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Athena is the face of Greenpeace’s climate and energy campaign in Asia. She has just returned from Kyoto, where she led a team pressuring the Asian Development Bank to put their money where their mouths are and invest in Clean Energy. Here’s her round up.

2 weeks ago I welcomed myself back to the city of Kyoto with high expectations: for the Asian Development Bank to honour the spirit of one of the most important environmental agreements in history – the Kyoto Protocol.

I finally got to see Kyoto on the last day of my visit to this historic city. A visit to the Kiyomizu-dera Temple and a walk along Gion made me appreciate its beauty – something I missed10 years ago during my first visit. The people of Kyoto should be proud of their home. The ADB could have made them even prouder, but they were a few steps short…

Continue reading Wanted – Energy Revolution leader for Asia…

Athena is the face of Greenpeace’s climate and energy campaign in Asia. She has just returned from Kyoto, where she led a team pressuring the Asian Development Bank to put their money where their mouths are and invest in Clean Energy. Here’s her round up.

2 weeks ago I welcomed myself back to the city of Kyoto with high expectations: for the Asian Development Bank to honour the spirit of one of the most important environmental agreements in history – the Kyoto Protocol.

I finally got to see Kyoto on the last day of my visit to this historic city. A visit to the Kiyomizu-dera Temple and a walk along Gion made me appreciate its beauty – something I missed10 years ago during my first visit. The people of Kyoto should be proud of their home. The ADB could have made them even prouder, but they were a few steps short…

Continue reading Wanted – Energy Revolution leader for Asia…

Posted by Dave (in Ireland)

© Greenpeace / Aoyama

One of our colleagues, George Pletnikoff, an Aleut working for Greenpeace as an oceans campaigner in Anchorage, has written an article for the Anchorage Daily News on how Japan exploits a loophole that allows it to kill nearly 1000 whales every year.

This May, Anchorage will become ground zero for a very important political battle. The 59th meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) will be held here for nearly three weeks. As the international body that manages the world’s populations of great whales, the IWC has as its most important and lasting concern to maintain the 27-year-old moratorium on commercial whaling.

Continue reading Japan’s ‘scientific’ whaling a slap in face of conservation…

Posted by Dave (in Ireland)

© Greenpeace / Aoyama

One of our colleagues, George Pletnikoff, an Aleut working for Greenpeace as an oceans campaigner in Anchorage, has written an article for the Anchorage Daily News on how Japan exploits a loophole that allows it to kill nearly 1000 whales every year.

This May, Anchorage will become ground zero for a very important political battle. The 59th meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) will be held here for nearly three weeks. As the international body that manages the world’s populations of great whales, the IWC has as its most important and lasting concern to maintain the 27-year-old moratorium on commercial whaling.

Continue reading Japan’s ‘scientific’ whaling a slap in face of conservation…

Posted by Dave (in Ireland)

Here’s the challenge – on May 27th, join other whale defenders in a global gathering to support the whales – by taking to the streets for the Big Blue March.It’s a simple task – make contact with other whale defenders, and get together in your city or town wearing a blue t-shirt to form a Sea of People!

You can join Big Blue marches planned from Amsterdam to Buenos Aires – or organise your own event. Some folk aim to march down a major street, others to hold a family “fun day”. In other places, whale events with food, music and guest speakers are happening. People are even having whale parties at their house! Run, dance, swim, skate – do whatever you gotta do, just do it blue!

Why May 27th? While the Big Blue March takes place, the International Whaling Commission Meeting (IWC) will be in session in Anchorage, Alaska. At the IWC, diplomats from around the world make crucial decisions on the fate of whales throughout in our oceans.

Continue reading Join the Big Blue March: Ocean of Whales, Sea of People…

by Warren Karlenzig While personal carbon calculators are turning into a dime-a-dozen offering across the web, the unveiling of Zerofootprint’s carbon counter at the C40 Climate Summit last week ushers in a new era of a large scale web-based data warehousing that can aggregate carbon emission information from city government, companies, universities, neighborhoods, groups or families. [Full disclosure: Zerofootprint provided offsets for the Worldchanging book tour in 2006.] Toronto Mayor David Miller announced that his city would be using the tool, called Zerofootprint Toronto, to calculate carbon emissions for the city’s 50,000 employees this July. The free tool will also be available to others in the city, so that it begins to build a “bottom-up” analysis of carbon emissions complementing the “top-down” analysis cities, counties and local government are currently engaged in with groups such as another Toronto-based non-profit, ICLEI. The mayor said Torontoans will be able to use the Internet-based tool to calculate their own carbon footprint–which includes the amount of energy and water used, waste generated, how they get around, consumption habits and food choices. Results can then be aggregated and sliced and diced so that profiles of city, neighborhood to glean personal carbon footprints. Zerofootprint runs on… (more)

(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Climate Change at 10:32 AM)

My friends at Sokwanele – an activist organization in Zimbabwe – sent me a card: The card commemorates the second anniversary of Operation Murambatsvina – which translates in Shona to “Operation Drive Out Trash”. The campaign, officially known as “Operation Restore Order” was designed to “reclaim” slum areas throughout Zimbabwe. The operations may have forced the relocation of as many as 2.4 million people, and were harshly condemned by the Zimbabwean opposition and the international community. Many people believe that the clearances were designed to punish slum dwellers from voting against Mugabe in the March 2005 parliamentary elections; others argue that they were designed to weaken the MDC opposition party, which had widespread support in these communities. I probably wouldn’t have thought about Murambatsvina today had I not gotten the card – unlike my friends at Sokwanele, I don’t have this week marked on my calendar. So in that narrow sense, the e-card was effective. And it’s got me thinking that eCards are an excellent, simple tool that campaigns – like the Free Monem or Free Kareem campaigns, for instance – might consider using to spread their messages. I expect eCards to be saccharine, sweet and sent by relatives I… (more)

(Posted by Ethan Zuckerman in Movement Building and Activism at 10:27 AM)

A growing culture of urban gardening in Singapore and other major cities in Asia may hold the key to reducing city temperatures, Reuters reports. Apartment dwellers who tire of endless rows of concrete buildings have resorted to planting vegetables in boxes, trees in troughs, and even lawns on concrete yards. Gardeners boast of the visual aesthetics of the gardens, but the vegetation itself has the added benefit of blocking the sun’s rays and lowering temperatures through evapotranspiration, according to experts. The high-rise gardening movement started small but is growing, participants say. “I thought I was the only one—the only odd nut, the only crazy person interested in growing vegetables,” said Wilson Wong, a Singaporean who started a website where fellow urbanites can share advice and arrange nursery shopping trips and plant swaps. Furn Li, who transformed his concrete balcony into a garden featuring aquatic life, giant tropical ferns, and white pebbles, won Singapore’s first “apartment gardener of the year” award last year. And Hong Kong resident Arthur Van Langenberg has written the book Urban Gardening, documenting his lush urban garden that showcases hundreds of plants and several tree varieties. The government of Singapore is recognizing the importance of urban gardens… (more)

(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Climate Change at 9:31 AM)

The practice of philanthropy wields influence far beyond the amount of money that foundations and individuals give away each year. Because a great number of the tasks most vital to building a better future demand investments whose return is measured in impact rather than dividends — tasks that would not be done correctly (or sometimes at all) if they needed to return a profit — smart philanthropy acts as a sort of yeast, catalyzing innovations that will pay off handsomely in future public benefits, from child welfare to ecosystem services. But much of the philanthropic work done today is less smart than it ought to be, and a whole host of new ideas is bubbling up which offer the possibility of real transformation in the field. One of the biggest changes is a dramatically increased demand for transparency in the ways foundations and donors track and reveal the impacts their giving has, why their gifts were made, and what they’ve learned from their failures. Shockingly enough, many philanthropists still treat their grantmaking and evaluation processes like business secrets, when they ought to be thinking about how to leverage the value of the new knowledge their money has purchased (in the… (more)

(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Philanthropy at 10:33 PM)

Filed under: Hybrid

Retail giant Wal-Mart has taken delivery of its (and the industry’s) first hybrid Class 8 big rig. The Peterbilt Model 386 Hybrid is the result of a partnership between Peterbuilt and Eaton, latter of which was tasked with developing the truck’s hybrid system. There are no surprises in how it works. Braking energy is recovered and stored in the batteries, which in turn power an electric generator/motor that’s used to supply added punch, increase range, and, in certain situations, allow the rig to operate on battery power alone. The batteries also supply power to the truck’s electrical and accessory systems, and the projected fuel cost savings to owners is around $9,000 annually based on the current price of diesel.

The Model 386 Hybrid will continue to be tested and evaluated while it serves in Wal-Mart’s truck fleet, helping Peterbilt refine the vehicle and its aerodynamics ahead of its full market launch, which is expected in 2009. Wal-Mart will likely be there, checkbook in hand, as increasing fleet efficiency by 25 percent is one of the planks inthe retailer’s new “Sustainability 360” platform.

[Source: The Pete Store via Wired.]

 

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