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Arts Integration: Save Our Selves - Live Earth - 7/7/07 |
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| Published on 7/7/2007 |
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| By Stephen M. Apatow |
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Live Earth is a 24-hour, 7-continent concert series taking place on 7/7/07 that will bring together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis.
Save Our Selves - Live Earth - 7/7/07
www.liveearth.org
Resources & Statistics:
Harvard Extension School - ENVR - E-130 / Fletcher School, Tufts University - DHPP-347
Global Climate Change: The Science, Social Impact and Diplomacy of a World Environmental Crisis
Open Invitation to Class Members, Course Alumni & All Concerned Global Citizens
This introductory course will give students an integrated overview of the science of climate change and an analysis of the implications of this change for patterns of daily life in their own circumstance and around the world. Humankind is facing an unprecedented environmental crisis of global proportions. Scientists from across the world have issued stark warnings about the potential disruption and destabilization that changes in Earth’s climate will most likely cause in the near future for the life systems upon which modern civilization depends. The social and political implications of climate change have begun to become apparent as local communities in widely different parts of the world struggle to adapt to new patterns of excessive rainfall, prolonged droughts and severe weather events. Internationally, nation states have endeavored to forge diplomatic agreements to help humankind cope with both the causes and consequences of global climate change.
Url: www.climate-talks.net/2007-ENVRE130/
Contemplating some of the more complicated problems
Weapons of Mass Destruction, Nonproliferation and International Security
Humanitarian Resource Institute Legal Resource Center: Biodefense Reference Library
Url: www.humanitarian.net/law/nonproliferation1082002.html
Current U.S. Nonproliferation programs in the former Soviet Union [2] include:
-- Material Protection, Control and Accounting (MPC&A) Program (DOE): Improving Security of 603 tons of nuclear weapons material at 53 sites and for 1000's of navel n-weapons.
-- Mayak Fissile Material Storage facility (DOD): The construction of a secure facility for 50 tons of weapons plutonium.
-- Aktau-BN-350 Breeder Reactor Project: The security of 3 tons of high quality Pu in spent fuel.
-- HEU Purchase Agreement - "Megatons to Megawatts" program (U.S. Enrichment Corporation - USEC): Purchase of 500 tons of weapons grade uranium over 20 years, blended down to non-weapons usable nuclear power plant fuel.
-- Plutonium (Pu) Disposition (DOE): The elimination of 34 tons of Russian Weapons Pu by irradiating materials as mixed oxide fuel in Russian nuclear power plants.
-- Pu Production Reactor Shut Down Agreement (DOE): End annual production of 1.8 tons (total) or weapons plutonium at three remaining Russian production reactors, while providing alternatives.
In January, 2001, Australian scientists developing a contraceptive vaccine for controlling field mice populations sought to enhance the vaccines effectiveness by inserting the gene for the immune regulatory protein interleukin-4 (IL-4) into mousepox, which was being used as a carrier virus. IL-4 is a substance that is normally produced in mice, but insertion of the IL-4 gene into the mousepox genome unexpectedly transformed the normally benign virus into a virulent strain that shut down the immune system and killed all the animals in the experiment. In addition to rendering mousepox lethal in mice genetically resistant to the virus, the inserted gene made the mousepox vaccine ineffective - the recombinant virus killed even those mice that had previously been vaccinated. Since human beings possess the interleukin-4 gene, it is possible that inserting this gene into a poxvirus that infects humans, such as smallpox or monkeypox, could create a lethal strain that would be resistant to the existing smallpox vaccine.
Current threats involving the deliberate reintroduction of smallpox as an epidemic disease would be an international crime of unprecedented proportions, but it is now regarded as a possibility. Without intervention, each person infected with smallpox could infect between 10 and 20 others in a society that had not been immunized. Epidemiologists refer to this number as the "transmission rate" of an epidemic.
A transmission rate of 20 means the first 50 victims could infect 1,000 others, and these "second generation" cases could infect 20,000 more, who would infect 400,000, and so on. The sixth generation of such a mathematical progression would be 160 million and if such a hypothetical epidemic were to occur with smallpox, that number of cases would be reached in approximately 10 weeks after the first case appeared.
The impact of a bioterrorist incident presents the challenge of mass casualties, the closure of roads, airports and waterways causing interstate and international commerce to potentially grind to a halt as containment and control becomes the priority. As economic scenarios in the global war against terrorism are assessed, the significance of a bioterrorist incident with an agent such as smallpox would present a catastrophic geopolitical challenge.
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| Article Credits and References |
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Humanitarian Resource Institute
Subject: Arts Integration into Education: Bridging the Gap
Url: www.humanitarian.net/university/arts/
Humanitarian University Consortium Graduate Studies Center for Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and Law. |
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| Press Release Follow-up Notes and Amendments |
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| Billboard Publicity Wire: 9 July 2007
Stephen Michael Apatow: Arts Integration - Save Our Selves - Live Earth Triggers a Global Frenzy
Url: http://billboard.prweb.com/releases/2007/7/prweb538481.htm |
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| Submitted on 7/9/2007 |
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