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Leave it to the French to come up with a wind turbine that is also aesthetically pleasing, integrating both form and function.

This article by the Worldwatch Institute argues pervasively that although private sector investments in renewables are soaring, without fundamental electricity grid transformation we will not be able to deliver on Paris climate commitments. The underlying architecture of electricity grids run nearly exclusively as natural monopolies, and where power flows in one direction is a dinosaur ill-suited to meet modern energy needs and climate imperatives.

If you follow any of the following high profile names – Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Campbell, Doutzen Kroes, Karlie Kloss, or Pearl Jam – you may have seen these celebrities and their friends sporting knotty fashions this week, for a cause.

If you walk through the streets of Toronto, you’ll likely come across brightly coloured canoes filled with milkweed, grass, and native wildflowers in surprising places. This grassroots initiative, called Community Canoe, is a network of pollinator-friendly canoe gardens stretching across the former Garrison Creek.

Every two years, the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) invites creatives from around the world to submit sustainable energy infrastructure designs. Their Biennial Competition encourages artists, architects, and landscape architects in collaboration with scientists and engineers to submit proposals that bring together design aesthetics with renewable energy and water technology.

Canada ranks well in sustainable development, but how exactly do we measure our headway? 

If there were only 100 people in the world, would we fight harder for equality? In just over two minutes, this video (by reducing stats on the world population to a sample of just 100 people) breaks down issues like:

By: Jaime Clifton, Research Curator

Costa Rica is pioneering a vision for development without fossil fuels, although 70% of all of its energy consumption is oil, because its transportation is totally dependent upon fossil fuels. And yet, they are inspirational because last year they did not use any fossil fuels for 299 days to generate their electricity. Transportation is the elephant in the room, as clearly as model of urban mobility is broken, and incremental change is not sufficient, we need transformational change.