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Spaceship Earth – Your Main Oxygen Systems are Collapsing
As the brilliant futurist Buckminster Fuller used to point out, our Spaceship Earth is hurtling through space at a great speed. Imagine if someone told you (a passenger on that ship) that the main oxygen systems were failing because of how food was being grown.
The World’s Disappearing Sand
Read the full article online at http://www.nytimes.com “MOST Westerners facing criminal charges in Cambodia would be thanking their lucky stars at finding themselves safe in another country. But Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, who is half British and half Spanish, is pleading with the Phnom Penh government to allow him back to stand trial along with three Cambodian […]
Swedish apartment encourages cycle-friendly lifestyle
As cities seek to become greener and healthier places to live, cycling is increasingly being catered for. In Malmö, Sweden, this now extends beyond infrastructure like bike lanes and cycle paths, with a specially designed apartment block and hotel being built for people who wish to lead a car-free lifestyle. Designed by architects Hauschild+Siegel, Cykelhuset Ohboy will comprise 55 apartments, ranging in size from one to four bedrooms, and a “bike hotel” on street-level with 31 mezzanine apartments, all spread across seven floors. Like Foster + Partners’ 250 City Road in London, UK, it will feature space for bike storage, large elevators to accommodate bikes and a bike workshop, as well as focusing on greenery and sustainability.
Five ways cities are acting on climate
Cities aren’t waiting for the rest of the world to make huge strides in confronting the climate crisis. In December 2015, almost the entire world (195 nations to be exact) agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and do their part to solve climate change as part of the landmark Paris Agreement. After years of negotiation and discussion, the world is closer than ever to finally shifting away from dirty fossil fuels and working together to reverse the dangerous upward trend in warming global temperatures.
Self-sufficient, floating off-grid island
From no-waste, no-impact, buy-nothing, no-money to living tiny, there are a multitude of saner and more courageous alternatives to the unthinking, zombie wastefulness of mainstream living. For Canadian couple Wayne Adams and Catherine King, living self-sufficiently meant building their own floating island near Tofino, British Columbia, consisting of twelve interconnected platforms that support their home, greenhouse, lighthouse and a dance studio.
India Plants a Record 50 Million Trees In a Day
Hundreds of thousands of people in India’s most populous state jostled for space Monday as they attempted to plant 50 million trees over 24 hours in hopes of shattering the world record. Officials in Uttar Pradesh distributed millions of saplings to be planted across the state to help India’s efforts to increase its forest cover, and to get into Guinness World Records for the most trees planted in a day. The current record is 847,275, set in Pakistan in 2013.
NASA is Teaching Us Sustainability
“Astronauts who spend months on end in orbit have to learn to make do and mend in the best tradition of sustainability. Missions to bring fresh supplies are expensive and time consuming. For any astronauts who take on a mission to Mars, planned for the 2030s, with the round trip likely to take two years, life would be even tougher.
That prospect has helped focus minds at America’s space agency, Nasa, on clever ways to provide for daily needs in challenging conditions. But the lessons being learned are also proving to have knock-on benefits down here on Earth.”
