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Image source: BusinessWeek.com

With Beijing getting all spic and span for the 2008 Olympic Games, a host of ideas are being considered for the Olympic Forest Park, a multimillion-dollar, 680-hectare green space planned for the northern portion of the city. Besides serving as the venue for Tennis, Archery, and Hockey, the area will also include a massive man-made mountain and a lake in the shape of a dragon. Since Beijing is not the type of city where deep breaths are naturally good for you, China is hoping this engineering feat will create a "green lung" for the growing metropolis.

Some of the ideas being considered include Grasscrete. As the name suggests, the concept embraces a harmonious relationship with grass and concrete to create footpaths through the area. The concrete is made from recycled materials while the grass allows for sustainable drainage and a natural filtration system. Also part of Olympic Forest Park will be porous concrete, which allows water to percolate through instead of running off. This allows the ground to stay moist and require less watering for surrounding areas.

All of these efforts will enable the forest to collect and recycle almost 95% of the rainwater that falls. Amphitheatres and sports facilities will be designed so as not to pollute or overwhelm the sounds of nature. In addition to the tens of thousands of trees and bushes to be planted, wind channels will also be created and rocks specially situated to acoustically maximize the forest ambience. China is hoping this Olympic feat — due to be completed by the end of this year — will be a model for other cities to embrace. Imagine if this was required for every host urban area to implement?

Check out CNET's tour of the latest green products on display at this year's China Beijing International High Tech Expo. We hope to update you with more on Beijing's massive new green addition as the finishing touches are put in place.

The technical support offered to Fair Trade producers covers a vast array of programs, all with the end goal of helping producers achieve success. In agricultural produce this support can mean education on sustainable farming practices, help and funds to navigate the way to organic certification, and educational tools to create a successful, democratic co-op. Acording to TransFair USA (PDF), “Fair Trade co-ops often invest in technical training in soil improvement, agroforestry, organic production, composting and environmentally-friendly processing techniques.”

In the craft arena, this means providing important information about consumer market trends and developing products which simultaneously express the culture in which they are produced and appeal to consumers in other communities. The Crafts Center is an organization which provides these resources to artisans and importers. The Crafts Center contributes to economic development through field programs and coordination of an international network dedicated to supporting low-income artisans. They provide an annual trends report and a library of resources covering aspects ranging from how to import to intellectual property rights. They also have item specific resources available to members.

To support Crafts Center, you can offer a donation or become involved in raising consumer awareness through a Crafts Center event in your home, such as a slide-lecture on a cultural preservation project, demonstration by a visiting artisan or a fundraising dinner to help spread the word about the importance of supporting low-income artisans worldwide.

Providing technical support and training to artisans is a key aspect of the Fair Trade relationship as it helps build toward the goals of sustainable production and achieving competitiveness in the open marketplace.

This is the fourth in a series of posts discussing the Fair Trade criteria. Also check out Fair Trade: Transparency, Fair Trade: Fair Wages, Fair Trade: Environment and Fair Trade: Financial Assistance.

Last week, leaders of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish faiths formed a pact to fight global warming. They delivered a letter to the White House and Congress announcing their alliance and calling on lawmakers to create limits on carbon global warming pollution.

Citing the Koran, the Hebrew Bible, and the teachings of Jesus Christ, the interfaith body declared global warming “a moral issue” in An Interfaith Declaration on the Moral Responsibility of the U.S. Government to Address Global Warming:

“All of our traditions call us to serve and protect the poor and vulnerable. And it is the world’s poor, who contribute the least to this problem, who will suffer the most from global warming.”

The group asks fellow people of faith to see beyond their differences and make the protection of life on earth a priority. But besides working on global warming soluations, faith communities must prepare to care for those who will be displaces and impoverished by its effects.

Advertisements, meetings with elected officials, and campaigns in individual congregations are planned for the near future.

Christian Post Reporter
Episcopal Life Online
An Interfaith Declaration on the Moral Responsibility of the U.S. Government to Address Global Warming

Posted by Dave (in Anchorage, Alaska)

George, Jun, Heroes star Hayden Panettiere, and Seni
© Greenpeace/Walsh

Well, we’re at the end of a great day here in Anchorage, on the eve of the International Whaling Commission. Today, Sunday 27th May 2007, people took to the streets in more than 50 locations around the world for the Big Blue March voicing their support for the world’s whales, and calling for an end to commercial whaling. Being so far west, we were possibly the last location to have a Big Blue March.

The fun began at Delaney strip, a grassy area on the edge of the city centre, after massive preparations by Mel, Asbhy, Sarah, and a host of others. The weather looked non-committal – drops of rain, the odd ray of sunshine. Cold one moment, warm the next. That didn’t deter the hardy Alaskans, because rom 1:15pm onwards, people started streaming in from all directions. A box of blue t-shirts awaited the first 300 – and more than 20 whale outfits (first come, first server!) Earlier, three Anchorage Police Department officers happened along – and one of them insisted on trying on a blue whale suit!

Continue reading Anchorage: The Big Blue March…

Posted by Dave (in Anchorage, Alaska)

Here’s photos from cities around the world where Whale Defenders have shown their support for the whales, before this years International Whaling Commission meeting kicks off here in Anchorage, Alaska.

Got photos from your Big Blue March? Post ’em here!

Posted by Steve (in Anchorage, Alaska)

The Whales Broadcasting Corporation at “opening time” this morning.

So, today is the beginning of an interesting week here in Anchorage – where the International Whaling Commission Meeting will take place. Delegates and Greenpeace folks from all over the world are all arriving in Anchorage, gearing up for the start of the Commission meetings tomorrow morning.

We’ve just wrapped up the launch of our efforts here – housed in the “Whale Broadcasting Corporation” tent at the corner of 4th and K Streets in downtown Anchorage – with a press conference. Journalists and film crews from all over the world crowded the tent to hear all about what Greenpeace is doing here. In addition to all of our activities here in the tent (http://www.whaledefenders.org), we’re also observing the meeting, hoping to bring the IWC into the 21st century: to protect the whales, and not the commercial whalers.

Continue reading Report from the Whale Broadcasting Corporation tent…

Filed under: Etc., Solar, Carbon Capture

There are many pilot projects going on right now with carbon capture and sequestration at power plants and other facilities that are burning fossil fuels. Capturing the carbon dioxide is probably the more straightforward part of that equation. The process of storing the carbon dioxide is can be more problematic.

Chemists at University of California at San Diego have come up with an alternative use for the captured CO2. Rather than storing it underground they want to split off one of the oxygen atoms to produces carbon monoxide and oxygen. The CO is an important feedstock for many chemical processes such as producing detergents and plastics and is usually produced from natural gas. Prof. Clifford Kubiak and grad student Aaron Sathrum have demonstrated a semiconductor catalyst device that uses solar power to split the CO2.

This has multiple advantages because it eliminates the CO2 from the atmosphere and provides the CO that is needed for other processes without consuming additional fossil fuels. More development is needed on the device to improve the efficiency, but the concept takes a novel approach to dealing with the problem of what to do with the carbon dioxide we produce.

[Source: UCSD News]

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD Step behind the curtain at Ford Motor. Experience the documentary first-hand.

Filed under: Etc., Legislation and Policy

As Joel Achenbah’s lede in this article so aptly points out, these are rough times for the American car industry. His proof? Daimler just sold Chrysler for a fraction of the original purchase price, President Bush wants to regulate tailpipe emissions, Gov. Schwarzenegger announced new low-carbon fuel standard and gas prices don’t stop rising.

All the while, Detroit continues producing trucks, SUVs and large sedans. In spite of the cool aspect of owning a hybrid or an electric car, Americans love keeping their fast, sexy, high-performance cars that are synonymous with suburban sprawl. There are, of course, initiatives set to downsize vehicles and make them more efficient but whether they’ll be effective isn’t all that clear, Achenbah says.

Big cars mean higher profits. American car companies are not likely to potentiate tiny, fuel-efficient cars. It looks like all investment has gone into performance and not fuel efficienly. “The transportation sector has been the least creative sector in our society,” says Dan Sperling, a professor at the University of California at Davis who helped write California’s new fuel standards.

[Source: Joel Achenbah from the Washington Post]

Everybody now is trying to figure how to combine the need for greener cars while keeping profits and “consumer choice”. In one hand, we can think about biofuels, hydrogen fuel cells and new materials. In the other hand, it seems that maket alone won’t keep us away from oil addiction (and reduce tailpipe emissions). Maybe politicians should intervene with regulation but that’s a difficult balance between what’s desirable and atainable. The real story, therefore, is how to deal with the tension between private desires and the public interest.

The thing is that “we’re not going to see huge changes in 10 or 15 years,” says Marc Ross, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of Michigan. “You can’t really change the fuel in that kind of time span. It takes time. It takes huge investments. We have almost 200,000 gas stations. The only fuel you could change in a time like 10 or 15 years is to add ethanol, to adopt a mixture that can be served from the same gas pumps. But if you want to do something different, like hydrogen – hydrogen is very difficult to handle – that’s going to take a great deal of time.”

It has calculated that every time gas prices jump 10 percent, the demand drops, at most, only 1 percent. The policy implication: Gas taxes won’t help curb demand as much as you may think, and Europe is an example: european cars are also bigger and SUVs sell there quite well (albeit with diesel engines).

This debate about the Car of the Future means also a debate on the health of our planet. “By 2050, the number of vehicles in the world is expected to go up by a factor of three,” says John Heywood, director of the Sloan Automotive Laboratory at MIT. “That should scare you. It scares me.”

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD Step behind the curtain at Ford Motor. Experience the documentary first-hand.