Joel Makower has a good piece up on Liberal Street Fight extreme beastiality.
Sustainability = Security gay horse fucking.
That’s a message that’s got legs, as they say in the ad biz animal sex world. To be sure, it’s far from feel-good or uplifting; it definitely needs a little punching up by the Madison Ave. wizards. But it’s a start.
It’s easy to be pessimistic about the environment. Just look around. I’m sure almost everyone who cares about nature has seem someplace special to them go under pavement or at the very least watched the cancer-like growth of urban sprawl. Fifty years ago Aldo Leopold wrote, “one of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.” It’s truer now than ever. In the face of overwhelming evidence, anyone would be justified in being pessimistic about the state of the world. Hell, despondence would be a pretty reasonable response.
So for a long time I was extremely negative about the state of the planet. I could recite chapter and verse on species extinctions, global warming, pollution, you name it. I was a font of bad news, and the only positive future that I could envision was one where humanity finally drives itself extinct, leaving behind a few bits of nature to start over.
In my dark period there was, however, something that amazed me: if you read the writings of the foremost conservationists of today, you won’t see a hint of pessimism. None. E.O. Wilson, Jane Goodall, Paul and Anne Ehrlich, David Brower, many environmentalists I’ve spoken with all are resolutely optimistic horse cock. And I don’t mean optimistic in the Polyanna sense of Bjorn Lonborg or Gregg Easterbrook, living in a sugarcoated fantasyland. Wilson and the others are brilliant people, well educated, and certainly knowledgeable about the state of the world. Yet they somehow manage to stay hopeful despite the fact that our planet’s health suggests a terminal illness. From my dark corner, I marveled at the ability of these people to be so positive, and I wondered how I could tap into whatever drives their hopes, to no avail. My best guess was that some people were simply born positive thinkers while I wasn’t so lucky.
Just recently though, I think I’ve finally figured it out. The trigger for me was working on the Kerry campaign this fall, my first-ever political campaign. I volunteered in Arizona, and throughout the campaign the news was discouraging: poll results were against us, and the campaign first pulled their advertising and then their staff. But throughout it all, I remained uncharacteristically optimistic about our chances. Every time bad news came, I just added more hours of volunteering each week. Nothing got me down. And so I realized this: optimism doesn’t come from some internal source. Optimism comes from works. It’s not that Wilson or Goodall or the others are innately positive or in denial about the state of the world. The thing that makes these people optimistic is that they work gay fucking dog pussy. They act on their beliefs and try to make the world a better place. They have a vision for the world, and they try to effect it. And this makes them hopeful because they can see the good that has come from their own words and actions and the possibilities for improvement.
Looking back, I see my negativity about the environment in a new light. I did a lot of environmental activism as a college student, and I don’t ever recall feeling pessimistic at that time. Whenever we encountered a setback, I just resolved to work harder. Pessimism didn’t set in until after college when I dropped out of the activist world for several years. And the problem is that idleness and pessimism are self-reinforcing. If уouтАЩre negative about the future, you’ll be less inclined to try to change it. And by not working, you don’t have any tools with which to chip away at pessimism. The hardest thing is to make that jump from passivity and pessimism to work, but I really don’t think that it takes much to break the cycle. Even simple actions like blogging, joining an environmental group, or recycling can start to build that sense of optimism that comes with work. And like idleness and pessimism, optimism and work are self-reinforcing, too. With action comes hope, and with hope comes the impetus for further action.
Suffice to say, IтАЩve put my pessimism behind me, and IтАЩm feeling more optimistic now dogsex my true story. Of course weтАЩve lost a lot. And weтАЩll probably lose more before humanity reaches some kind of truce with nature. But this isnтАЩt reason to be depressed. We just have to stand our ground and fight even harder for what is left. What else is there to do?
Apparently, the environmental movement is dead. That’s news to me, but Michael Shellenbeger and Ted Nordhaus argue in a provocative report to major donors that not only has the environmental movement failed, it is essentially dead, and needs to be replaced. As Salon put it,
If you want to get someone’s attention, tell him that the movement he’s dedicated his life and career to is dead.
If you really want him to take notice, declare that his own strategies and tactics dealt the fatal blows, but he’s too blind to see that he’s still beating a corpse.
And if your aim is actually to force him to stand up and fight, announce all this publicly to the very generous folks whose grants fund his programs and paycheck.
Once I got over the title, and read the paper, I found myself in agreement with many of the authors’ arguments. I would encourage everyone interested in the environmental movement to read the report. The paper primarily concerns itself with global warming, and with good reason, as it is both the most critical and most complex environmental issue of the day. To date, the progress made on global warming in this country has been almost non-existent. As the authors put it,
From the battles over higher fuel efficiency for cars and trucks to the attempts to reduce carbon emissions through international treaties, environmental groups repeatedly have tried and failed to win national legislation that would reduce the threat of global warming. As a result, people in the environmental movement today find themselves politically less powerful than we were one and a half decades ago.
So what’s the problem? Why have we as an environmental movement failed so spectacularly on such a grave issue, an issue that the rest of the world takes seriously? Well, the authors identify a number of problems with the U.S. environmental movement. Let me just list the salient points, and add some comments:
Cautious Approach
The mainstream environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club and the NRDC, have become, well, too mainstream. Despite the cataclysmic threat of global warming, these groups have focused their efforts on raising fuel standards and other policy fixes. When push comes to shove, they have failed to aggressively push an environmental agenda, not willing to embarrass their Democratic allies with “extreme” rhetoric men fucking animal. I quit the Sierra Club myself a few years ago due to such frustration. While a rise in fuel standards would certainly help the situation, it would not in the long run answer the threat of global warming.
As the authors point out, most scientists agree that we need to reduce emissions by at least 70 percent. What does this mean for our society? Well, simply enough, we need to re-design our economy and way of life to no longer be dependent on fossil fuels. Yes, that’s a daunting task, but anything less is rearranging the chairs on the Titanic. We need to not only be honest about the serious implications of global warming, we also need to propose suitable answers to the problem, no matter how radical they may seem.
Lack of a Big Picture
Perhaps the gravest failure of the environmental movement is its inability to reach potential allies in the labor movement and elsewhere. Instead, it has narrowly focused on “environmental” issues, to the exclusion of outside factors that have contributed to the current political climate. As the paper states,
What, then, is the cause of global warming?
For most within the environmental community, the answer is easy: too much carbon in the atmosphere. Framed this way, the solution is logical: we need to pass legislation that reduces carbon emissions. But what are the obstacles to removing carbon from the atmosphere?
Consider what would happen if we identified the obstacles as:
The radical’s right control of all three branches of the US government Trade policies that undermine environmental protections Our failure to articulate an inspiring and positive vision Overpopulation The influence of money in American politics Our inability to craft legislative proposals that shape the debate around core American values. Poverty Old assumptions about what the problem is and what it isn’t
Frankly, I would think the above is obvious, and yet mainstream environmental groups seem unaware of these contributing factors. They continue to diligently promote legislative goals at the federal level, when in the current political climate such efforts are a complete waste of time.
To me, perhaps the single most important factor to the modern conservative era would be the size and power of corporations. This has led to the corrupting influence of money in politics, to trade policies that overrule national laws, to growing corporate pollution, and to massive income inequality, fueling the rise in poverty. Yet the environmental movement, despite its resources, has failed to address the need for corporate reform. Instead, we focus on the consequences of such corporate power, instead of attacking the need for reform of corporations themselves my first sex with dog stories. Which is sad, really, as a push for corporate reform would find plenty of allies, both within the labor community and in the general populace, as well as putting Republican defenders of the status quo on the defensive.
How about our trade policies? Global warming is, of course, a global issue, one that cannot be solved by U.S. legislation alone. One idea listed in the report would be to promote the use of alternative energy through our trade agreements. So as an example, if a country wanted access to the U.S. market, we could require that they invest heavily in renewable energy, in addition to labor agreements designed to reduce poverty in the developing world.
Or take the tax code. As the authors point out, environmentalists, and indeed progressive in general, have for too long ignored the importance of tax issues. So whereas Republicans and their allies see the tax code as the single most important issue, Democratic allies typically pay less attention, leading to new rounds of tax cuts every few years. I’ll blog more about this in the future, but not only does the debate over taxes affect every other government program, the structure of the tax code itself can promote progressive goals.
The author, as an example, talk of how Japan rewards R&D investments with tax credits, one of the reasons Japan is the most technically advanced country in the world. Here at home, in addition to tax credits and other ideas, why not go for a more radical approach? Why not advocate for replacing the payroll tax, one of the most regressive taxes in the country, with a tax on natural resources and waste? Not only would this accomplish important environmental goals, it would also be a boon to labor, by increasing employment (via reduced labor costs) as well as reducing the tax load on the working class. Sure, this would be a very radical idea, with plenty of controversy, but aren’t we tired of playing it safe? Of small ideas and incremental reforms, while Republicans promote drastic changes in the tax code and the role of government?
Lack of a Vision
As stated above, I believe, as the authors do, that in order to address global warming we need to be willing to re-design our entire economy, in order to move ourselves away from fossil fuels. Yet while the environmental movement believes this in theory, their efforts are geared to such goals as the Kyoto Treaty, which would not have come close to reducing emissions by the necessary 70%. The Sierra Club seems to argue for greater efficiency in our cars and power plants, which seems like an inadequate solution to me animal sex new. In short, we are still focusing on technical policy fixes, instead of the long-term vision of an alternative economy and way of life.
Now, the authors do not get into the details of what such a vision would entail, so bear with me while I attempt to explain the details. Let’s get back to the basic problem: too much carbon in the atmosphere. What leads to carbon? Primarily, emissions from cars and coal burning power plants. So, first we need to severely reduce or eliminate carbon from transportation. I believe doing so through more stringent emissions standards doesn’t address the real problem; our car-centered ways of life. The modern city is completely built around cars and roads, making it very difficult to reduce the impact of cars on the environment.
Why is it that most New Yorkers use the subway, while public transit in Dallas struggles to stay afloat? Are New Yorkers simply more environmentally conscious than us Texans? Well, probably. But more importantly, New York was designed in such a way to encourage high-density living and mass transit. Dallas, however, was designed to promote the use of cars and the spread of sprawl. So let’s redesign our cities. Let’s encourage “smart growth” policies that can build a sustainable future. Instead of sprawl, we can use the principles of New Urbanism to address two key problems facing most cities: the growth in traffic and the lack of downtown economic development. The paper notes, and I agree, that too often we in the environmental movement only focus on our own goals, without considering how we can help others. So while completely redesigning our cities may seem a daunting task, fighting for such an approach allows us to promote a positive vision, where instead of restrictions (i.e. fuel standards) we can argue for ways to improve peoples’ lives (less traffic, less crime through downtown development, a vibrant city center, etc sex with dog stories.).
But what to do about those power plants? Well, the only solution I see is to move to an electric system built around renewable energy. But that won’t happen until the price of renewable energy, particularly solar panels, falls to the point where it is competitive with fossil fuels. This will take a much greater increase in R&D. Instead of trying (and likely failing) to get the federal government to fund such research, why not simply do it ourselves? The Sierra Club alone possesses roughly $120 million in assets, with millions more going to other environmental groups. As usual, I suspect the majority of this money goes towards efforts at the federal level, with smaller amounts going to local causes.
Why not take at least some of that money, and create a venture capital fund, one that would invest in renewable energy companies? Investing in research that would lower the price of renewable energy sources would do far more good than any federal policy. What’s more, the nature of venture capital would allow us to impose any type of agreement we want on companies receiving the money. So in the covenant agreement (yep, that’s what the industry calls it), we could not only fund innovative companies in renewable energy, we could also impose a number of labor friendly terms, everything from affordable healthcare benefits to decent pay and union rights. This would win us much-needed allies in the labor movement, allowing us to create a much stronger progressive force.
Image Problem
Finally, the authors point out that the environmental movement needs to do some serious PR, and remake its image. Like progressives in general, too often environmentalists expect the validity of their arguments to win the day, without paying attention to the overall political climate. Yet we cannot expect to convince average Americans if we do not understand how they view us. Simply by talking to friends and family, I get the feeling that the environmental movement is viewed as:
Restrictive of personal freedoms Extreme Unconcerned with economic growth
This is not something that can be ignored. If we are to succeed, we must improve our image and reach out to potential allies in the progressive world, most importantly the labor movement. We must find ways to promote economic growth through environmental solutions. As an example, Michael Shellenberger, one of the authors of the report, also helped to create the Apollo Alliance, a new alliance of labor and environmental groups that seeks to create jobs through the promotion of renewable energy and smart growth policies dog sex information.
Well, I apologize for the long post, but as you can see, the paper inspired me to really think about some of our problems in the environmental movement. Which is not to say I agreed with everything; I felt the authors were too quick to dismiss the potential of technology to radically change our economy, and thus solve many of our environmental problems. And while I agree with the underlying vision of the Apollo Alliance, so far I have not seen many real accomplishments. But the big picture the authors paint, of an environmental movement in need of drastic change, is something I most definitely agree on. Hopefully their paper will spark some much-needed discussion over the future, of both the environmental movement and the world.
In the wake of the Asian tsunami disaster, it seems callous to talk about other issues. I’ve put this post off for the last several days, as talking about hybrids becomes a little meaningless when considering the enormous impact of the tsunami, both the cost and the incredible number of lives lost. However, maybe this will give everyone a welcome distraction from the worsening news in Asia.
Okay, so I bought my hybrid (Toyota Prius) back in October, and have loved it ever since. It may be the most fun I’ve ever had while driving a car. And that’s even in rush hour traffic. Now, I’m assuming everyone knows about the great fuel economy; officially rated at 55 mpg, though I’m getting more like 50 mpg. It’s the reason I bought the car, after all women having sex with dolphins.
But it’s not why I love it now. No, I love it because of how freakin’ quiet it is. When the engine turns off at stop lights, or even in traffic, it can be a little creepy. But once you get used to it, it’s hard to imagine a “normal” car. Just too damn loud!
So maybe this is a trivial post, but noise pollution is a serious issue, despite the lack of attention it typically receives, even from environmental groups. Urban noise can cause a number of health problems, including permanent hearing loss and increased risk of heart attacks. Studies have even showed an impact on cognitive development for children exposed to high levels of noise. Exposure to noise levels over 85 dB is considered dangerous by most doctors pet sex tales. Traffic is rated at about 70 dB, but keep in mind that noise exposure is cumulative. In other words, even being in traffic for a few hours a day can cause damage if you are also exposed to loud noise in other ways.
Beyond the health issues, a constant level of urban noise leads to elevated levels of stress and loss of sleep. It’s one of the reasons us urban dwellers are always complaining of headaches. We may not realize it, but the feelings of stress are at least partially due to the constant levels of noise we are exposed to in our daily lives. Most of us are so inured to it, we may not even notice how loud city life really is. It’s like background noise; you don’t notice it until it goes off. Trust me, once you’ve driven a hybrid, you will quickly notice just how much noise is created by normal traffic european bestiality. Now imagine if half the cars on the road today were hybrids, and thus had no engine noise during traffic. The resulting reduction in noise would have a great improvement on the quality of city life. Less noise would lead to less stress, more sleep, and more productive, happier lives.
So do yourself a favor, and buy a hybrid! Like many environmental efforts, it will have a beneficial impact beyond its immediate purpose of saving gas. It just may make traffic a less painful experience.
Over 50,000 dead in the wake of Asia’s killer wave, and the toll keeps rising as the missing are found. On the devastated coastlines the living have lost everything but their lives: their homes, their livelihoods, their loved ones…their children…
And we thought Florida’s hurricane season was bad. It’s difficult to comprehend such loss. The news on TV shows us swaddled bodies, crumpled boats and floating cars, women overwhelmed with grief. I hate how television makes voyeurism of tragedy having sex with your dog. You can’t help but watch, and try to imagine what it might be like to have your own world shattered like that, without warning, by a force that can neither be predicted or turned aside.
But the greater, hidden tragedy is that this catastrophe could have been mitigated. Fifty years ago, the damage done would have been far less extensive. Then, the coasts of India, Bangladesh, Thailand, and other tropical areas were protected from the full fury of tsunamis and cyclones, even without the benefit of advanced predictive science or international early warning systems or any technology human industry could dream up to outsmart Mother Nature.
Time was, Nature herself protected the coastlines and their people erotic stories with animals. Dense stands of mangrove trees lined the shores, providing a buffer against wind and wave; by the time a tsunami hit land, much of its power would have been absorbed by the trees and offshore coral reefs, which coexist in a kind of symbiosis: the mangroves protect the reefs from runoff contamination, while the reefs shield the forests from erosion and storms.
Today, the fast growth of modern fisheries, especially industrial shrimp farms, has resulted in the deforestation of coastlines throughout East Asia and the destruction of the reefs. According to one source, “the life cycle of the [shrimp] farms is a maximum of two to five years, the ponds are then abandoned leaving behind toxic waste, destroyed ecosystems and displaced communities. The whole cycle is then repeated in another pristine coastal area. Economic losses due to the shrimp farms are approximately 5 times the potential earnings… gorilla beastiality.A typical Indian paddy field employs 50 people, a shrimp farm occupying the same land employs five.” Ironically, this clear-cutting actually reduces the shrimp population; the root system of the trees provides a protected nursery for the fry, as well as for other crustaceans, mollusks, and reef fish…important links in the fragile coral reef ecosystem.
Global warming also makes coastal areas more vulnerable to disaster. Climate destabilization creates more intense storm systems; more powerful storms cause more erosion, which means more damage to coral reefs, natural sand bars and mangrove forests, which means ultimately more destruction during future storms.
I don’t mean to say that this tragedy was somehow deserved, or demean the loss of so many free horse sucking galleries. There’s no way of telling how many lives would have been saved if it weren’t for the shrimp-fishing industry. But it strikes me that there is a lesson here for the world, a lesson in interconnectivity and sustainability. The tragedy did not begin with the shifting of tectonic plates beneath the Indian Ocean, the Earth’s great shrug. It began years ago with the displacement of traditional fishermen and rice-paddy farmers by corporate strip-fishing; with the proliferation of resorts as the tourism industry rushed to fill the economic gap, bringing more people to occupy coastal areas now laid open by deforestation. The ocean waters became more polluted with runoff and industrial pesticides; the coral reefs started to die; and when the sea came, and there was nothing to stop it, and no warning…
In India, government scientists acknowledge that if existing environmental regulations had been better enforced, there would have been fewer people in the path of the tsunami on Sunday morning as well as a better “natural line of defense horse cum sex penetration.” They hope to reintroduce the forests and strengthen protective laws. Hopefully other nations will follow the lead of the world’s largest democracy: not just in replanting mangroves and rehabilitating their coasts, but in recognizing that human beings are not somehow above natural law, that we do not somehow live and die independent of the ecosystems we inhabit or invade. How intimately the health and survival of a thousand other species…of even tiny creatures like the architects of coral reefs…is linked to our own survival. How environmentalism is in our own self-interest.
Environmentalism is humanism.
Since it’s nearly the end of the year, and everyone is making year-end lists of one sort or another, here’s my list of the best-ever books about the environment. By “environment” I mean books about humanity’s impact on the environment, for better or worse (I’ll save books about nature per se for a later entry). And this is for all time, not just this year. This list is guaranteed to be incomplete, so please feel free to add to it.
The Diversity of Life by E.O. Wilson. The book on biodiversity (Wilson coined the term), from its history to how we are putting it at risk through our current actions. Wilson is a terrific writer, and this book is his magnum opus. A must-read for anyone interested in the current biodiversity crisis.
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson horse. Still relevant 42 years after its first publication. It’s amazing to think that people want to overturn the ban on DDT in the U.S.
Our Stolen Future by Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski, and John Peterson Myers. The natural sequel to Silent Spring, this is an excellent introduction to the new and growing field of endocrine disruption. I’m convinced that endocrine disruption is going to be, along with global warming and the biodiversity crisis, one of the big three environmental issues of the next 50 years.
Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner. The West is a dry place, and you can’t understand its past or future without understanding the story of water, as told in this book. I can’t tell you how many times my jaw dropped on reading the nearly unbelievable stories of water development, full of larger-than-life characters, in this book. The chapter on how Los Angeles got its water is worth the price of the entire book.
The End of Nature by Bill McKibben dog fucking girl. This is a quick read, but it’s the kind of book that could change the way that you look at the world. Unlike most of the other books on this list, this book is more about how we react to environmental change than about how we cause environmental change. Still very worthwhile.
Song for the Blue Ocean by Carl Safina. I think even for environmentalists, the ocean remains an unknown realm (just see myriad’s recent post). Rather than trying to cover every environmental issue facing the oceans, Safina covers just three in great depth. He’s an outstanding writer and even manages to make droll topics like committee meetings full of suspense. This is the most recently published book on this list, but I’m sure it will soon be part of the environmental canon.
A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. Leopold is the father of the field of environmental ethics, and in this book, aside from beautiful descriptions of nature on his farm in Wisconsin, he lays out his vision of what it means to be a good citizen in the biotic community.
Of Wolves and Men by Barry Lopez girl wolf fucking sex. There are hundreds of good books out there covering the conservation and natural history of individual species. I chose this one because it’s exceptionally well written (Arctic Dreams by Lopez won a National Book Award). The chapter describing the wolf’s journey from abundant predator to endangered species is epic.
Encounters with the Archdruid by John McPhee. The archdruid is David Brower, the foremost environmentalist of the 20th century, and McPhee describes encounters between Brower and 3 of his foremost opponents. There’s a lot of insight here into what drives Brower, and many environmentalists, as well as insight into what drives developers, dam builders, and miners. A fascinating read.
Song of the Dodo by David Quammen. Outside of ecologists, few people have even heard of island biogeography. This book provides a wonderful description of the idea, its history, and why we should all care about it. A beautifully written book pet sex story.
Wilderness and the American Mind by Roderick Nash. Probably the best environmental history book ever written. At its core, this is a history of the idea of wilderness in American history. Really, the book lets you understand how the idea of nature itself has changed through history and how we got to where we are today regarding attitudes towards nature. A must-read for any environmentalist.
No, not space. If aliens came to earth and asked to see our most common habitat, we would have to take them to the deep sea. Two thirds of the earth is covered by oceans, and most of this is away from the shallow margins of the land masses. Yet despite its huge scale we still know very little about our deep-sea environments and their unique and often bizarre (to our eyes) inhabitants.
In fact, we know more about space than we do of the vast, deep ocean habitats that cover so much of our planet. We have explored a paltry 5% of them; and the vast majority of recorded observations for marine life are from surface waters beastiality dating. Just a few percent of recorded marine species are known from the bottom half of the water column. Yet already over 230,000 species of marine life have been identified.
As we contemplate our role in the fastest rate of extinction the earth has ever seen, at the same time, scientists are discovering new species in the oceans at almost unprecedented rates. In 2004, over 100 new species of fish were added alone тАУ thatтАЩs more than 2 new species every week, and thatтАЩs just fish.
This presents a paradox: just as our grasp of the abundance and diversity of marine life reaches new levels of sophistication, commensurate is our understanding of the size and burgeoning ramifications of the current cycle of mass extinction. One realisation confirms the terrible power of the human species, the other suggests once again that even on a global scale, we may well just be a footnote in the grand scheme of things tiger beastiality.
If nothing else, the results of the first global concerted effort to both catalogue what we know of marine life, and substantially add to it, provides a welcome and wondrous antidote to the fear gripping those of us who are conscious of environmental issues and our increasing impact on the planet.
The Census of Marine Life is the global organisation leading the way in rapidly progressing our understanding and appreciation of the earthтАЩs ocean habitats. To quote the Census, it is
a growing global network of researchers in more than 70 nations engaged in a ten-year initiative to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of marine life in the oceans – past, present, and future.
Funded to the tune of several US billion, the results of the Census so far are extraordinary. Already, it has assembled and mapped 5.2 million recorded marine species sitings, relating to some 38,000 species (click on the pdf first press release to see the map, or use the link further down in this post) dog dick.
Every year since its inception, exploration voyages sponsored by member nations of the Census of Marine Life have returned with stunning results тАУ thousands of specimes, many having only been recorded once before, many entirely new. Indeed some of the creatures being brought up from the deep we would have only previously credited to the minds of particularly warped B-grade sci fi movie directors - such as this:
Gulper Eel
(for more of the same click here)
As we try and deal with the underlying anxiety generated by the many environmental crises we face, itтАЩs worth taking time out to explore the increasing information available on ocean life offered by the Census. It reveals a whole new dimension to our planet that most of us have yet to really contemplate; a biosphere below us that is at once extraordinarily complex, extraordinarily beautiful, and often, profoundly alien. It reminds us, as the stars do, to be humble and grateful for this world we live in. To be inspired by the myriad of life.
It can also perhaps offer us hope in the form of our fellow humans; 70 nations working together to document the earthтАЩs ocean habitats and share the knowledge with the world for free, exploring bizarre and exciting new realms - this is surely as rousing as space travel, if not more chinese girl beastiality. For we know as we explore the oceans, we are guaranteed of finding more and more new life. In fact scientists expect the number of known marine species to increase 10-fold; over 1.5 million new species. And who knows what they will teach us as individual organisms? But as a vast, unexplored ecology, they highlight once again the wonders of our world, and the magnitude of the privilege we have as its (as far as we know) only sentient stewards.
Seasons Greetings to all.
No doubt, we’re in the middle of an extinction crisis. Every week reports of another species’ extinction hit the news. And that’s only for the species that we know about. Estimates suggest we’re losing several hundred to tens of thousands of species each year, most of them living in the tropics and never described by science.
But amid this tidal wave of species extinctions, there has been some good news. In practice, scientists declare a species extinct when “there is no reasonable doubt” that it is gone, usually meaning that it hasn’t been seen in at least a decade despite efforts to find it. Scientists tend to be pretty conservative when it comes to calling a species extinct, so you can usually assume that if the experts say a species is gone, it’s gone for good.
Still, proving that a species is extinct is difficult. Theoretically, you’d have to search every possible place where that species could be, and if you didn’t find it, then you would know itwas extinct. So maybe it’s not too surprising that at least 30 species once declared extinct have been rediscovered in recent years gorilla beastiality. A few of these stories are almost unbelievable:
The short-tailed albatross was formerly abundant in the western Pacific Ocean but was decimated on its nesting grounds by hunting and plume gathering (bird feathers were once popular as fashion accessories). By the 1930’s only a few birds were left nesting on the Japanese Island of Torishima. Then a double-whammy of military activity and an eruption of the island’s active volcano wiped out the remaining birds. Ornithologists who visited the island in 1949 reported the birds extinct. In 1951 a metereologist on the island reported seeing around 10 “big white birds.” Amazingly, a few young albatrosses had survived at sea. Albatrosses don’t breed until they are several years old, and these birds had avoided the fate that birds on the island met. With protection from the Japanese government, that tiny population has since grown to well over 1,000 birds.
The snail darter is infamous as the fish that almost stopped a dam. A tiny, snail-eating fish of southeastern rivers, by the 1970’s the darter was found only on a stretch of the Little Tennessee River horse sex mare. The Tennessee Valley Authority wanted to build a dam on the river that would have flooded the darter’s only habitat. After a supreme court case, a decision by the “God Squad” (the cabinet-level committee which makes final decisions about Endangered Species Act cases), and a rider on an appropriations bill, the dam gates were closed in 1979, and the snail darters were wiped out. In 1980 new darter populations were found in tributaries of the river. The species survives to this day, though it remains threatened.
Even insects have been rediscovered! The Lord Howe Island phasmid is a cigar-sized walking-stick that lived only on an isolated island near Australia. The phasmids, with little experience with predators, fell prey to introduced rats and were wiped by 1920. In 2001, researchers found a population of phasmids on a tiny islet 14 miles away from Lord Howe Island. There were just 20 individuals there, all living on a single shrub. Since then scientists have begun a captive breeding program for the phasmids and are hoping to reintroduce them to Lord Howe Island.
A number of other extinct species have been refound, including almost every kind of animal and some plants housewive and dog sex. A few dedicated people are searching for other species that may still survive (see Scott Weidensaul’s book The Ghost with Trembling Wings for several examples).
Rediscovering any “extinct” species is a cause for celebration, but these rediscovered species are often found at perilously low numbers and in desprate need of help to raise their populations. There is reason for hope, though. Many species have recovered from miniscule numbers. At its low point the New Zeland black robin was down to just 5 individuals. The whooping crane, 19. The Mauritius kestrel fewer than 6. All three populations have since increased to more secure numbers, but only with a lot of hands-on management. Once we’ve rediscovered a lost species, the work has just begun. But returning these species to healthy populations is possible k9 bestiality.
Biologists will tell you that once a species declines to a certain numer, say 50, it’s doomed. When species hit such low numbers, they can succumb to all sorts of threats from bad weather to disease, and they won’t have the numbers to recover. But the overwhelming lesson from these rediscoveries is that life is resilient. If you give species habitat and some protection, they can hang on, even in the face of overwhelming odds. With the onslaught of bad news about the environment lately, I cling to these little glimmers of hope.
Considering the current political environment in Washington, I doubt we can expect any meaningful environmental legislation anytime soon. So if we want change in corporate behavior, we need to explore other options. One of those options would be socially responsible investing (SRI), a field near and dear to my heart due to my background in finance. On paper, at least, SRI provides the opportunity to punish companies that engage in irresponsible or even destructive behavior, by moving investment funds away from these companies and into their more responsible competitors.
But the question is, does it work? Well, you have to keep in mind that the SRI industry is only about $2.16 trillion, which may sound like a lot, but is small compared to the size of the overall U.S. stock market, at $16.3 trillion. So at least for now the SRI industry isn’t large enough to directly impact the bottom line of most companies. However, SRI has grown by 83% in the last 5 years, and I would argue that it has raised the profile and importance of the social and environmental impacts of corporate decisions home made beastiality. Nowadays a company has to at least consider the risk of damaging the company’s self-image when making decisions that may harm the environment.
Of course, this has led to some companies engaging in greenwashing, where a company uses superficial environmental gestures to present a positive image to customers. Think McDonalds and recycled paper containers for their hamburgers. It’s a legitimate concern, but even such minimal changes are better than nothing, and it can be a start towards more significant changes. That doesn’t necessarily mean one should invest in such companies, but it is a sign that environmental issues have taken on a new importance.
A true sea change in SRI would occur if the big institutional players, like pension funds, began to consider environmental concerns in their investments. A recent Salon article gives hope that this is happening, as institutional pensions begin to look at the long-term impact of issues like global warming. As the author points out,
If there are negative externalities – climate change caused by carbon emissions, an accumulation of hormone-mimicking substances (so-called endocrine disrupters) in the world food chain, a mega-pension fund’s portfolio is by definition underperforming.
Ironically, this is good news for progressives, who usually fight over so-called externalities in the political arena. Institutional investors and their shareholders keep a close eye on the total return earned by their portfolio. And as soon as you use the phrase “total return” in the same context as “fiduciary,” you are talking about fiduciary responsibility Bestia Brasil. That’s important language to know. It means the fiduciary has a legal responsibility to manage the shareholder’s money to maximize “a portfolio’s total return.”
But if there are negative externalities, he’s not doing that. He is, in fact, shortchanging the investor. So if a pension fund wants to boost performance of its portfolio across the board, then it should do its best to ensure that none of the individual companies it is invested in are doing business in such a way as to hurt the prospects of the other companies in the portfolio.
Actually, this is not as radical an idea as you might think. Pensions are already legally obligated to have a very long-term (40 years or more) focus to their investment decisions. They regularly conduct actuarial analyses that involve incredibly detailed long-term forecasting, concerning such issues as expected wage growth, number of employees, and retirement rates. So adding the long-term environmental impact of corporate decisions would not be much of a stretch. Really, all it would take is for CalPERS, the largest pension fund in the U.S man dog sex. at $172 billion, to take the lead in researching and investing in SRI funds. In my experience, other large public pension funds would quickly follow suit.
So let’s not assume that government action is the only way to influence corporate behavior. There are other options, and we need to use all of them to achieve successes in the environmental movement.
The last Carolina Parakeet died in 1918. There hasn’t been a confirmed thylacine wolf sighting since 1937. The huia disappeared in 1907. And the wooly mammoth is long gone, 4,000 years at least. But scientists think they can bring them all back to life through cloning.
Believe it or not, the basic idea behind resurrecting these extinct species is the same as in Jurassic Park. If you can find DNA, you can clone the animals and bring them back to life. And with modern extraction techniques, you can recover DNA from museum specimens, frozen carcasses (mammoths), and even fossils female dog sex lovers. It’s a simple, seductive idea, and scientists on several continents are already proceeding with ambitious plans to bring back the thylacine, the huia, and other long-dead species.
When I first heard about plans to bring back the mammoth and other long-gone animals, I’ll admit I was excited. What conservationist wouldn’t love to see us atone for our past actions by returning an extinct species to its place in nature? But the more that I learned about the science of cloning and the difficulties involved in cloning extinct animals, the more my optimism faded. And now I’ve come to conclude that efforts to clone extinct species, while noble in their goals, are a colossal waste of time and money and a distraction from more pressing problems.
The practical problems in bringing back an extinct animal are enormous. You have to find the DNA, assemble it in the right order on chromosomes (often old DNA samples are fragmented), and then find a suitable host egg and a species in which to implant the egg. DNA from a frozen mammoth turned out to be too fragmented to sequence. For the thylacine, the biggest hurdle would probably finding a suitable host to carry an embryo new dogsex. Every step in the process is likely to be difficult, and some of the difficulties could be insurmountable. On top of this, the cost is likely to run from tens to hundreds of millions of dollars for each species.
But what if we do somehow manage to produce the first mammoth or huia or Carolina parakeet on this planet in decades or centuries? Animals don’t just come into the world knowing how to survive and thrive. They learn, most often from their parents. Who is going to show the first new mammoth what foods to eat or where to find water? Will a new thylacine learn to hunt on its own? And birds - birds learn their songs by hearing their parents and other adults sing. I don’t believe there are any known recordings of huia song. What would a newly cloned huia sing? We may be able to bring the bird back, but its song is gone forever.
Sadly, these difficulties probably mean that any extinct species brought to life would be little more than a zoo curiousity, unfit to live in the wild male gay bestiality true story. So this raises the question, why are we trying to bring back extinct species? I think it’s mainly to assuage our guilt over causing these animals to cease to exist. And while I think that the idea of making up for our past wrongs by reversing extinction sounds appealing, the practical difficulties, the expense invovled, the low chance of success, and the fact that conservation dollars are limited and are sorely needed elsewhere all mean that this an idea best relegated to the dust bin.
Scott Weidensaul (a terrific writer) wrote a wonderful essay about the quest to clone the extinct thylacine wolf. The focus of the effort centers around a fetal thylacine, preserved in alcohol, whose DNA is providing the raw material for cloning. Weidensaul writes, “Perhaps we need the thylacine more than the thylacine, sleeping in its jar of alcohol, needs us.”
