GRAFFITI THAT WILL GROW ON YOU
Artists have always made statements on environmental issues, and these days more and more are practising what they preach. In abandoned lots and derelict public parks, guerrilla gardeners plant flowers, trees and vegetables. On dirty walls and other surfaces, “reverse grafitti” artists delineate words or images by removing grime – not only a striking way to draw attention to urban pollution, but clever as well since there are no legal grounds to arrest them. Artists in Chicago have cleared dirt from sidewalks to create messages about air-quality legislation. In San Francisco, a 42-metre-long mural displays the stencilled shapes of trees and plants alongside the highway that has replaced them.
Taking it even further is London-based illustrator Anna Garforth, whose “Mossenger” project involves making graffiti out of moss instead of paints, which contain harsh chemicals and are often washed away with other harsh chemicals. “A lot of graffiti is considered detrimental,” Ms. Garforth says. Her project involves spelling out a poem by Eleanor Stevens: “In this spore borne air,/ Watch your skin peel,/ Feel your lungs split open -/ Slowly the slits appear…” The first line is up on a wall in London – letters cut out of moss affixed to the surface with a mixture of yogurt and sugar. She hopes the eco-friendly murals will inspire others, provide habitat for insects, enrich local biodiversity and “highlight environmental issues through nature reclaiming the city.”
‘SCIENTIFIC WHALING’
A controversial study published in the journal Polar Biology says minke whales are losing weight because of global warming: Their food supply, krill in the Antarctic, is declining as sea ice shrinks. Among the problems with the research, critics say, is that it used tissue from whales killed by the Japanese “scientific whaling” program, founded in 1986 when the International Whaling Commission (IWC) banned commercial hunts.
Opponents of the Japanese program say it is a facade for commercial hunting and fear this new study would lend it credibility. In particular, they are suspicious of the authors’ claim that competition for food from humpback whales may be contributing to minke weight loss – the Japanese have been hoping to resume hunting humpback whales now that their numbers have rebounded.
Professor Lars Walloe, co-author of the study and head of the Norwegian delegation to the IWC, defended the methodology, saying the blubber measurements could be obtained only by killing the animals. He agrees that “there is a commercial aspect to the Japanese scientific program,” but he says there is “no reason to keep the ban – there are large numbers of minke.”
Hal Whitehead, an expert on whale ecology and behaviour at Dalhousie University in Halifax, says biologists can measure the thickness of right whale blubber using ultrasound. “We are almost always able to find ways to study whales without killing them – it just takes ingenuity and time,” he says, adding that Japan’s “scientific whaling” program amounts to the “prostitution of science – using science as an excuse to kill whales.”
Though he does agree with Prof Walloe on at least one count: Canada’s seal hunt shares similarities with Japan’s whale hunt. “Many more animals are killed in our hunt then in all commercial whaling hunts put together,” says Prof Whitehead.
In any case, it is not necessarily advisable to eat whale meat in the first place: their tissues contain high levels of pollutants, like PCBs, linked to health effects in children in the Arctic and the Faroe islands.
JUNKING JUNK MAIL
A lot of us find it annoying, an undeniable waste of paper. Now, a report released last month by ForestEthics estimates that junk mail also contributes to global warming: They calculate that the 100 billion pieces of junk mail sent every year in the U.S. (848 pieces per household) contribute just as much to climate change as nine million cars, enough to heat nearly 13 million homes over winter.
If you add up the greenhouse-gas emissions from the machinery used in harvesting trees, transporting and pulping the wood and printing and distributing the flyers, plus the cost of recycling, dumping or incinerating, the amount of carbon dioxide released annually accounts for more than 51 million tons.
About half that comes from cutting down trees that would normally soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and act as a brake on climate change. The report notes that an estimated 90,000 hectares of Canadian boreal forest are cut down to make junk mail in America – accounting for about 10 per cent of the Canadian boreal harvest.
The report calls for the creation of a Do Not Mail Registry in the U.S. for people to opt out of junk-mail delivery. Canada already has a “red dot” program, whereby residents can write a letter to Canada Post stating they do not wish to receive junk mail. For more information, contact your local postal outlet, or visit reddotcampaign.ca.