NASA is about to commit an eco-sin on a galactic scale.

On October 8th, in search of water, NASA is going to bomb the Moon.

Water on the Moon, you ask? Yes, scientists think there might be evidence of moisture found in the debris plume (which will, by the way, be visible from Earth). I admit, this irks me; I find it strikingly arrogant. Exploration is one thing, but the Moon doesn’t belong to the United States for benefit and exploitation.

Even if water is found, shuttling it back to Earth is an inconceivably ridiculous prospect, and colonizing the place seems just plain silly. Let’s fix Earth’s problems first – including conserving our own water sources – before setting forth on destructive (and expensive) forays into the Solar System.

Dare this blogger wax sentimental, but the Moon is a celestial body revered by Earthlings of all cultures, inspiring poets, shamans and lovers across the globe. Disrespectfully viewing the natural world as naught more than raw materials has already taken us too far.

Does science rule all? Or are there some ecological lines we should never cross?

Image: Flowery Luza

If you’re still chuckling from the weirdest of 2008’s green building designs, pop some popcorn and pull up a chair before you check out the Dragonfly – it’s a 600-meter-tall wing-shaped skyscraper filled with self-sufficient offices and vertical gardens. Would you be happy to see this against the Manhattan skyline?

New Zealand comedian Mike King has been talking green for a while now, yet that didn’t keep him promoting the pork industry – until he broke into a pig farm with animal activists and saw things for himself. “If I had known this was going on I would never have supported this.” Read the full story at Stuff.

Another summer, another tide of sunscreen attacking man and beast alike – unless you go for the new wave of eco-friendly versions. Check out Alternative Consumer’s recommendations, and have a look at our own.

If you work in the heirloom tomato industry, you’ll be fuming after Scientific American’s Brendan Borrell described heirlooms as “feeble and inbred” in an article that implied these strains of fruit were fatally flawed and needed a genetic band-aid. A blistering response wasn’t long in coming, prompting Mr. Borrell to take back a few of his ill-chosen words. You can read our Vanessa’s thoughts on the subject at Civil Eats.

How about this for inflammatory? Writer and activist Michael Pollan is so concerned about food from mass-commercialized agriculture that he advises us to avoid all food we’ve seen advertised. Pioneering or paranoid? Read his argument at AlterNet and decide for yourself.

When people look at wind turbines, they make a lazy association: spinning blades = bird-killing machines = worse than traditional power. The problem, argues Benjamin Sovacool at Scitizen, is that few of us see first-hand the damage mining and acid rain does to our feathered friends, and out of sight means out of mind. Wind turbines have a ways to go, it’s true, but the conventional energy industry kills far more birds.

For the fellas out there who like to explore themselves – I mean figuratively, for pity’s sake – there’s a new magazine on that very topic, called Masc. Top tip? Funny is hot.

Some things shouldn’t be so small – stamp-sized cellphone manufacturers, I’m talking to you. In the same category is bonkers Brit Perry Watkins, who has turned a children’s ride into the world’s smallest road-legal automobile. Parking should be a cinch, although beware of being crushed under the wheels of passing bicycles. A unique concept, we dearly hope.

If you clicked on our popular TOMS vegan shoe giveaway and are now finding that standard footwear no longer measures up, hot-foot it to Greenopia where Katherine has listed the top eco-sneakers on the market today and gives advice on where to donate your shoes when they’re falling off your feet.

He’s walked 1,200 miles to raise awareness for the plight of homeless children. He’s about to walk the 600 miles from Atlanta to Washington. And he’s 11 years old. A kind of philanthropic Karl Bushby, Zach Bonner is a fund-raising walking machine, and you can read his story at MSNBC.

As someone who once got a chili seed in one of his eyes, I can attest that making hot sauce is dangerous. You need to know exactly what you’re doing, so we reckon you can’t go far wrong with Aleta’s comprehensive guide at Omnomicon. Although – is there a greener alternative to vinyl gloves?

We know that organic is the way to go in principle. But what about practice? Enough of “should”: is organic better? Chelsea Green’s Makenna Goodman isn’t so sure. Have we been robbed by companies willfully misusing the loosely-defined organic label? Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield Farm thinks Goodman’s aim is a little off: the real problem is the food system that small-scale farming challenges. Where do you weigh in?

If you’re wondering what the force of nature known as Bette Midler is up to these days, you don’t live in New York. She’s been tackling the city’s legendary garbage problems, and her New York Restoration Project has stumped up $38 million for good causes – not the first time she’s set such an inspiring example. Respect to the lady with the voice that parts your hair.

So, modular house-building is convenient, adaptive to the environment and oh-so-very-cool. But did you realise that you could knock a prefab together in just 8 days? It takes me that long to put up a shelf, let alone a house.

Finally, a dumb but impressively brave act of environmental terrorism. Just imagine if their timing had been off.

Image: Sleeping Bear

There are few sounds in the natural world that are as soothing as the restless sea – so it’s a shame we’re drowning it out.

In yet another assault on the biophony, human beings are flooding the depths of the oceans with noise pollution, turning the formerly Silent World into a busy-sounding place. All humanity’s sea-going machinery send out vibrations – some of them very substantial indeed – and for marine creatures that have evolved to pick up the faintest of noises and communicate with natural sonar, this is indeed a problem. Shockingly, a report by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw) argues that the range of blue whale communication has reduced down to just a tenth of what it was before humans starting plying the waves with powered-propeller vessels.

When it comes to airborne noise pollution, there are at least regulations – because this noise directly affects people. There are currently no such restrictions on noise pollution at sea. It’s true that we’re talking about the uppermost layers of a truly vast volume of seawater – the oceans cover 71% of our planet, around 1.3 billion cubic kilometres – but those upper layers are where most marine life thrives. It’s an even more urgent issue to consider when worldwide deep-sea drilling is set to intensify as our fossil fuels start running out, forcing us further and further away from the shoreline.

First the air, then the ground, then space, and now the oceans. We’ve been highly inventive in our methods of polluting every corner of the natural environment, so let’s hope we can be just as creative in cleaning them up – before our neglect reaches new depths.

Further reading:  Ifaw: “Ocean Noise: Turn It Down” (PDF).

Image: Kalandrakas

Fruit and vegetables are under a lot of pressure these days. It’s not just about taste, or how and where they’re grown – they have to be glamorous as well.

Late last year, I was horrified to find that the European Union was scrapping laws on the precise measurements of 26 types of fruit and vegetable. What horrified me was that there were laws to scrap. It seems that years ago, strict guidelines were laid down prohibiting the sale of foodstuffs that don’t reflect a standardized shape – as if Nature should conform to some edible version of the International System Of Units. A banana like a question mark? Offensive and vile. A carrot with an extra leg? My eyes, my eyes! And so on.

If these foodstuffs didn’t measure up – they were officially deemed unfit for sale. This amounted to an estimated 20% of the British harvest that couldn’t be sold (as if it didn’t have enough problems already), driving food prices even higher. No sale? It gets thrown away (oh good, we are pleased). Outcry? You bet – from producers and customers alike, after fiascoes like retailer J Sainsbury being told it couldn’t sell forked carrots relabeled as “witch’s fingers” for Halloween. Sorry, kiddies, off you pop – Europe has spoken.

So this ludicrous system is being ditched on July 1st, and good riddance. But is this worrying trend going to go away? Are we going to start obsessing over how our food looks before it’s cooked? It’s a fact that science is learning the genetic mechanisms that determine food-shape; at the moment, tomatoes are under the spotlight. We could be years away from the commercial version of beauty contests – but for now, from July 1st, I’ll be aiming for the wonkiest, lumpiest fruit and vegetables I can find. No matter what Eurocrats might think, they’re the real shape of things to come.

Image: Brettf

British scientists have come up with a colourful and creative way to detect pollution in the sea. They have created a carp-shaped robot that looks like a fish, acts like a fish, but of course, isn’t a fish.

Each “˜robo fish’ is capable of navigating around without human intervention and has chemical sensors that  enable  it to sniff out potential hazardous pollutants.  Information collected can be transmitted back to shore in real time via WiFi technology.

These cute but costly ($29,000 each) little fellows are roughly the size of a seal and have yet to be let loose in the sea. A five robotic fish trial is planned for next year in the northern Spanish port of Gijon. It’s hoped that, if successful, the robotic fish will be used in ports to monitor emissions and leaks from large ships. Eventually, though, the aim is for them to be used as pollution detection sensors in rivers, lakes, and seas across the world.

Wanna rub yourself down in hippo sweat? Well, me neither, but there is something fascinating about the aforementioned fluid: it may be synthesized and used as sunblock.

Hippos exude an oily secretion that contains light-scattering crystalline structures, and this is what keeps them from getting burned in the unrelenting African sun. Making use of nature’s knowledge in a science known as biomimicry, researchers are trying to figure out how to replicate this substance into a form appropriate for humans. Pretty amazing if you ask me. Just so long as this doesn’t implicate a future in bizarre sweaty hippo exploitation.

Image: The Lizard Queen

You drop a plate on the floor – crack! Your tights ladder when you’re putting them on. Your bicycle tire starts emitting a sad little whine. Paintwork gets scratched, shoes leak, cloths fray and holes appear where you least want them – often the prelude to a poignant, reluctant parting of ways. Wouldn’t it be nice if things fixed themselves?

Enter the exciting new world of self-healing. Far from a feelgood slogan or an eyebrow-raising euphemism (ahem), it’s the scientific development of non-living materials that act like biological systems to repair themselves.

Last year we were stunned by the unveiling of a type of rubber with unusually densely-packed chemical bonds. Cut it into two pieces, push them back together, and these bonds latch together just as tightly as in the original piece. In other words, it heals perfectly (and perfectly green). Just imagine if your tights were made from a similar material – you won’t be the first to.

But the most exciting new materials are those modeled on biological vascular systems. The way our bodies heal is truly amazing – and something like a simple grazed elbow can be the start of a process so thrifty, clever and dazzlingly effective that it makes plastic surgery look like strip-mining.

There’s much we can learn – and we’ve already started looking at new materials that are laced with microcapsules containing healing agents. If a break forms, these capsules rupture and the “wound” is flooded with substances that repair the damage. Astounding. And just when we think we’ve got our heads around all this Nature-copying wizardry…along comes a type of paint with scratches that heal in the sun.

In the drive to make everyone look twice at what they’re throwing away, products that continually look and work as good as new would be a priceless resource – and go a long way towards healing our broken relationship with our possessions.

Image: djeucalyptus

You’ve seen animals licking their wounds. And maybe the first thing you do when you cut your finger is put it in your mouth and suck on it for a moment. It turns out these instinctive urges have good reason: scientists in the Netherlands have isolated a compound in human saliva that not only kills bacteria but actually promotes healing. This would explain why oral wounds like tooth extractions and tongue piercings heal so quickly. It’s nurture, by nature.

The scientists hope to synthesize this compound and use it to help hard-to-heal wounds like diabetic ulcers and burn traumas. But remember, you’ve got your own anti-bacterial and healing compounds right there in your mouth, so if you’re caught somewhere without a first aid kit – just spit!

If you keep upbeat, do you really live longer?

A new study by the University of Pittsburgh offers a tantalizing hint. After looking at a population sample of women aged 50 and over, researchers have concluded that there is some kind of link between people with cheery attitudes, and those with higher longevity and resistance to diseases and health disorders.

Okay. Perhaps you’d now like to join one of two queues that are busily forming. The first is the “Well, Duh” queue, occupied by everyone who takes a wry view of scientific findings that confirm what’s widely held as “common sense”. The second is the “Science, What Science?” line. This is where you’ll hear: “how exactly can something as woolly as a positive outlook actually improve your physical health?”

Team leader Dr. Hilary Tindle doesn’t know either – and she points out that this research doesn’t claim that you can grin your way to a ripe old age. (It may well be that simple, but we still don’t know). Yet these findings are weighty. The sample? A whopping 100,000 women.  Of these, the proportion demonstrating an optimistic approach were significantly more likely to dodge ailments and death than their more pessimistic counterparts – a 14% better chance of being alive 8 years after the study began, and an impressive 30% lower likelihood of suffering heart disease during that time.

It’s true that these figures are based on subjective category assignments – a certain amount of informed pigeonholing by the research team – but it’s clear there’s something going on here. And while I’m waiting to find out what it is, I’ll be making sure I have a smile on my face.

Recommended Reading: Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project

Image: milena mihaylova

As the climate changes, so will the habitats of flora and fauna – changing far faster than natural adaptation can deal with. Mass extinctions are a very real threat. What to do?

One option on the table is a truly startling display of geoengineering. This week, scientists at Britain’s University of York (my home city, and a hotbed of eco-innovation at the moment) have just released the results of an experiment to move a species of butterfly to the limits of its traditional temperature “comfort zone”, to be encouraged to embrace a new habitat. It did – and it’s thriving.

The technique is called Assisted Colonization – and the implications are immense. Entire populations could, at great expense, be moved out of one habitat to another, staying one step ahead of global warming and continuing to thrive in the wild. Only the species most at risk would be targeted for such drastic measures, such as small plant-life relying on the wind to migrate painfully slowly (via seed dispersal).

It’s tinkering with Nature on an epic scale, and critics are going to find it easy to sling mud. We still understand only a fraction of the complex interdependencies within an ecosystem. The danger – take away a supporting beam (ie. a creature that is a vital link in the food chain, or necessary to propagate other species, such as the way bees pollinate apple trees), and the whole structure crashes down.

Are the risks worth the rewards?

Image: Paraflyer