When world leaders meet in Rio de Janeiro next week for a conference on sustainable development, they will do so in an economic climate that continues to be marked in red, with high unemployment numbers, sovereign debt crises, and the threat of the Euro Zone’s disintegration. But according to a new report by the United Nations’ International Labour Organization (ILO) in collaboration with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), a promising economic strategy from here forward may come in shades of green. The study concludes that a net gain of as many as 60 million green jobs is waiting to be seized upon worldwide with broad implications for reducing poverty.

Just how opportunities to usher in a new green economy were squandered here in the United States over the past four years is by now a well-worn subject. According to Van Jones, President Obama’s former Special Advisor on Green Jobs, meaningful progress in this country would have required the Senate to follow the House in passing legislation that set a price on carbon. He tells PLANET that the $80 billion dollars in public investments devoted to green industries and projects under Obama was only the first step. While 2.4 million green jobs were added, as estimated by the Brookings Institute, Jones sees that as a small fraction of what might have been possible with the cooperation of Congress.

“Cap and trade would have given the private sector an incentive to play,” Jones said in an interview, suggesting that the business community
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There has been a fair amount of hot air circulating across the blogosphere in recent weeks about wind energy after certain media outlets erroneously reported that wind turbines actually contribute to global warming. To set the record straight, the study they cited from the University of Albany showed evidence that pockets of warmer air can exist in the vicinity of wind farms – no big surprise since temperature is tied to the speed at which molecules move. The leap to worldwide warming trends is a giant one and what would appear to be a false one at that.

This controversy is only the latest instance of blowback against one of the more promising forms of renewable energy. Whereas many reports tend to emphasize the limitations of wind technology, it’s worth highlighting the potential improvements being developed within the industry. The standard three-blade design, which rotates on a horizontal axis, has existed since an early model was built in the 1930’s USSR, and that turbine essentially relied on the same concept utilized when windmills first produced electricity decades earlier. Wind power in the 21st Century is shaping up to look a lot different, though. Here’s an overview of some unconventional new approaches.

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It is quite literally everywhere. It covers 70% of the Earth’s surface and accounts for approximately 60% of our own composition. The thought that we could be running out of water seems unimaginable, and yet the combination of overuse, contamination, and the effects on the water cycle posed by climate change likely makes water the most unstable and therefore the most valuable resource of the 21st Century. The UN estimates that 3.4 billion people may suffer water shortages by 2025, and the problem stands to worsen from there forward.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Jessica Yu illustrates in her new documentary that water strains are fast becoming a vital concern not simply for a portion of the world’s population but for just about all of us. She recently spoke to Planet about directing “Last Call at the Oasis” and the things she learned along the way:

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As an unwritten policy, Planet’s Greenspace features tend to steer clear of the hot-button political debates of the moment. Concern for our environment may have unavoidable political implications, but we’re generally more likely to use this page to provide photo depictions of the Appalachian Trail than reports from the campaign trail. This Earth Day, however, I’m breaking from tradition and using today’s column to make a rare endorsement.

After years of inaction on the pressing environmental issues of our time, the country needs a president with bold ideas and a vision for the long-term protection of our resources and lands. We need a president willing to talk about change in the context of climate. We need someone willing to think outside of the fossil fuel-powered box and “go big,” as they say, offering a shock to the system in the spirit of “Nixon goes to China.” It is for those reasons that I’m stepping outside the parameters of my own box to support Richard Nixon for president in 2012.

This April 22nd marks 18 years since Nixon died, so I suppose my endorsement has little value. Ignoring that complication, there’s also the fact that he resigned in disgrace the last time around. But let’s not forget the full legacy of our 37th president. Before Watergate, there was the Clean Water Act, which turns 40 later this year.

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Now that he’s approaching 83, Edward O. Wilson, the Harvard biologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, has decided the time is at hand to publish a culminating work that wraps up many of the things he’s spent his distinguished career studying and to once again put himself at the center of heated scientific debates. In truth, he’s probably energetic enough to continue well on into his nineties. We’d expect nothing less from the man who can credibly call himself the Darwin of the present day. The book, titled The Social Conquest of Earth, presents some of the important discoveries that Dr. Wilson has made in the subject of advanced social behavior, many of which have had their origins in the study of ant colonies.

It turns out that we have much in common with ants and a small number of additional insect species. Mainly, there’s our shared inclination to be altruistic toward others of our kind, a phenomenon known as eusociality. It’s that behavior that forms the basis for so much of our success, but its origins haven’t always been understood. Especially puzzling is its rareness. E.O. Wilson spoke to Planet about the themes explored in his new book, including the notion that exploiting our eusocial instincts may turn out to be the key to saving our planet.
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Like it or not, spring is arriving several weeks ahead of schedule in most places this year. The world outside began coming back to life long before the official start of the season and after the very mildest of winters. Time will tell if this is merely a freak aberration or a harbinger of the new normal to come. But since we’re able to venture back outside, the time is ripe to teach our children all about the natural wonders to be found out there. It’s the perfect opportunity to tell them about the events that take place throughout the cycle of the seasons, or at least what things used to be like.
     The recently released illustrated children’s book Outside Your Window is a guide to bird migrations, blooming flowers, foraging squirrels, and so many other yearly phenomena that repeat themselves annually in line with the internal rhythms of the planet. Nicola Davies’ descriptive vignettes and Mark Hearld’s Caldecott Medal-worthy drawings brilliantly capture the astounding magic tricks that the world produces with reliable ease. Whether the scene outside your child’s window is that of rainbows and bucolic pastures of sheep or simply tomatoes being grown on the fire escape, this book celebrates it with an equal measure of awe.
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Lucy Walker’s Academy Award-nominated documentary begins with the event itself. A massive torrent of ocean water engulfs a modest coastal town, destroying everything in its path. Onlookers are heard crying out from behind the camera’s position, situated safely upon a hilltop, as the slow-motion obliteration unfolds below. Some on the ridge race down to bring others to safety in the final moments before the water reaches them. A few of them are successful. Others lose their own lives trying.
     The found footage is a terrifying reminder of just how devastating the tsunami was when it hit the Pacific coast of Northern Honshu over a year ago now. The numbers are well-known: a 9.0 magnitude earthquake; a tidal wave that topped 130 feet in at least one location; 22,000 dead or missing. But to experience the disaster in real time lays bare the true magnitude, complete with the emotional trauma of watching an entire community of buildings, homes, cars, and the people who fill them whisked away in a matter of moments.
     “The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom,” which airs later this year on HBO, deals with the shock and heartbreak of that horrible event. But it’s what followed the tragedy that occupies the heart of the movie. Ms. Walker, the filmmaker responsible, tells Planet she was profoundly inspired by the boldness and grace she saw in the Japanese people, particularly in the evacuated disaster zone, as the country braced itself for a long painful recovery in the aftermath of so much destruction.
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So often it’s the night sky that captures the attention of people contemplating undiscovered forms of life. Yet stargazers might not always appreciate that however unlikely it is for any of us to learn of alien creatures from far off galaxies in our lifetimes, there is a much better chance for us to find never before seen living things in the oceans here on the planet Earth. So-called intelligent life probably isn’t lurking anywhere in the deep blue sea, except maybe in a ghost story or two, but it’s an accepted estimate within science that microbial diversity in the world’s oceans accounts for what are thought to be millions of unknown species of phytoplankton, including protists, small metazoans, viruses, and bacteria. If anyone intends to study these unknown microbes, though, they better do so before the organisms vanish along with eroding coral reefs and become characters in a ghost story of their own.
     Warmer and acidified waters linked to human activities are disrupting subsurface ecosystems and turning the mission to study oceanic microorganisms into a race against time. A 2010 report in the journal Nature found that planktonic populations have declined by 40 percent since 1950. Appraising their health and numbers has significance beyond mere curiosity. As a food source, pelagic plankton constitute the foundation of the maritime food web. And as emitters of oxygen and as carbon sinks, they play a vital role in regulating the content and temperature of our atmosphere.
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It’s not as if the food message hasn’t been delivered convincingly before. But when it’s coming from a monarch whose country’s delicacies include something called spotted dick and something else that looks suspiciously like bottled oil slick but is actually a yeast extract paste known as Marmite — well, it’s getting pretty clear that something has to be done about the way we eat.
     Last May, the Prince of Wales delivered a speech to an audience at the Future of Food Conference in Washington D.C. about the dire state of our food production systems. Making elegant quotation signs with his fingers as he spoke of “sustainability” and its prospects in “the real world,” His Royal Highness drew from his three decades of experience with the issue to present the case that in the 21st Century, as global population escalates and as strains on agricultural land intensify, it is time for us to begin rethinking how our food is produced. Soils are being depleted, water is becoming scarcer, and climate change stands to make these problems considerably worse.
     The lecture now takes the form of a newly published booklet, which environmental activist Laurie David was inspired to help put together after attending the conference and hearing the prince in person. She tells PLANET that just as she sat and listened to Al Gore’s presentation of the climate crisis years before and had the vision for a film, she was motivated in this more recent case to spread the prince’s speech more widely.
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Think of the seven manmade wonders of the world, the list that originally included the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Colossus of Rhodes. Each creation was magnificent in its own way – each a monument to the uniquely human capacity we have to alter the land around us at an astonishing scale.
     Now consider the photographs of Edward Burtynsky and the entirely different form of sweeping change they document. Whereas the pyramids at Giza are a celebrated symbol of the engineering feats of an ancient era, Burtynsky shows us the large-scale constructions of today, like the mounds of coal that power China’s Bao Steel factory outside of Shanghai. In contrast to those earlier pyramids, there’s a less exalted feeling conveyed by the sooty heaps that feed the burgeoning Chinese city’s relentless appetite for construction materials. The picture casts some doubt on the glory of our achievements, given the ecological price revealed. Yet the impact of such a representation is likely more complex.
     The photographer tells PLANET that the motivation behind his work is in large part to shed new light on our perceptions of the ever-changing places we inhabit: “I’m interested in how the medium of photography can help us see the world anew – to take the perceived ‘mundane world’ and move it into forms that challenge conventional notions of our world and landscape,” he says.

Slideshow
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