Join the peace movement. www.amnesty.org.nz; www.gpja.org.nz
2. Mutated frogs are appearing in alarming numbers around the world and scientists consider the phenomenon a warning. Like canaries in mines, frogs are particularly sensitive to environmental poisons. The most commonly used herbicide in the world, Atrazine, turns frogs into hermaphrodites - even at concentrations as low as 0.1 parts per billion (ppb). The US Environmental Protection Agency allows 3ppb in drinking water. In New Zealand the maximum allowable volume is 2 ppb.
You can reduce levels of toxins in your drinking water by using a filter. In the home replace harsh chemical products with natural alternatives. For tips on going organic, see point 24.
3. Babies need between 5000 and 9000 nappy changes, a gruelling task for any parent. It%26#39;s no wonder disposable nappies are so popular. It%26#39;s estimated in New Zealand alone we throw away 575 million disposables each year, and each one takes up to 500 years to decompose in a landfill. On top of that, most parents don%26#39;t flush the waste first, meaning not only do the nappies hang around forever, they also add to the harmful methane gases that help cause global warming. (A UK study showing cloth nappies to be more environmentally unfriendly than disposables - due to energy use in washing etc - was found to have used flawed methodology).
Buy cloth nappies. This isn%26#39;t the 1920s; you don%26#39;t have to fold mountains of white cloth squares in complicated patterns while using your hand as a pin cushion. There are plenty of great re-usable versions available. And you%26#39;ll save money - the cost of two years%26#39; worth of cloth nappies is about one-eighth the amount you%26#39;d spend on disposables. See www.thenappynetwork.org.nz.
4. No more fish and chips. At the current rate the global fish supply will crash in 2048 to just 10 percent of its natural level - effectively ending the ocean%26#39;s role as a source of food. You%26#39;ll just do without? It%26#39;s not that simple. A third of all fish caught is turned into animal feed, which means 16 percent of the world%26#39;s protein supply comes from the sea. And spare a thought for the one billion people who depend on fish as their primary source of protein.
Visit http://www.forestandbird.org.nz to download a copy of the Best Fish Guide for 2008. This lists all the most environmentally friendly fish to eat right now.
5. In 1997 wealthy adventure yachtsman Charles Moore took a short cut home through seas normally avoided for their lack of wind. To his horror, he found himself sailing through what has since become known as the Eastern Garbage Patch - an area of ocean larger than Texas where vast, circular currents accumulate the floating rubbish of the world. Altogether, it%26#39;s calculated to weigh three million tonnes - six times more than the region%26#39;s plankton biomass. It took Moore a week to pass through. The Laysan albatrosses of Midway Atoll feed in and around the Eastern Garbage Patch. Mistaking the brightly coloured rubbish for food, they consume huge quantities of plastic, including lighters, bottle caps, and clothes pegs, which are in turn regurgitated and fed back to their young. It%26#39;s calculated that each year five tonnes of plastic is fed to the albatross chicks on Midway Atoll; 40 percent of the chicks will die. Most common cause of death: dehydration or starvation due to indigestible stomach contents.
Make sure all your waste goes to the landfill and not down the drain. Also, think twice before buying anything made out of plastic - do you really need it, or is there a better substitute, such as glass?
6. Environmental toxins like mercury exist in very low levels in seawater but become concentrated in the flesh of long-lived, top-of-the-chain predators like swordfish and tuna. Mercury, which affects brain development in babies, has accumulated to such levels in these fish that pregnant women are cautioned against eating too much of them.
For a list of the safest fish to eat in pregnancy, see www.nzfsa.govt.nz/consumers/chemicals-toxins-additives/mercury-in-fish/index.htm. If you are looking for an alternative way of obtaining the crucial Omega-3 (a highly effective anti-depressant, amongst other things) that fish provide, you can take cold-pressed hemp seed oil (it contains more essential fatty acids than flax seed oil).
7. Global warming could wipe out polar bears. In the summer of 2007 the Arctic ice receded by a record 2.61 million sq km - an area equal to 10 New Zealands - and dramatic new evidence suggests the Arctic will be ice-free over summer within five or six years. As the ice reduces, the bears hunt less, feed less, have fewer young - and eventually starve.
Stop adding to global warming. See www.carbonzero.co.nz and www.bethechange.org.nz for easy ways to reduce your carbon footprint.
8 The polar bear is hardly a rare case. The majority of biologists agree that we are experiencing - and causing - a mass extinction on a scale that wiped out the dinosaurs. Plants and animals naturally disappear at a rate of about one species in a million per year. But at the most conservative estimate, the rate of extinction is now 100 times that. That means that today - and every day after - 2.7 species will vanish.
9. When it comes to making animals extinct, we Kiwis sure punch above our weight. We%26#39;ve already vanished about 50 species of birds, a handful each of frogs and snails from the face of the earth. So what%26#39;s next in line? %26quot;Probably an insect that no one%26#39;s discovered yet,%26quot; says Professor Dave Kelly of Canterbury University. %26quot;But in terms of the big, important stuff? The Mohua, or Yellowhead [the bird on our $100 note] is hanging on by a thread. Or the Storm Petrel, or maybe the Magenta Petrel?%26quot;
Says the Green Party: %26quot;New Zealand%26#39;s in line to knock off the next dolphin [the Maui%26#39;s]. And it looks like we%26#39;ll possibly knock off the next frog.%26quot;
Help save the Maui%26#39;s dolphin www.doc.govt.nz
10. This Wednesday is a big day for New Plymouth. That%26#39;s when a major study on dioxin levels in workers at the Paritutu plant is due for release. The Ivon Watkins-Dow (IWD) chemical plant (now Dow AgroSciences NZ Ltd) manufactured the herbicide 245T, which was used extensively in New Zealand to kill gorse. Dioxin is a byproduct of 245T manufacture. It both contaminated the widely used herbicide and, from 1962 to 1987, was released from the plant in an aerial plume that settled over the suburb of Paritutu and its residents. Dioxin can cause mutations, birth defects, and genetic damage which can be passed down through generations. It%26#39;s also one of the most carcinogenic agents known. A 2003 study concluded that dioxin has no known cancer-causing threshold. This doesn%26#39;t mean that it won%26#39;t cause cancer - it means there%26#39;s no known level at which it won%26#39;t.
In 2006 a TV3 documentary looking at the number of deaths, diseases and defects in Paritutu gave voice to the ongoing concerns of its residents, who believe the government%26#39;s attitude is %26quot;delay and deny until they die%26quot;. The Green Party has called for an apology and further action. The ESR, on the other hand, described TV3%26#39;s analysis as lacking in %26quot;any substantive, scientifically rational criticism.%26quot;
11. In New Zealand, stoats and weasels are slaughtering our native birds - all thanks to global warming playing havoc with beech trees.
The trees have a clever trick. Occasionally an entire forest will produce far more beech seed than normal. The native birds and insects that eat them are taken by surprise and can%26#39;t possibly eat them all - so a lot of seed makes it through to grow into mature trees. Biologists call this phenomenon %26lsquo;masting%26#39;. Unfortunately beech masts are a bounty for introduced mice and rats. This means they produce several more litters in the year, so there are more rats eating the eggs and chicks of vulnerable native birds. The extra rats and mice provide a glut of food for their predators - stoats and weasels, which in turn reproduce in record numbers. Eventually all the rodents are eaten and the plague of weasels and stoats decimate our bellbirds, yellowhead, blue ducks, and kiwi.
Mast years are triggered by warm weather in late summer and early autumn; in the past, one would swing around once every seven or so years. This at least gave native birds time to recover. However, since 2000, every year but one has seen a beech mast somewhere in the country - sending our protected birds spiralling towards extinction. %26quot;People think global warming is all about Hurricane Katrina,%26quot; says Kevin Hackwell, at the Forest and Bird society. %26quot;But it%26#39;s happening now, in places that you know, to species that you care about.%26quot;
Donate your time and/or money to those helping our endangered species. Go to www.doc.govt.nz, and look up your local chapter of Forest and Bird at www.forestandbird.org.nz
12. Global warming could spell the end of our snake-free paradise. Notice how once or twice a year there%26#39;s a news story about MAF finding one in a shipping container and no one really worries? It%26#39;s because New Zealand%26#39;s cold winter generally kills them off. Notice all the news about global warming?
13. 200,000 cars are brought into New Zealand every year.
You can make your car last longer by alternating driving with walking, cycling or taking the bus. And if you really want a new car, check out hybrids. The most popular brands sell for about $35,000 to $45,000.
14. It%26#39;s estimated that every 21 months, 2.6 million New Zealanders discard their mobile phone and buy a new one.
You can drop your old mobile phone off at Telecom and Vodafone stores to be recycled.
15. Between four and five trillion plastic bags were made in 2002, of which 0.06 percent are recycled.
We all know this one: bring your own re-usable bags to the supermarket. For your existing plastic bags, most supermarkets have a take-back recycling scheme. Avoid plastic-wrapped fruit and vegetables; most can go straight into your trolley or into one of your re-usable bags. Request your meat paper-wrapped from the butcher.
16. Britons throw out 2.4 million fridges a year, which are dumped in used fridge yards such as this one in Trafford Park, ManchesterFridge seals can be replaced at your local appliance store to make your fridge last longer. See www.sustainability.org for more tips on taking care of appliances.
17. Americans throw away 25 billion styrofoam cups every year. Styrofoam does not biodegrade.
Use a glass rather than the disposable cups at the water cooler. Most New Zealand caf%26eacute;s use paper cups with plastic lids for take-out coffees - bring your own sealable mug.
18. The world is entering a new nuclear era, with scores of reactors planned around the globe. Nuclear power is perceived as a greener option for meeting rising energy needs than coal- or gas-fired plants. But the world may yet regret embracing nuclear power%26#39;s millennia of waste, its terrorism risk - and the spectre of accidents like Chernobyl, which spread radioactive fallout across the east of North America, the UK and Europe.
19. Television is very, very bad for you. Unless it%26#39;s a fancy flatscreen, your TV set and computer monitor have a cathode ray tube (CRT) which contains a cancerous cocktail of barium, beryllium, cadmium, selenium, mercury and arsenic - plus up to 3.4kg of lead.
CRTs are safe sitting in your living room or office, but a danger when disposed of. In California you can%26#39;t dump them because they%26#39;re classed as toxic, but not here. In New Zealand most of our 10 million CRTs - containing a grand total of 19,700 tonnes of lead - will make their way into landfills, where the chemicals eventually break down, leaching into our soil and water.
Recycle your telly (http://www.molten.co.nz) - or give it to someone else who could use it. See www.donatenz.com
20. New Zealand%26#39;s death rate from skin cancer is the highest in the world. If you think the sun feels fiercer than when you were young, you%26#39;re right: summertime ozone levels have dropped 10 percent since 1970.
21. PC, or polycarbonate - a sturdy plastic used in food storage containers, microwaveable dishes and baby bottles - leaches a chemical called Bisphenol A (BPA) - especially when heated. BPA is an endocrine disruptor that mimics the human sex hormones, affecting brain development. Whether heating your baby%26#39;s bottle is dangerous is contentious but, according to David Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany, knowingly exposing infants to Bisphenol A is %26quot;absolutely obscene%26quot;.
Keep a glass jug of water on your desk to avoid plastic bottles, and store your dry goods in glass jars at home. For glass baby bottles, see stores such as www.born.co.nz and www.naturebaby.co.nz. Avoid heating your food in a plastic container in the microwave.
22. In 1989 the tanker Exxon Valdez struck a reef and spilled 42 million litres of crude oil in the pristine Prince William Sound in Alaska. The oil slick spread over 28,000 sq km, killing thousands of birds, fish, otters - and 22 killer whales. Almost 20 years later, the area is still contaminated.
Since 1990 there have been 507 oil spills where seven tonnes or more were lost into the environment - including 107 of more than 700 tonnes and at least one involving a drunk tanker pilot.
23. In the past 25 years an area of sea floor larger than New Zealand - 28.3 million hectares - has been bottom-trawled. While fishing companies say the practice is sustainable, environmentalists believe that scouring the sea floor destroys all life there.
Join Greenpeace and protest against bottom- trawling: http://www.greenpeace.org.nz/
24. We%26#39;ve all heard of DDT, the chemical discovered by Swiss chemist Paul M%26uuml;ller (who won a Nobel Prize for his discovery). DDT enabled the inexpensive control of pests and thus a huge growth in crop yields. What no one figured out for a long time was this miracle of modern technology also killed not only other wildlife, such as birds and fish, but also built up toxicity in humans, linked to birth defects, cancer, and a host of other health problems.
Although DDT is banned in most Western countries (but widely used in the developing world to kill mosquitoes as a way of controlling malaria), it%26#39;s been replaced by the next generation of pesticides, many of which are up to 10 times as toxic as DDT, but more water-soluble. The idea is they wash away so humans don%26#39;t end up consuming enough to be toxic (although the most common method of ingesting these chemicals is by eating meat, fish and dairy goods that have a build-up of the compounds in their fat deposits from exposure to the environment). More than half of the 3000 insecticides, herbicides and fungicides used in New Zealand each year are known to be toxic to humans.
Go organic. It can cost more, but setting up a co-op with a local grower, starting your own personal or community garden, and bulk-buying are all economical choices. Watch Maori TV show Kiwi Maara for New Zealand-related ways to grow your own, or see http://www.permaculture.org.nz/
25. In the race to become industrial superpowers, developing nations like China and India are set to become super-polluters. This year China overtook the US as the top producer of carbon dioxide. Yet per capita the US is still by far the worst greenhouse polluter. If developing nations eventually match the emission levels of the so-called developed %26lsquo;west%26#39; - 13 percent of the global population, producing 45 percent of emissions - the consequences will be dire.
Buy locally made. http://www.buykiwimade.govt.nz/
26. Gold may be a pure and beautiful element, but extracting it is one of the dirtiest practices there is. In Brazil, illegal miners are poisoning the Amazon by extracting gold with mercury, which is dumped into the water. While in Hungary, the entire length of the Tisza River was killed in February 2000 when an Australian mining company spilled 100 tonnes of cyanide - enough to kill a billion people - into a tributary upstream while mining for gold. By the way, one wedding ring weighs, on average, 10g and causes three tonnes of toxic waste.
Buy second-hand or estate jewellery. You can always have something re-designed to your taste. www.greenkarat.com
27. Lake Hallwil, Switzerland, hides a dark secret. Nutrient run-off into the lake (pictured above) feeds a red algal bloom, the Blood of Burgundy, which sucks the oxygen out of the lake, killing everything in it. Since 1985 the lake has been kept alive with submerged bubble machines that oxygenate it like a giant goldfish bowl. Most nitrate run-off is caused by farm fertiliser. Another reason to support your local organic farmer.
28. The ride from abundance to extinction can be frighteningly swift. The Passenger Pigeon was once the most numerous bird in North America. Its annual migrations were legendary - continuous flocks of birds filled the skies for days on end, blocking the sun. As late as 1850 they were so numerous that people knocked them from branches with sticks, working through the night to collect them - they were stewed, smoked, roasted, fried or baked in a %26lsquo;pigeon pot pie%26#39;. Pigs were fattened on the spare corpses. By 1896, the birds were scarce. In 1914, at 1pm on September 1, the last Passenger Pigeon died in captivity.
29. Scientists searching for ways to tackle global warming have stumbled on the perfect solution for removing CO%26sup2; from the air and locking it away in a non-gaseous state. Crucially - given the scale of the problem - the device is self-replicating, self-powered, and has the added benefit of preventing floods and erosion. They call it %26lsquo;the tree%26#39;. Unfortunately, trees are being cut down at an alarming rate. Ninety percent of West Africa%26#39;s forest has been destroyed since 1900; this has been implicated in several droughts and their resulting famines in Central Africa. According to UN figures, Indonesia cleared more than 28 million hectares of forest between 1990 and 2005. And Brazil cleared more than 27 million hectares in the same period.
Forests are increasingly seen as crucial to the stability of life on earth, yet more than 80 percent of the world%26#39;s forests have been destroyed.
If you%26#39;re buying new wooden outdoor furniture, make sure it%26#39;s certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (www.fsc.org/en). Endangered Indonesian tropical hardwood, kwila, is particularly popular in New Zealand - you can help protect Indonesia%26#39;s rainforest by not buying it. Also avoid old-growth trees from New Zealand such as native beech. And whether in your backyard or as part of a community scheme, there is a simple, effective way to play a part in the fight against global warming: plant a tree.
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