////////////////Back to the future
Mark Lynas
Published 27 September 2007
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The World Without UsAlan Weisman Virgin Books, 336pp, £20
It takes a lot to make us environmentalist writers turn green, if you'll excuse the pun. But every once in a while, someone who is not obviously from our camp comes up with an idea that is so lateral and clever, so powerfully evocative and masterfully executed that the only appropriate response is fervent envy. Such is my response to The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, an award-winning American journalist whose previous books involve topics as varied as the US border with Mexico, a sustainable village in war-torn Colombia, and his own family's tortured Jewish history.
The stated premise of this book is very simple: what would happen if humans disappeared overnight? This sets the stage for a fascinating exploration of the durability of human civilisation, and the natural landscapes on which it has been built. Manhattan Island, Weisman reveals, was once traversed by more than 40 brooks and streams. If pumping systems in the subway ceased and the foundations of New York's skyscrapers began to corrode, in not too long a time Lexington Avenue would once again become a river, while deer might browse among the tall hardwood trees where Broadway once lay.
The odd discursion into structural engineering aside, the genius of this book lies in its fresh approach to some otherwise rather familiar environmental issues. In asking how quickly the earth might recover, once human beings vanished, Weisman needs to answer the question of how profoundly our species has altered the pla net's natural biological systems - the classic environmentalist concern.
But rather than straightforwardly bemoaning the amount of plastic dumped in our seas, for instance, Weisman discusses how long it might take for microbes to evolve that would be able to biodegrade the artificially synthesised organic molecules in modern plastics. Rather than lament the destruction of almost the entirety of Europe's old-growth forest, he asks how long it might take for the remnant fragment of "wildwood" left in Poland to begin to recolonise abandoned farmland.
Instead of getting angry about genetic engineering, he explores how persistent the novel genes that humans have inserted into everything from fish to potatoes might be in situations where natural evolutionary pressures are restored. The subtext, while never explicitly addressed, is a profoundly moral one, exploring the human relationship with nature and our place on this planet: the true meaning of life.
Much of the book is based on first-hand field research, and Weisman's observational talents as a journalist are evident from the very first page. At one point we find him aboard a research vessel in the remote Pacific Line Island archipelago, surrounded by sharks. At another, he's in low-lying England, investigating recolonised agricultural land which was experimentally fenced off in the 1870s. The prose is vivid and lucid, every sentence carefully crafted.
Whereas most environmental books sag under the weight of their accumulated bad news, The World Without Us seems refreshingly positive. Yes, biodiversity has crashed and Mother Nature has been banished to the sidelines by the rapacious demands of industrial civilisation and an exploding human population; but once the pressure is eased, the earth quickly begins to bloom again.
This is probably the only place that I would quibble: not with the engaging optimism, but because Weisman possibly overemphasises the ephemeral nature of humanity's planetary impact. It is true that New York in a few centuries would revert to forest, and in a future ice age, a few tens of millennia hence, what is left of the Empire State Building and its companions would be ground to dust by the advancing glaciers.
But humanity is a profound geological force, and the earth can preserve even the most fragile markers for tens of millions of years. When imprints of fish scales and bird feathers survive in fossils over long spans of geological time, it is hard to believe that traces of humanity would not litter the planet pretty much for ever more. Some of our lasting legacy may get sucked down into subduction zones at the edges of plates and melted in the planet's hot mantle, but much of the rest - from fossilised laptops to a nutrient spike in ocean sediments - will survive for as long as the earth does. Like the rather longer Cambrian and Cretaceous, the Anthropocene will be one of the world's most transformative geological eras, as this book elegantly shows.
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report this comment Carl Jones 03 October 2007
I`d like to take this in the opposit direction. Humans are the dominant life on this little rock...well, we`ll hold this until the gates at Area 51 are flung open to the public.
Try looking at the Earth as a seed and that everything on Earth is there to be used to support the dominant life form...US!
We didn`t develope our minds so that we could live in caves....all of human knowledge has brought some form of environmental cost. The Sun and Earth are not forever. But we humans could be. While we are occupied with doubts of doom and self doubt. This book is but an outward sign, that some members of the human race are having a bit of a breakdown.
Mark Lynas
Published 27 September 2007
1 comment
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The World Without UsAlan Weisman Virgin Books, 336pp, £20
It takes a lot to make us environmentalist writers turn green, if you'll excuse the pun. But every once in a while, someone who is not obviously from our camp comes up with an idea that is so lateral and clever, so powerfully evocative and masterfully executed that the only appropriate response is fervent envy. Such is my response to The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, an award-winning American journalist whose previous books involve topics as varied as the US border with Mexico, a sustainable village in war-torn Colombia, and his own family's tortured Jewish history.
The stated premise of this book is very simple: what would happen if humans disappeared overnight? This sets the stage for a fascinating exploration of the durability of human civilisation, and the natural landscapes on which it has been built. Manhattan Island, Weisman reveals, was once traversed by more than 40 brooks and streams. If pumping systems in the subway ceased and the foundations of New York's skyscrapers began to corrode, in not too long a time Lexington Avenue would once again become a river, while deer might browse among the tall hardwood trees where Broadway once lay.
The odd discursion into structural engineering aside, the genius of this book lies in its fresh approach to some otherwise rather familiar environmental issues. In asking how quickly the earth might recover, once human beings vanished, Weisman needs to answer the question of how profoundly our species has altered the pla net's natural biological systems - the classic environmentalist concern.
But rather than straightforwardly bemoaning the amount of plastic dumped in our seas, for instance, Weisman discusses how long it might take for microbes to evolve that would be able to biodegrade the artificially synthesised organic molecules in modern plastics. Rather than lament the destruction of almost the entirety of Europe's old-growth forest, he asks how long it might take for the remnant fragment of "wildwood" left in Poland to begin to recolonise abandoned farmland.
Instead of getting angry about genetic engineering, he explores how persistent the novel genes that humans have inserted into everything from fish to potatoes might be in situations where natural evolutionary pressures are restored. The subtext, while never explicitly addressed, is a profoundly moral one, exploring the human relationship with nature and our place on this planet: the true meaning of life.
Much of the book is based on first-hand field research, and Weisman's observational talents as a journalist are evident from the very first page. At one point we find him aboard a research vessel in the remote Pacific Line Island archipelago, surrounded by sharks. At another, he's in low-lying England, investigating recolonised agricultural land which was experimentally fenced off in the 1870s. The prose is vivid and lucid, every sentence carefully crafted.
Whereas most environmental books sag under the weight of their accumulated bad news, The World Without Us seems refreshingly positive. Yes, biodiversity has crashed and Mother Nature has been banished to the sidelines by the rapacious demands of industrial civilisation and an exploding human population; but once the pressure is eased, the earth quickly begins to bloom again.
This is probably the only place that I would quibble: not with the engaging optimism, but because Weisman possibly overemphasises the ephemeral nature of humanity's planetary impact. It is true that New York in a few centuries would revert to forest, and in a future ice age, a few tens of millennia hence, what is left of the Empire State Building and its companions would be ground to dust by the advancing glaciers.
But humanity is a profound geological force, and the earth can preserve even the most fragile markers for tens of millions of years. When imprints of fish scales and bird feathers survive in fossils over long spans of geological time, it is hard to believe that traces of humanity would not litter the planet pretty much for ever more. Some of our lasting legacy may get sucked down into subduction zones at the edges of plates and melted in the planet's hot mantle, but much of the rest - from fossilised laptops to a nutrient spike in ocean sediments - will survive for as long as the earth does. Like the rather longer Cambrian and Cretaceous, the Anthropocene will be one of the world's most transformative geological eras, as this book elegantly shows.
Post this article to
Digg
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1 comment from readers
report this comment Carl Jones 03 October 2007
I`d like to take this in the opposit direction. Humans are the dominant life on this little rock...well, we`ll hold this until the gates at Area 51 are flung open to the public.
Try looking at the Earth as a seed and that everything on Earth is there to be used to support the dominant life form...US!
We didn`t develope our minds so that we could live in caves....all of human knowledge has brought some form of environmental cost. The Sun and Earth are not forever. But we humans could be. While we are occupied with doubts of doom and self doubt. This book is but an outward sign, that some members of the human race are having a bit of a breakdown.
///////////////////The spirit of Che Guevara
I F Stone
Published 20 September 2007
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Taken from The New Statesman 20th October, 1967Next month marks the 40th anniversary of Che Guevara’s execution at the hands of the CIA and the Bolivian army. The 39-year-old Che was, at the time of his death, already an icon and a legend to a generation of young, revolutionary romantics across the world. But this incisive appraisal by the radical American journalist I F Stone recognised that, while Che’s influence would be lasting, his commitment to change through violence was perilous to his cause.
The word that first came to mind on meeting Che Guevara was simplicity. I had been waiting to see him for some time late at night in the Cuban National Bank building in Havana. It was in 1960, during my first visit to Castro’s Cuba. Che was then Economics Minister, a heady post for a wandering Latin-American revolutionary. Waiting with me in the anteroom of his office on the top floor of the building were several members of the old oligarchy — suave, plump, cynical and smooth. Guevara greeted me with a warmth I found puzzling until I learned that, a few years earlier, the US Embassy in Mexico had accidentally touted me to him and his fellow revolutionaries. Che told me the Embassy had bought up every copy it could find of my Hidden History of the Korean War when it appeared in Spanish translation. The remaining copies were all the more widely read and appreciated, perhaps too highly. Che greeted me as a fellow rebel against Yanqui Imperialism.
He was the first man I had ever met whom I thought not just handsome but beautiful. With his curly reddish beard, he looked like a cross between a faun and a Sunday-school print of Jesus. Mischief, zest, compassion and a sense of mission flashed across his features during our interview. But what struck me most of all was that he seemed in no way changed, corrupted or intoxicated by the power which had suddenly fallen into his hands. I met his lovely dark-eyed Cuban wife for a moment before we sat down with an interpreter to a midnight supper. He spoke with that utter sobriety which sometimes masks immense apocalyptic visions. His were beginning to be nothing less than a hemispheric showdown with the Colossus of the North, and its final overthrow. He was already pictured in the US press as the foremost communist in the Castro entourage. Talking with him, this soon seemed another reflection of our simplistic North American political universe. There were no communist clichés in his conversation. What might have been taken for them by an American reporter was his deep distrust of the US. This had multiple roots. He was an Argentine, i.e. a citizen of that Latin country which regards itself as our chief rival in the hemisphere. He had seen at first hand how crudely and brutally we had dealt with Latin aspirations in Guatemala, after the long night of a dictatorship whose horrors we had regarded with equanimity so long as no hand was laid on the United Fruit Company; in Guatemala as in Cuba, land reform had set the alarm bells ringing in Washington. As a doctor in self-imposed exile from Peronist Argentina, he had begun by practising medicine among the Indians in Bolivia and knew the misery of the continent at first hand.
Men become revolutionaries for diverse, often surprising and sometimes unworthy motives — rancour, dislike of themselves, greed for power, or a hatred of stupidity which easily becomes contempt for humanity itself, since stupidity is its most salient characteristic. In Che one felt a desire to heal, and pity for suffering. It was out of love, like the perfect knight of medieval romance, that he had set out to do combat with the powers of the world. This was Galahad, not Robespierre. The focus of his political concern was not Moscow but his America — from the Mexican sierra to the Argentine pampas, the America we forget when we ethno-centrically use the word in the US. Of our talk on that first visit I remember the vivid relic of a fragile hope soon dissipated. ‘We are going to be the Tito of the Caribbean,’ Che said of the Castro regime. ‘You get along with Tito and you will gradually reconcile yourself to getting along with us.’ But accommodation with a rebel from the Russian empire was quite different from accommodation with a rebel from the American empire. American policy soon demonstrated that Castro would have to be Krushchev’s protégé if he were to survive our animosity.
On my second visit some weeks before the Bay of Pigs there was no more talk of Titoism. Now Che spoke with enthusiasm of what he had seen in his grand tour of the Soviet bloc. What impressed him most was the reconstruction of North Korea and the quality of its industrial output — here was a tiny country resurrected from the ashes of American bombardment and invasion. Perhaps he saw this as a preview of Cuba’s fate.
I was not surprised when the news broke that Che had suddenly disappeared and it was said that he had set out on a wider mission. He was not made for a desk. He was a permanent revolutionary. Even Cuba may have become too sedate for his taste. In the early years of the Castro regime, when heretical communist and anti-communist works could still be seen in Havana’s book stores and there was still some faint hope of a peaceful settlement with the US, Latin exiles who had come to Cuba for support already began to complain that there was a palpable cooling off of revolutionary ardour. Like the Polish Jacobins come fruitlessly for aid to revolutionary Paris, they began to feel that the interests of the new state in the international order had begun to blur revolutionary fraternity. For the revolution, as for the church, the world is full of snares and pitfalls: the unavoidable minimum of intercourse with things-as-they-are, the need for trade to earn one’s bread, th necessity for some diplomatic relations, the lure of friendly hands in ideologically repugnant places (like Franco’s to Castro), and the logic of statecraft which demands weapons, technology, compromise and duplicity. With the assumption of temporal power, the Revolution, like the Church, enters into a state of sin. One can easily imagine how this slow erosion of pristine virtue must have troubled Che. He was not a Cuban and could not be satisfied with building freedom from Yanqui Imperialism in one Latin country only. He thought in continental terms. In a sense he was, like some early saint, taking refuge in the desert. Only there could the purity of the faith be safeguarded from the unregenerate revisionism of human nature.
Che will live with Bolivar and Juarez among the heroes of the Latin hemisphere. His little book on guerrilla war has become not only a bible for revolutionaries but the anti-bible of the Green Berets of Fort Bragg where John F. Kennedy initiated the training of Special Forces as the Janissaries of the counter-revolution. But few in my own country pay much attention to those sober reflections with which Che begins his practical and unrhetorical little handbook. He says that where there is some hope of peaceful change, even if only the simulacrum of democracy, the conditions are not yet ripe for successful guerrilla action. This is in perfect accord with the ideology of 1776, but everywhere, out of politically mindless military logic or anti-communist panic, we ourselves — as most recently in Greece — lay down the welcome mat for our adversaries.
I have always felt there was something anachronistic in Castro’s Cuba and in Che's mission to build a new and bigger Sierra Maestra in the Andes. The musical accompaniment of the Castro revolution was Chopin and the spirit of Garibaldi hung over it. It had all the naïve hopefulness and humanitarian faith of the 19th century. It had not heard of Hiroshima or of IBM’s new Sinai, the computer. The hard realities of the hemisphere are very different from the revolutionary clichés of Castroism. How to create new managerial and scientific cadres to replace the old oligarchies and American aid? How do you inspire and organise for hard work over many hungry years an illiterate mass quite different in its conditioning and past from, let us say, the immemorially productive people of China? For after the music of the revolution dies down, everybody still has to go to work.
There are riches at hand easily seized, but how do you cash in the swag? If you expropriate US oil in Venezuela, how do you sell it in a world where the cartel controls the tankers and the outlets, and the Soviet bloc has surpluses of its own to sell? If you expropriate US copper in Chile, how do you refine and sell it under US blockade or attack? How many Cubans can Moscow support in a style to which they would otherwise never hope to become accustomed? How do you persuade to the revolutionary course men of good will appalled by the harvest of hatred in our time — the crematoriums, the liquidation of the kulaks, Hiroshima and Nagasaki? These mass murders were committed under the influence of some vision that this was the way to the earthly paradise. How convince us that a New World can only be built after another outburst of bloodshed?
I recognise the Shelleyan purity of Che’s intentions. I mourn the prospect that he may be dead. I welcome the fact that new Che's will spring up to carry on his work - for without the fear of revolutionary challenges neither the Latin oligarchy nor Washington will make peaceful change possible. But I believe their success would be out of all proportion to the terrible cost, and I believe this romantic handful underestimates the power, flexibility and intelligence of the American colossus. Yet when I see the follies my beloved country cornmiss in Vietnam and elsewhere, the billions we spend on ‘defence’, while hate, misery and despair build up to volcanic proportions in our black slums, I wonder whether Che’s long-range estimates may not prove more realistic than mine. Lyndon Johnson may precipitate what Che Guevera alone could never accomplish.
I F Stone
Published 20 September 2007
Print version
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Taken from The New Statesman 20th October, 1967Next month marks the 40th anniversary of Che Guevara’s execution at the hands of the CIA and the Bolivian army. The 39-year-old Che was, at the time of his death, already an icon and a legend to a generation of young, revolutionary romantics across the world. But this incisive appraisal by the radical American journalist I F Stone recognised that, while Che’s influence would be lasting, his commitment to change through violence was perilous to his cause.
The word that first came to mind on meeting Che Guevara was simplicity. I had been waiting to see him for some time late at night in the Cuban National Bank building in Havana. It was in 1960, during my first visit to Castro’s Cuba. Che was then Economics Minister, a heady post for a wandering Latin-American revolutionary. Waiting with me in the anteroom of his office on the top floor of the building were several members of the old oligarchy — suave, plump, cynical and smooth. Guevara greeted me with a warmth I found puzzling until I learned that, a few years earlier, the US Embassy in Mexico had accidentally touted me to him and his fellow revolutionaries. Che told me the Embassy had bought up every copy it could find of my Hidden History of the Korean War when it appeared in Spanish translation. The remaining copies were all the more widely read and appreciated, perhaps too highly. Che greeted me as a fellow rebel against Yanqui Imperialism.
He was the first man I had ever met whom I thought not just handsome but beautiful. With his curly reddish beard, he looked like a cross between a faun and a Sunday-school print of Jesus. Mischief, zest, compassion and a sense of mission flashed across his features during our interview. But what struck me most of all was that he seemed in no way changed, corrupted or intoxicated by the power which had suddenly fallen into his hands. I met his lovely dark-eyed Cuban wife for a moment before we sat down with an interpreter to a midnight supper. He spoke with that utter sobriety which sometimes masks immense apocalyptic visions. His were beginning to be nothing less than a hemispheric showdown with the Colossus of the North, and its final overthrow. He was already pictured in the US press as the foremost communist in the Castro entourage. Talking with him, this soon seemed another reflection of our simplistic North American political universe. There were no communist clichés in his conversation. What might have been taken for them by an American reporter was his deep distrust of the US. This had multiple roots. He was an Argentine, i.e. a citizen of that Latin country which regards itself as our chief rival in the hemisphere. He had seen at first hand how crudely and brutally we had dealt with Latin aspirations in Guatemala, after the long night of a dictatorship whose horrors we had regarded with equanimity so long as no hand was laid on the United Fruit Company; in Guatemala as in Cuba, land reform had set the alarm bells ringing in Washington. As a doctor in self-imposed exile from Peronist Argentina, he had begun by practising medicine among the Indians in Bolivia and knew the misery of the continent at first hand.
Men become revolutionaries for diverse, often surprising and sometimes unworthy motives — rancour, dislike of themselves, greed for power, or a hatred of stupidity which easily becomes contempt for humanity itself, since stupidity is its most salient characteristic. In Che one felt a desire to heal, and pity for suffering. It was out of love, like the perfect knight of medieval romance, that he had set out to do combat with the powers of the world. This was Galahad, not Robespierre. The focus of his political concern was not Moscow but his America — from the Mexican sierra to the Argentine pampas, the America we forget when we ethno-centrically use the word in the US. Of our talk on that first visit I remember the vivid relic of a fragile hope soon dissipated. ‘We are going to be the Tito of the Caribbean,’ Che said of the Castro regime. ‘You get along with Tito and you will gradually reconcile yourself to getting along with us.’ But accommodation with a rebel from the Russian empire was quite different from accommodation with a rebel from the American empire. American policy soon demonstrated that Castro would have to be Krushchev’s protégé if he were to survive our animosity.
On my second visit some weeks before the Bay of Pigs there was no more talk of Titoism. Now Che spoke with enthusiasm of what he had seen in his grand tour of the Soviet bloc. What impressed him most was the reconstruction of North Korea and the quality of its industrial output — here was a tiny country resurrected from the ashes of American bombardment and invasion. Perhaps he saw this as a preview of Cuba’s fate.
I was not surprised when the news broke that Che had suddenly disappeared and it was said that he had set out on a wider mission. He was not made for a desk. He was a permanent revolutionary. Even Cuba may have become too sedate for his taste. In the early years of the Castro regime, when heretical communist and anti-communist works could still be seen in Havana’s book stores and there was still some faint hope of a peaceful settlement with the US, Latin exiles who had come to Cuba for support already began to complain that there was a palpable cooling off of revolutionary ardour. Like the Polish Jacobins come fruitlessly for aid to revolutionary Paris, they began to feel that the interests of the new state in the international order had begun to blur revolutionary fraternity. For the revolution, as for the church, the world is full of snares and pitfalls: the unavoidable minimum of intercourse with things-as-they-are, the need for trade to earn one’s bread, th necessity for some diplomatic relations, the lure of friendly hands in ideologically repugnant places (like Franco’s to Castro), and the logic of statecraft which demands weapons, technology, compromise and duplicity. With the assumption of temporal power, the Revolution, like the Church, enters into a state of sin. One can easily imagine how this slow erosion of pristine virtue must have troubled Che. He was not a Cuban and could not be satisfied with building freedom from Yanqui Imperialism in one Latin country only. He thought in continental terms. In a sense he was, like some early saint, taking refuge in the desert. Only there could the purity of the faith be safeguarded from the unregenerate revisionism of human nature.
Che will live with Bolivar and Juarez among the heroes of the Latin hemisphere. His little book on guerrilla war has become not only a bible for revolutionaries but the anti-bible of the Green Berets of Fort Bragg where John F. Kennedy initiated the training of Special Forces as the Janissaries of the counter-revolution. But few in my own country pay much attention to those sober reflections with which Che begins his practical and unrhetorical little handbook. He says that where there is some hope of peaceful change, even if only the simulacrum of democracy, the conditions are not yet ripe for successful guerrilla action. This is in perfect accord with the ideology of 1776, but everywhere, out of politically mindless military logic or anti-communist panic, we ourselves — as most recently in Greece — lay down the welcome mat for our adversaries.
I have always felt there was something anachronistic in Castro’s Cuba and in Che's mission to build a new and bigger Sierra Maestra in the Andes. The musical accompaniment of the Castro revolution was Chopin and the spirit of Garibaldi hung over it. It had all the naïve hopefulness and humanitarian faith of the 19th century. It had not heard of Hiroshima or of IBM’s new Sinai, the computer. The hard realities of the hemisphere are very different from the revolutionary clichés of Castroism. How to create new managerial and scientific cadres to replace the old oligarchies and American aid? How do you inspire and organise for hard work over many hungry years an illiterate mass quite different in its conditioning and past from, let us say, the immemorially productive people of China? For after the music of the revolution dies down, everybody still has to go to work.
There are riches at hand easily seized, but how do you cash in the swag? If you expropriate US oil in Venezuela, how do you sell it in a world where the cartel controls the tankers and the outlets, and the Soviet bloc has surpluses of its own to sell? If you expropriate US copper in Chile, how do you refine and sell it under US blockade or attack? How many Cubans can Moscow support in a style to which they would otherwise never hope to become accustomed? How do you persuade to the revolutionary course men of good will appalled by the harvest of hatred in our time — the crematoriums, the liquidation of the kulaks, Hiroshima and Nagasaki? These mass murders were committed under the influence of some vision that this was the way to the earthly paradise. How convince us that a New World can only be built after another outburst of bloodshed?
I recognise the Shelleyan purity of Che’s intentions. I mourn the prospect that he may be dead. I welcome the fact that new Che's will spring up to carry on his work - for without the fear of revolutionary challenges neither the Latin oligarchy nor Washington will make peaceful change possible. But I believe their success would be out of all proportion to the terrible cost, and I believe this romantic handful underestimates the power, flexibility and intelligence of the American colossus. Yet when I see the follies my beloved country cornmiss in Vietnam and elsewhere, the billions we spend on ‘defence’, while hate, misery and despair build up to volcanic proportions in our black slums, I wonder whether Che’s long-range estimates may not prove more realistic than mine. Lyndon Johnson may precipitate what Che Guevera alone could never accomplish.
/////////////////////The problem is that Mongolia has some of the best and largest gold and copper deposits in the world and since 1997, with a massive acceleration since 2000, the government has been selling licences to mine these at a huge rate. The area of Mongolia covered by mining licences is now about 45%, and they are going for a relative song - $20 a hectare for a 30-year license is typical.
One ‘stock watch’ website I consulted just before conference said that Mongolia is literally a gold mine for investors because of, "the incredible ease and speed of securing exploration and mining licenses." There are literally hundreds of mining companies involved in this new gold rush, but most of the biggest offenders are based in Canada, Australia, South Africa and London.
Not all of these licenses have been exploited yet, but those that have are causing immense problems already – literally carving chunks out of Mongolia’s beautiful landscapes and leaving a legacy of pollution that will be there for years to come. More than 2,000 of the country’s small and medium sized rivers have disappeared, due to mining operations digging up their sources, and there is widespread soil and water pollution from the mercury and cyanide used in the mining and extraction process.
Only 20% of the land used for mining is rehabilitated afterwards, and the film is full of images of gorgeous hills and valleys being turned into dried up, uninhabitable rubble.
The environmental problems will become bigger and more irreversible if something isn’t done soon, so Perevsuren Shah is aiming to draw international attention to the issue in order to increase pressure on the irresponsible mining companies and the irresponsible government that is encouraging the destruction.
He also wants help to bring environmental scientists and investigators to Mongolia measure properly the pollution and damage caused so far. He is a soil scientist himself, and much of the research shown in the film is his own, but it’s too big a job for one team and they badly need more investment in their projects.
We talked about how the Greens in the UK can help and plan to make contact with other green groups to help get this onto the agenda here. One obvious task is to sort out a full translation of the film, so anyone out there with skills in both Mongolian and English, please get in touch.
One ‘stock watch’ website I consulted just before conference said that Mongolia is literally a gold mine for investors because of, "the incredible ease and speed of securing exploration and mining licenses." There are literally hundreds of mining companies involved in this new gold rush, but most of the biggest offenders are based in Canada, Australia, South Africa and London.
Not all of these licenses have been exploited yet, but those that have are causing immense problems already – literally carving chunks out of Mongolia’s beautiful landscapes and leaving a legacy of pollution that will be there for years to come. More than 2,000 of the country’s small and medium sized rivers have disappeared, due to mining operations digging up their sources, and there is widespread soil and water pollution from the mercury and cyanide used in the mining and extraction process.
Only 20% of the land used for mining is rehabilitated afterwards, and the film is full of images of gorgeous hills and valleys being turned into dried up, uninhabitable rubble.
The environmental problems will become bigger and more irreversible if something isn’t done soon, so Perevsuren Shah is aiming to draw international attention to the issue in order to increase pressure on the irresponsible mining companies and the irresponsible government that is encouraging the destruction.
He also wants help to bring environmental scientists and investigators to Mongolia measure properly the pollution and damage caused so far. He is a soil scientist himself, and much of the research shown in the film is his own, but it’s too big a job for one team and they badly need more investment in their projects.
We talked about how the Greens in the UK can help and plan to make contact with other green groups to help get this onto the agenda here. One obvious task is to sort out a full translation of the film, so anyone out there with skills in both Mongolian and English, please get in touch.
//////////////////////////
By MIKE SULLIVAN Crime Editor
Published: 11 Oct 2007
A TV channel showing pictures of missing children was launched yesterday to help trace some of the 150,000 kids who go missing in the UK every year.
Images of children will be shown on screens at GPs’ surgeries, hospitals and, in future, at shopping centres.
Missing Kids TV has been backed by Gerry and Kate McCann, who have tried to highlight the plight of youngsters who disappear since their daughter, Madeleine, vanished in May this year.
By MIKE SULLIVAN Crime Editor
Published: 11 Oct 2007
A TV channel showing pictures of missing children was launched yesterday to help trace some of the 150,000 kids who go missing in the UK every year.
Images of children will be shown on screens at GPs’ surgeries, hospitals and, in future, at shopping centres.
Missing Kids TV has been backed by Gerry and Kate McCann, who have tried to highlight the plight of youngsters who disappear since their daughter, Madeleine, vanished in May this year.
////////////////////14 September 2007New Insights Into Early Star Formation
A new computer model suggests that the formation of the first stars depended crucially on the nature of dark matter. Intriguingly, the model also suggests that some of the very first stars that ever formed can still be found in the Milky Way galaxy today. The simulations of the formation of these early stars factored in both so-called "cold", as well as "warm", dark matter.
Reporting in Science, The Durham University researchers say that with slow moving "cold dark matter" particles, the first stars formed in isolation, with just a single, larger mass star forming per developing spherical dark matter concentration. In contrast, for faster-moving "warm dark matter", a large number of stars of differing sizes formed at the same time in a big burst of star formation.
According to the researchers, these bursts occurred in long, thin filaments. "These filaments would have been around 9000 light years long, which is about a quarter of the size of the Milky Way galaxy today. The very luminous star burst would have lit-up the dark universe in spectacular fashion," said Durham's Dr Liang Gao.
Stars forming in the cold dark matter would have been massive and short-lived. However, the warm dark matter model predicts the formation of low-mass stars as well as larger ones and the scientists say the low mass stars could have survived until today.
The research could bring scientists closer to finding out more about the nature of dark matter. "A key question that astronomers often ask is 'where are the descendants of the first stars today?' The answer is that, if the dark matter is warm, some of these primordial stars should be lurking around our galaxy," said co-researcher Dr Tom Theuns.
The models also suggest new ways that black holes could form. The team hypothesises that collisions between stars in the dense filament in the warm dark matter scenario lead to the formation of the seeds for such black holes. "Our results raise the exciting prospect of learning about the nature of dark matter from studying the oldest stars. Another tell-tale sign could be the gigantic black holes that live in centres of galaxies like the Milky Way. They could have formed during the collapse of the first filaments in a universe dominated by warm dark matter," Dr Theuns noted.
A new computer model suggests that the formation of the first stars depended crucially on the nature of dark matter. Intriguingly, the model also suggests that some of the very first stars that ever formed can still be found in the Milky Way galaxy today. The simulations of the formation of these early stars factored in both so-called "cold", as well as "warm", dark matter.
Reporting in Science, The Durham University researchers say that with slow moving "cold dark matter" particles, the first stars formed in isolation, with just a single, larger mass star forming per developing spherical dark matter concentration. In contrast, for faster-moving "warm dark matter", a large number of stars of differing sizes formed at the same time in a big burst of star formation.
According to the researchers, these bursts occurred in long, thin filaments. "These filaments would have been around 9000 light years long, which is about a quarter of the size of the Milky Way galaxy today. The very luminous star burst would have lit-up the dark universe in spectacular fashion," said Durham's Dr Liang Gao.
Stars forming in the cold dark matter would have been massive and short-lived. However, the warm dark matter model predicts the formation of low-mass stars as well as larger ones and the scientists say the low mass stars could have survived until today.
The research could bring scientists closer to finding out more about the nature of dark matter. "A key question that astronomers often ask is 'where are the descendants of the first stars today?' The answer is that, if the dark matter is warm, some of these primordial stars should be lurking around our galaxy," said co-researcher Dr Tom Theuns.
The models also suggest new ways that black holes could form. The team hypothesises that collisions between stars in the dense filament in the warm dark matter scenario lead to the formation of the seeds for such black holes. "Our results raise the exciting prospect of learning about the nature of dark matter from studying the oldest stars. Another tell-tale sign could be the gigantic black holes that live in centres of galaxies like the Milky Way. They could have formed during the collapse of the first filaments in a universe dominated by warm dark matter," Dr Theuns noted.
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Get Rich Slowly
How to Eat at a Swanky Restaurant Without Blowing Your Monthly Food Budget
Posted: 12 Oct 2007 07:00 AM CDT
Kris and I joined some friends last weekend for a 40th birthday celebration at Bluehour, a swanky Portland restaurant. While the other couples spent $150 to $250 for their meals, we escaped paying only $52, including tip. We hadn’t planned to do this, but our unintentional parsimony taught us a few ways to save the next time we dine out at a fancy restaurant:
Eat a healthy snack before you go to take the edge off your hunger. Kris often does this — I do not. It enables her to look at a menu and order reasonably. I, on the other hand, get carried away when I feel ravenous, and order too much.
Order something that takes time to eat. Some foods — such as pasta — are easy to eat. You can scarf them down quickly. At Bluehour, we ordered a couple of fiddly things: a cheese fondue and a plate of cheeses, olives, and meats. While everybody else was finished with dinner, we were still working on ours. Eating slowly allows you to reach a feeling of fullness.
Order appetizers as your meal. We’ve begun to do this more often. Last weekend’s fondue and cheese plate were considered appetizers, but they were delicious and filling. The fondue for two with artisan bread and apples cost just $12. An alternative on the menu was six-bites-worth of bacon-wrapped scallops for $16. The scallops would definitely be an appetizer, while the fondue could actually serve as a meal.
Watch what you drink. We each had one cocktail on Saturday. They were expensive: $10 each. (It was a very swanky place.) Imagine how quickly our expenses would have increased if we’d had more than one drink. Better yet, imagine how much we could have saved if we’d only had water. Decide which you’d enjoy more: a cocktail starter, a glass of wine with dinner, or perhaps dessert and coffee. Choose one rather than splurging on all three.
Order in sequence. If the restaurant will allow, order and eat your appetizer before you place your order for an entree. If, as is usual, you order everything at the same time, it’s easy to order more food than you need. Be patient if you try this technique, the kitchen will need time to prepare your entree once the order has been placed. (Also consider increasing your tip if you order in sequence — you’re displacing the table for a longer period of time.)
Share food. At Gino’s, our favorite restaurant, the portions are enormous. Splitting an entree gives us enough food for two. Many restaurants charge an extra few bucks for doing this, but it’s much less than paying for a second unnecessary entree. At Bluehour we were able to share our food without extra charge.
Take food home. An excellent way to stretch your restaurant dollar is to actually plan to take home leftovers. Kris and I have done this for years, yet I don’t know how wide-spread the practice is. If you do this, keep it in mind when browsing the menu; some foods keep and reheat much better than others.
Skip (or share) dessert. I’ve heard of people keeping a bar of dark chocolate (or other sweet treat) in their purse or car. Often, you crave just a bite or two of something sweet — so satisfy that craving on your way home. Or, if you can agree on a choice with your dinner companions, split a dessert.
Many of the same tips for saving money at a restaurant will also help to keep your calories in check. Restaurant portions are huge. There’s nothing worse than blowing both the budget and your waistline, only to be filled with regret later. By making smart choices to split meals, skip courses and limit alcoholic or sugary beverages, you can relish the experience while keeping your frugal self-respect.
Get Rich Slowly
How to Eat at a Swanky Restaurant Without Blowing Your Monthly Food Budget
Posted: 12 Oct 2007 07:00 AM CDT
Kris and I joined some friends last weekend for a 40th birthday celebration at Bluehour, a swanky Portland restaurant. While the other couples spent $150 to $250 for their meals, we escaped paying only $52, including tip. We hadn’t planned to do this, but our unintentional parsimony taught us a few ways to save the next time we dine out at a fancy restaurant:
Eat a healthy snack before you go to take the edge off your hunger. Kris often does this — I do not. It enables her to look at a menu and order reasonably. I, on the other hand, get carried away when I feel ravenous, and order too much.
Order something that takes time to eat. Some foods — such as pasta — are easy to eat. You can scarf them down quickly. At Bluehour, we ordered a couple of fiddly things: a cheese fondue and a plate of cheeses, olives, and meats. While everybody else was finished with dinner, we were still working on ours. Eating slowly allows you to reach a feeling of fullness.
Order appetizers as your meal. We’ve begun to do this more often. Last weekend’s fondue and cheese plate were considered appetizers, but they were delicious and filling. The fondue for two with artisan bread and apples cost just $12. An alternative on the menu was six-bites-worth of bacon-wrapped scallops for $16. The scallops would definitely be an appetizer, while the fondue could actually serve as a meal.
Watch what you drink. We each had one cocktail on Saturday. They were expensive: $10 each. (It was a very swanky place.) Imagine how quickly our expenses would have increased if we’d had more than one drink. Better yet, imagine how much we could have saved if we’d only had water. Decide which you’d enjoy more: a cocktail starter, a glass of wine with dinner, or perhaps dessert and coffee. Choose one rather than splurging on all three.
Order in sequence. If the restaurant will allow, order and eat your appetizer before you place your order for an entree. If, as is usual, you order everything at the same time, it’s easy to order more food than you need. Be patient if you try this technique, the kitchen will need time to prepare your entree once the order has been placed. (Also consider increasing your tip if you order in sequence — you’re displacing the table for a longer period of time.)
Share food. At Gino’s, our favorite restaurant, the portions are enormous. Splitting an entree gives us enough food for two. Many restaurants charge an extra few bucks for doing this, but it’s much less than paying for a second unnecessary entree. At Bluehour we were able to share our food without extra charge.
Take food home. An excellent way to stretch your restaurant dollar is to actually plan to take home leftovers. Kris and I have done this for years, yet I don’t know how wide-spread the practice is. If you do this, keep it in mind when browsing the menu; some foods keep and reheat much better than others.
Skip (or share) dessert. I’ve heard of people keeping a bar of dark chocolate (or other sweet treat) in their purse or car. Often, you crave just a bite or two of something sweet — so satisfy that craving on your way home. Or, if you can agree on a choice with your dinner companions, split a dessert.
Many of the same tips for saving money at a restaurant will also help to keep your calories in check. Restaurant portions are huge. There’s nothing worse than blowing both the budget and your waistline, only to be filled with regret later. By making smart choices to split meals, skip courses and limit alcoholic or sugary beverages, you can relish the experience while keeping your frugal self-respect.
////////////////////ANS THE BIG Qs=http://www.lhc.ac.uk/
///////////////////For me (I can only speak for myself, not for Thomas) "mind" is the subjective contents and functions of consciousness, which is a form of perception, in my view, and "self-consciousness " or "self-awareness" is the brain perceiving it's own perception. "Interiority" is just another word for subjectivity, in my view. I am a "brain chauvinist" -- or at least a nerve chauvinist -- I suspect that a living being must have a brain or neural network in order to be conscious of a mind. I am not a pan-psychist, althought the physicist David Bohm suggested that subatomic particles have "mind-like" attrubutes.Namaste, cousins,Brer Davananda, the Pink Pantheist
//////////////////CHILD COUGH MEDS TAKEN AWAY
There is very little evidence that cough and cold medicines are effective in young children, and there are increasing fears that they may be dangerous. From 1969 to 2006, at least 45 children died after taking decongestants, and 69 died after taking antihistamines, the industry association has said.
Many of these children were injured after their parents mistakenly gave them too much, either because they did not realize that products from two different makers contained identical medicine, or the parents measured doses poorly. But there are growing reports that even children given recommended quantities of the medicines are at risk.
The Poison Control Center of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia recently reported on four cases of prolonged hallucinations in children as old as 6 who were given recommended doses of the medicines.
With almost no evidence that they are effective and growing worries that they may be unsafe, a group of prominent pediatricians petitioned the agency earlier this year to consider banning the drugs’ use in young children.
Among the products being withdrawn are Dimetapp Decongestant Infant Drops, Little Colds Decongestant Plus Cough, Pediacare Infant Drops Decongestant, Robitussin Infant Cough DM Drops, Triaminic Infant and Toddler Thin Strips Decongestant, and Tylenol Concentrated Infant Drops Plus Cold and Cough.
Dimetapp and Robitussin are products of Wyeth; Little Colds is made by the Medtech Products unit of Prestige Brands Holdings; Tylenol and Pediacare are made by the McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit of Johnson & Johnson; and Triaminic is made by Novartis.
None of the companies’ stocks moved significantly today; by midafternoon Novartis and Johnson & Johnson were trading slightly higher, and Wyeth and Prestige Brands slightly lower.
Many of these children were injured after their parents mistakenly gave them too much, either because they did not realize that products from two different makers contained identical medicine, or the parents measured doses poorly. But there are growing reports that even children given recommended quantities of the medicines are at risk.
The Poison Control Center of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia recently reported on four cases of prolonged hallucinations in children as old as 6 who were given recommended doses of the medicines.
With almost no evidence that they are effective and growing worries that they may be unsafe, a group of prominent pediatricians petitioned the agency earlier this year to consider banning the drugs’ use in young children.
Among the products being withdrawn are Dimetapp Decongestant Infant Drops, Little Colds Decongestant Plus Cough, Pediacare Infant Drops Decongestant, Robitussin Infant Cough DM Drops, Triaminic Infant and Toddler Thin Strips Decongestant, and Tylenol Concentrated Infant Drops Plus Cold and Cough.
Dimetapp and Robitussin are products of Wyeth; Little Colds is made by the Medtech Products unit of Prestige Brands Holdings; Tylenol and Pediacare are made by the McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit of Johnson & Johnson; and Triaminic is made by Novartis.
None of the companies’ stocks moved significantly today; by midafternoon Novartis and Johnson & Johnson were trading slightly higher, and Wyeth and Prestige Brands slightly lower.
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HI-RES JPEGSize: 465 kb
This Hubble image shows the gigantic nebula NGC 3603 located in the Carina spiral arm of the Milky Way, about 20 000 light-years from the Solar System.
NGC 3603 hosts one of the most prominent, massive, young clusters in the Milky Way. Hubble has been observing this prime location for star formation studies.
HI-RES JPEGSize: 465 kb
This Hubble image shows the gigantic nebula NGC 3603 located in the Carina spiral arm of the Milky Way, about 20 000 light-years from the Solar System.
NGC 3603 hosts one of the most prominent, massive, young clusters in the Milky Way. Hubble has been observing this prime location for star formation studies.
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