environment

King Abdullah Gives Saudi Women the Right to Vote – Just to Battle EthicalOil.org

Saudi King Abdullah announced on Sunday that he was giving women the right to vote and run in municipal elections.What a coincidence. One week after it seemed that Canadian oil was going to beat the Saudis to the gigantic American market by making an inane comparison between the relative ethicality of the two fossil fuel purveyors, since Saudi women can't vote, King Abdullah has given Saudi women the right to vote.Suddenly now, dirty energy lobbying group EthicalOil doesn't have a marketing leg to stand on.

Lobbying group EthicalOil.org is challenging Saudi Oil on the basis of women’s rights. A Canadian lobbying group is claiming that Canada’s oil is somehow more “ethical” than Saudi Arabian oil because the Saudis don’t just destroy the climate we evolved to live in but also abuse women’s rights. Now, I am as feminist as they […]

Bush era US climate science policy seems to have moved north to Canada, argues Susan. A student researcher at the University of Toronto has exposed a draconian shut-down of climate science in Canada. This is a first for Canada – an advanced democracy, but a democracy that has the resource-curse of vast oil sands potential. James Birch does research in a thirty […]

“Let the world see the openness of Israel,” wrote one participant. Fortunately, mostly positive press dominates the Naked Sea photoshoot, which took place on private property along the shores of the salty lake. Prior to the Spencer Tunick photo shoot at the Dead Sea this Saturday, international coverage of the famed artists latest installation was […]

Like cockroaches, bed bugs have been around since prehistoric times. Good night, sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite. If they do, grab a shoe and beat them till they’re black and blue! When my sibs and I were kids, we’d repeat that little ditty to each other before climbing into bed at night. […]

It’s not just excess calories anymore. It could be that environmental chemicals are ordering your body to put on the pounds. We live surrounded by synthetic chemical substances. They’re in our food, our soaps, in hundreds of thousands of things we handle daily. Like parabens, a preservative found in moisturizers and bath products. Exposure to […]

Abu Dhabi’s Corniche has become the Arabian Gulf’s first Blue Flag beach The city of Abu Dhabi has become the first Arabian Gulf location to gain a Blue Flag environmental award for one of its beaches. The certification has been awarded to the famous Abu Dhabi Corniche, a four mile stretch of coastline which is […]

Explosive phytoplankton “bloom” in Pacific Ocean, caused by too much CO2 infusion. Photo credit: NASA We have written time and time again in Green Prophet about environmental dangers to the world’s seas and oceans. These dangers include pollution by plastic material, chemicals and other debris; from over-fishing; and from global warming. Global warming is […]

Looks ‘finger lickin good’; but how much arsenic is inside? Issues over whether the poison arsenic is being fed to commercial poultry in many countries, has now come to a head again with the USA’s Federal Department of Agriculture (FDA) has now admitted that amounts of the cancer causing poison arsenic is being fed to […]

Traditional Jewish burials: guidelines to a green farewell. The recent controversy over arch-terrorist Osama bin Laden’s burial at sea has piqued an interest in eco-funerals here at Green Prophet. It can hardly get more friendly to the environment than a biodegradable cloth shroud in which to wrap the corpse, plus weights to ballast – then […]

Turkey’s prime minister has announced a plan to build a second waterway through Istanbul, just west of the existing Bosphorus Strait. As Turkey’s June parliamentary elections draw nearer, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has unveiled what he calls “the biggest project of the century”: a canal from the Black Sea to the Marmara Sea. […]

ResponsibleTravel.com customers on holiday in Egypt. Feluccas and Pharoahs, a popular trip. British ethical tourism pioneers ResponsibleTravel.com has celebrated its tenth birthday by announcing its biggest ten sellers over the last decade – and Middle Eastern destinations top the list. Responsible Travel offers hundreds of holidays across the world and its birthday announcement also included […]

Russian nuclear icebreaker 50 Years of Victory: Can spend many months at sea With the nuclear power plant crisis in the Chernobyl reactor in 1986 and now the recent Japanese nuclear crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant many people are still wondering if there is any possible good use for nuclear energy , especially […]

Is a bird death “aflockalypse” being caused by ionospheric experimentation? Strange mass bird and fish kill-offs. Then 152 dolphins get “zapped” in the Straits of Hormuz and 200 cows die suddenly in the American State of Wisconsin. News reports some 7000 buffalo dying in Vietnam seem to indicate that something unnatural may be causing all […]

SlutWalk Toronto took just six weeks to organize, and now a dozen protests are planned worldwide. Is the Middle East next on the slut map? Without exception, every major human rights organization, from Amnesty International, the World Health Organization, and World Pulse to the Association for Women’s Rights in Development point to the clear connection […]

As a new political order struggles to assert itself in the autocratic states of the Middle East novel challenges – and possibilities – emerge. In looking toward the future, social Greens throughout the region would do well to coordinate an agenda geared toward a sustainable tomorrow.

“Szzzzz, c’mon, honey; just take a little bitty bite of this delicious fruit” This question has been asked by much of Mankind ever since the dawn of the Creation: was the snake that enticed Eve and Adam to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge really environmentally unfriendly? And is it fair to blame the […]

Natural phenomena, HAARP experiments or an alien death ray? Some 152 dophins boiled alive with conspiracy theorists pointing to HAARP. You may think you have seen everything after Arwa’s article dealing with the slaughter of sharks in Persian Gulf waters off Dubai. Think twice, dear readers, because you haven’t! There’s something even more sinister and […]

Ramallah celebrated Palestine’s first environment festival March 19-21 2011 This past weekend, Ramallah celebrated what is believed to be Palestine’s first dedicated environment festival. Large-scale ‘green’ development has been making big news in Palestine recently. But this event was on a much more personal scale. According to organisers from community support organisation Juhoud, the Basateen […]

Checking radiation levels. Will potassium iodide work? When I wrote a Green Prophet article in the summer of 2009 dealing with research into a vaccine to protect against the effects of radiation sickness, I never realized that this topic would be as relevant as it is today. This is due to the ongoing crisis of […]

Japanese soldiers prepare for the worst. The China Syndrome? Is the worst yet to come? Radiation from damaged reactor cores at Japan’s Fukushima Diiachi nuclear power plant now appear to be reaching dangerous proportions according to statements being issued by governmental authorities and assessments being made by nuclear energy safety analysts. Some experts in Israel […]

Desert pivot irrigation project is one of Gaddafi’s several “eco wonders” that could be axed In a way, it might be possible to have empathy for Libya’s embattled head of state, Muamar al Gadaffi, whose beloved green projects all over this desert kingdom may soon be coming to an abrupt end. Prior to all the […]

IDE’s new desalination plant in China is powered by excess heat from power plant nearby. Israel has been a world leader in desalination technology and projects by through companies like Tahal and IDE Technologies. IDE has already constructed more than 400 desalination plants in 40 countries, including at least 3 in Israel – the world’s […]

Palestinian youth learn about water issues at Al-Auja Eco-Centre Green Prophet has featured news about the Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME) Eco-Centre at Al-Auja, a Palestinian village in the Jordan Valley, on a number of occasions. Green Prophet writer Rachel Bergstein has reported on the challenges the inhabitants of Al-Auja face because the […]

Once part of the urban horizon, crows are leaving Iranian cities. Since the 1980s scholars have studied the influences of urbanization on the environment, particularly the ecosystem. The rapid growth of the urban population and especially the lifestyle of the urban dwellers have undeniable effects on the life of living species and plants. Birds are […]