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Tonight's editor: boatsie
Please remember to rec the BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership: 71
All views expressed by today's editor do not necessarily represent those of eKos or eKos listed diarists.
Photo: One Difference
Meet Lerato
12-year old Lerato used to spend her days gathering water for her sick mother and little brother. For three hours every day she would collect the water that her family needed. Now a PlayPump has been installed and Lerato can spend those precious hours at school working towards her dream of becoming a nurse.
What would you do if you heard that 1 billion people in the world lack access to clean water? Well, if you're Duncan Goose, you quit your full time job, roll up your sleeves, recruit your friends and launch One Difference
It's been a challenging, but sometimes quite magical, journey for the team behind One. What started off as three men and a dog working late into the evenings and every weekend suddenly started to snowball into a team of like-minded people who wanted to help out in any way they could. Wives, friends, former colleagues, companies, friends of friends, friends of friends of friends. It seemed like whoever heard about the project wanted to make a difference too.
This is what happens when you ask the wonderful people in the One Difference community if they want to make a film about One. Awesome!
In my inbox today from Médecins Sans Frontières ...
EMERGENCY: PAKISTAN
After the worst floods in Pakistan in 80 years, the situation is desperate. Official figures now speak of more than 3 million people who have been directly affected by the floods, with more than 1,400 confirmed deaths. Millions of people have been left homeless, isolated, in desperate need of shelter, water, food and medical attention. Roads and bridges have been washed away and many of the areas are unreachable via land, leaving the inhabitants isolated and in desperate need of assistance.
The immediate challenges for MSF are to expand activities relating to the provision of clean water and to improve hygienic conditions, in order to prevent the spread of acute respiratory infections and potentially fatal epidemics of diarrhoea and cholera.
MSF’s response in Pakistan relies on the donations it receives. With your help, we can dispatch more help to the millions in need. But we need you to act immediately.
TAKE 15 SECONDS TO MAKE A DONATION AND SAVE A LIFE.
THANK YOU FOR HELP.
Super Bowl? ... Life without the loo?
Sink Toilet. "I'm not sure if this is a water fountain or a place to wash your hands. I did both to be safe." By goldiestereo
"Imagine a life where bathrooms don't exist." Afterall, just a little over four generations ago, today's pressurized plumbing and sewage treatment plants didn't exist and it wasn't until the 1920's that building codes in America required a 5x7 foot room with three fixtures: sink, toilet and shower/tub. Given the growing population, massive water shortages and the ruptured sewage infrastructure, tomorrow's bathroom IS going to have to change. According to a recent article in Dwell magazine, one option 'the super bowl' a combo sink-toilet is a likely option, introducing a process in which, post flush "the fresh water refilling the tank runs out through the sink tap, down the drain, and into the tank." Link This sink-toilet has a flush volume of 3 to 4.5 liters, offering sufficient water for a good hand washing.
"The user merely turns around, straddles the toilet bowl or rests a knee on the seat, and tries to get the soap rinsed off before the end of the tank-refilling cycle." Gardiner, Virginia, Super Bowl, Dwell Magazine, July/August. p. 116 Link
Some other interesting facts around H20 and toilets:
* 90% of future populations will undoubtedly reside in urban slums with no plumbing solutions.
* Using squat toilets cuts back on appendicitis, diverticulosis, constipation
* a typical non regulated urban sewage sludge mix contains tens of thousands of toxic chemical compounds - some radioactive -
* AND the flush toilet was NOT invented by British Engineer Thomas Crapper; the word 'crap' did not evolve from his name but has an Old English origin.
Watch the video featuring industrial designer and London–based Dwell contributor Virginia Gardiner on "the ins and outs of her low-cost, low-tech concept for a waterless toilet system."
WarrenS made a New Year's Resolution to write a letter advocating climate action every day. The result is over two hundred letters to congresspeople, newspapers, President Obama, and more. Warren has even had letters published in the New York Times and the Boston Globe.
Learn Warren's letter writing technique here. And be sure to steal his stuffand visit his blog.
Tonight, however, in lieu of publishing one of his letters, ekos is pushing a story he sent our way: Moynihan to Erlichmann, 1969 (paraphrased): "If we don't do something about atmospheric CO2 we're gonna be in deep shit by 2000." Good thing we were paying attention back then, and moved rapidly to end our reliance on fossil fuels.
1969 Global Warming White House Memo
FOR JOHN EHRLICHMAN
As with so many of the more interesting environmental questions, we really don't have a very satisfactory measurement of the carbon dioxide problem. On the other hand, this very clearly is a problem, and, perhaps most particularly, is one that can seize the imagination of persons normally indifferent to projects of apocalyptic change.
The process is a simple one. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has the effect of a pane of glass in a greenhouse. The CO2 content is normally in a stable cycle, but recently man has begun to introduce instability through the burning of fossil fuels. At the turn of the century several persons raised the question whether this would change the temperature of the atmosphere. Over the years the hypothesis has been refined, and more evidence has come along to support it. it is now pretty clearly agreed that the CO2 content will rise 25% by 2000. this could increase the average temperature near the earth's surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit. This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Good bye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter. We have no data on Seattle.
It is entirely possible that there will be countervailing effects. For example, an increase of dust in the atmosphere would tend to lower temperatures, and might offset the CO2 effect. Similarly, it is possible to conceive fairly mammoth man-made efforts to countervail the CO2. (E.g., stop burning fossil fuels.)
In any event, I would think this is a subject that the Administration ought to get involved wit. It is a natural for NATO. Perhaps the first order of business is to begin a worldwide monitoring system. At present, I believe only the United States is doing any serious monitoring, and we have only one or two stations.
Hugh Heffner knows a great deal about this, as does also the estimable Bob White, head of the U.S. Weather Bureau. (Teddy White's brother.)
Then Environmental Pollution Panel of the President's Science Advisory Committee reported at length on the subject in 1965. I attach their conclusions.
Daniel P. Moynihan
deep purple iris backlit Where Has All the Water Gone? (The American Prospect May 27, 2008)
Three scenarios collude toward disaster. Scenario one: The world is running out of freshwater. It is not just a question of finding the money to hook up the 2 billion people living in water-stressed regions of our world. Humanity is polluting, diverting, and depleting the Earth’s finite water resources at a dangerous and steadily increasing rate. The abuse and displacement of water is the ground-level equivalent of greenhouse-gas emissions and likely as great a cause of climate change.
(snip)
Imagine a world in 20 years in which no substantive progress has been made to provide basic water services in the Third World; or to create laws to protect source water and force industry and industrial agriculture to stop polluting water systems; or to curb the mass movement of water by pipeline, tanker, and other diversions, which will have created huge new swaths of desert.
(snip)
... the verdict is in and irrefutable: The world is facing a water crisis due to pollution, climate change, and surging population growth of unprecedented magnitude. Unless we change our ways, by the year 2025 two-thirds of the world’s population will face water scarcity. The global population tripled in the 20th century, but water consumption went up sevenfold. By 2050, after we add another 3 billion to the population, humans will need an 80 percent increase in water supplies just to feed ourselves. No one knows where this water is going to come from.
Scientists call them "hot stains" — the parts of the Earth now running out of potable water. They include northern China, large areas of Asia and Africa, the Middle East, Australia, the Midwestern United States, and sections of South America and Mexico.
The worst effects on people are, of course, in those areas of the world with large populations and insufficient resources to provide sanitation. Two-fifths of the world’s people lack access to proper sanitation, which has led to massive outbreaks of waterborne diseases. Half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by people with an easily preventable waterborne disease, and the World Health Organization reports that environmental factors, including contaminated water, are implicated in 80 percent of all sickness and disease worldwide. In the last decade, the number of children killed by diarrhea exceeded the number of people killed in all armed conflicts since World War II. Every eight seconds, a child dies from drinking dirty water. (read entire article)
Annoucements
Stop by and rec tonight’s EcoAdvocates: The Misfits, featuring soothsayer99 on Mustangs and Burros Remain at Risk and rb137 on Alaskan Wolves: Preditors or Prey?
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If you would like to make an announcement for an upcoming diary or event, please e-mail us at eKos350atgmaildotcom. Please send us formatted HTML!
(All times Eastern!)
eKos diaries from Wednesday, August 04, 2010 |
Diary | Author | Time (Eastern) | Tags |
EcoAdvocates: The Misfits | soothsayer99 | 8:02:31 PM | EcoAdvocates, Free-Roaming Wild Horses and Burros, Alaskan Wolves, BLM, endangered species |
It's time for truth to become a movement. | Bill McKibben | 8:01:08 PM | climate change, eKos |
The Death Gyre in the Gulf: What BP Didn't Want People to See | Ellinorianne | 4:51:23 PM | Recommended, BP, Gulf, Oil, Spill |
Defend the Gulf...in your own home... | luckydog | 4:25:10 PM | NOLA, BP, Gulf, Oil, Spill |
Put Solar On It | LaughingPlanet | 4:09:09 PM | solar, senate, climate change, ekos, solar energy |
BOE Chief Thinks Drilling Moratorium Can End Early | Something the Dog Said | 9:48:34 AM | BP Oil Disaster, Deepwater Horizon, Bureau of Ocean Energy, Obama Administration, Michael Bromwich |
BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership: 71 | Gulf Watchers | 6:55:34 AM | Recommended, Oilpocalypse, BP, Deepwater Horizon, Gulf of Mexico, LMRP |
Energy COOL: Direct Wafer | A Siegel | 5:47:09 AM | ekos, solar energy, solar pv, solar, energy |
Final Update #11: The Week in Editorial Cartoons (Part I) - Dropping the Ball | JekyllnHyde | 12:51:18 AM | Recommended, The Week in Editorial Cartoons, eKos, Climate Change, Democratic Party |
eKos diaries from Tuesday, August 03, 2010 |
Diary | Author | Time (Eastern) | Tags |
Great news! The Earth will survive climate change! | shpilk | 11:04:56 PM | ekos, perspective |
Environmental security: Gulf drill ban ends early? Action alert! | RLMiller | 7:31:44 PM | ekos, oilpocalypse, environmental security |
The blindness of conventional wisdom | A Siegel | 6:11:08 PM | ekos, rant, energy, climate, 2010 election |
On the death of 17 chickens | mwmwm | 1:35:05 PM | ethics, death, chickens, farming, animals |
Organic Agriculture and Genetic Engineering Work Together In Surprising Ways | NourishingthePlanet | 12:57:36 PM | biotech, disease, disease prevention, genetic engineering, organic |
UPDATE: Corexit and the Oil That's Left, the Worst is Yet to Come | Ellinorianne | 9:49:45 AM | Recommended, Oil, Dispersants, BP, Corexit |
BP Catastrophe/Static Kill Day Liveblog Mothership: 70 | Gulf Watchers | 6:24:04 AM | Recommended, Oilpocalypse, BP, Deepwater Horizon, Gulf of Mexico |