Hydraulic Fracturing

(Source:gaslandthemovie.com) One of the most heated environmental debates has recently centered on the costs and benefits of shale gas extraction, namely through an unconventional gas exploration technique known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking. The fossil fuel industry lauds the opportunities that shale gas and its production can bring. To the proponents of gas drilling, shale gas production means job creation, economic...

Here is Home & Love is Forever

Happy Valentine’s Day! I love you! Yes, I do. I love the fact that it is not only during the hours of happiness do you glow with melonly gentleness, but at the presence of seemingly insurmountable challenges your sweetness remains the same. I love the fact that even under the depth of a winter storm, you make me envision us holding hands in the golden glow of a peeking sun at the horizon. Countries may have borders....

Noise @ Nightfall

This post is as much of a heads-up for potential future tenants of this house as it is to unload a cacophony of noises, which through time has almost engraved in my bones and driving me crazy. 666 Crescent (modified) is too old to stay quiet. Imagine yourself living underground, where the city’s water lines run, as you try to drift off to asleep, water kept splashing against the half empty pipelines. It is like the sound...

Control Gun, Now!

  Bang. Bang. Bang. On university campus in Virginia, in a cinema in Aurora, in a high school in Columbine, and now at an elementary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, bullets are flying across U.S. states, striking innocent people as they fly, taking young lives, turning holiday into tragedy. Every single time, the media follows, police storms, and people outcry. However, as soon as the news fade, campus reopened, and...

COPs With Procrastinator’s Syndrome

United Nations’ Climate Talk, the Conference of Parties (COP), has recently been diagnosed with chronic Procrastinator’s Syndrome. The illness exacerbates in environment, where there is higher presence of atmospheric GHGs concentration. Its symptoms include willingness to trade current actions with distant visions, fear of any SMART (specific, measureable, accountable, reasonable, and time-bound) plans and commitments,...

What Type of Climatic Legacy to Leave Behind

Talks in Doha continue, without making any concrete progress. Folks hit the streets—streets that are only too familiar with demonstration to notice a peaceful walk. As nations defend their emissions records, rights to pollute, and excuses for inaction, fortnight of get-together almost comes to an end. We are unfortunately too accustomed to UN’s climatic conventions. Delegates circumambulate old debates (developed vs....

L-abe-L

As I wait for final decisions on my doctoral candidacy and employment applications, I have been spending my days to read and write. Both my academic trainings and work experiences have exposed me to a wide range of environmental topics, however, none of which has penetrated to a depth where I can proudly label myself as an expert. While a label in and of itself does not really make too much of a difference, and may even fall...

A Corpulent Few Means A Skinny Bunch

China is set to build a huge eco-city from scratch, where none of the estimated 80,000 residents will need to drive. The master planning of Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture envisages a romantic eco-space, in which homes nest amidst public green spaces. Eco-parks filter and purify wastewater like Mother Nature does. Automobiles are no longer part and parcel of the eco-landscape. In this grand new eco-city of 78...