March 2012
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February 2012
25 posts
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“… between 2000 and 2009, U.S. transportation and housing costs increased...”
– A paragraph from the Atlantic Cities article, ‘How More Expensive Housing Can Actually Cost You Less’, which highlights the growing economic benefits of living in walkable/ “location efficient” neighborhoods.
The website for the ‘Housing and Transportation...
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Graphing Food, Income & Climate Change →
From The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Climate Progress:
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Food in Cities: Seattle neighborhood creates "the... →
From Crosscut:
Sandwiched between 15th Ave. S. and the play fields at the SW edge of Jefferson Park in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle are seven acres of lonely, sloping lawn that have sat idly in the hands of Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) for the better part of a century. At least until this spring, when the land that has only ever known the whirring steel of city mowers will begin a...
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Urban Agriculture: 18 Story Vertical Farm Being... →
From CleanTechnica:
Here’s a pretty cool urban farming solution—a Plantagon greenhouse for urban farming. Construction on the first one broke ground in Sweden last week. This unique vertical-farming greenhouse will also be “[part of] an international Centre of Excellence for Urban Agriculture, a demo-plant for Swedish clean-tech and a climate-smart way to use excess heating and CO2 from...
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NOAA Study: Solar, wind hold promise to replace... →
From The Vancouver Sun:
Large-scale green energy systems can affordably replace fossil fuel as the world’s primary source of electricity within 20 years, new research from the United States weather office suggests.
… a director with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Friday in Vancouver that wind and solar could supply 70 per cent of electricity...
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STREAMING NOW: Climate Scientist & Nobel Laureate... →
Climate scientist and Nobel Laureate Michael E. Mann – author of the IPCC’s “Hockey Stick” Report that sparked a bitter controversy between scientists and science deniers.
Hear the real story of the science and politics behind this controversy – and of the campaign to deny the reality of global climate change.
The Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions & David Suzuki Foundation are...
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“… the think tanks and institutes that deny the reality or severity of...”
– A healthy bite of Naomi Oreskes‘ recent piece in the Los Angeles Times, ‘The Verdict is in on Climate Change’. Oreskes is a science historian, professor at the University of California San Diego, and author (‘Merchants of Doubt’). If you’re interested, you can...
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Climate Denial: Leak Exposes How U.S. Think Tank... →
From The Guardian:
The inner workings of a libertarian thinktank working to discredit the established science on climate change have been exposed by a leak of confidential documents detailing its strategy and fundraising networks.
Desmogblog, which broke the story, said it had received the confidential documents from an “insider” at the Heartland Institute, which is based in Chicago....
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“The melt-off from the world’s ice sheets, ice caps and glaciers over eight...”
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A quote from the LiveScience article, ‘NASA Satellites Show How Our Icy World Is Melting’. It profiles a new study that points out that, “The Earth is losing an incredible amount of ice to the oceans annually, and these new results will help us answer important questions in terms...
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'China report spells out "grim" climate change... →
From Reuters:
Global warming threatens China’s march to prosperity by cutting crops, shrinking rivers and unleashing more droughts and floods, says the government’s latest assessment of climate change, projecting big shifts in how the nation feeds itself.
The warnings are carried in the government’s “Second National Assessment Report on Climate Change,” which...
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Study: U.S. green economy lost fewer jobs in... →
From USA Today:
The green economy lost fewer jobs than did the overall economy during the height of the United States’ recent recession, finds a study out today on California’s experiences.
The state’s overall economy lost 7% of jobs from January 2009 to January 2010 while its “core green economy” lost 3%, according to the study released by San Francisco-based...
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Building Green: 'Lessons in Sustainability:... →
From the Vancouver Sun:
Since retrofitting buildings to make them sustainable is both more expensive and less effective than building them right in the first place, we create 50- to 100-year consequences when we construct buildings without consideration for sustainability.
Such buildings are leading sources of greenhouse gases, guzzle up our natural resources and are expensive to maintain for...
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Getting Around: Cities, Streets, and 'Shared... →
From The Economist:
For years urban planners have emphasised the needs of the motorist over those of the pedestrian. Thanks partly to greenery, partly to a greater understanding of how pedestrians behave, and partly to concerns about social cohesion, priorities are changing.
London provides two good example of this shift. On February 1st Exhibition Road, a landmark street near many of the...
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“The advent of bike lanes in some American cities may seem like a big step, but...”
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A quote from the New York Times article, ‘The Dutch Way - Bicycles and Fresh Bread’, which highlights the cycling culture in the Netherlands in search of lessons for building more robust cycling cultures in North American cities and towns.
(Photo credit: Amsterdamize)
January 2012
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Water: 'Why Every City Should Be Planting Rain... →
From Atlantic Cities:
Once, cities were built to channel storm water away from building foundations and roadways. But as urban areas have grown, rooftops, streets and other impervious surfaces have disrupted cities’ natural hydrology. Today, everyone from water authorities to home gardeners are looking to absorb rain where it falls, eschewing traditional treatment plants and underground...
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Infographic: 'The Metals That Enable Our Gadgets... →
From FastCoDesign:
Check out the article from which the infographic came here. You may also want to check out the ABC News article, ‘World running out of resources: UN’.
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Energy Efficiency Infographic: 'How to get... →
The infographic accompanies the Globe & Mail article, ‘Switch off the lights, here comes the sun’, which highlights a promising solution to increase the energy efficiency of buildings:
Technology being commercialized in British Columbia aims to transform building interiors — providing practical, affordable illumination by harnessing the natural light of the sun. It’s...
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Nature Editorial: Peak Oil Has Come and Gone,... →
From Wired News:
The global production of oil has remained relatively flat since 2005 and peaked in 2008, declining ever since even as demand has continued to increase. The result has been wild fluctuations in the price of oil as small changes in demand set off large shocks in the system.
In Wednesday’s issue of Nature, James Murray of University of Washington and David King of Oxford...
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Moving Forward: 'Canadians want more bike lanes... →
From The National Post:
Following recent high-profile cycling deaths in Ontario, results of a poll suggest four in five Canadians think until more cyclists respect the rules of the road, they won’t be able to gain the respect of motorists.
“What Canadians are saying is that there needs to be more understanding between motorists and cyclists,” Ipsos Reid associate...
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“Even though the problem of what to do about global climate change is very...”
– Thomas Malone, director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, talking about a new approach to addressing climate change that involves collaboration and competition. The Center’s Climate CoLab recently announced the winners of a contest generating “a wide range of innovative...
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WatchThe International Energy Agency’s ‘World Energy Outlook 2011’ Report
From The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:
Carnegie’s Energy and Climate Program hosted the U.S. launch of the World Energy Outlook 2011, the flagship annual report of the International Energy Agency (IEA). Maria van der Hoeven, IEA executive director, Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist who...
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“The chief characteristic of sustainable systems is resilience, or the capacity...”
– Writer David Orr explaining the relationship between sustainability and resilience in his article, ‘Sustainability as National Security’.
(Image source: Green Flow)
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Creating Awareness? 10+ Years of Climate Change...
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Newspaper Coverage, 2000-2011:
(Source: Daily Climate, ‘Climate coverage down again in 2011’)
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TV Network News Coverage, 1996-2011:
(Source: Climate Progress, ‘Network News Coverage of Climate Change Collapsed in 2011’)
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* If you’re interested in exploring the role of media in creating climate awareness you might want to check out the Yale Forum on...
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“Multiple, concurrent steps need to be taken to prepare our cities, towns, and...”
– These strategies come from a chapter written by leading urban sustainability expert Warren Karlenzig for the Post Carbon Institute’s excellent ‘Post Carbon Reader’. You can check out his blog and work here.
(Photo credit: Seed Magazine via Urbanism.org)
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“A HUNDRED years from now, looking back, the only question that will appear...”
– The opening paragraph from the article, ‘Climate change: Durban and everything that matters’, in The Economist. To get a sense of some of the modeled impacts of a 4 C (7 F) hotter Earth check out the map created by the United Kingdom’s national weather agency.
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“At a macro level, one of the biggest constraints for many developing countries...”
– Above is response given by biologist Walter Reid to the following question:
Given the current state of the world and of ecosystem services, what changes are most critical in order to move toward a sustainable and desirable future for humanity?
(Source: Solutions Journal; Graphic credit:...
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'Global Ranking of Top 10 Resilient Cities' →
From TriplePundit:
Resilient cities, those that are working to transition towards a low-carbon economy while also preparing to avert the worst of climate change, are gaining interest and attention from policy makers, city councils and others worldwide. In fact, today, leaders from the public and private sector, supported by ICLEI (see below) and the U.S. Green Building Council, are launching...
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“It is hard for people to see that the assumptions, patterns of behavior, and...”
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Above is the conclusion of Nancy Southern’s article for Triple Pundit, ‘Why are people so immune to change?’ Southern is the chair of the organizational systems program at San Francisco’s Saybrook University and a regular contributor to ‘Rethinking Complexity’....
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Adaptation: 'Roof Gardens Urged as Solution to... →
From e360:
A panel formed to study solutions to increased flooding in Singapore has urged the government to require green roofs on new and retrofitted buildings. The 12-member panel, which was created after torrential rains caused flash flooding across eastern and central Singapore last year, said improved weather modeling and infrastructure improvements are needed to handle a surge in...
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Good News: 'Global investment in clean energy hits... →
From The Sydney Morning Herald:
Despite the turbulence in the global economy, the world invested a record $251 billion in clean energy last year, with the US streaking ahead of China in green spending and boosting confidence among climate action advocates.
New figures from Bloomberg New Energy Finance showed the US spent $54 billion on clean energy, retaking the No. 1 spot it lost to China in...
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Solutions: 'How to tackle the climate, health and... →
From The Guardian:
From coal mines to rice paddies and cooking fires to diesel exhausts, 14 highly cost-effective measures could quickly curb global warming and save millions of lives, while also boosting global food production. That is the striking conclusion of a new study published in Science and the most authoritative look yet at the opportunities offered in tackling methane and black...
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WatchCopenhagen, Denmark is… ‘Cycle City’
From Al Jazeera:
Joyce Ohajah visits Copenhagen to see what it is like to travel in a city built for bicycles, and experience Bicycle Rush Hour, when more than 35,000 cyclists cross the Dronning Louises Bridge on what is the busiest bicycle street in the western world
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Urban Planning: 'What Neighborhoods Need to... →
From Atlantic Cities:
New research from Southern California has found that residents of neighborhoods with a central core of shops and services – a pattern typically found in older, traditional communities – walk nearly three times more often than do residents of neighborhoods whose nearest shops and services lie along a major arterial roadway, a pattern typically found in newer suburban...
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Ecosystems: 'NASA says Canada in 'hot spot' of... →
From The CBC:
A new NASA study predicts massive ecological changes for Canada’s Prairies and boreal regions by the year 2100.
Those areas are in “hot spots” highly vulnerable to massive environmental changes this century due to global warming, the study states.
Much of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba is predicted to see major shifts northward of plant and animal...