Adventure in 60 Seconds

Text by Keith Rutowski and Tetsuhiko Endo

Lapka Rita Sherpa skipped his way up 19,340-foot Mt. Kilimanjaro to become the first Sherpa in history to climb all of the Seven Summits reports pitchengine.com. The 45-year-old has climbed Everest 11 times and Aconcagua 22 times.

Eco-Warrior of the Week: Goldman Sachs

Say you are are one of the biggest banks on Wall Street (a very
relative term lately) and you find yourself in possession of 680,000
acres of pristine wilderness in Chilean Tierra Del Fuego. What would
you do with it? If you were Goldman Sachs, you would donate the land to
the Wildlife Conservation Society and pledge $12 million of your own
money to keep it clean and exploitation free. That is exactly what the
bank did in 2002 and is now planning to open the land, dubbed
Karukinka, to visitors for hiking, fishing and backpacking. To see what
the bank gets from all of this and what Chileans have to say about it,
check out the article on the BBC website.

Ship Emissions Worse Than Expected

If floating around the Caribbean aboard a cruise ship is
your idea of quality R&R, you might want to reconsider. Your
blissful getaway may be more detrimental to the environment than
researchers had originally thought. A new study
led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the
University of Colorado at Boulder has found that commercial ships
account for nearly half as much particulate pollution as all of the
world's cars. The study is the first of its kind to propose a rough
global figure for ship pollution based upon direct emissions sampling.
In addition to impacting climate, ship emissions may be particularly
harmful to the health of those living along the coastal areas. And
while ship sulfate emissions are regulated with varying degrees of
success by the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution
from Ships, their organic pollutants and carbon emissions remain
unchecked. 

Bomb Squad Hits Puerto Rico

Researches are collaborating with the U.S. Navy to try to figure out how to safely remove hundreds of un-detonated bombs that litter the ocean floor off he coast of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. The bombs, left by the Navy during training missions near the island over a period of six decades, have been slowly releasing carcinogens into the marine ecosystem according to an article by CNN. Among the proposed cleanup techniques is the use of a prototype remotely operated vehicle.