I just wrote the other day on four Greenpeace activists, dubbed the “Arctic Defenders,” who climbed an oil rig in the Arctic and occupied it (hanging above cold Arctic waters) for 40 hours before coming down and being arrested by the Greenland police.

Their friendly Greenpeace colleagues and partners in Greenpeace’s ‘Go Beyond Oil’ tour were hoping that after being released from jail, the four would rejoin them on their boat, the Esperanza, and they’d complete the tour together. News is that won’t be the case. The four young men are being deported to their home countries now. Fellow ‘Go Beyond Oil’ activist Lisa writes:

Jens, Sim, Timo and Matt are flying home to Germany, USA, Finland and Poland respectively. Their personal belongings are still on board and they are going home in spare clothes bought for them by friends in Greenland. I’m sure they’ll be glad to see their families again but we’re really going to miss them on the ship and we haven’t finished our ‘Go Beyond Oil’ tour yet.

Yesterday we were hoping they would be back on board and Victor even made them a Welcome Home banner. I have sent them all the supportive messages people wrote us over the last few days by email.

For more on this story and a few photos of Jens, Sim, Timo and Matt, head on over to Greenpeace International’s ‘Making Waves’ blog.

Hopefully these four young activists accomplished enough in their time in the Arctic and through their heroic efforts there to lessen the amount of oil being pulled from the Arctic, burned, and turned into global warming pollution, and to help generate enough social consciousness and political will to stop deepwater oil drilling in the Arctic before we have oil disasters there that ruins its fragile and precious ecosystems.

Photo Credit: StephYo via flickr

One might not immediately draw a comparison between miners trapped underground and astronauts living aboard the International Space Station (ISS), but in fact, the two situations have much in common. Both involve isolated locations with multiple persons occupying very close quarters for long periods of time, and in which hazards to health and survival are always present.

The on-going plight of the 33 trapped, Chilean miners has made news around the world. Efforts to sustain and ultimately rescue the miners continue but by all accounts a full rescue from the mine will take months. The hourly and daily stress of trying to stay alive, and the uncertainty of a successful rescue, will exact a heavy psychological toll on these men. Recently, NASA adviser and UCSF professor of psychiatry Nick Kanas offered his key insights and advice on successfully coping with and surviving through this prolonged confinement.

NASA adviser and UCSF psychiatrist Nick Kanas, writing in an op-ed in Monday’s NY Times,  lists the crucial factors needed to maintain good mental health in isolated, confined spaces for prolonged periods of time, based upon space and extreme  habitation psychological studies…factors which will become more crucial to the Chilean miners as time passes.

Not surprisingly, professor Kanas gives top listing to staying connected via maintaining outside communication. Citing studies of  long-term Antarctic missions, the professor notes what came to be called the “third quarter” phenomenon, wherein depression and anxiety set in amongst crew members after a mission’s half-way point. The professor notes also that this was rare on board Space Station Alpha, and with the Russian Mir missions, due to the fact that crew members had near constant radio contact with people back on Earth–including members of their family and friends.

Kanas goes on to list other expected behaviors and factors that will come into play as the months proceed. One such behavior is displacement of miners’ anger onto “outsiders” (those above ground in the case of miners, or mission control in the case of astronauts).

Another likelihood is that the group of men will form sub-groups based upon similar interests and values. Such sub-groups could be the recipients of some of that displaced anger too, so Kanas emphasizes the importance of  seeing themselves, and those above ground, as all being members of a team, and, he stresses the need for supporting the leader (who is typically the most experienced member). Such leaders help maintain group integrity and positive mental attitude through both delegating tasks and monitoring the emotional states of crew members.

One often forgotten factor contributing to the stress and anxiety levels of these isolated miners is family. The miners will likely experience growing anxiety for the well-being of their families while they are trapped for months. Knowing that their families are being provided for–the responsibility of the company (or government if publicly owned)–during this crisis period will go a long way towards ameliorating this anxiety. Addressing these needs and behaviors will help promote a more positive mind-state in the miners, which is and will be key to their survival, almost as much as air and food.

Mining–especially metals mining–is perhaps the most dangerous heavy industry on Earth, claiming scores, sometimes hundreds, of lives every year. It is also one of the most polluting and environmentally destructive industries on Earth, with much of its international activity and regulation left to “self-policing” *. As of 2007, total market capitalization of mining companies was nearly 1 trillion dollars. Despite this, worker safety precautions and environmental protections are often lax or lacking, especially with operations in developing nations.

To read the full op-ed, click here

* via financial market oversight concerned with ‘socially responsible investing’.

top photo:  NASA/ESA – ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter, STS-116 mission specialist, in the Minus Eighty Degree Laboratory for ISS (MELFI) inside the Destiny laboratory.

bottom photo: TJBlackwell on wikipedia.org under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

chart: KVDP

Mexico City joins the growing number of cities worldwide who are banning plastic bags.

I recently wrote about the largest state in India banning plastic bags, and about bag monsters in California pushing for a California-wide plastic bag ban, and I just mentioned that the richest Hindu temple in the world has completely banned plastic in our Green Living, Clean Energy, and Green Activism News of the Week post this weekend.

Now, Mexico City is the latest to get on board the ban-plastic-bags bandwagon.

This is great news. Hopefully with such a big city as this making the move to ban these unsustainable bags, many more will feel confident that they can do so as well. As Beth Buczynski of Care2 writes, there are a lot of reasons to ban plastic bags from your municipality: “In good circumstances, high-density polyethylene will take more than 20 years to degrade. In less ideal circumstances (landfills or as general refuse), a bag will take more than 1,000 years to degrade, according to Reusit.com.” Additionally, plastic is being linked to more and more health and reproduction problems.

Great move by Mexico City and great to see the momentum building on this topic. Hope to see another story about another city, state or country stepping up and addressing this issue this week again.

Photo Credit: Eneas via flickr

Here’s my roundup of some great articles from around the Important Media network this last week. Hope you like them.

The Inspired Economist

Cindy Tickle had an interesting article on a recent interview (and especially one statement) made by John Elkington, Founder and Non-Executive Director of SustainAbility and Founding Partner and Director of Volans Ventures this week. The key statement is this:

“I feel that sustainability is going to be impossible unless we have a really major economic meltdown. And I’ve been feeling that we were headed toward some element of that for some years. I don’t think as yet we have had enough of that crisis to really force a re-think.”

Another good piece by Cindy reminds us that, every day, we vote with our money. We vote for what we want based on what we spend our money on. What are you spending your money on every day? Sustainably-grown food? Sustainable transportation? Or the opposite?

Ecopreneurist

Jennifer Kaplan had a helpful post this week on 12 great (and free!) energy efficiency resources. Definitely worth a look.

Green Building Elements

Glenn Meyers had a uplifting story this last week on the Salvation Army hiring 400 native Haitians to build shelters in the country, in order to “assist in relocating earthquake-displaced Haitians back to their home communities.” A nice read.

Eat.Drink…Better.

Some really good food and rainforest news this week comes from General Mills, via Becky Striepe. The major food company has committed to only using sustainable palm oil in its products, thanks to a good push from the Rainforest Action Network to do so. As Becky points out, you can also thank CEO Ken Powell for making this move. A good idea if you want to see more of this kind of stuff in the future.

Heather Carr also had a great piece I couldn’t pass up. on the amount of energy that is used in U.S. food production. Some big figures.

EcoLocalizer

Rhonda Winter had a story (plus video) on the always great Vandana Shiva (one of my heroes) calling out the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) for creating a global food crisis. A must-see post and video.

I also wrote one that I think is worth sharing here, a story on a new study put out by IBM looking at where the world’s most painful commutes are, and giving us a hint of just how painful they are.

Crafting a Green World

I love baby carriers that wrap around a mom or dad’s body. Perhaps because they remind me of my natural upbringing, or perhaps just because they are so warm and comfy looking. Julie Finn had a nice piece this last week on how to “recreate” some of your favorite baby carriers.

Feelgood Style

In addition to her EatDrinBetter posts, Becky Striepe has a great post this week on a hot new fashion trend, zero waste design. It includes a cool video on eco-friendly design, too.

And she has a nice one focused around a beautiful quote by Audrey Hepburn, on the topic of natural beauty, that I highly recommend checking out.

Fail Drill

Joshua S Hill wrote on the large amount of oil that still remains in the Gulf 5 days ago, 80% at the time.

And David Anderson had an interesting piece (plus video) on the “great” safety training oil spill cleanup workers received prior to getting into the oily, toxic mess.

Not exactly the most uplifting stuff, but important to be informed about.

Hope you enjoyed some of these articles from around the Important Media network. Check out any of those individual sites for more along those lines!

The global warming news I have to share this week transitions from the floods and fires we discussed last week to the issue of food and water (including how they are affected by floods and fires) and other effects of global climate change you may not be thrilled to hear about. Additionally, I have a few analytical pieces from Joe Romm and John Cook.

Global Warming and Food

First up is the always informative and fun Climate Denial Crock of the Week by Peter Sinclair. This is on the “CO2 is Plant Food” topic. Watch it below.

For more on this topic, you can also read Grist’s: “In a warmed world, even food won’t be as good for you.”

Also on the topic of food (and touched on in the video above), Matthew McDermott of TreeHugger recently wrote a post (I admit, it was over a week ago) on a new report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that shows how warming nighttime temperatures from climate change are reducing Asian rice yields (already).

One of the key conclusions from this report — we can expect “a net negative impact on yield from moderate warming in coming decades,” and the impact will be worse the worse the warming is.

Global Warming and Clean Drinking Water

Global warming isn’t just a threat to our food supply, it’s a threat to our clean water supply.

Susan Kraemer had a recent post on this issue on Blue Living Ideas where she pointed out that sea level rise and flooding alone (not to mention droughts) threaten the drinking water of 15 million Americans, and this is only in one region of the U.S.

This is the point of climate change that those informed on the issue are concerned about — it threatens the most necessary natural systems and resources that we all rely on to live on this Earth.

Global Warming and the Oceans

Another water issue related to global warming is in the oceans.

Directly from Climate Progress, here’s the intro to a not-so-uplifting piece by renowned scientist Carl Zimmer on “the looming oxygen crisis and it’s impact on our oceans.”

We’ve known for a while that we are poisoning the oceans and that human emissions of carbon dioxide, left unchecked, would likely have devastating consequences.  A 2010 study found thatoceans are acidifying 10 times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred.

And we’ve known those impacts might last a long, long time —a 2009 study concluded ocean dead zones “devoid of fish and seafood” are poised to expand and “remain for thousands of years.” Worse, a Nature study just found that global warming is already the likely cause of a 40% decline in the ocean’s phytoplankton:  “Microscopic life crucial to the marine food chain is dying out. The consequences could be catastrophic.”

Carl Zimmer, a noted science writer and winner of the 2007 NAS Communication Award, reveals some more chilling facts about the path our oceans may be on in this repost from Yale’s Environment 360 online magazine.

Fun Reads on Global Warming Science

One of global warming deniers’ least favorite pieces of science is the famous hockey stick graph. A recent (and unsuccessful) attempt to show there is no hockey stick in the climate change data, does not kill the hockey stick at all, but it does seem to kill the theory of a global “Medieval Warm Period,” a global warming denier favorite. A fun, in-depth read on this, comparing it to a murder case and frequently referencing The Usual Suspects, is available on Climate Progress — The Curious Case of the Hockey Stick that Didn’t Disappear. Part 1: The Police Lineup But who killed the Medieval Warm Period? He follows up on this piece with another good one as well — I went to a statistician fight and a hockey stick broke out Part 2, DeepClimate throws McShane and Wyner into the penalty box: “This is a deeply flawed study”

John Cook of Skeptical Science dove into another key topic of climate science recently — how the fact that CO2 lags temperature in previous climate change on our planet shows us that the CO2 emissions/global warming merry-go-round speeds means bad news not good (global warming isn’t happening) news. The general point is: “warming causes more CO2 and more CO2 causes warming.” Not good, and one clear reason why we need to get acting fast to reduce our CO2 emissions.

Joe Romm follows Cook’s piece on Climate Progress by pointing out some of the other amplifying global warming feedback loops scientists have firmly identified.

I know, not the most uplifting stuff this week. But, what can you expect?

As I also noted in my Green Living, Clean Energy, and Green Activism News of the Week post this week, I’m not sure yet if we will get a global warming roundup out next weekend, since I will be on vacation. But perhaps someone else will be interested in picking up this job. So, we’ll see.

Image Credits: tlindenbaum via flickr ; Ehsan Khakbaz via flickr; Climate Progress/Deltoid

In response to furious protests by local residents, Beijing city officials installed 100 high-pressure fragrance sprays to cover the stench generated from overflowing landfills.

Now, I’ve heard of everything. Nothing like using an over-sized Frebreze bottle to try and cover-up the trashy smell around your city. I can’t help believing there must be a better way to handle the city’s overflowing landfill problem. I know some folks prefer to use band-aids on this type of issue, but this is ridiculous.

According to The Guardian, these deodorant guns can spray dozens of liters of fragrance per minute over a distance of 50 meters. The guns are produced by several Chinese companies and based on German and Italian technology. Oh but wait, it gets even better. Beijing authorities say they will also apply more plastic layers to cover the landfill site. Huh?

China’s waste problem is expanding as fast as its economy, at about 8% each year. The local government estimates that Beijing’s 17 million people generate 18,000 tons of waste every day – 7,000 tons more than the capacity their municipal disposal plants. Even more frightening, less than 4% of Beijing’s garbage is recycled while 2% is burned. And the rest, well, is dumped in landfills.

So out come the giant deodorant guns… Am I the only one who thinks this is a very bad idea?

Follow Cindy on Twitter @ethicalbiz
Image credit: penwuji.com