planted city

Water… the stuff of life

Connect the Dots: Lester Brown on ‘Why Food Is The New Oil And Land The New Gold’

From CNBC:

The United Nations food agency reports that food prices are rising again, reaching 6-month highs and nearing levels not since 2008. Higher prices then spurred food riots in the Middle East and North Africa, which fueled the Arab Spring.

There’s no sign of widespread food riots now but eventually there could be, says Lester Brown, president and founder of the Earth Policy Institute and author of the new book “Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity.”

“The term ‘food unrest’ will become part of our daily vocabulary,” Brown tells The Daily Ticker.

It reflects the imbalance between the supply of food and demand for food globally.

Check out the rest of the article here.

Related:

• New England Complex Systems Institute ‘Food Briefing’
• ‘Americans waste, throw away nearly half their food: study’ (Reuters)
• ‘How much in food do Canadians waste a year? Think billions’ (Globe & Mail)
• ‘7 ways to reduce household food waste’ (CBC)

Fossil Fuels | ‘Infographic: How Tar Sands Oil Is Produced’

From NPR:

The oil product extracted from Canada’s tar sands isn’t like conventional crude. Known as bitumen, it’s sticky and so thick, it can’t flow down a pipeline without extensive processing. There are two methods for getting bitumen out of the ground and turning it into usable products. Both are complex, energy-intensive and expensive processes – but high oil prices are finally making tar sands profitable.

Related:

• ‘When This Oil Spills, It’s ‘A Whole New Monster’ (NPR)
• ‘Oil Sands: Canada’s 10 Ethical Challenges: The Series’ (The Tyee)
• ‘Oh Canada: The Government’s Broad Assault on Environment’ (Yale e360)

From Coursera:

This course introduces the academic approach of Sustainability and explores how today’s human societies can endure in the face of global change, ecosystem degradation and resource limitations. The course focuses on key knowledge areas of sustainability theory and practice, including population, ecosystems, global change, energy, agriculture, water, environmental economics and policy, ethics, and cultural history.

This subject is of vital importance, seeking as it does to uncover the principles of the long-term welfare of all the peoples of the planet. As sustainability is a cross-disciplinary field of study, this foundation requires intellectual breadth: as I describe it in the class text, understanding our motivations requires the humanities, measuring the challenges of sustainability requires knowledge of the sciences (both natural and social), and building solutions requires technical insight into systems (such as provided by engineering, planning, and management).

All you need to participate is a decent internet connection and an up to date browser. More details including how to sign up here. You can download the class text for free here.

(Image source: Globaia)

Clean Energy Future: ‘Artificial Waterfall Could Make 2016 The Greenest Olympic Games We’ve Seen Yet’

From The Creators Project:

‘As Brazil readies itself for the upcoming 2014 World Cup, the honor and burden of hosting an even larger global sporting event still sits on the country’s shoulders. In conjunction with the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, several new structures will be erected in Rio’s cityscape. One of the many projects creating huge buzz is the Solar City Tower, an artificial waterfall designed to generate clean, renewable energy.

…

The vertical structure’s design is conducive to multiple functions: its primary purpose is to capture and distribute solar power to the Olympic Village and to the city, but it doubles as an observation tower. The 345-foot structure will have solar panels around its base, used to store energy during the day, releasing it through turbines for use at night. For special occasions, the turbine will pump seawater into the tower and then shoot it back out to sea, creating a waterfall effect in the middle of the ocean.

Check out more pictures and the rest of the article here.

Details here.

(Source: Union of Concerned Scientists)

Some morning light in a great little park on the other side of the Laurel Street overpass here in Vancouver.

Carl Sagan, American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and science popularizer. 

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).

…

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.

…

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.

Related:

• ‘Green Roofs & Solar Panels: The Future of Renewable Energy?’ (Clean Technica)

(Infographic source: McGraw-Hill Construction) 

It’s Gettin’ Hot in Here: “Welcome to the Rest of Our Lives”

Related:

• ‘Yes, Virginia, Sea Level Really is Rising’ (The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media)

(Source: Climate Crocks)