Green Beings

June 5 World Environment Day

Bear Melts for World Environment Day G-Online

Wildlife sculptor Mark Coreth’s ice bear will arrive at Customs House Square Sydney to mark World Environment Day on June 5, in an effort to highlight the urgent threat of climate change to Arctic life.

“I was very careful to also speak to the sea ice, polar bear and polar environment scientists – the likes of Peter Wadhams at Cambridge University and Andrew Derocher, who is probably the world’s leading polar bear scientist – and explain my project to them, and they all gave it huge blessing saying it’s science in 3D.”

People are invited to touch Sydney Ice Bear at Customs House Square, Circular Quay on Friday June 3 as it slowly melts.

Supported by the Purves Environmental Fund, Sydney Ice Bear will raise much-needed funds for the three partner environmental organisations, WWF-Australia, 1 million women and Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC).

Video | The Ice Bear Project

2010 Carbon Emissions Increase 5%

A dubious downside of the global recession was a 2009 lessening of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide. In 2010, as recovery propelled the global economy forward, emissions rose 5 percent according to the UN’s International Energy Agency (IEA).

The report was released in advance of a preliminary meeting in Bonn from June 6 to June 17 for an interim round of talks ahead of the main global-climate negotiations set for Durban, South Africa, in late November.

The increase in emissions is much larger than predicted for a single year, putting at risk a global consensus of holding the long-term global-average-temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

A related report is perhaps more concerning. It asserts that the world has reached a plateau in the efficiency with which fossil fuels are used to drive industrial production. The rate or reducing efficiency of fossil fuels has dropped consistently since 1990, according to Roger Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder who has written widely on the politics of climate.

The Christian Science Monitor writes that Pielke asserts that in 2010 this declining rate of ‘decarbonization’ hit zero.

America

Americans Believe Marital Affair More Immoral Than Abortion

US Perceived Moral Acceptability of Behaviors and Social Policies Gallup

In a twist of poll results that might surprise the Republican War on Women, the entire nation (91%) believes that married men and women having an affair is morally wrong and that polygamy (86%) when a married person has more than one spouse at a time is almost as wrong but half the nation (51%) believes that abortion is wrong.

In another results that underscores the complexity of human values 80% of Americans believe that suicide is morally wrong, but if the behavior is doctor-assisted suicide, the number drops to 48%.

The Gallup poll didn’t ask whether it’s morally wrong to have American women dying in emergency rooms because only an abortion will save their lives. Based on these numbers, it seems that the vast majority of Americans might find that reality a moral outrage. There is a focus on living, adult behaviors in these results — not that they all make sense to us.

How does one defend the the fact that an affair is considered morally worse than polygamy? Presumably because adults engaged in polygamy have made the decision to do so, or it suits their religious beliefs?

Boys Club

Egyptian banker charged with sexual assault is granted bail The Guardian

Saudi woman accuses chauffeur of rape amid row AFP

A Saudi businesswoman who must be driven by a male under Saudi law, has accused the chauffeur of raping her. The woman reported the attack and the driver was arrested.

Earlier this week, Saudi authorities freed on bail Manal al-Sharif who was detained for 10 days for breaking the Saudi ban on women driving. AOC supports ‘We are all Manal al-Shariff’ on Facebook. AFP reports that another Facebook page calls on men to use ‘eqals’ the cords used with traditional headdresses by many Gulf men — to beat Saudi women who drive their cars in the planned June 17 protest.

This Saudi woman has uploaded her fifth video on YouTube, explaining that she is defying the women driving ban because her son Ibrahim died in a car accident by an irresponsible male driver.

Saudi Woman Driving