planted city

From The New York Times:

Suppose you don’t need your car today. And suppose, as it happens, that a stranger in your area does need a car. Would you be willing to rent yours out?

Several car-sharing start-ups, including Getaround, RelayRides and JustShareIt are eager to connect car owners with renters this way. The companies use different formulas, but participating owners receive, generally speaking, about two-thirds of the rental proceeds. RelayRides says an owner of a midsize, late-model sedan who rents out a car for 10 hours a week could expect to clear about $3,000 a year.

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The newer start-ups say peer-to-peer sharing is an environmentally friendlier option because it allows an existing car to be used more fully. 

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Car sharing is just one form of “collaborative consumption,” the clunky catchphrase that encompasses Airbnb’s space sharing and is commonly used to suggest an ideological or moral imperative to share more things. Who knows? In the future, car sharing may become so accepted that we can eventually return to that bygone age when licensed drivers actually outnumbered licensed vehicles.

Check out the rest of the article here. You can also check out an animated infographic about car sharing here.

(Image credit: New York Times)

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, then the bloc would attain anything from 12% to 26% of its targeted emissions reduction, depending on what forms of transport the cycling replaced, according to the report by the Brussels-based European Cycling Federation (ECF).

This figure is likely to be a significant underestimate as it deliberately excludes the environmental impact of building road infrastructure and parking, or maintaining and disposing of cars.

The ECF is urging politicians to focus less on technologically complex solutions to emissions, such as electric cars, and instead think about the potential for increased cycling, especially given that around a third of motorised journeys within the EU are 1.25 miles or less.

“There’s this rhetoric going about that technology is going to save the day. In the end it’s going to have to be the political decisions which make the difference in emissions, and it’s not just going to be technology,” said Julian Ferguson of the ECF, one of the report’s authors.

“Things like e-cars will need a massive investment in new infrastructure. But that’s almost part of the problem. Politicians like having those massive, awe-inspiring projects, something to change the face of transport. The big advantage of the bicycle is that it exists as a vehicle, it’s not just a projected attempt to reduce emissions.”

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Image credit: Copenhagenize)

Infographic: Gardening and its Health, Mental and Financial Benefits

(Source: Loch Ness Water Gardens)

~ A couple of paragraphs from the article, ‘Do all economists favour a carbon tax?’ in The Economist. 

(Cartoon credit: Marc Roberts)

‘The Plentitude Economy’

From The Center for a New American Dream via Vimeo: 

This fun animation provides a vision of what a post-consumer society could look like, with people working fewer hours and pursuing re-skilling, homesteading, and small-scale enterprises that can help reduce the overall size and impact of the consumer economy. Narrated by economist and best-selling author Juliet Schor.

If you like this video you may want to check out Schor’s recent article, ‘Less Work, More Living’.

From the Vancouver Sun:

A “massive” store of clean, renewable energy is sitting at Canadians’ feet, according to a federal report on geothermal energy.

Tapping into hot rocks that are tantalizingly close to the surface in western and northern Canada could generate more electricity than the entire country now consumes while generating few greenhouse gas emissions, says the report by a team of 12 scientists led by Stephen Grasby at the federal Geological Survey of Canada.

“As few as 100 projects could meet Canada’s energy needs,” according to the team’s findings, to be presented at a geothermal conference in Toronto on Thursday.

The 322-page report suggests the clean, renewable source of energy could be a gamechanger.

“Canada’s in-place geothermal power exceeds one million times Canada’s current electrical consumption,” the report says.

The heat is closest to the surface in large swaths of British Columbia, Alberta, Yukon and Northwest Territories, but the report says geothermal energy opportunities exist across Canada.

It notes that geothermal has distinct advantages over not only fossil fuels and nuclear energy but also wind, solar and biofuels, as the Earth’s heat is available 24 hours a day, yearround.

Grasby said that geothermal is not without technological and environmental risks. But there is no question there is a vast amount of clean energy underfoot, he said, and the country is well placed to start drilling for it.

Check out the rest of the article here. You can find more on the report at Energy Boom, including the map above.

(Photo credit: Vancouver Sun)

From the Guardian:

A majority of the world’s largest firms are taking action on climate change as part of their business strategy for the first time, a survey has found.

The 10th annual Carbon Disclosure Project, which analysed responses from 396 of the 500 largest companies in the world, found more than two-thirds (68%) now say they put climate change central to their business, compared with 48% last year.

Almost half (45%) are now reporting they have cut their greenhouse gas emissions as a result of steps they have taken to tackle carbon, up from less than a fifth (19%) in 2010.

The Carbon Disclosure Project report, written by PwC, also said there was a link between higher stock market performance and action on climate change, with those that have a strong focus on the issue providing investors with approximately double the average return over the period 2005 to 2011.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: The Guardian)

Seoul’s trailblazing ’Stream of Consciousness’

From the New York Times:

For half a century, a dark tunnel of crumbling concrete encased more than three miles of a placid stream bisecting this bustling city.

The waterway had been a centerpiece of Seoul since a king of the Choson Dynasty selected the new capital 600 years ago, enticed by the graceful meandering of the stream and its 23 tributaries. But in the industrial era after the Korean War, the stream, by then a rank open sewer, was entombed by pavement and forgotten beneath a lacework of elevated expressways as the city’s population swelled toward 10 million.

Today, after a $384 million recovery project, the stream, called Cheonggyecheon, is liberated from its dank sheath and burbles between reedy banks. Picnickers cool their bare feet in its filtered water, and carp swim in its tranquil pools.

The restoration of the Cheonggyecheon is part of an expanding environmental effort in cities around the world to “daylight” rivers and streams by peeling back pavement that was built to bolster commerce and serve automobile traffic decades ago.

Check out the rest of the article here. The video above is from the documentary series, ‘e²: the economies of being environmentally conscious’ (via Vimeo).

Infographic: ‘The British Cycling Economy’

“Cycling in the UK has undergone a renaissance over the past five years, with an increasing number of people taking to the streets of the UK by bike. Structural, economic, social and health factors have caused a ‘shift in the sand’ in the UK, spurring an expansion in the cycling market with indications that this will be a longer-term trend. This growth in cycling participation has had the knock-on effect of bringing economic and social benefits to the UK. In 2010 the result was a gross cycling contribution to the UK economy of £2.9bn.”

~ Dr Alexander Grous, productivity and innovation specialist at the London School of Economics and lead author of the new report, ‘The British Cycling Economy: Gross Cycling Product’.

(Source: London Cyclist)

From Triple Pundit:

Urbanization and going back to nature seem like incompatible concepts, but there’s a body of evidence that says increasing migration to cities has definite environmental benefits.

An obvious one is that living close to, or even where you work takes cars off the road and reduces CO2 emissions.

Also, as people increasingly move to urban centers, pressure on global forests eases. Because forests double as the planet’s lungs, they are a natural and effective answer to sequestering carbon emissions. The more those particular lungs can hold, the better.

A study published last month by Science, suggests the world’s forests are doing better than anticipated, and the reason for that is traced to increased urban living.

The study, led by U.S. Forest Service researcher Yude Pan (and cited by The New York Times’ Green blog), found the world’s established forests absorb 2.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year, or about a third of the total released by burning fossil fuels.

Pan says the study is the most comprehensive analysis of the global carbon budget to date, showing that forests are a far more significant carbon sink than previously thought. At the same time, the report emphasizes the devastating effects of tropical deforestation and the need to protect trees that perform an enormous global service.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: Debate Your Plate)