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It’s gettin’ hot in here | ‘Climate change: how a warming world is a threat to our food supplies’ (Infographic)
Source: The Guardian
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Notes"We’re used to the notion of sharing libraries, public parks, and train cars. But in many ways, American culture in particular drifted away from sharing as a value when we spread out from city centers and into the suburbs. Molly Turner, the director of public policy for short-term rental lodging website Airbnb, evokes the iconic image of Richard Nixon, in Moscow, introducing Nikita Khrushchev to the modern marvel of the state-of-the-art washing machine, available for private consumption in every American home. Beginning with the era of that washing machine, Turner argues, we forgot how to share.
We came to prize instead personal ownership – of multiple cars, of large homes with private backyards and space inside for appliances that would never fit in a modest city walk-up. Today, this kind of bald consumerism is considered almost tacky. But the reasons underlying that cultural shift reveal why we’re witnessing a true change in paradigm. Much has transformed in the last few years alone: the economy, technology, and the allure of cities themselves.
“What’s really going on here is the urbanization of the world and the reurbanization of American cities,” Turner says. “Either consciously or subconsciously, [people] are realizing that that involves the public realm, the commons, sharing goods and services and infrastructure. And I think that kind of bleeds into your personal life.” In other words, if you’ll share a subway car, why not a kitchen?
This move back into city centers also coincided with the Great Recession. Those big houses and multiple cars, it turns out, were beyond many of our means. And it’s no coincidence, Turner says, that Airbnb – a company founded around shared housing – was born in 2008, just as the U.S. was entering a recession built on a housing crisis. For many Airbnb members, the spare rooms they were able to rent through the service helped them keep their homes. City living, for all its allure, is expensive, but the sharing economy makes it possible for more people, whether they’re sharing a car because they can’t afford to own one, or sharing a bike because they’ve got nowhere to store it.
"A quote from The Atlantic Cities article, ‘Share Everything:Why the Way We Consume Has Changed Forever’. Check out the rest of the article here.
Image source: Collaborative Consumption
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Notes Clean Energy Transition: 'Denmark's Recipe for a Model Democracy'
From Der Spiegel:
Indeed, the statistics are impressive. It’s estimated that some 50,000 wind turbines have been exported from this mini-kingdom between the North and Baltic seas, nearly 50 percent of the wind-powered generators worldwide. But sales are declining now that large industrialized nations, such as India, China and the US, are emulating the Danes’ success.
In addition to the graceful, towering turbines made of fiberglass and steel, however, Denmark has also given the world a shining example of sustainability: The parliamentary monarchy is widely seen as a laboratory and model for how an entire country can make the transition away from coal, oil and gas and toward energy generated from renewable resources.
Today, already 24 percent of the electricity consumed in Denmark comes from wind power — a world record. There are plans to increase this to 50 percent by 2020, and the country intends to become entirely independent of fossil fuels by 2050.
Check out the rest of the article here.
(Photo source: Der Spiegel)
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NotesGetting Around: ‘Good Bicycle Karma’ (Video)
Here’s a fun, simple, and low cost idea to encourage smart and safe cycling in cities. Copenhagen’s ‘Karmaspotters’ walk the streets of the city giving out good karma presents to cyclists who are being considerate while biking around the city.
(Source: Cycling Embassy of Denmark)
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Notes It’s Gettin’ Hot In Here: Some Good News, For A Change
In a week where Arctic ice has reached a new low and food prices have spiked due to severe droughts in Europe and the United States it feels strange to think that progress is being made in the fight against global climate change. However, over the last couple of weeks four big initiatives have been announced that have potential to make a significant dent in our collective carbon footprint.
Last week, China announced it will spend some $372 billion on clean energy, energy efficiency, and reducing its use of the dirtiest of fossil fuels: coal. Its announcement also made clear that:
Seven Chinese cities and provinces will launch CO2 emissions trading schemes over the next two years ahead of a national scheme later in the decade. (Reuters)
The country is currently the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions.
On Tuesday, Australia and the European Union announced a partnership to create the world’s largest carbon market, which will begin trading by 2015. Harvard environmental economist Robert Stavins encouragingly described the move in an interview:
Given the relatively primitive state of climate change policy around the world, especially considering the scope of the problem, this is a very significant step forward. (Atlantic Cities)
For those keeping score at home, when California’s carbon trading system opens in November it will be the world’s second largest.
Finally, this week the United States stepped up and delivered a big one-two punch:
President Barack Obama issued an executive order on Thursday that would increase the number of cogeneration plants in the U.S. by 50 percent by 2020, a move that would boost U.S. industrial energy efficiency and slash carbon emissions by 150 million tons per year.
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Thursday’s executive order came just two days after the White House finalized a rule - developed with U.S. automakers - that would double fuel efficiency standards for automobiles and light trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The EPA said the car efficiency standards will be the most effective domestic policy in place to curb greenhouse gas emissions, cutting as much as 6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2025.” (Reuters)
Canada has indicated it will copy Obama’s fuel efficiency rules.Together these initiatives are significant because they include the countries with the largest carbon footprints, which must be in leadership roles if we are to get a handle on this predicament. We definitely have a long, long way to go and have some epic challenges before us. But, more and more people seem to be waking up, learning about where we are at, talking with others about it, and then making changes. Positive changes.In essence, what I’m trying to get across is that it’s important to celebrate the positives. Dwelling on the bad news about our climate and the health of our planet and society can be counterproductive and self-defeating. Instead of feeling stuck, now more than ever I think we need to be awake and aware. Ready to adapt to what’s already in the pipe while finding new, old, and otherwise ways of remaking our homes, our food, our transportation, our cities, our economies, our institutions, and even our thinking that allow us to use energy, ecosystems, and other resources more creatively and wisely over the long term. As Charles Darwin is quoted, but apparently misattributed as saying,“It is not the strongest of species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”Those are my two bits for now. Have a good long weekend!(Photo source: Clean Technica) -
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Public Space: ‘Shower of colour! Artist creates illusion of floating umbrellas in vivid art installation’
From Daily Mail:
Suspended from mid air these stunning colourful umbrellas certainly put other art installations in the shade.
Looking as though they are floating above the ground the brollies are held in place by wires between buildings in Agueda, Portugal.
The installation is an initiative by the council, in the small town just south of Porto, and is part of an art festival call Agitagueda.
Check out the rest of the photos here.
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Green Infrastructure: The 10 Largest Green Roofs in the World (Infographic)
From McGraw-Hill Construction:
Green roofs are gaining acceptance in dozens of countries, joining other forms of green infrastructure that are being used to mitigate environmental problems of urban centers.
For example, vegetated roofs “are very good at managing stormwater. Most extensively planted green roofs will hold the first inch of rainfall and slow any additional rainfall, thus reducing peak flows and lowering the stress on combined sewer overflows,” says Steven Peck, founder and president of Green Roofs for Healthy Cities (GRHC).
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Many cities throughout the U.S. and Europe have green-roof mandates or incentives in place. Stuttgart, Germany, requires green roofs on all new flat-roofed industrial buildings. In 2007, Pittsburgh enacted an law establishing stormwater volume reduction standards for properties greater than 10,000 sq ft, including on-site retention of the first inch of rainfall through any combination of infiltration, evapotranspiration and rainwater harvesting. Portland, Ore., requires new city-owned buildings and existing buildings in need of a roof replacement to install a green roof on at least 70% of the roof area.
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Green roofs trace their origins back several centuries, to sod roofs on homes and barns in Scandinavia—or even further, if we consider the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. But modern green roofs, involving manufactured layers of growing medium and vegetation, developed in Germany in the 1960s. And Germany is believed to be the country where green roofs are most popular, with about 10% of the roofs “greened,” encouraged by a system of government grants to property owners.
Check out the rest of the article and a slideshow of the 10 largest greenroofs in the world here.
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(Infographic source: McGraw-Hill Construction)
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Notes Tools for Change: 'Around the world, cap-and-trade is still alive and kicking'
From The Washington Post:
Countries or regions that have already passed cap-and-trade: This includes the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, California, and Quebec. They’ve all set hard limits on a significant portion of their carbon emissions. (Different countries have different targets and exemptions for various sectors.) This is a sizeable chunk of the planet: By my calculations, these countries and regions represented roughly 19 percent of the world’s carbon emissions in 2008.
Countries that could shift to cap-and-trade this decade. Mexico and Brazil have both recently passed laws to significantly slow their rate of emissions growth by 2020. (Brazil’s target is voluntary.) They’ve both set up task forces to study various ways to achieve this, with cap-and-trade as an option. Japan, for its part, has set up a limited cap-and-trade scheme for Tokyo and has a voluntary carbon-trading scheme at the national level that has slightly curbed emissions.
Meanwhile, China is setting up its own regional cap-and-trade systems in several of its provinces and is looking to set up a national program by the end of the decade. Jennifer Morgan says that her organization, WRI, recently hosted a Chinese delegation in the United States to study California’s climate program, as well as the small cap-and-trade system for electric utilities in the Northeast. While China’s program likely wouldn’t shrink the country’s overall level of emissions, it would at least slow the country’s ferocious growth in greenhouse gases.
Countries that are still pondering the idea. According to the World Bank report, there are at least 14 developing countries that are in various stages of study. Chile, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Thailand, and Jordan are all developing some sort of “crediting mechanism.” South Africa has a carbon tax that could well be converted to a cap-and-trade program.
Add these programs all up, and it’s potentially quite significant. Right now, about 6 percent of the world’s greenhouse-gas sources are capped and traded. By the end of the decade, according to some estimates, that could rise to as much as one-third of all emissions.
Many of these countries could eventually link together — Australia’s climate-change minister, Greg Combet, has suggested that eventually South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and China could cooperate on some sort of pan-Asian carbon-trading system. And, the World Bank notes, there’s still plenty of demand for carbon-offset projects in the developing world under the U.N. program. All told, the global carbon-trading market rose to a record $176 billion in 2011.
Check out the rest of the article here.
(Image credit: Climatepedia)
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Notes"As Hermann Scheer, the father of Germany’s feed-in tariff, often said, the intent of his disruptive law was to fundamentally restructure the German energy industry. Energy technologies, Scheer understood, came with their own “techno-logic.” Coal and gas and nukes and hydro were top-down and centralized, their profits earned by securing and exploiting scarce, expensive fuels.
Shifting to renewables isn’t a megawatt-for-megawatt swap between energy sources but a paradigm shift from one techno-logic to another. Renewables encourage smaller scale and decentralization; they reward efficiency over consumption; and they centralize the value at the level of technological development and implementation, thus to exploit free fuels.
In a market where small-scale, decentralized renewables thrive, you’ll invariably find angry conventional energy companies. They mastered a game and rigged a market for themselves, and now it doesn’t work quite as favorably for them. (Notice that none of Germany’s big energy giants, even the ones paying those big tariffs, went bankrupt during the solar industry’s heyday.)"
Writer Chris Turner explains the differing “techno-logic” associated with renewable and non-renewable energy in his MNN article, ‘What have we learned about cheap energy?’. If you’re interested, you can read one of Herman Scheer’s quotes about the transition to clean energy and its connection with democracy here.
(Photo credit: MNN)
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Notes Climate Leadership: 'South Korea Passes Cap-And-Trade Legislation'
From Sustainable Business:
South Korea passed legislation to begin a national cap-and-trade program with a near unanimous vote of 148-0, with three abstentions.
The fourth largest economy in Asia, South Korea is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions among industrialized countries, doubling since 1990. It is the 8th biggest source of GHG emissions in the world and has a national target of cutting them 30% by 2020.POSCO, the world’s third largest steelmaker, and Samsung Electronics, the largest electronics manufacturer, are among South Korea’s biggest polluters.
Emissions trading is scheduled to begin in Korea in 2015, the same year as those in Australia and China. New Zealand started emissions trading in 2009, and the EU’s went into effect in 2005. South Africa has plans for a program. In the US, the northeastern states have a cap-and-trade program, California’s begins in 2013.
In April, both Mexico and Peru passed national climate change legislation.This opens the possibility of linking country cap-and-trade programs - allowing participants to trade regionallly and eventually worldwide - which would raise the value of carbon markets substantially.
Check out the rest of the article here.
(Photo credit: Energy Korea)
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Third Year of Drought Threatens Southwestern Oklahoma! Meanwhile … O.K. Sen. Inhofe still says global warming’s a hoax @ State Impact
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Young Monk! by Mardy Photography
Siem Reap, Cambodia
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