I’m sure many have read the news about this move winning the Oscar award and such. How many have really watched it? If u have not, I’ll highly recommend watching it.
thecovemovie.com

Dolphins and whales definitely do not like captivity. The recent Seaworld case is yet another reminder.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/24/killer-whale-florida

Capturing them for captivity for $150 000 is one thing. Why did they have to kill the rest that are trapped by them? For their meat? Dolphins meat are proven to be mecury toxic! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cove_(film)

Since 2000, Japanese researchers such as Tetsuya Endo, a professor at the Health Sciences University of Hokkaido, have found high concentrations of mercury, which can cause mercury poisoning, in the whale and dolphin meat sold around Japan. In their studies Taiji residents who eat whale/dolphin meat had high levels of mercury in their hair.[37]  Whale meat contaminated with mercury is commonly eaten in the town, and residents have been found to have 10 times the level of mercury in their hair when compared to average Japanese citizens. [38]  Although the film argued that the Japanese government and media were trying to conceal the facts, in actuality the Japanese Ministry of Health has issued warnings on the consumption of some species of fish, whale and dolphin since 2003.

The reason could well be what was discuss later in the movie about Japanese pride and such against Westerner telling them what to do and not. Pls dun make dolphin suffer for human pride.
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Asia/Story/STIStory_512905.html

Its mind bobbling why the japanese ppl in Taiji are doing to these intelligent animals. More than 20 thousand are killed yearly!

Take action. Take part. http://www.takepart.com/thecove

BBC

A proposal to ban international trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna, which is a sushi mainstay in Japan, has been rejected by a UN wildlife meeting.

Thursday’s decision occurred after Japan, Canada and many poor nations opposed the measure on the grounds it would devastate fishing economies.

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Scientists and campaigners working with conservation organisations were disappointed with the outcome.:

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The US, which supported and lobbied for the ban, also described the outcome as “disappointing”.

“Today’s vote was a setback for the Atlantic bluefin tuna,” said Tom Strickland, head of the nation’s CITES delegation.

“But we will keep fighting to ensure that the fishery is managed sustainably, so that future generations may see it return to health.”

US officials said they would be pressing governments to live up to promises to control fishing through Iccat.

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Japan – the principal bluefin-consuming nation – had made its opposition to the proposal clear before the CITES meeting started.

It argues that commercial fisheries should be managed through bodies such as Iccat.

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The vote on the original motion then went down by 68 votes to 20.

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Sue Lieberman, director of international policy with the Pew Environment Group, suggested lobbying from the fishing industry was ultimately responsible for the defeat.

“This meeting presented a golden opportunity for governments to take a stand against overfishing, and too many governments failed to do so,” she said.

“The market for this fish is just too lucrative, and the pressure from fishing interests too great, for enough governments to support a truly sustainable future for the fish.”

CITES votes can be reviewed on the meeting’s final day, but the substantial margin of defeat suggests this one will not be.

Earlier in the day, a US-sponsored motion seeking to ban international trade in products made from polar bears was also defeated.

Opponents argued that the species’ main threat was not trade, but climate change. Some conservation groups – including Traffic – did not support the proposal, therefore.

There were also concerns that banning the trade might hurt indigenous peoples around the Arctic who sometimes hunt the bears for meat.

BBC

More than a third of species assessed in a major international biodiversity study are threatened with extinction, scientists have warned.

Out of the 47,677 species in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, 17,291 were deemed to be at serious risk.

These included 21% of mammals, 30% of amphibians, 70% of plants and 35% of invertebrates.

Conservationists warned that not enough was being done to tackle the main threats, such as habitat loss.

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The Red List, regarded as the most authoritative assessment of the state of the planet’s species, draws on the work of thousands of scientists around the globe.

The latest update lists amphibians as the most seriously affected group of organisms on the planet, with 1,895 of the 6,285 known species listed as threatened.

Of these, it lists 39 species as either “extinct” or “extinct in the wild”. A further 484 are deemed “critically endangered”, 754 “endangered” and 657 “vulnerable”.

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“In our lifetime, we have gone from having to worry about a relatively small number of highly threatened species to the collapse of entire ecosystems,” observed Professor Jonathan Baillie, director of conservation programmes at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

“At what point will society truly respond to this growing crisis?”

The updated data from the 2009 Red List is being made publicly available on the IUCN website on Tuesday.

www.ageofstupid.net

‘The Age of Stupid’ is the new cinema documentary from the Director of ‘McLibel’ and the Producer of the Oscar-winning ‘One Day in September’. This enormously ambitious drama-documentary-animation hybrid stars Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055, watching ‘archive’ footage from 2008 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change while we had the chance?

Stomp.com.sg

STOMPer Eric was having lunch at a seafood restaurant in Johor when he saw a whale shark being hauled into the jetty and hacked to pieces.

In an email to STOMP today (Aug 24), the STOMPer says:

“These pictures were taken yesterday at a jetty in southern johor.

“I was there having lunch with some friends at a seafood restaurant when a local walked in and told the boss that a big shark was caught.

“I did not give much thought to it until the workers who went there to see came back and told their fellow colleagues that the shark was as big as a pick-up.

“This caught my attention. We paid for our meal and went over to the jetty to have a look.

“When we reached the jetty, it was already quite crowded. I managed to squeeze in some photos as the poor shark was being sliced by a hack saw.

“I’m not too sure who caught it but heard it was brought in by three fishing boats from the South China Sea.

“As you can see, the shark was being chopped up, did not stay long to watch as we had to catch our ferry.

“Seeing the poor guy being chopped up, I was quite sad.

“What you see in picture is very different from the actual situation. There was the noise from the hack saw, blood flowing out etc.”
Click on link to see more pix

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National Geographic

environment.gov.au

Fast Facts

www.sfgov.org

Measure is Key to Reaching 75% Landfill Diversion

06/23/09 – Mayor Gavin Newsom today signed mandatory recycling legislation requiring residential and commercial building owners to sign up for recycling and composting services.

Mayor Newsom’s ordinance will require all residences and businesses in San Francisco to take advantage of the city’s recycling and composting collection programs. While several other cities require recycling service and participation, San Francisco is the first city to require the collection of food scraps and other compostables. Refuse collection has been mandatory since the 1930s.

“San Francisco has the best recycling and composting programs in the nation, and we’ve already attained an impressive, and first in the nation, 72 percent recycling rate because of them,” said Mayor Newsom. “I am pleased with the leadership the Board of Supervisors has demonstrated on this important legislation. By collaborating with all of our stakeholders, businesses, colleagues, and citizens, we can build on our success and continue to lead the nation in recycling.”

A comprehensive study conducted by the Department of the Environment found that 36 percent of what San Francisco sends to landfills is compostable, primarily food scraps, and 31 percent is recyclable—which is mostly paper. There are facilities in the City and surrounding areas that reuse, recycle, compost or otherwise process and market most materials discarded in San Francisco, saving this material from landfill and creating green-collar jobs.

Newsom said a primary goal of the mandatory recycling ordinance, which was co-sponsored by Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi and Chris Daly, is to get recycling and composting happening in buildings where it is not currently provided.

According to the San Francisco Department of the Environment, if all of the recyclable and compostable materials currently going to landfills were captured by the city’s programs, San Francisco’s recycling rate would soar from 72 percent to 90 percent.

No fines are specified in the ordinance, but there is a cap of $100 established for residences and businesses that generate less than one cubic yard of refuse per week, which is the equivalent of six 32-gallon carts. Fines higher than $100 may still apply to businesses and to landlords of large apartment buildings who refuse to offer recycling and composting opportunities to tenants when feasible.

Newsom said that cities with mandatory recycling and fines, such as Seattle, rarely assess such fines. He stressed that fines serve primarily to heighten public awareness and encourage compliance.

www.saveyourlogo.org

An innovative project for biodiversity

Many companies and organizations use plant or animals in their logos, from the Lacoste crocodile to the MAAF dolphin.

The principle of Save Your Logo is simple:

Save Your Logo creates an opportunity for companies represented by a plant or animal in their logo to contribute to the conservation of that species.

Save Your Logo is an innovative global initiative in the field of biodiversity that involves public and private funding, with supports like the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), the World Bank, the International Union for Nature Conservation and the Endowment Fund for Biodiversity.

The 3 stages of Save Your Logo

Conservation

The funds from the private sector will be invested in the Endowment Fund for Biodiversity and will then be distributed to organizations that specialize in biodiversity and local conservation projects.

The selection and follow up on these grants will be managed by a steering committee of representatives from the World Bank, the IUCN, the GEF and the Endowment Fund for biodiversity.

Part of the private sector funding will be used to finance the creation of an  Emergency Fund for the conservation of for lesser known species that are found on the IUCN Red List.

All these efforts will be overseen by independent auditors and the court of auditors.

This public-private partnership will engage new partners from the corporate sector in the conservation community and complement existing conservation efforts. A robust education outreach campaign will engage the general public to participate in this effort.

The status of all conservation projects will be updated on a daily basis on the website.

Education: A Global and Multimedia Project

Save Your Logo will create the first global observatory for biodiversity using a multimedia platform to communicate about it programs, creating a community of people interested in plant and animal biodiversity and the health of the planet.

Engagement and Interactivity

Our mission is to create a global community around a common objective. The conservation of the planet’s diversity among and with plant and animal species. Preserving the planet and its biodiversity is essential in the survival of the human species.

CleanEdge

Despite growing economic uncertainty over the last year, the three major clean-energy sectors — solar photovoltaics (PV), wind power, and biofuels — kept up a blistering growth rate, increasing 53 percent from $75.8 billion in 2007 to $115.9 billion in revenues in 2008, according to the Clean Energy Trends 2009 report released today by Clean Edge, Inc. By 2018, Clean Edge forecasts that these three sectors will have revenues of $325.1 billion.

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Global production and wholesale pricing of biofuels reached $34.8 billion in 2008 and are projected to total $105.4 billion by 2018. Last year, the global biofuels market consisted of more than 19 billion gallons of ethanol and biodiesel production worldwide, and in Brazil, ethanol surpassed petroleum use for the first time.

Wind power became the first clean-energy sector to surpass the $50 billion mark. Its $51.4 billion in worldwide revenue in 2008 is expected to grow to $139.1 billion in 2018. Last year’s global wind power installations reached a record 27,000 MW, including more than 8,000 MW in the U.S., pushing the U.S. ahead of Germany as the world’s leading generator of wind energy.

Solar PV (including modules, system components, and installation) totaled $29.6 billion last year and will reach $80.6 billion globally by 2018. Annual solar PV installations reached more than 4 GW worldwide in 2008, a fourfold increase from four years earlier, when the solar PV market reached the gigawatt milestone for the first time.

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Clean Energy Trends 2009 also outlines five trends poised to make an impact on the markets in the coming year. It describes:

What happens when the smart grid goes online
How energy storage will become a key issue for utilities
Where new clean-energy markets are emerging around the world
Why grid transmission capacity will be making headlines in 2009
The unseen growth in “micropower” grids

“The clean-energy sector, like the broader economy, faces many challenges,” said Clean Edge co-founder and managing director Ron Pernick. “But while 2009 will be a difficult year, we believe that clean energy will play a central role in any global economic recovery.”

cnet

Google now wants to organize your home’s energy information.

The search giant on Tuesday muscled into the burgeoning smart-grid software business, showing off a prototype Web application that displays home energy consumption broken down by appliance. The software uses so-called smart meters, which can communicate home energy consumption back to utilities every few minutes.

The driving idea behind the Google PowerMeter iGoogle gadget–and nearly all smart-grid companies–is that giving consumers access to more detailed home energy data will lead to lower usage. There are dozens of smart-grid trial programs now going on, offered through utilities.

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Google cites figures showing that regularly viewing real-time energy use will prod people to cut electricity by 5 percent to 15 percent on average through behavioral changes. The product is now in private beta.

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Through its Google.org philanthropic arm, the company has invested in a number of renewable energy firms, as part of an effort to make renewable energy cheaper than coal-powered electricity. It has installed a large solar array at its company headquarters and is testing a fleet of plug-in electric cars.

In the smart-grid arena, Google is taking a more overtly commercial position by introducing its own product. To gain broader acceptance for PowerMeter, it is creating a partnership program for hardware manufacturers, utilities, and government agencies. A company that makes a smart meter or in-home display for energy usage could, for example, make its information available in an Google gadget format or build a specialized application using PowerMeter.

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For a hint on where Google might go next, one could look at demand response software, which gives utilities the ability to remotely control home appliances with a consumer’s consent and ability to override. Google joined an industry association called the Demand Response and Smart Grid Coalition in November.

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Google’s effort to influence smart-grid policy reflects the potential disruption that energy-efficiency regulations and smart-grid products pose to utilities.

Incentives for smart-grid deployments–the Obama administration has set a target of bringing smart meters to 40 million homes over the next three years–are a big part of the stimulus package being considered by Congress, with as an early draft offering $11 billion for research.

Yet many utilities are lukewarm or unenthusiastic about smart-grid technology. That’s because utility regulations are traditionally structured around making investments to build new power plants and selling more electricity, not energy efficiency, said Roy Ellis, who focuses on energy, utilities, and chemicals regulatory relations at consulting firm Capgemini.

“Today, the vast majority of utilities are serious about carbon reduction. But once you say that, the business case still has to work for them to operate their business,” Ellis said. “The business case starts to bump up against shareholder value.”

thefuelfilm.com

Oscar contender FUEL is an insightful portrait of America’s addiction to oil and an uplifting testament to the immediacy of new energy solutions. Director, Josh Tickell, a young activist, shuttles us on a whirlwind journey to track the rising domination of the petrochemical industry—from Rockefeller’s strategy to halt Ford’s first ethanol cars to Vice President Cheney’s petrochemical company sponsored energy legislation — and reveals a gamut of available solutions to “repower America” —from vertical farms that occupy skyscrapers to algae facilities that turn wastewater into fuel. Tickell and a surprising array of environmentalists, policy makers, and entertainment notables take us through America’s complicated, often ignominious energy past and illuminate a hopeful, achievable future, where decentralized, sustainable living is not only possible, it’s imperative.

The film won the following awards:
• Sundance Film Festival: Audience Award for Best Documentary
• Sedona Film Festival: Best Screenwriting
• Sedona Film Festival: Most Compelling Documentary
• AFI Dallas Film Festival: Current Energy Environmental Award
• GAIA Film Festival: Audience Award for Best Documentary
• Santa Cruz Film Festival: Producer’s Award
• IVCA Clarion Award: for Corporate Social Responsibility
• Cinema for Peace Award: Berlin Film Festival