December 2011
27 posts
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Free Download: 'The Death of Sprawl: Designing... →
Ultimately, the car-dominant model of urban and suburban development is not sustainable. Recognizing the limitations of this outmoded model is the first step in planning for our future of economic, energy, and environmental uncertainty.
You can read and download the report here.
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'Plan B for Climate Change: Forget the Federal... →
From co.Exist:
What can those of us who recognize the overwhelming scientific evidence regarding the existence of climate change and humanity’s role in it do to help? Some, myself included, have started to feel incredibly betrayed by our governments and almost useless in helping our species right the ship before it’s too late.
But I believe there is still hope. Not anytime soon at the...
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Watch‘How 2011 Became a ‘Mind-Boggling’ Year of Extreme Weather’
From PBS via Climate Progress:
From snowstorms to floods and tornadoes, severe weather wreaked havoc across the United States this year, with 2011 marking far more extreme weather events than a typical year. Hari Sreenivasan discusses the science behind this year of extreme weather with NOAA’s Kathryn Sullivan and...
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Fossil Fuels: 'California's New Regs Discourage... →
(Photo credit: National Geographic)
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“The $1-billion mark used to be exceptional, said Robert Tremblay, director of...”
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This quote is drawn from the article, ‘Year’s wild weather wrecked costly havoc’, in the Globe & Mail.
(Photo credit: Environment Canada)
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'No White Christmas For Canadians In 2011' →
From Discovery News:
Most Canadians will not wake up to a white Christmas on December 25 for the first time since Canada’s weather office began recording snowfalls in 1955, the government agency reported.
With just days before the Christian holiday, Environment Canada senior climatologist Dave Phillips told AFP he has never seen so little snowpack in Canada’s cities.
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Food Security: 'A major step forward towards... →
From PhysOrg:
When a plant encounters drought, it does its best to cope with this stress by activating a set of protein molecules called receptors. These receptors, once activated, turn on processes that help the plant survive the stress.
A team of plant cell biologists has discovered how to rewire this cellular machinery to heighten the plants’ stress response – a finding that can be...
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Climate Change Infographic: 'Frozen Carbon' →
From the New York Times:
Perennially frozen ground, known as permafrost, underlies nearly a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere and stores a huge amount of carbon.
ANCIENT PLANTS removed carbon from the atmosphere by absorbing carbon dioxide. When the plants died, much of their stored carbon was trapped and frozen in layers of soil and glacial silt.
OVER THOUSANDS OF YEARS the layers of soil...
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NASA: 'Climate Change May Bring Big Ecosystem... →
From Science Daily:
By 2100, global climate change will modify plant communities covering almost half of Earth’s land surface and will drive the conversion of nearly 40 percent of land-based ecosystems from one major ecological community type — such as forest, grassland or tundra — toward another, according to a new NASA and university computer modeling study.
Researchers...
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“…a lot of the new ideas seeping into cities are aimed not at making them...”
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Writer Will Doig in his Salon.com article, ‘In the future, urban bikers go faster than cars’. The piece highlights cities around the world that are “slowing down in the name of progress.”
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'China scales up solar power capacity plan by 50... →
From Reuters:
China has further revised up its solar power development target for 2015 by 50 percent from its previous plan, state media reported on Thursday.
The government has set a target for installed solar power generating capacity to reach 15 gigawatts by 2015 and wind power capacity to hit 100 GW, China National Radio reported, citing an announcement from the National Energy...
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WatchDr. William Rees on ‘The Dangerous Disconnect Between Economics and Ecology’
From The Institute for New Economic Thinking:
The world economy is depleting the earth’s natural resources, and economists cling to models that make no reference whatsoever to the biophysical basis that underpins the economy. That’s why ecological economics is needed, says William Rees in this INET...
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Free Download: 'Shanghai Manual - 'A Guide for... →
From the UN Division for Sustainable Development:
The Shanghai Manual is a resource on sustainable urban development to mayors, urban planners and decision-makers of cities around the world. The chapters of the Manual are used as training modules in workshops that are organized by UN/DESA training centers, such as the UN Center for Regional Development, as well as other capacity building...
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“Delaying action [on climate change] is a false economy: for every $1 of...”
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This quote is from the International Energy Agency’s recent 2011 World Energy Outlook, which points to the huge economic benefits of building clean energy infrastructure ahead of 2020.
For more on the report check out the Guardian, which highlights that “if fossil fuel infrastructure...
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Climate Change: 'Shock as retreat of Arctic sea... →
From The Independent:
Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.
The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East...
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Good News: 'Renewable power trumps fossil fuels... →
From The Los Angeles Times:
Renewable energy is surpassing fossil fuels for the first time in new power-plant investments, shaking off setbacks from the financial crisis and an impasse at the United Nations global warming talks. Electricity from the wind, sun, waves and biomass drew $187 billion last year compared with $157 billion for natural gas, oil and coal, according to calculations by...
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'Cycle like the Danes to cut carbon emissions,... →
From The Guardian:
Europe could cut its total greenhouse gas emissions by more than 25% if every population cycled as regularly as the Danes, according to a pioneering study which tracks the environmental impact of cycling down to the extra calories consumed by riders.
If the EU cycling rate was the same as it is in Denmark, where the average person cycles almost 600 miles (965km) each year,...
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“There’s really only one label for the pathetic exercise we’ve just witnessed in...”
– Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon, director of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation and CIGI Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ontario, in his new article in the Globe & Mail, ‘Climate summit was a pathetic exercise in deceit’.
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WatchSustainability on Film: ‘Surviving Progress’
From the National Film Board of Canada:
Surviving Progress is a stunning new feature documentary that connects the financial collapse, growing inequity, and the Wall Street oligarchy, with future technology, sustainability, and the fate of civilization. Inspired by Ronald Wright’s bestseller A Short History of Progress, filmmakers...