Fancy playing Sardines every morning on your way to work? Move to Japan and you can. We all know that maximising use of public transport is the most energy-efficient type of travel, but this is taking it to the extreme.

“There was a time not so long ago when famine was an expected, if not accepted, part of life. Until the 19th century – whether in China, France, India or Britain – food came almost entirely from local sources and harvests were variable.

“In good years, there was plenty – nough for seasonal feasts and for storage in anticipation of winter and hard times to come; in bad years, starvation cut down the poorest and the weakest – the very young, the old, and the sickly.

“Sometimes bad years followed one upon another, reducing the size of the population by several percent. This was the normal condition of life in pre-industrial societies, and it persisted for thousands of years.

“Today, in America, such a state of affairs is hard to imagine. Food is so cheap and plentiful that obesity is a far more widespread concern than hunger. The average mega-supermarket stocks an impressive array of exotic foods from across the globe, and even staples are typically trucked from hundreds of miles away.

“Many people in America did go hungry during the Great Depression, but those were times that only the elderly can recall. In the current regime, the desperately poor may experience chronic malnutrition and may miss meals, but for most the dilemma is finding time in the day’s hectic schedule to go to the grocery store or to cook.

“As a result, fast-food restaurants proliferate: the fare may not be particularly nutritious, but even an hour’s earnings at minimum wage will buy a meal or two. The average American family spent 20 percent of its income on food in 1950; today the figure is 10 percent…”

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Jim Koan has a 120-acre apple farm in Flushing, MI. Plagued by the Plum Curculio Beetle that lays its eggs in apples and makes the fruit drop too early from trees, Koan could have used frequent sprays of pesticides for years to get rid of the beetles, or he could use pigs.

He tried chickens and guineas, but they weren’t hard enough workers and the guineas were taken away by hawks. He contemplated sheep, too, but in the end, hard-working pigs, too big for any hawk or coyote to steal, were the best bet.

Now he has a group of pigs who shuffle through the orchards when the apples infected with beetles start to fall. They eat the apples and the eggs that would have spelled disaster for next year’s crop, and clear the ground and eat weeds in the process.

The pigs make short work of an apple orchard, eating every last contaminated apple.

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Growing use of such crops wheat and corn to make biofuels is putting world food supplies in peril, the head of Nestle, the world’s biggest food and beverage company has warned.

“If as predicted we look to use biofuels to satisfy 20 percent of the growing demand for oil products, there will be nothing left to eat,” Chairman and chief executive Peter Brabeck-Letmathe said.

“To grant enormous subsidies for biofuel production is morally unacceptable and irresponsible,” he told the Swiss newspaper NZZ am Sonntag.

While the competition is driving up the price of maize, soya and wheat, land for cultivation is becoming rare and water sources are also under threat, Brabeck said.

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Few Canadians know that Canada is home to one of the world’s largest dams and it is built to hold toxic waste from just one Tar Sands operation.

And this is just the beginning. Approvals have already been given that will double the size of existing operations and Canada’s leaders have been talking with the US government to grow oil sands operations in a “short time span”.

A few facts about the Alberta Oil Sands:

• Oil sands mining is licensed to use twice the amount of fresh water that the entire city of Calgary uses in a year.
• At least 90% of the fresh water used in the oil sands ends up in ends up in tailing ponds so toxic that propane cannons are used to keep ducks from landing in them.
• Processing the oil sands uses enough natural gas in a day to heat 3 million homes in Canada.
• The toxic tailing ponds are considered one of the largest human-made structures in the world. The ponds span 50 square kilometres and can be seen from space.
• Producing a barrel of oil from the oil sands produces three times more greenhouse gas emissions than a barrel of conventional oil.
• The oil sands operations are the fastest growing source of heat-trapping greenhouse gas in Canada. By 2020 the oil sands will release twice the amount produced currently by all the cars and trucks in Canada.

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A huge boost in corn production from US govt ethanol mandates has sent record amounts of nitrogen fertilizer down the Mississippi River and into the Gulf of Mexico.

Once in the Gulf, the nitrogen breeds oxygen-eating algae that blossom on the water’s surface, depriving creatures of their lifeline. More nitrogen means even deader zones in the Gulf and elsewhere.

And with streams, rivers and other waterways struggling more than ever to drive out excess nitrogen naturally, the situation is going to get worse. Everywhere.

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Every now and then it’s nice to see a company branch out into supplying ecologically sound alternatives to regular products. One area that I hadn’t previously considered is swimming pools. Think about all the chemicals maintaining a clean pool normally requires.

One company I have found that offers sound alternatives is Ecosmarte Pools. They have created a range of products all based around minimising the impact of running a chemical free pool.

Now, if you’re like me you may think that a good alternative to chlorinating swimming pools would be salt water pools, after all the sea is salt water isn’t it? But think about what happens to the salt water when you back wash the filters? You don’t want that saline water on your lawn or flower beds, that’s for sure.

Also, the main reason for using the salt water in a swimming pool is that a chlorinator usually works on the salt to convert some of it to chlorine. So we are back to caustic chemicals again. And let’s face it, whether salt water or chlorine based, neither taste too good when it gets in your mouth.

But there are alternitives and probably the best one right now is a pool ionizer which works by piercing the protective outer membrane of algae cells and disrupting their enzyme balance thereby killing them. When you use a pool ionizer the only other chemicals you may need would be to balance the water’s PH (acidity/alkalinity).

Of course there is a cost to such a system in terms of electricity usage, but it’s only a fraction of the money you normally spend on purchasing chemicals for your pool. In fact, it only costs a handful of dollars each year. And what’s more, you dramatically reduce your environmental impact by not using all those caustic products such as chlorine and sodium hypochlorite etc.

This clean technology works equally well with spas and hot tubs and is particularly suited to garden ponds as the potential chemical impact on your fish is entirely removed compared to most standard pond treatments.

Altogether, with an ionizer, you end up with a much cleaner and healthier environment for you and your family to swim in; you save a whole bundle of cash each year; and you know  you’re making a postive contribution towards reducing environmental pollution.

Oh and I should also mention that Ecosmarte offer a replacement for sand filters by crushing pre-used glass. As well as being environmentally friendly this recycled material is long lasting and saves significantly on backwash water. They also donate 5% of their profits to environmental charities.

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The marble-like sphere on the left is the size all the water in the world would be if gathered up into a ball. The one on the right shows all the atmosphere gathered into a sphere at sea level atmospheric pressure. Both spheres are on the exact same scale as the Earth.

In the words of the Sting song “How fragile we are“.

The US government has announced plans to open more than 3m acres (about 5,000 square miles) of Alaskan wilderness to logging, mining and road building, angering environmental campaigners who say it will devastate the region.

Supporters say the plan for the Tongass National Forest, a refuge for grizzly and black bears, wolves, eagles and wild salmon, will revive the state’s timber industry.

The Bush administration plan for the forest, the largest in the US at nearly 17m acres, would open 3.4m acres to logging, road building and other development, including about 2.4m acres that are currently remote and without roads. About 663,000 acres are in areas considered most valuable for timber production.

The move, the latest in a long-running saga over the Tongass forest, effectively reverses the “Roadless Rule” protection given to the area by President Clinton.

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