Eco-Chick · The modern girl's guide to living green & fabulous.

Dumping once again

 

 

This morning I read this article about toxic sludge being dumped by a tanker in the ocean and washing up on the shores of the Ivory Coast. The kid in the picture above has sores on his body from exposure to this stuff. People have gotten ill from exposure and inhalation of the pollutant and some have even died. Efforts are underway to clean-up and dispose of the waste. But, once a dumping action happens, it is so hard to contain and clean it up. Heinous events like this are inexcusable and I cannot believe more cannot be done to prevent them.

Companies and corporations have a great ability to damage our planet and need incentive to act responsibly. There is a serious need for a global environmental body of law and team of enforcers to make sure that the law is enforced. Where are the regulations we really need to make sure that things of this nature cease? We cannot keep dumping in our oceans and think that the waste will just disappear.

Whatever someone does in one place, in one country, in one moment, will impact the world.

I am reminded of a research trip I took to the island of San Salvador, located far east in the Bahamian Islands. While I was there, I took a trip out to the almost completely uninhabited eastern shore and hiked down to the beach from the road. I came around a bend in the path and was shocked at the site of garbage; garbage as far as the eye could see in all colors of the rainbow. Anything that floats and large pads of petroleum waste were polluting an otherwise pristine tropical beach. I was told that this garbage washed in from cruise ships and whoever else happened by and decided to dump their waste in the water. In investigating the waste, I found languages from around the globe including Japanese, Russian, and English. There are laws against this. 

I remember when I was a kid in Connecticut, they shut down the beaches because medical waste was washing up on the shore. 

There is not one place on the planet that has not felt human presence in the form of pollutants. Even in Antartica, coke cans sometimes wash up next to the penguins…

I am also reminded of images of sea birds covered in oil from the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, back in the 1980s. This tragedy prompted Congress to pass the Oil Pollution Act in 1990, tightening regulations on oil tankers.

I hope that the same will come out of this recent careless act in Africa.

 

Sakhalin Island

 

    

Sometimes environmental victories come in unlikely packages. The Russian government announced this week that it is putting the nix on Shell Oil Company’s plans to pursue the “Sakhalin II” project, a project to extract, exploit, and transport fossil fuels through both on and offshore pipelines in a remote part of Russia, Sakhalin Island. Sakhalin Island is off of the East coast of Russia, right above Japan. The Russian government is claiming environmental concerns for their decision. The international money grabbers (the usual players; Western governments and international money lenders) are pissed, but environmentalists are celebrating.

Sakhalin Island was once a prison colony; it is located far enough north that the sea freezes above the island every year. There are 11 endangered species in the waters off its shore, including the Western Grey Whale, whose populations are really endangered. Pipelines would also run over a thousand waterways on the island where endangered salmon spawn. The threat of the project is its potential to dump, spill, and leak oil, and then what to do with the resulting dredge material. The safety specs for the project do not meet international environmental standards.

WWF has been monitoring the situation and putting pressure on the money lender.

And there is a specific website dedicated to an environmental watch of the island if you are interested to know more. For now, this decision by the Russian government (even if it is politically charged for selfish reasons) sends a message to those hellbent on exploiting as much as they can while supplies last; protecting the environment can be more important than extracting the fossil fuel.

 

 

 

Backyard Miracles

 

The butterflies are migrating! I have noticed the delicate orange wonders flit joyfully through my neighborhood from one purple butterfly bush to the next for about 2 weeks now. They float along the sidewalks, the Potomac, and through our backyards. Today I counted about 13 of them float by my office window. The butterfly migration marks the end of summer, but no one is quite sure just how they do it.

I remember the first time I noticed the migration. I was standing in the parking lot of an apartment complex I was living in and it seemed that several butterflies were traveling in the same general direction, one after another, like on a pathway. I immediately started to research what I witnessed to find an explanation.

It appears that monarch butterflies travel from Canada all the way to Mexico every year in order to winter in a warmer climate. The longest recorded distance for one tagged flutterby was about 2, 879 miles (4, 634 kilometers). Once they reach Mexico, they gather on cypress trees, one layer upon the next, creating an incubated space for the butterflies at the center. This is how some of them make it through the winter in order to reproduce the following year. A single butterfly of the Methuselah generation, a special generation of the Monarch that can live 7 to 8 months rather than the normal 5 to 6 weeks, will make the journey south for the winter to hibernate. When they make the return journey north in the spring, this generation will make it only so far before they lay eggs and die; the subsequent generations will continue north along the path to Canada, but it will take several generations of shorter lived butterflies to make it there. Pretty fascinating!

Pesticides, deforestation, and general human expansion threaten populations. This miraculous event is one that we are just barely aware of as we rush through our daily routines, but we can be more involved. You can volunteer/support groups that monitor and tag the butterflies; plant appropriate plants, such as milkweed, for them to eat, lay eggs on, or take refuge in; get your kids involved by creating an educational project around conservation and understanding what we know about these creatures; educate yourself; refrain from spraying your gardens and lawns with pesticides. Just as I was writing this piece, I counted 6 more butterflies pass by my window!

Fishtale

This week in DC, concern over a scientific study that found “intersex fish” in the Potomac resonated only briefly around my office and circle of friends. I have tried impress my concern upon them that we are, in fact, drinking Potomac River water here in DC (and in some of the surrounding suburbs like Arlington). The question of course is: if this is happening to the fish, what could it mean for us? These intersex fish are male bass, both large and small mouthed, who are developing eggs in their reproductive tissues. They were first discovered in 2003, but the news is that their numbers have increased.

 

This hermaphroditic phenomenon is thought to happen because of endocrine disruptors, pollutants or chemicals that promote estrogen production, present in the water. The EPA, though conducting ongoing studies on endocrine disruptors, has yet to issue any guidelines to water treatment plants about allowable levels of estrogen in drinking or evacuated waters. This discovery is not limited to the DC area. Elevated levels of endocrine disruptors and estrogen have been detected in U.S. waterways throughout the country by the U.S. Geological Survey (you can read the report through this link). This estrogen appearance can be linked with birth control pills, pharmecuetical company waste water, sewage, or a combination of several pollutants causing unpredictable effects upon our environment and the beings residing in it.

 

“Experts” have made public announcements that there is no evidence to indicate our drinking water is unsafe.  They attribute this to the fact that fish are at a higher risk for these mutations due to their body size and because they are constantly in the water. I am drinking bottled water.

Global Warming Debate in Supreme Court

When I first read that the Supreme Court is debating global warming and whether the U.S. Government should have more stringent emissions regulations on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from automobiles, my heart skipped a beat. The Supreme Court is going to decide whether the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should treat CO2 emissions as a pollution regulated under federal law, specifically under the Clean Air Act. That must mean that this is really important, but why?

After marinating in the notion of the highest court of our country discussing such a seriously contended issue as global warming, I began to understand my internal reaction.

This decision could, in essence, dictate how the United States treats global warming.

I hope we will see some interesting debate this fall. So why is the fact that the Supreme Court deliberating about global warming this fall important? This decision may be held as a final say on the subject of global warming/climate change and how our government should proceed with policy and regulation. This could go one of two ways. One is obvious – continue on the current path of trade and economics before environment. But, if it is determined that CO2 is damaging the air enough to regulate it, we may see regulation beyond automobiles to other forms of transportation (airplanes are a big contributor) or to stationary emitters (factories). That would be super responsible of us. It may even set a global trend (as some of our environmental law certainly has in the past). It could be a move toward responsible globalization.

It’s about time the feds step up to the plate on this matter, but I pray that their approach is a cautious one.