China + going green= FAIL

I am not happy with China right now. Actually, I don’t think I ever was really.

TIBET IS NOT YOURS!!! And neither is Taiwan!

China is trying to go green for this summer’s Olympics. They are trying so desperately. As far as I know, China has always had some of the most polluted cities in the world. But nothing was done about it until the Olympics came up.

This is a picture of what I assume Beijing looks like on a regular basis. I’ve seen clips of people riding around in scooters with face masks on in smoggy Beijing. It is really surprising to see people be outside in such horrid air.

Doesn’t China care about their citizens? Why wait until the Olympics to make the air safe for people? Are their green efforts going to even last until AFTER the Olympics? The only reason I am even remotely excited for the Olympics is because I want to see one certain torchbearer. Other than that, China, good luck going green! Or as they say, JIAYOU!

This article in the New York Times says that everyday, monitoring stations across China have to measure air pollution and watch for blue skies day. In the earlier picture, citizens were warned to stay indoors because the air was bad. The day rated at 421, on a scale of 1 being good to 500 being worst.

Of course, people don’t listen especially if they are use to it. What amuses me about the picture is a man is flying a kite. I don’t see blue skies. Overall, I don’t see how life could be possible in that picture yet to Chinese citizens this is normal.

L.A. Times says China is trying to clear up pollution by closing down factories and taking 3 million cars off the road each day. That isn’t enough though. Recently, the Beijing city government has decided to stop construction during the Olympics according to an article on Daily Yomiuri.

I’m not sure if they will actually be able to meet their goal come August 8th, but after the Olympics, the cars will be put back on the streets, construction will start, and factories will open up again.

If it weren’t for the Olympics, the air quality and overall environmental crimes done on their own land will continue.

For example, there is a Chinese company that dumps bubbling white liquid waste in a village.

What is shocking and funny is that the company is supposed to be a green company!!! The “green” company makes polysilicon for solar energy panels to be sold around the world.

According to the article on the Washington Post, stories of environmental pollution are not uncommon.

The government knows bad things are going on yet they continue to turn a blind eye on their citizens.

If this village was anywhere near the foreigners, maybe then they would do something about it. But they are more focused on the Olympics not their people. They don’t want to take any chances on the games not even on the weather.

China wants to make sure it doesn’t rain during the games so they want to seed the clouds. According to National Geographic, “An array of rockets and anti-aircraft guns are used to "seed" clouds with particles to induce rainfall for the country's parched northern region.”

By doing this, they will pull out as much rain before the games so it is dry during the games.

Apparently, during the Vietnam War the U.S. even produced torrential rains on the Ho Chi Minh trail to slow down the opposing side.

Scientists say that human weather modification is done through putting pollutants in the air. So China, we are back to square one, not that you ever left.

"If you have driven your car this morning, you have been cloud seeding because of the particles emitted by your car," said Bruintjes, lead researcher of the Colorado-based National Center for Atmospheric Research's international weather-modification programs.

Good going China! Do you or do you not want to take pollutants out of the air? Although, that quote doesn't make me any better, I did drive.

This is an environmental blog, but since this is my last blog (for now unless I find something interesting to blog about), I will end it off with a music video. It is Beijing Welcomes You, the theme song for the 100 Days Countdown celebration to the Beijing Summer Olympics. It features Jackie Chan, HanGeng (the one percent reason I support the Olympics) and various Chinese stars in various blue and sunny locations in China, quite the opposite from the picture I had above.

FlexibleLove

FlexibleLove is an accordion-like furniture made from recycled materials.
My friend showed me this YT video (Oh, how I love le YouTube). My jaw dropped.



I think this is the coolest thing ever! Then I went onto the FlexibleLove.com website to find out more information.

The furniture is made from recycled paper and wood products. The website says that it is, “…produced using pre-existing manufacturing processes in order to reduce their overall impact on the environment.”

FlexibleLove has a honeycomb structure that can be extended to seat 16 people or collapsed and be put away in a closet.

Flexible is available in FlexibleLove16 or FlexibleLove mini version.

After doing some research, I found out that a Canadian Design team called Molo has made a round brown paper chair and home decorations made from paper. It's all extendable and collapsable. The pictures of their works are very stylish.

Someone has also made similar accordion like chairs out of newspapers and magazines so the concept isn’t exactly new.

Still, it is environmentally friendly. If sold, it will use up all recycled material reducing the carbon footprint.

Insects call each other too.

Well, sort of.

The Environmental News Network has an article entitled Insect use Plants Like a Telephone.

A Dutch ecologist and her colleagues found out that any plant-eating insect can communicate to each other using plants.

Subterranean insects or underground insects emit chemical warning signals using the leaves of plants. When the underground insect does that, aboveground insects are warned that the plant is taken.

Herbivore insects do this to avoid unnecessary competition. Aboveground insects would rather have plants that have not yet been occupied by underground insects which have already eaten the root.

The article says that in recent years it has been found that some aboveground insects have developed slower when they eat plants that have been eaten by an underground insect.

Through this telephone, underground insects can also communicate to parasitic wasps. Aboveground insects are the unfortunate hosts of parasitic wasps who lay eggs inside of them. When signals are emitted from underground insects, it shows wasps where they can find a good host for their egg.

Because the recent studies on insect communication was done in only a few systems, ecologists don’t know how commonly widespread the green telephone is.

Vietnam

Sapa, located in North Vietnam. July 07. Photo taken by someone in my family.

When I went to Vietnam last year, it had only been my third time to the country. I am fortunate to have parents who like traveling so my family and I traveled all throughout Vietnam from the North into the South. Despite the unfortunate third-world country status, it is a truly beautiful country. I don’t think I could have fully and truly appreciated nature until my trip. I hiked mountains which I had never done before. I saw some of the most beautiful country sides, great green mountains and went into caves.

Ha Long Cave. July 07. Photo mine.

Parts of the beautiful scenery are many different plants and trees. There are a lot of different fruits and plants that I have never seen in California so I wanted to share my 3 favorite plants I found in Vietnam.

1. Cay Ca Trung “Fish Egg Tree”

It is known as the Jamaican Cherry Tree in most of the world, but I had only known of it as Cay Ca Trung or literally translated to Fish Egg Tree. The outside is small and red. The inside looks like fish eggs hence the literal Vietnamese name. The fruit is very sweet and VERY sticky. When I went to Vietnam, my younger cousins showed me the fruit. Then we proceeded to have fish egg fights while we were on duck paddle. Very dangerous. And very sticky. The tree was found almost alongside roads. Unfortunately, this tree is rarely seen in North America.

2. Bong Mac Co “Shy Flower”

The second time I had been to Vietnam, this plant amused me to no end. I had never seen anything like it. With a flick of a finger or a kick of the feet, the leaves closed up as if it were alive. I was astonished. A few years later, the plant appeared for my amusement again except in Hawaii! You can grow your own at ticklemeplant.com.

Here is a video I found on YouTube where someone touches the shy leaves.

3. Cay Phuong Do

The woman under the tree is my mom during our trip.

Here in America I’ve seen these trees except in purple. When in season, my whole street blooms into purple. It’s great until the petals fall on the streets and cars causing a slightly sticky mess. In Vietnam, the trees have red flowers. I can’t find the English name and I can’t translate Phuong into English. So my basic translation is Red --- Tree.

Mushrooms clean up pollution

There is a town 130 miles away from San Francisco called Fort Bragg.

That is Fort Bragg. It is quite gorgeous except for the building.

In this town, a pollutant, dioxin, is infesting the area of a former lumber mill.

How do they want to clean the dioxins?

With mushrooms.

There are two types of mushrooms native to the North that is dioxin-degrading:

Turkey Tail:

And Oyster mushrooms:

I eat oyster mushrooms. My family just finished off a 5lb bag of oyster mushrooms last week.

Mushrooms being used to clean up oil spill are nothing new. It is a process called bioremediation. In this process pollution-eating organisms like fungi or green plants are fed with fertilizer, oxygen and anything else that makes it grow faster. As defined on this site, it “uses microorganisms or their enzymes to return the environment altered by contaminants to its original condition.”

However, it hasn’t been used to clean dioxins. Dioxin is the second most toxic man-made chemical. Number one goes to radioactive waste.

There is no safe level of dioxin exposure according to the Department of Toxic Substances Control. Constant exposure to dioxin can lead to cancer.

There is a lot of contaminated soil because of the dioxins made from the lumber mill. Normally contaminated soil gets taken away to be burned or buried.

What the town hopes to do is use the mushrooms by putting it in plots, sprinkled with straw then left alone with the mushrooms spawning. Then, it is supposed to release a threadlike web called mycelium that secretes enzymes which causes the toxins to fall apart.

Since mushrooms haven’t been used to clean dioxins, sometime this year the town will try a test of mushrooms on a truck loads worth of contaminated soil.

Article from New York Times.

Right Whale

This is a picture of a right whale and her calf.

Whales are such magnificent creatures. While watching the news yesterday, a package on whale watching came on. Big dangerous looking creatures, swimming alongside a boat. My mom made a comment that if they wanted to they could easily flip the boat over. But no, they are harmless.

They swim by big man made machineries and mind their own businesses. If I was a whale and saw the ugly ship that does not belong in my home, I’d flip it over. Thank goodness for those ships I’m not a whale. But honestly, I can’t say the same for killer whales.

As kind as most whales are, ships are their predators. One of the most endangered species of whales is the right whale. The name right whale comes from whalers who thought it was the "right" whale to kill. Back in the day it was for the whale's oil, One of the leading two unnatural causes of right whale deaths is getting hit by a ship.

An article from the New York Times says that the National Marine Fisheries Service wants to make speed limits on ships within 30 miles of port. The White House has been lagging on making a decision because shipping companies don’t like it.

In the last 10 years, a third of the right whale population was killed due to ship strikes. With only 350 North Atlantic whales left in the world, scientists warn that an unnatural death of even one breeding female can push North Atlantic right whales into extinction.

Everything is plastic.

Almost once a week there’s always some kind of new report saying that some product I use or eat is not good for me because a certain chemical in it will make me sick or kill me.

I’m over exaggerating. Just a little.

One week coffee is good for me then the next week coffee isn’t. One week chocolate is good for me the next week it isn’t. Antidepressants make people stop being depressed or make them kill themselves all together.

Everything has its’ pros and cons. We eat and buy everything. With everything we consume, how can producers not put pesticides on veggies? They want us to buy, and we won’t buy if it has little holes in it. Even my Asian noodles had issues with it. Chemicals were being put into it to make it a little chewy. Later everyone found out the really delicious noodles have chemicals in it that harm you. I get surprised but not surprised at the same time. You are supposed to eat to live. But maybe some of the stuff I eat will kill me. Then what is there left to eat? I can eat organic food, but they could be lying to me. It’s probably organic by label.

All those toys I played with when I was younger had lead. I’m pretty sure. Most of them were made in China. But hey, I’m not dead now. =) But I love lead!!! All those Mexican candy I bought from the Ice Cream man after elementary school were GOOD.

The National Toxicology Program says this week’s unhealthy substance is Bisphenol A. BisphenolAfree.org says the substance harms people and the environment. BPA, for short, is the major compound used in polycarbonate plastic. The substance can be found in baby bottles, water bottles, and as liner in a lot of canned food. The BPA can leak out of the can into your food. BPA can cause problems in human development and reproduction.

So basically, this week’s unhealthy product is BABY BOTTLES. I am not surprised. Baby bottles are hard and clear. I could put it in the microwave and it didn’t break down. That’s not natural. To me, that’s an obvious sign of: possible harmful ingredient.

After studying plastics by animal testing (Great…), scientists found out that when the womb was exposed to BPA, there were chances of developing certain cancers and childhood behavioral changes such as hyperactivity.

Canada is considering banning all baby bottles that contain bisphenol A. For now, the U.S. has no plans on doing so.

In this article, BPA can be found in your teeth too. A small amount of it is used in fillings and sealants.

Nothing is natural anymore. Not the food we eat. Not the things we buy. Not even people.

I got this blog idea from: http://www.thegreenguide.com/blog/lowdown/1309