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May 20, 2011

Eco-muscles flexing in China

There’s good eco-news from China.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the nation’s environmental protection ministry has halted construction of a high-speed railway because builders didn’t get the right permits. From the report:
China's Ministry of Environmental Protection said in a statement on its website Wednesday that project managers from eastern China's planned Tianjin-Qinhuangdao high-speed railway failed to submit to required environmental inspections after they made location changes. 
A woman who answered the phone at the Tianjin-Qinhuangdao Passenger Dedicated Line Co., which is managing the project, said the company declined to comment. The environment ministry didn't respond to a written request for comment.
It was the second time in two months the environment ministry has ordered the suspension of a high-speed rail project. The ministry ordered a completed line to cease operation in April because the project was never submitted for environmental evaluation. That line runs between the coastal city of Qingdao and Jinan, the provincial capital of eastern China's Shandong province.
As noted elsewhere in Catholic Ecology, China has serious ecological issues. Its frenzied...
May 18, 2011

S936

Infrastructure takes care of people, but it doesn’t take care of itself.

You might think that America would excel at caring for the life-support systems of our economy and public health. But . . .  not so much. Especially when it comes to water, as can be found in this US EPA report.

If you don’t want to read the report in its immense entirety, American Rivers sums the study up by noting that “the nation must invest $390 billion over a 20 year period to update or replace existing wastewater systems or risk having water quality regress to mid-1970s pollution levels.” And that's just the wastewater side of the equation. Drinking water has many more billions needed.

One solution is a bill currently in the US Senate. S936: The American Infrastructure Investment Fund Act of 2011 is described as a “bill to establish the...

May 13, 2011

Get your climate change report here

Read "Fate of Mountain Glaciers in the Anthropocene," a report by climate researchers and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, here. My commentary on it is two posts below; my column is here.
May 11, 2011

Growing old with grace

I was reading about a study that examined old age in the animal kingdom. Next to the online story was an ad promising septuagenarians the body of a twenty-something year old. I won’t link the ad here, but it shows a 72 year-old "doctor" with no shirt, looking like an Olympic gymnast.

Whether or not the ad and the product are legitimate—which I doubt—the irony of its placement next to a story about the reality of biological aging is telling.

We live in a world of material impermanence. Life especially comes and goes. According to a story in Science Blogs, Wild animals age, too, this is news in the scientific world. Here's part of the story:

Until now, the scientific community had assumed that wild animals died before they got old. Now, a Spanish-Mexican research team has for the first time demonstrated ageing in a population of wild birds (Sula nebouxii) in terms of their ability to live and reproduce.
“It was always thought that senescence was something particular to humans and domestic...
May 6, 2011

A Pontifical report on climate change

This morning at work, I delighted in emailing colleagues with the day’s big news on climate change. In doing so, I was allowed to write the word “Pontifical” in my official government capacity. That email not only helped share breaking news on climate change research, it also demonstrated the faith-reason link within Catholic thought and practice.

The big news is, of course, the publishing of "Fate of Mountain Glaciers in the Anthropocene," a report by leading climate researchers and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. You can read the full report here, but these few snippets will help you understand its focus:

Warming of the Earth is unequivocal. Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperature since the mid-20th century is ‘very likely’—defined as more than 90% likely—to be the result of the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. This warming is occurring in spite of masking by cooling aerosol particles—many of which are co-emitted by CO2-producing processes.
The widespread loss of ice and snow in the world’s mountain glaciers is...
May 3, 2011

Justice, mercy and ecological oversight

News from the State of New York’s Rural Wastewater Association notes that, due to the souring economy, the state Department of Environmental Conservation will have to cut its technical assistance programs to communities with wastewater treatment systems.

The news reads in part:

NYSDEC’s Division of Water has performed a comprehensive review of its legal obligations, environmental priorities, and available resources and determined that it can no longer deliver the operator certification, training, and technical assistance programs at the level they deserve. NYSDEC will respond to violations in accordance with its compliance and enforcement guidelines. If formal enforcement is warranted, NYSDEC will assess penalties in accordance with their guidelines. There may be cases in the past where NYSDEC would provide some technical assistance to help deal with operational problems or violations. NYSDEC is no longer able to provide these services. So the lack of technical assistance may result in prolonged violations that NYSDEC must address through formal enforcement.
This hits home because my job involves just this type of technical assistance to local communities that have...

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About the Blog

Catholic Ecology posts my regular column in the Rhode Island Catholic, as well as scientific and theological commentary about the latest eco-news, both within and outside of the Catholic Church. What is contained herein is but one person's attempt to teach and defend the Church's teachings - ecological and otherwise. As such, I offer all contents of this blog for approval of the bishops of the Church. It is my hope that nothing herein will lead anyone astray from truth.