By The Hive
In today’s Sustainable Snapshot, the beauty of compostable jewelry, the incredible house made of hemp, and the usual dose of bad news about our climate.
The 32 Most Alarming Charts From The Government’s Climate Change Report
“Just reading about the government’s massive new report outlining what climate change has in store for the U.S. is sobering. In brief: temperature spikes, drought, flooding, less snow, less permafrost. But if you really want to freak out, you should check out the graphs, charts, and maps. For the more visually oriented bunker builders out there, here are the 32 most alarming images from the 1,200-page draft report.” – Grist
Compostable Accessories Are A Girl’s Best Friend
“At the recent DesignersBlock in the Southbank Centre in London I came across this beautiful jewellery made by Young Yu Do. Compostable Accessories are made from organic materials that can easily be composted at home alongside your teabags, potato peelings and eggshells (unlike a lot of new compostable materials that can only be broken down in an industrial composting facility).” – Do The Green Thing
Andean Glaciers Melting At “Unprecedented” Rates: Study
“Climate change has shrunk Andean glaciers between 30 and 50 percent since the 1970s and could melt many of them away altogether in coming years, according to a study published on Tuesday in the journal Cryosphere.” – Reuters
BP Deepwater Horizon Spill: Scientists Say Seafood Safe, But Health Effects Being Measured
“There continues to be no evidence that harmful levels of chemicals from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill are in seafood, but initial study results show that former spill cleanup workers are carrying biomarkers of many chemicals contained in the oil in their bodies, and women and children along Louisiana’s coast are reporting health effects believed linked to oil.” – The Times-Picayune
Obama’s Green Team: He Really Meant It
“President Obama’s green energy team all said, in essence, that Obama really, really meant it when he vowed to make climate a major focus in Monday’s inaugural speech. “We need to make sure that we tackle climate change in these next four years and this president is going to do it,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, wearing his traditional ten-gallon hat and bolo tie, told the crowd Monday night.'” – The Hill
STUDY: Warmest Year On Record Received Cool Climate Coverage
“Even In Record-Breaking Year, Broadcast Climate Coverage Remained Minimal. In 2012, the U.S. experienced record-breaking heat, a historic drought, massive wildfires in the West, and Hurricane Sandy. Meanwhile, Arctic sea ice extent shattered the previous record low and the Greenland ice sheet saw the greatest melt in recorded history. According to the National Climatic Data Center, 2012 was the warmest year in recorded history for the contiguous U.S. Yet despite these illustrations of climate change, the broadcast news outlets devoted very little time to climate change in 2012, following a downward trend since 2009.” – Media Matters
Why We Now Oppose Drilling In The Arctic
“Last week, announcing the beginning of an internal review of the Arctic drilling program, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar admitted that he “never felt comfortable” with Shell’s efforts and added, “it may be that Shell isn’t even ready to move forward with drilling in 2013.” He should take that statement a step further. The Obama administration shouldn’t issue any new permits to Shell this year and should suspend all action on other companies’ applications to drill in this remote and unpredictable region.” – Bloomberg
Death From Above: Chicago’s Bird Casualties Offer Clues On Climate Change
“Willard and the museum team collect hundreds of birds, their vitals hand-logged in books now numbering in the hundreds. The birds are then identified, numbered, then ziplock-bagged and frozen. Still more are delivered by members of the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors who comb the city’s streets for migration casualties, storing them in kitchen freezers, hidden among pints of ice cream and frozen pizzas.” – Grist
Look Out Coastal Cities: Greenland Is Melting, Fast
“Those who claim it’s all cycles just don’t understand that humans are driving the cycle right now, and for the foreseeable future,” he says. And the coastal consequences of allowing Greenland to continue its melting—and pour 23-feet worth of sea level into the ocean over the coming centuries—are just staggering. “If you’re the mayor of Hamburg, or Shanghai, or Philadelphia, I think it’s in your job description that you think forward a century,” says Box. “They’re completely inundated by the year 2200.”- The Atlantic
The 14 Fossil-Fuel Projects Poised To F*ck Up The Climate
“And finally, a broader and perhaps more optimistic thought: Lots of these projects are stoppable. It may not seem like it, but they are. Human beings are making these decisions and human beings are subject to social, political, and economic pressure. It is possible for passionate groups of citizens to create that pressure. It’s happened before!” – Grist
PHOTOS: The House Made of Hemp
“Hemp is the soft, durable fiber cultivated from the Cannabis plant and is used to refer to marijuana with a low, non-psychoactive level of THC, the main chemical in marijuana. Hemp has been used for hundreds of years with an estimated 50,000 products being derived from it. Here, hemp is used in the form of Hemcrete- a mixture of industrial hemp, lime and water- to construct a home located in Asheville, North Carolina.” – So Fresh And So Green