Category: environment


The search for habitable planets

Filed under: astronomy, ecology, environment — Leave a comment
May 17, 2012

Now for something out of this world.  Australian astronomers announced this week that finding planets outside our solar system capable of sustaining life should be made a top funding priority.

Since the first discovery of a planet orbiting another star was made in 1995, the number of exoplanets has skyrocketed to more than 750.  While a small handful of these planets are known to be ‘Earth-like’, astronomers are a long way from knowing whether they can sustain life.

“Determining whether these planets are habitable has become the new holy grail of astronomy,” says Dr Charley Lineweaver of the Australian National University.  And so the race is on. 

But in my view the whole idea is little more than a ridiculous infantile fantasy.  Funds allocated to the search for habitable planets beyond our solar system, whether public or private, would be better spent on programs to clean up our own planet’s land, air and water resources for future generations.

Broadcast on 2CH Sydney, 13 May 2012.

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Callenbach’s last word to the planet

Filed under: ecology, environment, hope, social change — Leave a comment
May 13, 2012

Author, academic and enthusiast for simple living Ernest Callenbach

Apart from founding the prestigious academic journal Film Quarterly, Ernest Callenbach is probably best known for his two popular and influential utopian novels, Ecotopia (1975) and Ecotopia Emerging (1981). Callenbach died on April 16, 2012, and on his computer’s hard drive he left what was to be his final word to the planet. Titled, “Epistle to the Ectopians: Last Words to an America in Decline,” it’s well worth reading and reflecting upon.

While he has Americans and American society in mind, much of what Callenbach says has immediate relevance to people in all Western countries. There are also rich theological themes to be mined, not least notions of human hope amid pervasive degradation and destruction. Here are the first two paragraphs:

As I survey my life, which is coming near its end, I want to set down a few thoughts that might be useful to those coming after. It will soon be time for me to give back to Gaia the nutrients that I have used during a long, busy, and happy life. I am not bitter or resentful at the approaching end; I have been one of the extraordinarily lucky ones. So it behooves me here to gather together some thoughts and attitudes that may prove useful in the dark times we are facing: a century or more of exceedingly difficult times.

How will those who survive manage it? What can we teach our friends, our children, our communities? Although we may not be capable of changing history, how can we equip ourselves to survive it?

Read on…

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Repentance for ecological sins

Filed under: climate change, ecology, environment — 1 Comment
November 11, 2011

Were you one of the thousands who participated in Hope for Creation last Sunday?  Hope for Creation is an opportunity to engage as people of faith in an ongoing public conversation too long dominated by science and politics.  Last weekend, Christians around Australia joined others in 50 countries to pray about the negative impact of climate change in our world.

Claire Dawson blogged on her church’s response.  She writes:

Taking time to recapture a sense of God’s immense delight in all that he has made, his great and infinite care and his provision through Christ to one day mend all things has an amazing capacity to re-energise those of us who might otherwise despair in the face of the immense challenge of climate change.  And now, we move forward in hopeful repentance, doing what we can to make amends and to make a difference.

We need more people like Claire, to lead the way in responsible creation care. 

Broadcast on 2CH Sydney, 13 November 2011.

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Hope for Creation

Filed under: creation, ecology, environment, prayer — Leave a comment
November 4, 2011

Christians around the world are gathering today (Sunday 6 November), under the banner of Hope for Creation, to pray about the growing negative impact of climate change in our world.

It’s an opportunity to engage in a public conversation that has for too long been dominated by science and politics.  Through prayer, Christians are seeking God’s help to better understand the issue, and to pray for political leaders, for the future of our children who will inherit the world we leave behind, and for the world’s poor who are hit first and hardest by climate change.

World Vision Chief Executive Tim Costello said, “Hope for Creation goes to the biblical mandate of creation care.  All of creation carries the imprint of its Maker.  Through [World Vision’s] work with the world’s poorest people, we are already seeing the dramatic impact of climate change, so this initiative calls us to speak boldly and live faithfully, to honour our call to follow Jesus.”

Hope for Creation spokesperson Cath James said, “When we give in to denial, it ensures that things will not change.  But to dare to hope that we can change the world sets us on a path of making sure it will happen.”

Broadcast on 2CH Sydney, 6 November 2011.

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Problems for Canadian salmon

Filed under: ecology, environment, pollution — Leave a comment
September 30, 2011

In Canada, the source of a lot of the farmed salmon we eat in Australia, the salmon industry is losing its chemical war with a pest called sea lice.

In the wild, salmon have developed resistance to sea lice and the parasites cause minimal harm.  But with industrial salmon production, the fish are kept in their hundreds of thousands in pens open to the coastal sea – a banquet for sea lice

Producers manage the pests by using pesticides, but sea lice adapt, forcing the industry to increase the doses, and search for more exotic poisons.

What do massive doses of pesticides mean for farmed salmon eaters?  No one really knows, says Tom Philpott of Maverick Farms. But one sure loser is wild salmon, which is headed for rapid local extinction due to recurrent louse infestations from the farmed salmon.

Once we disturb nature’s balance through industrial-scale intervention, it’s very hard to control the unintended consequences.

Broadcast on 2CH Sydney, Sunday 2 October 2011.

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