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Milan to House Vertical Forest to Fight Pollution

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01-Bosco-verticaleThe bustling city of Milan is one of the most polluted in Italy. But the fashion forward city has come up with a clever solution to help clean up its air – vertical forests.

Architect Stefano Boeri designed Bosco Verticale, a vertical forest which will plant 900 trees on the balconies of two towers. The vegetation from the towers will produce the same ecological footprint as 10,000 square meters of forest.

The lush forest will add so much more than natural beauty to the building’s design. The plants and trees will produce humidity and oxygen while protecting from radiation and pollution through absorbing carbon dioxide. It will also attract birds and insects, creating a miniature ecosystem. Continue reading →

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The Day the Earth Stood Stupid

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Originally posted on Huffington Post by Marty Kaplan, Director, Norman Lear Center and Professor at the USC Annenberg School

dayearthstillSay goodnight, Earthlings.

That message — plus the slimmest of shots at an eleventh-hour reprieve — was announced to the people of the world last week.

When this happens in science fiction — 1951′s The Day the Earth Stood Still is the classic — the planet pays attention. The flying saucer lands; an alien, in this case played by Michael Rennie, emerges; a final warning is issued: Stop it. If you don’t, you’re doomed.

Back then, the “it” was violence — the Cold War, and the threat of nuclear midnight. Last week, it was climate change — greenhouse gases, and the promise of ecological extinction.

“Heat-Trapping Gas Passes Milestone, Raising Fears,” ran the headline on the front page lead story in Saturday’s New York Times, with this sub-head: “CO2 at Level Not Seen in Millions of Years, Portending Major Climate Changes.”

A headline like that — millions of years? really? — normally turns up in comic books and superhero movies, not in the paper of record. In fiction, what usually comes next is a montage. At breakfast tables and on street corners, in souks and igloos, in the Oval Office and at the U.N., the shocking news galvanizes humanity into action.

In the real world, it was pretty much a one-day story.

What does it take to grab us by the eyeballs? Chris Christie’s waistline is guaranteed wall-to-wall coverage. The next Jodi Arias is waiting in CNN’s wings. The Benghazi circus will be in town at least through 2016. Sure, disaster porn is always good for ratings, but though a Superstorm Sandy may momentarily raise the specter of climate change, daily bulletins on the parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere apparently aren’t Nielsen enough. Continue reading →

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Heat Trapping Gas Passes Long Feared Milestone

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SUB-CLIMATE-articleLargeCarbon dioxide, the most important heat trapping gas in the atmosphere just passed the 400 parts per million milestone last week, a level not seen on earth for millions of years.

Per the New York Times: The best available evidence suggests the amount of the gas in the air has not been this high for at least three million years, before humans evolved, and scientists believe the rise portends large changes in the climate and the level of the sea.

“It symbolizes that so far we have failed miserably in tackling this problem,” said Pieter P. Tans, who runs the monitoring program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that reported the new reading.

Ralph Keeling, who runs another monitoring program at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, said a continuing rise could be catastrophic. “It means we are quickly losing the possibility of keeping the climate below what people thought were possibly tolerable thresholds,” he said.

What exactly causes carbon dioxide levels to rise?

Continue reading →

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Climate Change Soon to Affect More Than Half of All Plants & A Third of All Animals

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climate-changeScientists from Britain, Australia and Colombia recently announced that the habitats of many common plants and animals will shrink dramatically this century unless governments act quickly to cut rising greenhouse gas emissions.

After studying 50,000 species throughout the world, the scientists came to the conclusion that about 57 percent of plants and 34 percent of animal species were likely to lose more than half the area with a climate suited to them by the 2080s if nothing was done to limit emissions from power plants, factories and vehicles.

“Climate change will greatly reduce biodiversity, even for many common animals and plants,” lead author Rachel Warren of the University of East Anglia in England said. The decline would damage natural services for humans such as water purification and pollination, she said. Continue reading →

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College Divestment Campaigns Gaining Momentum for Young Environmental Activists

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brown-divest-coal-1In the fall of 2012, a Rolling Stone article about the terrifying math of climate change by Bill McKibben ignited a flame in many, and left a lasting impression on many college students. At around 300 college campuses around the US, student activists are coming together and building on a strategy that helped end apartheid in the 1980s – divestment.

In the 1980s, students got their schools to drop stocks in companies that did business with the South African government. Today, students are demanding their schools take their investments out of big oil and coal companies.

The movement itself is slowly gaining momentum, but in the meantime, is creating a whole new slew of young environmental activists. In an interview with NPR, Brown University senior Emily Kirkland who leads the Brown Divest Coal campaign says “It’s been really exciting for me to feel like this is the first time where I’ve seen how I can directly make a difference on my campus and force my administration to make a decision that could have reverberations around the country.” Continue reading →

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Watch This Amazing Speech on Climate Change on the Senate Floor

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God will not save us, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) declared in a Senate floor speech on climate change on May 8 that sounded more like a sermon than a political appeal.

Whitehouse has made it his personal mission for more than a year to highlight the catastrophic consequences of climate change every week. His zeal became downright evangelical Wednesday evening, apparently inspired by hearing a fellow senator assert that God won’t let people ruin the planet.

In a powerful 17-minute speech, Whitehouse argued that such sentiments amounted to “magical thinking” and smug arrogance that do not gibe with the Bible, let alone reason.

“If we believe in an all-powerful God, then we must then believe that God gave us this earth, and we must in turn believe that God gave us its laws of gravity, of chemistry, of physics,” Whitehouse said.

“We must also believe that God gave us our human powers of intellect and reason. He gives us these powers so that we his children can learn and understand earth’s natural laws,” Whitehouse said.

What intellect tells people is that they are polluting the planet and causing it to warm with foreseeable, catastrophic consequences, Whitehouse contended. He said it was senseless to ignore what the God of knowledge has enabled people to learn.

“We learn these natural laws, and we apply them to build and create, and we prosper,” Whitehouse said. “So why then, when we ignore his plain, natural laws, when we ignore the obvious conclusions to be drawn by our God-given intellect and reason, why then would God, the tidy-up God, drop in and spare us?”

Although Whitehouse did not name names, some of his Senate colleagues could be counted as targets of his speech, including Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), who recently said on the floor that he didn’t know what humans have done to Mother Nature.

Climate science deniers are more vocal in the House, where Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) recently called evolution a lie from the pit of hell, and where the Science Committee is weighing ways to exert political control on the National Science Foundation. Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) has quoted scripture to deny that climate change will destroy the earth.

Whitehouse suggested that such anti-science attitudes are anything but humble or religious.

“We are here to do God’s work. He’s not here to do ours,” Whitehouse said. “How arrogant — how very far from humility — would be the self-satisfied, smug assurance that God, a tidy-up-after-us God will come and clean up our mess?” Continue reading →

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California Bill Boosts Open Access Charging for EV Drivers

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electric-vehicle-charging-stationGood news for California electric vehicle drivers! SB454, the EV Open Access Act, has passed out of the California Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee. SB454 allows consumers with plug-in cars the same access to charging stations that gas stations provide gasoline cars. In other words, EV drivers will soon be able to charge anywhere, at rates that are clearly marked, and without the need for special membership.

“This bill will ensure that plug-in drivers can charge everywhere and will know what it will cost,” said Jay Friedland, Plug In America’s Legislative Director. “Public charging spots must be readily accessible to the public and not constrained with access cards or network membership requirements.”

Currently, EV drivers are required to obtain access cards for charging stations. The new bill would allow anyone with an electric vehicle to charge their car and pay with their regular credit card. The bill also requires pricing transparency so that drivers know costs associated with particular charging stations. Since 2010, the charging industry has made significant progress installing EV charging infrastructure.

“A sustainable vehicle charging infrastructure is an important part of the road to electric transportation. Greater consumer confidence in public charging will speed acceptance of EVs by ensuring that drivers will know how much charging will cost them,” Friedland added. “A straightforward, sound set of principles that builds off the best practice standards already being set by leading charging companies will strengthen and increase the size of the market, especially as the number of vehicles continues to grow at an accelerating pace.” Continue reading →

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Studios Donate Leftover Set Material to Habitat For Humanity

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restoreHollywood studios are upping their sustainability game by donating used props and set material to Habitat for Humanity. Rather than hauling leftovers to a landfill after a movie or TV show wraps, studios have found new ways to reuse what often adds up to tons of material.

Just recently, Warner Bros. donated plywood, joists, furniture, faux brick, and other set material once The Hangover Part III wrapped. Ten truckloads unloaded at Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles, to be sold in Habitat’s stores in Gardena and Norwalk. The proceeds supported the organization’s mission of building and renovating homes for the needy.

“The crews take pride in what they’ve built, so if we’re able to salvage the materials and give them another use, everyone feels good about that,”  Mike Slavich, director of sustainability for Warner Bros. Entertainment tells the LA Times. The studio last month supplied Habitat’s stores with more than 30 rolls of carpet and linoleum flooring from the set of the CBS TV show “The Mentalist.” Continue reading →

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