Well we wanted to post this video from Bangladesh where there is already entire communities of Bangladeshi who are becoming climate refugees as a result of the increase in glacial melt in the Himalayas. Regardless of when the glaciers will be completely decimated they’re current rate of melt is having effect on the people downstream. Our hope is to show that regardless of the fact that the numbers are still not completely in, the effects are being felt and this is a serious situation.

Please have a look at this video.

A bit of a back story…

For the past 40 years the island of Bohla in Bangladesh has experienced annual flooding and massive erosion fed by rapid melting of the Himalayan glaciers. The rising water level has forced entire communities on Bhola to relocate, making them climate refugees.  An estimated 1,000,000 people been removed from the island since 1995. The erosion and flooding is now taking its toll on the mainland as well. Experts suggest that as many as 20 million Bangladeshis will have to relocate due to the rising waters.

In Permuteran Bali, the reefs that been healthy for thousands of years were decimated between 1998 and 2002 by a combination of coral bleaching due to climate change, fish bombing and cyanide fishing.

Fish bombs are created from a mixture of Kerosene and fertilizer, then stuffed into glass bottles where a fuse is added. When the bomb is thrown into the water it can quickly kill large amounts of fish, but the shockwave from the blast also destroys the surrounding coral.

Cyanide fishing is method used to stun and catch fish live either for aquariums for restaurants that allow their patrons to pick out the live exotic fish they would like to eat. To make the cyanide mixture the fisherman simply crushes up a few tablets of sodium cyanide and mixes it with some water in a plastic bottle. He then dives down, finds a fish and gives it a little squirt to incapacitate it. Of course the residual cyanide stays in the water killing coral reefs and algae.

In May of 2002 Dr. Thomas Goreau and his partner the late Wolf Hilbertz travelled to Permuteran to try and revitalize the area by installing Biorock. Here is the full story and the amazing results.

Charles Moore at TED

My time in the Republic of the Marshall Islands only solidified the need for proper waste management at home. Like most developing countries there are few systems to properly deal with garbage. When you add the challenges of living on small islands the problem is only intensified. The RMI’s garbage removal and recycling programs are so poor that a huge amount of the trash ends up in the ocean. It’s incredibly difficult to be standing on a beautiful beach watching the surf wash up all sorts of plastics and waste.

Many locals claim that until recently all products used in the RMI were biodegradable. Most garbage consisted of coconut husks or other food scraps that were that were thrown on the beach. What wasn’t swept away by the tides naturally broke down and the shores remained clean. Unfortunately many of the products used today aren’t readily biodegradable while culturally the ocean remains as a garbage disposal.

RMI wash up trash.

These images stuck with me when I returned home and I had a heightened sense of accountability for my own garbage. During the trip to the Marshall’s my wife moved us into a new apartment (I am still working this one off) but I was happy to find that our new building has and excellent recycling system. I am able to sort and recycle almost all of my non-biodegradable garbage.

This leads me to the real reason for this post: my Christmas present. Somehow my wife must have read my mind or intuited my newfound crusade to battle waste. Her gift was an Naturemill indoor composter. I have to say that it is pretty damn cool. It’s small and compact and best of all it works inside. It comes complete with everything to get started including wood pellets, and baking soda.

All that was needed were food scraps, which there were plenty of after the holidays, and one cup of dirt, which I got from the flowerbed at the McDonald’s across the street. I can officially claim that my composter is powered by Mickey D’s.

Naturemill 101.

Once I cut up all of the food waste I simply added two tablespoons of baking soda, one cup of wood pellets or saw dust and one cup of dirt. For irony’s sake you can get your dirt from the Golden Arches  but the jury’s still out as to if it matters where the dirt comes from.

Once rolling the unit heats the food waste and churns it every four hours. The nutrient rich compost tea collects in a tray below, which you can use to feed your plants. The composter uses very little electricity and isn’t smelly, save for when you open it. The only downside is that the motor is a touch noisy when it goes off at night. All in all, the thing is amazing. Between the unit and our building’s recycling I have yet to change our garbage bag in two weeks.

Good old reliable dirt

According to a story in the New York Times yesterday, The Federated States of Micronesia, located west of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, is challenging a proposed refit of a Czech coal fired power plant. The F.S.M has built their case on the grounds that emissions from the plant are a threat to their country’s existence. The appeal marks one of the first occasions where a nation has stepped into a realm most often reserved for activist groups. The plant is the largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions in the Czech Republic. Sounds like shutting the plant down might be good the F.S.M and the Czech republic. Read the full story in the New York Times here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/business/global/19power.html

On a side note, World Bank statistics show that the Czech Repubic’s G.D.P. came in at            $215, 355, 000, 000 USD in 2008, while the F.S.M’s was a measly $247, 000,000 USD. It will interesting to see how a comparatively well off nation will respond to one that has little power on the world stage.

We’re pulling for you Micronesia.

It’s easy and by far the best thing you can do today: http://www.wyclef.com/

This video was produced by a group called the UK Youth Climate Coalition. The coalition has banded together to spread awareness and establish global changes that will overcome the environmental challenges. This video recaps their visit to Copenhagen for COP15 and, in my opinion, says all the right things.

They point out that the leaders at COP15 are in pursuit of their own individual interests and failed to address climate change. But what is more important is that the video also focuses on what was achieved–for a period of two weeks the entire planet was focused on the subject of the environment. Accomplishments like this should be recognized. The event stirred the public’s conscience and challenged us to question environmental accountability of our leaders and ourselves.

I believe that there is a revolution stirring. This video and more over at UKYCC are an example of how the youth are motivated to over initiate positive change (visit their site here and you’ll see). This energy and momentum is a further indication that we are entering a very exciting decade. We could very look back at as the ten years that spawned the global environmental revolution and returned balance to the planet’s climate.

There’s no doubt that humans can and will find ingenuous ways to overcome the challenges we face as a result of climate change. After spending just a few minutes on the internet searching for alternative housing solutions for the people living on low lying islands, we came across numerous innovative projects that are designed to take advantage of the most uninhabited space on our planet: the oceans. You can see the benefit that these solutions would provide for the Marshallese who are losing their land to the rising tide.

This company from Germany has taken the concept of house boating to the next level, drafting floating homes that have all of the comfort and elegance of today’s designer metropolitan apartment.

An article posted by inhabitat.com shows a pretty cool concept project that looks at how we can take advantage of ocean’s space by building floating cities. Ideally you could have entire community living above the ocean. It even includes a green roof heli pad.

Now the question is,  for all of this adaptive innovation, at what cost does it come? What beauty, culture and life would be lost to these rising tides?

By the time we are in a position to engineer a community of this scale, island countries like the Marshall’s may already have been swallowed up by the rising sea level.

We are very limited in our ability to compete with the craftsmanship of Mother Nature and there is no doubt that much will be lost with the passing of these islands. No matter how hard we try we won’t be able to recreate them with concrete and steel. For all the steps that we take forward we should recognize the value of the past.

Standing on the deck of one of these proposed floating super-structures in the Pacific would bring about some sense of connection with mother nature, but how would it compare to this scene on Arno Atoll in the Marshall Islands?