The recent economic meltdown has left millions of Americans homeless and thousands fearing losing their jobs; many already have.
As the world struggles to dig itself out of recession, the green industry appears as a beacon of hope. In post-modern industrial world where the threats of global warming and climate change have been taken for granted, a digital world that seeks to be more earth-friendly is emerging. But irony or not, this seems to be the case.
Gavoitas can teach us a lot about how to deal with global warming. Located in Columbia’s Los Llanos region, it’s a village with about 150 residents. It was founded in the late sixties by Paolo Lugari together with friends from Bogota’s universities.
The land in Los Llanos is mainly savannah plans that get a lot of rain. Few people live there due to the poor soil quality. After flying over the area in 1965, Lugari wondered whether people could live there. He staked a claim to 25 000 hectares of land and Gavoitas – named after a local bird – was born.
This is what US Global Warming Guru has to say:
I recently joined Facebook because I want to talk with you directly about solving the energy and climate change challenge and ensuring America’s leadership in a clean energy economy. I hope you will check out my new page at http://www.facebook.com/stevenchu
Global warming may be affecting the size of sheep in Scotland, scientists have found. Over twenty-five years, they studied the Soay sheep on Hirta, an island in the Outer Hebrides, off Scotland.
They found that the sheep had shrunk by about 2cm (0.8 inches) and 81g (2.9oz) each year. This amounted to five per cent of their body mass.
The sheep were completely unattended and it’s thought that the smallest lambs would usually die in the cold weather of early spring. However, as spring is getting warmer, more of these lambs survive. Their ‘small’ genes then get passed to the next generation of sheep.
The British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was enthusiastic about the outcome of the G8 summit for global warming. At the summit he said:
“For the first time the G8 has agreed what I believe are vital decisions that take us on the road to Copenhagen and change the way we look at energy policy in the future.
We have agreed for the first time that average global temperatures must rise by no more than 2C. That is a historic agreement.
“We have agreed as G8 that we want to cut our emissions by 80% by 2050 and we believe that this will allow the world to reduce its emissions by 50%.”
Fine words on global warming and climate change were not in short supply. Detailed agreements were. The G8 developed countries agreed to cut their emissions by 80% by 2050 and said worldwide emissions should fall 50% by the same date.
They also agreed to try to limit global warming to just 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial levels. Interestingly, in the communique announcing the targets, the application of an “exit strategy” – as sought by Germany – until recovery is assured was put off. But these were only targets with no detailed obligations.
The White House released this statement which makes interesting reading:
Energy & Environment
“So we have a choice to make. We can remain one of the world’s leading importers of foreign oil, or we can make the investments that would allow us to become the world’s leading exporter of renewable energy. We can let climate change continue to go unchecked, or we can help stop it. We can let the jobs of tomorrow be created abroad, or we can create those jobs right here in America and lay the foundation for lasting prosperity.”
This video made me laugh, but it has more than a grain of truth in it.
Spam email is annoying. An amazing 62 trillion unwanted emails were sent in 2008. But spam’s also contributing to global warming according to a report by ICF international, an environmental consultancy.
The report, commissioned by online security company McAfee, calculates that 33 terrawatts of electricity were used sending this spam. Put another way, that’s enough to provide energy to 1.5 million US homes for a year or the energy consumption of 3.1 million cars during the same period.
Around 40% of the UK’s carbon dioxide emissions each year come from businesses. That’s compared to 27% from households.
The Carbon Trust calculates that about 21% of businesses’ energy expenditure is wasted. In monetary terms, that’s an incredible £2.4 billion annually.
Take office lights. Not switching the lights off before going home at night in a typical small office annually uses enough energy to power a three-bedroom house’s heating for a nearly five months.
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