Tag: ambiente
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Diritti della natura (o Pacha Mama)
Capítulo séptimo Derechos de la naturaleza Art. 71.- La naturaleza o Pacha Mama, donde se reproduce y realiza la vida, tiene derecho a que se respete integralmente su existencia y el mantenimiento y regeneración de sus ciclos vitales, estructura, funciones y procesos evolutivos. Toda persona, comunidad, pueblo o nacionalidad podrá exigir a la autoridad pública…
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Controproducenti
Sadly, malaria is making a comeback in many parts of the Third World, due partly to insecticide-resistant mosquitoes and partly to complacency and political disintegration. Irrigation projects such as dams, reservoirs, and irrigation canals often work well in temperate climates. However, in tropical regions, they may backfire. They create large bodies of stationary water that…
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Moralità
I said, “I can name for you something that is good, no matter what stories we tell ourselves.” “And it is…” I held up my glass. “Drinkable quantities of clean water.” “I don’t understand.” “Drinkable quantities of clean water are unqualifiedly a good thing, no matter the stories we tell ourselves.” She got it. She…
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Effetti del clima sull’ingegnosità umana
Other, lesser social changes may trace their origins to the Year Without a Summer. A New Scientist article published in 2005 argues convincingly that the velocipede, the ancestor of the modern bicycle, was developed in the aftermath of 1816’s failed grain harvests as a means of transportation that didn’t need to be fed (unlike horses). Dall’Anno Senza…
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Acacie, formiche e punti di leva dei sistemi
The researchers were testing different methods of preserving acacia trees on experimental plots in Kenya. Half of the plots were surrounded by fences that excluded herbivores such as elephants and giraffes, while the other half were left open. The thinking was that if herbivores were kept away, at least for a while, the acacia trees—which…
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Almeno ci avremo provato
Venerdì prossimo, a partire da alcune proiezioni (in Creative Commons *) cercherò di introdurre i problemi del picco energetico e dei cambiamenti climatici e di stimolare la discussione. Maggiori informazioni qui. * Tra le altre cose, alcuni talk provenienti da TED e già pubblicati qui. Ma vederli o rivederli in compagnia fa un altro effetto,…
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Abeti, tortricidi e feedback
Tree ring records show that the spruce budworm has been killing spruce and fir trees periodically in North America for at least 400 years. Until this century, no one much cared. The valuable tree for the lumber industry was the white pine. Spruce and fir were considered “weed species.” Eventually, however, the stands of virgin…
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L’equivoco
The agricultural life, often referred to as “pastoral” or “rural”, seems a natural world to modern-day city dwellers and suburbanites. A weekend drive in the country is a time for relaxing and “going back to nature.” Yet farming is not na- ture, but rather the largest alteration of Earth’s surface from its natural state that…
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Falsa competizione
Rodney Heitschmidt and Jerry Stuth point out that “[h]umankind has historically fostered and relied upon livestock grazing for a substantial portion of its livelihood because it is the only process capable of converting the energy in grassland vegetation into an energy source directly consumable by humans.” Nineteen billion metric tons of vegetation are produced by…
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Una catastrofe annuale artificiale
Agriculture is a recent human experiment. For most of human history, we lived by gathering or killing a broad variety of nature’s offerings. Why humans might have traded this approach for the complexities of agriculture is an interesting and long-debated question, especially because the skeletal evidence clearly indicates that early farmers were more poorly nourished,…