AN EXCERPT:   Fish were everywhere.

Then, just a hundred years, later — except for a little patch near Labrador — they’re gone, or drastically diminished.

This is, of course, a macro picture. These bigger, popular fish are mostly not extinct. There are just way, way fewer of them, and while this happens in a blink of an eye in our animation, from the human point of view, the decline took four human generations.

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http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/05/15/152752465/too-many-cooks-not-enough-fish-whats-the-solution

AN EXCERPT:    Humanity is outstripping the Earth’s resources by 50 percent — essentially using the resources of one and a half Earths every year, according to the 2012 Living Planet Report, produced by conservation agency the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Colby Loucks, the director of conservation sciences at WWF, compared humanity to bad houseguests.

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47421743/ns/technology_and_science-science/#.T7JQslJ0Qw1

AN EXCERPT:  President Obama is attending a fundraiser today in New York City that will be hosted by Hamilton E. James, the chief operating officer and president of Blackstone. The financial firm Blackstone is “one of the world’s largest private equity fund businesses,” according to its website…But ironically, Obama today is using Mitt Romney’s background in private equity as the basis of an attack on his Republican rival.

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http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-attacks-private-equity-raises-funds-private-equity-leaders_644470.html

AN EXCERPT:  In a world of large numbers, try wrapping your head around these digits: This year, the world is expected to set a new record with the sale of 80 million cars and trucks.

Let me put that into perspective:

– Annual sales: 80 million

– Daily sales: 219,178

– Sales per hour: 9,132

– Sales per minute: 152

So by the time you’re done reading this, the world will have added another 300-500 vehicles.

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http://www.cnbc.com/id/47375478

AN EXCERPT: 

GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.

Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.

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AN EXCERPT:

The Department of the Interior notes that it is the manager of 20 percent of the nation’s public lands, and a further 1.7 billion acres off its shores. Interior notes that, “Within the Southwest, our Bureau of Land Management manages 30 million acres of public lands with solar potential. We have set aside 1,000 square miles of BLM lands in 24 solar-energy study areas and are evaluating these lands for appropriate development.”

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management, which has taken the point on fast-track solar projects, notes that as of the end of 2010, “there are 147 solar applications pending. Of those, 104, comprising 1 million acres, are “first-in-line” applications.” (As of the end of 2011, the total number of major renewable energy projects approved by Interior totaled 22, including 13 commercial-scale solar energy facilities).

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http://thesunrunner.com/2012/05/09/the-death-of-tourism-in-our-area-and-across-the-american-west

Study on vast area of rubbish in north Pacific ocean finds it is beginning to impact on ecosystem

AN EXCERPT:

Marine insects in the Pacific Ocean are changing their reproduction habitats in response to environmental changes from the accumulating amount of rubbish in the north Pacific subtropical gyre, also known as the great Pacific garbage patch, according to researchers.

The patch has increased in size 100 times since the 1970s, including its swath of microplastic particles of less than 5mm diameter. The marine insect Halobates sericeus, a species of water skater, is now using the microplastic debris as a surface to lay its eggs, said a study by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California San Diego, published on Wednesday in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/09/pacific-garbage-patch-insect-habits

The way in which the U.S. media ignores such events speaks volumes about how we perceive them

AN EXCERPT:  “Yesterday, I noted several reports from Afghanistan that as many as 20 civilians were killed by two NATO airstrikes, including a mother and her five children. Today, the U.S. confirmed at least some of those claims, acknowledging and apologizing for its responsibility for the death of that family…At some point — and more than a decade would certainly qualify — the act of continuously killing innocent people, countless children, in the Muslim world most certainly does reflect upon, and even alters, the moral character of a country, especially its leaders. You can’t just spend year after year piling up the corpses of children and credibly insist that it has no bearing on who you are. That’s particularly true when, as is the case in Afghanistan, the cause of the war is so vague as to be virtually unknowable”

ZEPHYR NOTE: Glenn Greenwald is one of the last courageous journalists left in America…

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http://www.salon.com/2012/05/08/us_attack_kills_5_afghan_kids/singleton/

“very damn cool.  Click the image…

AN EXCERPT: 

A United Nations investigator probing discrimination against Native Americans has called on the US government to return some of the land stolen from Indian tribes as a step toward combatting continuing and systemic racial discrimination.

James Anaya, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, said no member of the US Congress would meet him as he investigated the part played by the government in the considerable difficulties faced by Indian tribes.

Anaya said that in nearly two weeks of visiting Indian reservations, indigenous communities in Alaska and Hawaii, and Native Americans now living in cities, he encountered people who suffered a history of dispossession of their lands and resources, the breakdown of their societies and “numerous instances of outright brutality, all grounded on racial discrimination”.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/04/us-stolen-land-indian-tribes-un