, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. It’s been celebrated every year since then, but this year marks the first time it has official U.N. recognition. Henceforth, World Oceans Day will be celebrated on June 8th, every year.

You might think that since I live near Geneva, about as far away from the sea as it is possible to get in Western Europe, I would not have much to say about the sea. If you think that, you must be new to this blog (welcome!), the sea is one thing I can talk about for hours. I grew up in England, closer to the coast than most people there. Nobody in England is more than 70 miles from the sea, I grew up much closer than that, about one mile away from the shore, on an island, no less. I spent many a childhood summer day freezing in the cold water, picking my way over the stony beaches, trying to see what I could through the opaque grey-green waters of the north Kent coast (not much, as it happens). I collected foraminifera (tiny shells, less than 1 mm across) and looked at them under a microscope. I remember the first time I saw sea-anemones, on the beaches of Jersey on a family holiday. I’ve seen octopus and nudibranchs on crowded Greek beaches, and sharks and dolphins in the Maldives. Oh yes, I can safely say I love the sea.

The oceans are huge. They cover almost three-quarters of the surface of the earth, and something like three fifths of the earth is over a mile below the surface of the sea. There is an awful lot of seawater out there. So why do we need a world-day event to draw attention to the oceans? Well, as it turns out, the seas and oceans of the world are not in good shape, and it’s our fault, again. You can find out more about the threats to the oceans on the Marine Conservation Society website, here are a few of the highlights.

Everyone knows about global warming, and the melting of the polar ice-caps. That’s bad news for penguins and polar bears, but also for people. A large fraction of humanity lives near the coast, making a substantial part of their living from what they can haul out of the sea. Rising seas and warming waters will change that. Not only will islands and low-lying regions be lost under the waves, the ecosystems at the coastal fringes will suffer too. Coral reefs, for example, provide living space and nurseries for a great many species, and are essential to the marine environment. Even creatures that don’t live on or in them directly often depend on the animals that do. Excessively warm water leads to ‘coral bleaching’, which can kill it if the water stays warm for long enough. Bleaching events are more common than they used to be, and are predicted to become much worse over time. Despite some research showing that some corals may adapt to warmer waters, there is strong reason to believe that most corals will be killed by warm seas by the end of this century unless we make big cuts in our emissions of greenhouse gasses. Scientists are working to find ways to help coral survive, but they’re racing against the clock.

Globally, there’s an even bigger threat, ocean-acidification. The oceans absorb a great deal of the excess carbon dioxide that we are pumping into the atmosphere, and this is slowly turning the seas more acidic. This slows coral growth because it is harder for the coral to form its chalky skeleton. Other creatures, many of which are right at the bottom of the marine food chain, will suffer the same fate. Acidification of the oceans is a global problem by its very nature. It will affect reefs and other ecosystems worldwide, not just those near to cities and industries.

Overfishing is another major problem for the oceans. By depleting stocks of even a few species, we change the way entire ecosystems behave, often seriously. Tuna have been fished almost to extinction in the Mediterranean sea, and there is little sign that common sense will prevail to reduce the pressure on them. Tuna are predators, high up in the food chain. When you remove top predators, often the result is that a few species lower down the food-chain start to dominate, out-competing other creatures. The ecosystem becomes unbalanced, and may change its nature completely. It may not be enough to simply stop hunting the predators, the ecosystem may no longer be able to recover on its own.

Floating garbage is another serious problem. On the tiny atoll of Midway in the Pacific ocean, albatross often mistake floating plastic garbage for food, which they then feed to their chicks. That kills many of them, not surprisingly. Albatross aren’t meant to digest golf-tees, toothbrushes, and lego blocks.

Even the efforts we go to to protect the oceans and their inhabitants can often be misguided. I’m sure we’ve all heard of dolphin-safe tuna, it even got a mention in Lethal Weapon 2, released some 20 years ago. I’m fond of dolphins, like many people, but I was shocked to learn about just how much damage dolphin-safe tuna-fishing can do. The methods used to catch tuna without harming dolphins have a much higher rate of bycatch than other methods. ‘Bycatch’ is another word for ‘collateral damage’, animals accidentally killed while hunting a specific species at sea. Much of the bycatch in dolphin-safe tuna is in itself seriously endangered, far more so than dolphins themselves. No, dolphin-safe tuna is not a good thing for the marine environment.

More and more people are becoming aware of and involved in environmental issues. They are paying attention to the environmental cost of the goods they purchase, insisting on packaging that can be recycled, lower power consumption from electrical goods, or higher mileage from their cars, for example. But what can you change in your daily activities to help the oceans, especially if you live far from the sea? The Marine Conservation Society have some advice, and there’s also a page of hints at The Ocean Project. One obvious thing is to be more informed and cautious in your seafood purchases, both sites have suggestions there. If you prefer to avoid seafood altogether, simply buying organic food is a good idea. That encourages farmers to produce more of it, which means less pesticide in use. Reduced pesticide use means less of it getting into our rivers and from there into the sea, finally ending up in marine mammals like that dolphin we were trying to save a moment ago.

You can find out more about World Ocean Day at the World Ocean Network site. Maybe one of the events that they list is taking place somewhere near you. If not, there are plenty of web-based resources available, like the 24 hours in the Ocean online event from the Musée Nausicaä. I’ll certainly be following that for some of the day.

Verena Wiesbauer is a marine biologist, with particular knowledge of coral propagation and restoration techniques. In March 2009, she gave a lecture to the Maldives Science Society. Someone in the audience filmed it, and was kind enough post it on google-video, so now you can all enjoy watching “The Coral Reefs of the Maldives” as I have.

I learned a lot from this presentation, it’s very educational and entertaining. There’s a ‘pop-quiz’ early on, in which you are asked to identify what type of plant or animal is being shown. I pride myself on having correctly recognised Coriocella (though I did have to look up how to spell it), having seen them in Baa Atoll a few years ago.

Verena tells us that the Maldives sits on a volcanic chain which forms the basement of the islands. These volcanoes were active around 67 million years ago, so around the time the dinosaurs were dodging asteroids. Coral first started growing on these volcanoes some 55-57 million years ago. Since then, sea-level has changed several times, most recently after the last ice-age when it rose dramatically as the ice melted and retreated. The Maldivian atolls were flooded at that time, and the upward growth of coral only succeeded in creating islands around 3000-4000 years ago. The actual coral growth in the Maldives now forms a layer about 2000 metres thick. That’s a lot of coral!

Having shown us some of the animals that live in and around the Maldivian reefs, Verena goes on to tell us about some of the problems that are affecting the reefs today. Beach erosion is a serious problem. With two monsoons each year, coming from different directions, it is natural for the sand to shift from one side of an island to the other during the year. In 2000, half of the islands were sufferring from beach erosion. There are simple measures that the Maldivians can take to protect themselves from the worst effects of such erosian, such as not building too close to the shoreline and using sand and aggregates imported from India for construction (instead of dredged from their own reefs).

They can also protect the islands by protecting the living reef. A living reef will protect against beach erosion by reducing the force of the waves as they come inshore, a dead reef will soon be destroyed by the waves and offer little or no protection. A reef needs at least 50% live coral-cover to provide adequate protection, few of the Maldivian reefs have that at this time.

There are other threats to the reefs too. The Maldivians themselves generate a lot of waste, and they have nowhere to put it. The island of Thilafushi is a municipal landfill, and there is concern that all sorts of toxic waste from it may leak into the ocean and harm the environment.

Discarded fishing-lines cause a lot of damage too. One horrible slide in the presentation shows a turtle that became entangled in a fishing-line while it was young. It survived, and grew up with the fishing-line constricting its growth. I’ve never seen a turtle with an hour-glass figure before, and I hope I never do again.

Another major cause of damage to coral reefs is the tourist industry. Divers, even experienced ones, can cause a lot of damage. Verena gives a personal account of diving with tourists who lay down on the reef to watch sharks, and who were upset with her for not doing the same because she might scare the sharks away! I’ve seen divers who allowed their diving lamps to trail along the bottom of a reef like a wrecking-ball while they were concentrating on getting closer to a few manta-rays nearby.

Not surprisingly, divers with cameras cause more damage than those without, they’re focussed (literally!) on what they’re looking at, not what they’re bumping into. Diving from shore causes more damage than diving from boats, and night-diving causes more damage than diving during the day. Even without direct physical contact, reefs can be damaged by divers who kick up sediment with their fins, smothering the corals they have paid so much to see.

It’s not only divers, but also snorkellers, that damage reefs. Snorkellers will often stand on the reef to adjust their equipment, and can do a great deal of damage by careless contact. Verena cites a paper by W.R.Allison in 1996 which showed that snorkellers can can do an immense amount of damage in a short period of time.

Verena says that the dive-schools could give better briefings, for both divers and snorkellers. Her own experience is that people appreciate being reminded of the simple things they can do to reduce their personal impact. I know some dive-schools don’t like to impose on their divers, so will not mention such things in their briefings. You can always invite them to say something when they ask if there are any questions. Put your hand up and say “I have a question, do we have to be careful about what we touch on this dive?”. It’s worth a try!

Dive-schools should also respect the ‘carrying-capacity’ of dive-sites, and not visit them too frequently, so they have time to recover from each invasion. This is a particular problem in the Red Sea, where many reefs are seriously degraded by divers. Of course, that’s not easy when there are many dive-schools competing to take people to the most popular sites.

Individually, divers can take steps to reduce their impact even more. Those of you that dive with PADI can take the Peak Performance Buoyancy course (other organisations probably have something similar). You’ll find you dive better (i.e. use less air, are more relaxed) and do less harm to the reef because you have more control. You’ll see more on each dive, too, because you will spend less time fighting with your equipment and frightening fish with your thrashing, and more time looking around.

Tourism can also be a positive force. wildaid.org invented the slogan “When the buying stops, the killing can too“, and used it in their campaign against shark-finning. You can kill a shark for its fins only once, but if you leave it alive, tourists will pay again and again to come and see it when they dive.

Verenas’ presentation has an optimistic tone, she clearly loves her work. There are things that can be done to help the reefs, and she mentions some of the many restoration and conservation projects in the Maldives. She herself has assisted in the creation of an artificial reef at Huvafenfushi. I’ll end this post with a quotation she gave at the beginning of per presentation. It’s from Baba Dioum, a Senegalese environmentalist or poet (depending on who you ask):

It would be good if people were taught more about the world we live in today.

Just to remind you that tomorrow, April 22nd, is Earth Day 2009. Earth Day has been around for a long time, the first one being in 1970, some 39 years ago. It is hailed by many as being one of the cornerstones of the environmental movement, and this year it’s still as important as ever. More so, perhaps, as the need to act on climate change and pollution becomes ever more urgent.

You can look for Earth Day events near you on their site. If you can’t find anything, why not just do something for yourself? Our dear friend Shannon Ryan took part in the very first Earth Day, all those years ago, by walking to school instead of taking the bus.

Of course, no gentleman would ever do the math, but this clearly makes her an experienced lover of nature! You need only read Shannons’ blog “Chippers’ Alley” to see that for yourself, it’s full of the beautiful photos she takes on a regular basis, such as these mushrooms. Nice one, Shannon.

Whatever you do to mark the occasion, I wish you a Happy Earth Day 2009!

The oldest song about pollution that I know of about is by Tom Lehrer, a mathematician, pianist, and satirist, who wrote many fun songs. “Pollution” was written sometime around 1962-1963, coincidentally the same time that Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, a book which is often credited with having started the environmental movement.

It’s not just the English-speaking world that was singing about pollution, Johnny Hallyday released “La Pollution” in 1970, some 39 years ago. There’s a list of French songs on an environmental theme on Yahoo, if you want more.

More recently, the Australian group Midnight Oil have been actively campaigning in their music for aboriginal rights, and on environmental issues. Their singer, Peter Garrett, has taken his protests one step further. Since November 2007 he is the Environment Minister in the Australian government.

I was surprised when I first found out that people were singing about pollution over 40 years ago. If anyone knows of an older song about pollution, I’d love to hear about it please. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy Tom, there’s a lot of his stuff on YouTube if you want more.