In fact, this year the folks at Earthday.org are running a special initiative, inspired by all of those pledge and goal-tracking websites. They’re calling it ‘A Billion Acts of Green‘, and the idea is to get a billion people to pledge to doing something – anything – out of their normal daily routine that is good for the environment.

That could be going around and picking up trash, turning off the water when you’re brushing your teeth, or planting a tree.  Some companies have even gone so far as to pledge to plant a tree for every sale made on Earth Day, or to donate a portion of all sales made on Earth Day to a green charity.

So, they’ve haven’t quite made it.  They only have a little over 100 million pledges.  That’ll do for now, I guess.  You can either make your own pledge by clicking the button below, or you can browse the pledges made by others, and pledge the same thing – it’s the lazy man’s conservationism!

Whatever your motivation or energy levels, get involved this Earth Day.  The point of the Billion Acts of Green is not to get people changing the way they do things for one day – it’s to get people to pledge to change their behaviour slightly for the next year.  If 100 million people have already done it, then that will make quite a difference.

Well, here’s a little something you probably didn’t know about these gadgets:

Nearly all of them are manufactured using a substance called Coltan, or Columbite-tantalite.  It is used to make many small electronics components, most notably the batteries.  80% of the world’s Coltan comes from the war-torn region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), and I’m about to explain why you should do whatever you can to minimize your Coltan consumption.

Coltan – Just the Facts:

• Most of the world’s Coltan comes from the DRC, where the average wage is $10 a month, yet the price of Coltan can go as high as $650 a kilogram
• The Rwandan army, key instigators of the war in the Congo, made as much as $250 million selling Coltan in under 18 months, despite the fact that there is no Coltan in Rwanda
• Coltan and other minerals used in cell phone batteries are recyclable, yet tend to end up in landfills where they can poison groundwater, crops, livestock and local residents
• A recent UN report claimed that all parties involved in the war in the Congo have interests in Coltan mining, and derive a great deal of funding from its ‘systematic and extensive exploitation’ (source: http://www.cellular-news.com/coltan/)

In a nutshell, Coltan and other rare earth metals are the new blood diamonds.

There is a good chance that somebody was extorted, coerced or killed in order to get the minerals used to make your new iPhone. Profits from Coltan mining go directly to financing and equipping both sides in the conflict, extending it for years.  UN analysts have claimed that Coltan and oil exploitation are the main reasons that the war in the DRC continues to this day.

What’s worse is that the price of Coltan has recently slumped, leading to widespread unemployment, increased exploitation of local miners and a great deal less Coltan-derived money in circulation amongst the poorest people in the DRC. This means that miners have to work harder, for longer hours, in increasingly more dangerous war zones, to find enough Coltan to support their families.

The Alternative

It is very easy to recycle your old electronics. So easy, in fact, that there are a number of websites that will send you a free-post envelope for you to put your phone in, and then pay you cash directly into your bank account for your phone.  Unless it’s a relatively recent smart phone you won’t get much –$20 or so for a basic phone – but the point here isn’t really to make money.

What Happens to my Mobile?

• Most phones will be refurbished and re-sold.  This is the least carbon-intensive and inexpensive way to recycle phones and electronics, and reduces the amount of Coltan consumed worldwide
• If the phone is too old or damaged it can be dismantled and the rare earth metals used in its construction recycled, re-smelted and re-used.  This process is expensive, but carries a far lower cost in both carbon footprint and human suffering than mining and processing new Coltan.

Where Can I Send my Phone?

There are a number of companies who will send you a small amount of cash for your mobile, and recycle or re-use it.  Here are a few:

UK and Europe: http://www.envirofone.com

United States: http://www.recellular.com/

Canada: http://www.recyclemycell.ca/

If you’re interested in finding out more about Coltan exploitation, or find out how you can do your part to help alleviate the problem, here are some further reading resources:

• BBC News: Congo’s Coltan Rush
• Guns, Money and Cellphones
• Environmental and Social Impact of Cell Phone Batteries
• Coltan, Guerillas and Cellphones
• BBC News: Q&A on the Conflict in the DRC

In fact, with all the twists and turns on that track it’s actually quite a good simulation of real-world driving. You do more braking and turning than accelerating, and probably never reach the kinds of speeds you would on the average motorway.

The result? The Prius managed a respectable 17.2mpg – still far short of its advertised 50mpg. The BMW M3 (a high-performance racing car) did 19.4mpg.
Now, this isn’t the whole story by far.

An M3 is more carbon-intensive to produce than a Prius, but when you consider what goes into the making of a Prius battery alone, this difference is negligible considering that when you sell your M3 and buy a Prius, someone else just goes and buys your old M3.

More to the story

The message here is not that the Prius is inefficient. The message is that how you drive makes more difference than how much fuel your car uses as its baseline. If you are constantly accelerating and braking, instead of trying to keep as level a speed as possible, and you accelerate up hills, rev high when you take off, and drive in the wrong gear, you’re going to use more fuel regardless of what car you drive.

The sad truth is that most people have no idea how to drive economically, and so it doesn’t matter whether their car is powered by half-battery, half-fuel or a plutonium reactor.

Before we get onto which cars are really good for the environment, here are a few tips for driving more fuel efficiently:

• Always use the right gear.  If you have to put your foot down to slowly get the revs up, you’re using too much fuel.  Remember that the amount of fuel you’re using is directly proportional to how hard you’re pressing the accelerator.
• When approaching hills get your speed up as high as possible before the hill.  When you get to the hill keep your accelerator position constant.  You’ll lose a bit of speed, but use the minimum fuel.
• When going downhill put your car in gear (not in neutral) and take your foot off the accelerator.  Fuel consumption drops to zero. (Don’t do this with an automatic – you may damage the transmission)
• Keep a constant acceleration whenever possible.  If you’re one of those drivers who is constantly speeding up to close a gap in front, and then slowing down again creating one, you’re not only using as much as 30% more fuel, you’re contributing to ‘concertina effect’, which is the number one cause of traffic jams and there is surely a place already reserved for you in hell.

And if you Really Want to Save the Environment?

Buy diesel. Diesel cars are leaps and bounds more fuel efficient, and have far lower emissions, than their petrol counterparts.  The BMW Mini Cooper Diesel (blisteringly fast), the Smart Fortwo CDI (kind of cute) and the Volkswagen Polo Diesel (Car of the Year 2010) all have much greater fuel efficiency than the Prius, have lower emissions, are much less expensive, can be converted to biodiesel, have a far lower carbon footprint to manufacture – and are far nicer to look at and drive anyway.

The Verdict:

The Toyota Prius is a marketing gimmick and a guilt trip disguised as a green car (which some would say is an oxymoron anyway).  If you want your commute to have as little impact on the environment as possible, the Prius is one of the worst (and most expensive) ways to do it.

And the best way to save the environment?  Take the bus.

The implications may be much further reaching, however.  Radiation is dispersed easily by sea water, and there are risks that ocean currents may carry radiation particles around the world, affecting biospheres for thousands of miles in the direction of the currents.

The sample was taken only 300 metres out to sea from the Fukushima plant.  The plant’s reactor cooling system was irreversibly damaged by the massive earthquake that hit Japan on March 11, and since then radiation has been leaking into the surrounding environment in the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

Environmental Impact

Despite the high levels of radiation, the impact on the environment has been relatively minor up until now.  Workers are fighting to keep fresh water flowing into the reactors to prevent them from overheating.  However this means that the contaminated water must be pumped out, and this is slowly distributing radiation into the ocean and the local biosphere.

If the reactors are not brought under control, however, there are two major risks.  The first is that the reactors will catch fire, which will release huge quantities of airborne radiation into the atmosphere.  It is difficult to predict exactly what the outcome of this will be, but it is suspected that the radioactive fallout will extend over the Pacific Ocean and across most of East Asia and into Russia.  The world has never had to deal with radioactive fallout on this scale before, so it is unknown how local governments will deal with such a crisis, should it occur.

Alternatively a second danger is that the reactor rods will melt through the floor of the containment chamber, spilling radiation into the groundwater.  This could have severe environmental impact, damaging crops and hurting livestock for hundreds of years.  The effect would likely be limited to Japan and nearby waters, but it will undoubtedly spell the end of thousands of endangered species which live exclusively in the local biosphere.

Foreign Leaders Pledge Aid

US President Barack Obama reportedly telephoned Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, offering any and all possible aid in dealing with the nuclear crisis.  He has specialists and emergency workers on stand-by, should they be required and should Obama’s nuclear advisors consent to putting these workers in close range of the Fukushima plant.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy has also offered his aid, and the expertise of French nuclear experts – supposedly the most knowledgeable in the world at this point. Sarkozy is expected in Japan later this week to offer support, and his experts are standing by to offer advice on cooling and repairing the damaged reactors.

Is There Even More Damage to Containment Chambers?

In further news, there are also suspicions that there is damage to the containment chambers which prevent radiation from leaking from the reactors’ cores.  This was discovered on Tuesday when trace elements of Plutonium that matched the damage number-three reactor’s fuel rods were found in nearby soil.

As a precaution all human population has been evacuated from the area 20km around the damaged nuclear plant.  Foreign experts are divided over whether this is sufficient, and the Japanese nuclear agency has been accused of playing down the scope of the disaster at Fukushima and the immediate danger it poses.

Radiation exceeding legal limits has now been found in 11 different types of vegetables and milk in prefectures surrounding the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. This has caused a stoppage in the shipping of many different products.

Countries like the US have completely stopped the import of milk, milk products, fresh vegetables and fruit from four Japanese prefectures, though certain products could be allowed in if tests show them to be safe, according to a Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman.

If you have ever wondered just how the radiation gets into the food and water and what kinds of effects it can have keep reading:

Radiation particles from nuclear plant to food, water and milk

Radioactive particles escaping from the Fukushima Daiichi plant can bind to dust, then travel in the air for some time before landing on the ground. Once these particles, they could be cesium-137 and/or iodine-131, land on the farm produce or in the water they contaminate them. It’s as simple as that.

The problem with leafy vegetables is that they have big surface areas (think spinach and lettuce) meaning all the more space on which the radiation particles can land, according to Marko Moscovitch, professor at Georgetown’s Department of Radiation Medicine.

Now when it comes to milk, the particles aren’t getting into the milk itself per se, they are landing on the grass that is then eaten by the cows, thereby infecting them.

Is it dangerous to eat the food, milk and water?

According to experts there is not a lot known about how dangerous eating radiation-contaminated food really is. That said, the experts who have spoken with CNN have all said that the contamination levels reported so far appear to pose very little risk.

Dr. James Cox, an oncology professor at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said he thinks the radiation levels measured in the food and water in Japan pose a “nonexistent” immediate risk to humans, and “very low” long-term risk.

Spinach tested in a prefecture south of Fukushima showed radiation up to 27 times greater than the legal limit. Dr Sanjay Gupta, however, said a person “would have to eat the contaminated spinach from Japan every day for one year to get the same amount of radiation you would get from one chest CT (computed tomography) scan.”

A chest CT scan exposes the human body to about 7 millisieverts of radiation. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says that an average person gets about 3.1 millisieverts annually from natural sources, and an average American – thanks in part to medical diagnostic procedures and other man-made sources of radiation – gets about 6.2 millisieverts per year.

Even low radiation doses can damage or alter the DNA of irradiated cells, the NRC says. And the radiation protection community “conservatively assumes that any amount of radiation may pose some risk for causing cancer and hereditary effect, and that the risk is higher for higher radiation exposures,” the NRC says.

Still, Drs Gupta and Moscovitch say it’s very unlikely that the radiation reported at this time in Japanese food would pose a risk to the health of the people of Tokyo and other parts of Japan.

“(The radiation is) not negligible my any means. But impact on human health? Not likely,” Gupta said on the CNN program “In the Arena.”

The concern about infants and the contaminated water

On Tuesday night officials warned parents to not give their children tap water after tests shows there were 210 becquerels of radioactive iodine per kilogram of water – two times higher than the limit that the government considers safe for infants.

While that sounded dire for small children the amount of iodine detected was lower than the level considered safe for adults: 300 becquerels per kilogram. A liter of water weights 1 kilogram. A becquerel is a measurement of radioactive intensity by weight.

Experts say that the level set for infants is “very conservative,” but elevated radiation levels are considered a problem for small children, because their thyroid glands are more susceptible to radioactive iodine.

“Erring on the side of caution for the extreme degree for children makes good sense,” Cox said. For adults, “as far as the immediate health risk, something that would make people sick, I don’t think that would come close to it.”

Is there a way to get radiation out of water?

According to the World Health Organization it is possible that standard water treatment procedures – including coagulation, sedimentation and filtration – might remove “significant amounts of radioactive contaminants.”

It is also possible to mix the radiation contaminated water with clean water in an effort to dilute the radiation dangers.

(CNN) — Before I started working on the documentary “The Cove,” I assumed like many others that dolphins and orcas enjoyed living at Sea World and other marine parks. They always seemed to be smiling, jumping merrily around their tanks, eager to put on a show for human spectators.

However, when I met Ric O’Barry, my perspective changed. O’Barry was the man responsible for capturing Kathy — the original “Flipper” — from the wild and helping to create the language used to train dolphins to do tricks and flips. When Cathy died in his arms some years later, O’Barry realized the whole process of capturing and training dolphins was wrong.

He eventually co-wrote the book “Behind the Dolphin’s Smile,” where he explains that the smiles you see on these animals are not true reflections of happiness. In actuality, they hate to be enclosed in their holding tanks and are often not fed until it is time to perform their daily routines. During his time as a trainer, O’Barry learned dolphins had true feelings — they would get depressed, stressed out, even suicidal. In some parks, the trainers have to give the animals Maalox and Tagamet to treat the ulcers that develop from their stress.

The horrific tragedy that occurred last week at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida, has left me deeply shaken. My heart goes out to Dawn Brancheau and her family. Dawn lost her life doing the job that she loved, yet I — like O’Barry — believe that this job should no longer exist.

We know now that the whale involved in this accident has a well-documented history of violent behavior. SeaWorld knew of this history yet continued to exploit the animal and endanger the lives of its employees to put money in its pockets. If this isn’t a wake-up call, I don’t know what is.

At this very moment, a dozen boats in the town of Taiji, Japan, are heading out and rounding up hundreds of dolphins in a secluded cove. The fisherman will close off the cove with nets, and with the help of employees from various dolphinariums, they will try to find the next “Flipper” among their catch. The fishermen will snatch these beautiful creatures from their natural habitats, hoist them into nets, load them onto airplanes and drop them into a cement tank in the middle of Turkey, Korea or other nearby Asian countries.

In some ways, these animals are the lucky ones. These dolphins escaped the fate of many of their pod mates, who are brutally slaughtered with primitive harpoons — turning the cove into a scene straight from Melville’s “Moby Dick.” The water turns bright red with the blood of the slain. The fishermen then transport the meat — despite health concerns of mercury content in the dolphins’ systems — back to shore, where they sell it to local vendors.

It’s time for us to step up and make a difference in these animals’ lives. Until we make marine parks obsolete, dolphins and other sea mammals will continue to be senselessly captured and slaughtered.

We can no longer fall for the argument that SeaWorld shows “make us love the dolphins and want to understand and protect them” — this couldn’t be further from the truth. As I see it, we will only truly love and understand these animals when we can watch them running wild and genuinely smiling in their natural habitat.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Fisher Stevens (and me).

From CNN: The U.N.’s leading panel on climate change has apologized for misleading data published in a 2007 report that warned Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.

In a statement released Wednesday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said estimates relating to the rate of recession of the Himalayan glaciers in its Fourth Assessment Report were “poorly substantiated” adding that “well-established standards of evidence were not applied properly.”

Despite the admission, the IPCC reiterated its concern about the dangers melting glaciers present in a region that is home to more than one-sixth of the world’s population.

“Widespread mass losses from glaciers and reductions in snow cover over recent decades are projected to accelerate throughout the 21st century, reducing water availability, hydropower potential, and changing seasonality of flows in regions supplied by meltwater from major mountain ranges (e.g. Hindu-Kush, Himalaya, Andes)…”

“The chair, vice-chairs, and co-chairs of the IPCC,” the statement continued, “regrets the poor application of IPCC procedures…”

The apology follows a growing storm of controversy which initially forced the IPCC to concede that data relating to the Himalayan glacier melt included in the 2007 report was not backed up by sufficient scientific data.

Speaking at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi Wednesday, the IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri admitted errors had been made but said it was not an excuse to question the legitimacy of all global warming science.

“Theoretically, let’s say we slipped up on one number, I don’t think it takes anything away from the overwhelming scientific evidence of what’s happening with the climate of this earth,” he said, according to Agence France-Presse.

The controversy centers on a paragraph in Chapter 10 of the 2007 report which states: “Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world, and if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 square kilometers by the year 2035. ”

But is has recently emerged that the IPCC statement on Himalayan glaciers, which was based on information from a 2005 report by the World Wildlife Fund, was in turn gleaned from an article that appeared in the popular UK science journal, The New Scientist in June 1999.

In the article, “Flooded Out,” Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain speculates that the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming.

A glacier expert interviewed by CNN explained that the data published was flawed.

Michael Zemp from the World Glacier Monitoring Service said: “There are simply no observations available to make these sorts of statements.”

Zemp says that the figures quoted in the report are not possible because 500,000 square kilometers is estimated to be the total surface area of all mountain glaciers worldwide.

“The other thing is that the report says the glaciers are receding faster than anywhere else in the world. We simply do not have the glacier change measurements. The Himalayas are among those regions with the fewest available data,” Zemp said.

In defense of the IPCC, Zemp says “you can take any report and find a mistake in it but it’s up to the next IPCC report to correct it.”

Zemp also believes that the errors shouldn’t shake people’s belief in climate science.

“Glaciers are the best proof that climate change is happening. This is happening on a global scale. They can translate very small changes in the climate into a visible signal,” he said.

I got this in my email box today and had to share, even though it’s sad, it’s important. It’s a message from Defenders of Wildlife:

Maximus the grizzly bear was “a big, beautiful, wild bear,” according to grizzly specialist Mike Madel. “He kept to himself, stayed out of trouble.”

But he was gunned down in the prime of his life. Left to rot in a Montana hayfield, his badly decomposed body was discovered a month after being ruthlessly shot.

His killer is still at large.

It is possible for you can help bring lawless wildlife killers to justice and respond quickly to other wildlife emergencies.

We’ve quickly moved to offer a reward to bring Maximus’s killer to justice. But sadly, this bear’s story is not unique.

Poachers have recently ended the lives of some of our most endangered animals including Florida panthers, southwest gray wolves and California condors. In Idaho, a female wolf pup was illegally gunned down from a roadway. And a thriving black market in bear gallbladders and other parts is fueling a slaughter of bears across the nation.

Help us post rewards for poachers and alert the public as we aid law enforcement in the capture of these heartless people. Please make a donation today.

For more than a decade, Defenders of Wildlife has worked with state and federal agencies, offering more than $245,000 in rewards to bring these ruthless wildlife poachers to justice.

We’re also pressing Congress to pass the Bear Protection Act to end the trade in bear parts that encourages a terrible poaching plague.

None of this work is possible without people like you.

Are you aware that in the Pacific Ocean there is a massive, well, mass of floating plastic and other debris. It’s located in the northwest part of the Pacific Ocean, approximately a thousand miles off the coast of California.

It’s been dubbed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and it makes up perhaps thousands of miles of open ocean. Gross right? Researchers are cracking down on it and trying to find out where all this garbage is coming from and why it is gathering there in such quantity.

Now researchers are trying to learn more about the sea-bound trash zone and perhaps find answers to basic questions. The crew on the job is a group of scientists from the University of California’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and they plan to spend 3 weeks studying the debris field.

“There may be a misapprehension … that if you got out there and stood on the middle of a deck you’d see nothing but plastic litter from horizon to horizon,” said Robert Knox, deputy director for research at the Scripps Institution.

“It’s relatively sparse, and you might or might not see something visible to the human eye at any particular location out there,” Knox says. “Certainly one does encounter pieces of plastic stuff that are big enough to see. But the other side of the puzzle is all the little bits and pieces of plastic that you can’t even see unless you scoop up a sample of seawater and see what’s in there.”

“I think it’s a little misleading to think of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch as a great big island that you could practically get out and walk on, but the point is it’s a big area of ocean. So even a few pieces of plastic per square meter amounts to a lot of plastic when you add it up over this enormous ocean area.”

The information this new group of scientists are looking for are vital to combating the problem and making sure this kind of thing can be avoided in the future. Here are some of the answers they are seeking concerning the garbage patch:

1) How much garbage is there?
2) How big is the debris in the area?
3) What is the majority of the debris made of?
4) How deep does the garbage go, is it just on the surface?
5) How does all of this thrown away plastic and other material affect the food chain?

They are pretty sure that the vast majority of the garbage in the area is made up of different types of plastic and they want to know how that is affecting the marine life as well as birds etc. etc. who feed in the area.

While there are many facts they don’t yet know about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch there are some things they do know:

The size of this zone is massive, perhaps as big as Texas. They are also pretty sure that the plastic began it’s journey in the ocean as bigger pieces but over time has been broken down into small bits like confetti that is most likely sitting just under the surface like so many bits of confetti. Just think, thousands of miles of shredded plastic bits that fish and birds are ingesting as we speak.

While other oceans, rivers and seas have debris fields of their own, at this time it seems as though the Pacific Patch is the largest by far. Rusty Brainard with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration believes that this debris field contains not only plastic but also huge masses of fishing nets, which destroys ecosystems around the Hawaiian Islands.

What makes plastic so deadly is that as it breaks down and degrades it becomes smaller and smaller bits of poison that seabirds mistake it for food. They then dive down and eat it.

Brainard says they’ve found many, many skeletons of seabirds on the Islands and “their gut content is just filled with plastic.” How many other animals are eating plastic? Birds eat it, something else eats the bird which in turn is eaten by something else until these toxins finally find their way into our own diet.

Scary thought.

When you have left over medications from the doctor, what do you do with them? Do you flush them down the toilet? Dump them in the trash? Millions and millions of people do. This is leading to some pretty serious problems due to the fact that these meds decompose in our soil and water supplies and this affects not just animals but plant life and us humans too.

Oftentimes these chemicals actually destroy vital bacteria in soils and water that help purify those resources. Sure our wastewater systems are able to clean out plenty of things that could make us sick but they are not able to filter out many of the chemicals from common prescriptions from the doctor. These meds filter straight down into the reservoirs and other water sources, which we and animals and fish feed and drink from.

Finally, the National Association of Counties has adopted a resolution called the “Support of a Safe, Convenient Medicine Return Program” and through this they intend to educate people about their responsibility to dispose of their medications the right way.

I know that here where I live, I can take left over medicine to any pharmacy and they will dispose of it the right way. Both Canada and the United States that these take back programs, just ask your pharmacist the next time you get a prescription filled.

Consider this: most of us are on some kind of medication or other. Anti depressants and anti anxiety drugs are extremely common as are things like cholesterol controllers, and oral contraceptives. They have done studies and the numbers are pretty scary. In fact, medicine metabolites are found in the drinking supplies of “24 major metropolitan areas affecting 41 million Americans.”

We need to do our part and learn how to dispose of prescription drugs. This means no flushing them or throwing them in the garbage. Ask your pharmacist about the programs of proper disposal of medication in your local area.