planted city

From Reuters:

China will plough $372 billion into energy conservation projects and anti-pollution measures over the next three-and-a-half years, part of a drive to cut energy consumption by 300 million tonnes of standard coal, the country’s cabinet said Tuesday.

…

The central government’s drive to reduce China’s insatiable appetite for fossil fuels is aimed at improving the country’s future energy security, and is a central plank of its policy to slow down growth in greenhouse gas emissions.

China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, plans to cut its CO2 emissions per unit of GDP by 40-45 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.

…

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, as China seeks to move away from traditional command-and-control measures to combat spiraling carbon emissions.

Check out the rest of the article here.

Related:

• Video: ‘China’s environmental issues in a global context’ (Asia Pacific Memo)
• ‘China remains most attractive country for renewable energy development’ (Sustainable Business)

(Photo source: Reve)

From Al Jazeera English:

In the early 20th century the American city of Detroit was a booming industrial powerhouse and world leader in car manufacturing, with a population that reached nearly two million people.

But since the major car companies closed their factories, more than a million taxpayers have moved out of Detroit, leaving behind more than 100 square kilometres of vacant land, and nearly 40,000 abandoned houses.

Now after decades of urban decay, Detroit is undergoing something of a revival as a centre for a new trade - urban farming.

In this half-hour special Russell Beard meets a group of visionary residents who see the city’s vacant land as fertile ground for an urban agriculture revolution.

Check out the rest of the article here. 

Related:

• ‘Detroit: rejuvenation through urban farms, sustainable living and innovation’ (The Guardian)
• ‘Detroit: The Center of Urban Farming’ (Care2)
• ‘City Farmer News’ (website)

The opening paragraph of The Guardian article, ‘US wind energy industry breezes past 50GW milestone’.

Related:

• ‘Setting the Record Straight on Oil and Clean Energy’ (Huffington Post)
• ‘Obama slams Romney’s opposition to wind energy tax credit’ (Los Angeles Times)
• ‘IEA Forecasts 40% Growth in Renewable Power Generation in Next 5 Years’ (Clean Technica)

(Photo source: Clean Technica)

Feeding Cities:‘Urban farming shows its “Growing Power”’ (Video) 

From CBS:

While driving through Milwaukee, Will Allen saw a plot of land that would bring him back to his childhood roots of working on a farm. Byron Pitts reports on his mission to bring healthy food to the inner city and to create jobs in the community.

Related:

• ‘Soil survivor: An interview with urban farming legend Will Allen’ (Grist)

Resilient cities: ‘Vancouver plans to face climate change head-on’ (Video)

From The Vancouver Sun:

The city of Vancouver has designed a climate change “adaptation” strategy to tackle a potential increase in street flooding, sewer backups, damaged forests and heat-related illnesses by 2050.

The strategy, scheduled to go to council for approval in principle Tuesday, suggests nine measures to address the potential impacts of climate change, which is expected to bring more intense rain and windstorms, hotter and drier summers and rising sea levels, affecting the city’s economic prosperity and livability.

…

The move is part of the Vancouver’s Greenest City plan that is aimed at reducing greenhouse gases by 2020. The specific measures include:

• Complete a coastal flood risk assessment;

• Amend flood-proofing policies;

• Develop and implement a citywide integrated stormwater management plan;

• Continue with sewer separation;

• Develop a backup power policy;

• Continue to implement water conservation actions;

• Support and expand extreme heat planning;

• Include climate change adaptation measures in the next Vancouver Building Bylaw update; and

• Develop and implement a comprehensive Urban Forest Management Plan.

Check out the rest of the article here. You can read the adaptation plan here.

Related:

• ‘Conserving water key, cities warned’ (Vancouver Sun)
• ‘Paying the price: The economic impacts of climate change for Canada’ (NRTEE)
• Photo: ‘Visualizing climate change in Vancouver’ (planted city)
• ‘Study: Many U.S. cities unprepared for future heat waves’ (Washington Post)

(Video: Global BC)

(Photo: planted city)

From The Guardian:

Tens of millions of new jobs can be created around the world in the next two decades if green policies are put in place to switch the high-carbon economy to low-carbon, the UN has said.

Between 15m and 60m additional jobs are likely, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep). These are net gains in employment for the world economy, taking into account any job losses in high-carbon industries that fail to transform.

Achim Steiner, executive director of Unep, said: “The findings underline that [the green economy] can include millions more people in terms of overcoming poverty and delivering improved livelihoods for this and future generations. It is a positive message of opportunity in a troubled world of challenges.”

As well as generating net new gains in the number of jobs, the switch to a green economy could help to lift millions of people out of poverty.

In the US, there are now about three million “green jobs”, in sectors such as wind power and energy efficiency, the study found. In the UK, the number is close to one million and has been one of the few areas of the economy that has been creating jobs. There are about 500,000 people working in green jobs in Spain. In the developing world, too, the number is growing rapidly – about 7% of people employed in Brazil, amounting to three million people, are now in the green economy.

However, realising the full potential of green jobs depends on countries taking action to develop the green economy and bringing in policies that will foster investment, according to the report.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Image credit: UNEP)

From The Globe & Mail:

Broccoli, beets, carrots and peppers, spinach, romaine and buttercrisp lettuces. Since 2009, employees of the Vancouver Island community of Ladysmith have been turning the flower beds around the town hall into vegetable gardens, donating all their crops to the Ladysmith Food Bank. The produce display is beautiful – and bountiful.

“We sow a few hundred plants and get a good amount of vegetables,” says Glen Britton, an original member of the town’s employee-based Green Team and parks supervisor who oversees the planting and harvesting with six employees.

…

In-house employee Green Teams who come up with and manage environmental initiatives have become integral to most of Canada’s Greenest Employers for 2012. All Green Team members are volunteers, both off and on the company clock, for projects such as paper conservation, energy reduction, tree-planting and recycling electronics, often working in partnership with community organizations.

The Ladysmith garden project grew out of a combination of community, employee and city council support. One key needed for success is having support from the top down.

“When we established a Green Team in 2008, we left it open to all our employees so anyone who had an interest could be part of it,” says Ruth Malli, Ladysmith’s city manager and a member of their Green Team. “Meetings are held during working hours. We chose to do it on the employer’s time because we wanted to show employees it was important enough to dedicate some of their work time to it. A lot of work is done on their own time as well.”

Check out the rest of the article here. Also worth checking out, ‘These employers back Green Team initiatives’.

(Photo credit: Globe & Mail)

BBC:

The US has regained top spot from China as the biggest investor in clean energy in 2011, according to global rankings.

…

Globally, overall financial backing in clean energy technologies hit a record $263bn, up 6.5% from 2010 levels.

The report, Who is Winning the Clean Energy Race, showed that G20 nations accounted for 95% of the investment in the sector (which does not include nuclear power).

…

Over the course of the year, an additional 83.5 gigawatts (GW) was added to the world’s clean energy generation capacity, including almost 30GW of solar and 43GW of wind.

“The sector continues to expand and is outpacing growth in the overall (global) economy. The sector reached its trillionth dollar of investment last year,” observed Phyllis Cuttino, director of Pew’s Clean Energy Program.

“We now have 565GW of installed (generation) capacity around the world. That outstrips nuclear installed capacity by 47%.

Check out the rest of the article here. And an interactive map of the report here.

(Photo credit: Pew Charitable Trusts)

From Business Green:

Businesses have been urged to accelerate their environmental footprinting strategies to include emerging economies, after new research by the Carbon Trust revealed young people in China could hold the key to unlocking mass demand for greener products.

The survey of 2,800 young people across six countries carried out by TNS found 83 per cent of 18-25 year-olds in China would be more loyal to a brand if they could see it was reducing its carbon footprint. In contrast, just 57 per cent of US respondents and 55 per cent of young people in the UK made the same claim.

Globally, 78 per cent of young people said they want their favourite brands to reduce their carbon footprint, but again those in Chinese showed the highest demand for emission reductions with 88 per cent calling on firms to cut their footprint.

South Africa came in second place with 86 per cent of respondents calling on blue chips to reduce their impact, followed by Brazil at 84 per cent. Again the US and UK lagged far behind with only two thirds of respondents demanding more action from big brands.

Check out the rest of the article here. You can also check out an infographic of the study here.

(Image credit: Carbon Trust) 

From The Province:

Karin Boriss is thrilled to be taking her Vancouver house apart instead of just knocking it down.

Boriss and her husband Alex Holmes are the first homeowners in the city to get a deconstruction permit instead of simply demolishing their 1940s-era home on West 18th Avenue.

They purchased the home in order to build a new house and tried to sell it to someone who would move it. They couldn’t even give it away, though, so it had to come down.

But they didn’t want to just send the house to the landfill.

“We were thrilled when we found out about the deconstruction process,” Boriss said Thursday during a city tour of her house being carefully torn apart to salvage anything of value.

“It cost us less to do than demolition,” she said.

The process takes longer, two to three weeks compared to two to three days for demolition, but that’s where the city steps into the process by speeding up the permitting process.

Sadhu Johnston, the deputy city manager, said a pilot program tested deconstruction on two homes.

“We found we could actually keep 93 per cent of the houses out of the landfill,” said Johnston.

He said that 80 tonnes of housing materials were diverted from the landfill with each house. With 800 house demolitions a year in Vancouver, the rough estimate of diverted material is 64,000 tonnes.

“We think we can create good green jobs, apply less pressure on the landfill and pursue our Greenest City goals,” said Johnston.

Check out the rest of the article here and TV news coverage of the story here. The Tyee article, ‘Building Jobs By Tearing Down Houses The Green Way’ is also worth a look if you’re interested in deconstruction.

(Photo credit: The Tyee)