In an ambitious attempt to assess how humans are doing as stewards of planet earth, 28 leading scientists have drawn up a list of nine "planetary boundaries" that must not be crossed if we want to avoid drastically changing the global environment and imperiling our own existence. The only problem is, we've already crossed three of those thresholds.

The paper, published in Nature (and available for free), aims to define a "safe operating space" for human life on the planet. It's a first-draft users' manual for an era that scientists dub the "anthropocene," in which nearly seven billion resource-hungry humans have come to dominate ecological change on Earth [Wired.com]. What follows is a list of the nine environmental factors, and how we're doing on living within each limit. Read the rest of this entry »

From Mt. Everest to the Maldives, people worldwide are turning an arcane number into a movement for a stable climate. Bill McKibben asks: Will you join them?

Let's say you occasionally despair for the future of the planet. In that case, the place you need to be this week is the website for 350.org.

Every few minutes, something new arrives at our headquarters, where young people hunched over laptops do their best to keep up with the pace. News that activists in Afghanistan — Afghanistan — have organized a rally for our big day of action on October 24. They'll assemble on a hillside 20 kilometers from Kabul to write a huge message in the sand: "Let Us Live: 350." Read the rest of this entry »

Here's the good news: Plastic may break down in the ocean in as little as a year, not 500 to 1,000 years as scientists previously thought. Now, the bad news: This degradation could be releasing harmful compounds such as bisphenol A (BPA) into the ocean, according to research presented at the American Chemical Society in August 2009.

Ocean-borne plastic, such as that in the vast Great Pacific Garbage Patch, has traditionally been viewed as an environmental hazard due to the danger it can pose to sea life and birds. But to find out more about how plastic behaves when in the ocean, researchers acquired water samples from Japan, India, Europe, the United States, and other locations. The results? All the water samples were found to contain derivatives of polystyrene, a common plastic used in disposable cutlery, Styrofoam, and DVD cases, among other things [National Geographic News]. Read the rest of this entry »

Only Time will tell if we're at the point in the food debate to pop the taboo question: how come, despite all the squawking about food being too expensive these days, food is so incredibly cheap? What hidden force lies behind all the obvious problems?

To give credit where it's due, Time magazine, a showpiece of glossy conventional wisdom since 1924, is the first mass-audience news weekly to make a splash — 'Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food', the 20 August edition challenges its readers — about the false economies that drive the cheapening of food and all the mishaps that causes. Read the rest of this entry »