Norway is leading the way with new climate innovations, by investing a billion dollars to get people moving. Bicycle highways are a major component of the country’s plan to connect suburban areas to city centers, by providing a viable alternative to a car-centric commute.
A large part of the transition away from fossil fuel dependency is the development of viable alternatives, not only for energy production, but also for everyday materials that have widespread uses. One may not expect an automobile manufacturer to be one of the major players in this move forward, but Ford motor company, in a combined effort with food giant Heinz, are doing just that.
The idea that suburban sprawl is a major contributing factor to the size of our carbon footprints (and climate change overall) is new: these images are a fascinating look into just how much municipal planning visions and implementations differ between North American and European cities.
This haunting melody is the result of Bartholomaus Traubeck’s technology which reads the rings of a tree as a record, and interprets them as music. These tracks represent different varieties of trees, and the results are pretty incredible. The complexity of nature, and its patterns to which we are largely unconscious, are revealed by this unique integration of nature, technology and the arts. A reflexive moment before starting my work day.
This is the first time I have 'heard' a minister publicly commit to a carbon neutral economy. The Ministers of Energy for Ontario and Quebec just announced bold new steps for energy. The Quebec Minister during the announcement stated, "“There is genuinely, on our part, the intention to really make a transition to a carbon free economy and it is a good thing to see that we are being supported by the federal government,” Arcand said.
Check out this video; a first person tour of a building site in Ethiopia where a new technology, which uses discarded straw to make safe, effective and strong building material, to build new homes.
Finland’s plan to implement a basic income supplement to a sample of 100,000 people of employment age (17-65) is gaining international attention. The project objective is to give people more autonomy over their finances, and observe if people are more inclined to make different decisions if they are given more choices in their lives.
In the last week, two papers have been published, one about the West Antarctic ice sheet and the other about Greenland ice sheets, each highlighting the same concern: that conventional estimates about rates of future melting are probably much too low and that, instead, it is plausible the world will experience sea level rise this century of one to several meters should we fail to drastically reign-in emissions of greenhouse gases. Click on the links below for further information. (From the Canadian Association of Geographers newswire).