Nov 21, 09
A 3.3 Million-Year-Old Toddler
Zeray Alemseged is an Ethiopian paleontologist who claims responsibility for an amazing discovery: the world’s oldest child skeleton. In northeastern Ethiopia, he’s discovered a skeleton of a three year old girl which is 3.3 million years old. The skeleton, called Selam, is a member of the species Australopithicus. The fossil he discovered comes from an enormously remote part of the country - driving from Addis Ababa, it took 27 hours to drive the first 400km, and four hours to...
The National Agriculture Imagery Program
Modern agriculture is caught on an industrial treadmill that has polluted waterways, degraded soils, and devastated family farms. Agriculture, however, has begun the transition from an industrial to an information age, opening the door for a more sustainable system. The National Agriculture Imagery Program is a harbinger of this transition. The U.S. Department of Agriculture doles out billions of dollars in farm subsidies each year. In 2005 these subsidies topped $25 billion, yet the USDA...
Dropping Knowledge Launches a New Platform
About a year ago, we wrote about Dropping Knowledge, a self-described "educational resource and online network that connects people around the globe seeking to exchange ideas and solutions to the most pressing issues of our day." The plan was to aggregate the collective wisdom and insight of leading thinkers in an online public archive. At the time, Jamais asked the sensible question: all this is great, but why only ask the famous people for their opinion? What about the collective wisdom of...
The Happy Planet Index
What ultimate goals should we pursue? The Happy Planet Index offers and claims to measure one answer: happy, long lives within environmentally sustainable ecological footprints. The HPI ranks countires based on the reported happiness of their inhabitants, the length of their lives and the size of their ecological footprints. What they've found is that some nations (like Costa Rica, Cuba and Bhutan) which we think of as relatively underdeveloped are actually delivering longer, happier human...
Biocapacity and ecological footprints: graph, thousand words
We've written quite a bit about the concept of ecological footprints, but this graph, from the Footprint Network, pretty handily sums up the whole situation. As they say: The Earth's biologically productive area is approximately 11.2 billion hectares, or 1.8 global hectares per person in 2002 (assuming that no capacity is set aside for wild species). Global hectares are hectares of biologically productive area with world-average productivity. This standardised measurement unit, or...
Have Your Fish and Eat It, too
Eating sustainable food has inconsistent benefits. Being a sustainable chocolate eater, for example, usually means double the pleasure, since most of the fair trade, organic bars have superior flavor. Same goes almost unconditionally for eating organic, local produce and free range eggs. On the other hand, being a sustainable fish eater doesn't necessary hold the same delight, since the best way to eat fish sustainably is to not eat fish. For me, moderating my fish intake is not as...
Why Aren't Americans 'Very Worried' About the Climate?
It was barely six weeks ago that Time magazine warned us to "Be Worried. Be Very Worried" about climate change. So, why aren't we?
No News Today*
Today's issue of the UK paper, The Independent, was guest edited by Bono, with half of all revenues from the issue going towards the fight against AIDS in Africa by way of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS. Due to the size of this cover image (designed by Damien Hirst), you won't be able to see the note that corresponds with the star at the end of the title; it says, "No News Today (*) Just 6,500 Africans died today as a result of a preventable, treatable disease. (HIV/Aids)." The paper's been...
Worldmapper: A New World View
Another great post from our friend Geoff at BLDGBLOG leads us to Worldmapper, a series of dramatically distorted multi-colored maps that show the world according to statistical data, largely obtained from obscure UN reports that glean little attention. Cartographers Danny Dorling and Anna Barford of the University of Sheffield, UK, have created almost one hundred maps so far, which display information on population, migration, births, freight, imports and exports, and more. As they say in...
Compact Communities, Climate Change: Mapping the Answers
Compact communities fight climate change. We've said it before, but now Clark points us to some incredible visual evidence: CO2 maps of major cities, which show that, in general, the denser a neighborhood, the less the climate-changing impact of people who live there: What can we learn from these maps? Our personal transportation choices can and do impact greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change. Households in the city have easier access to public transportation systems, drive less...
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