Leaders Act! Save Climate!

Quoted from Greenpeace:

“On the eve of the G8 summit in Italy – our activists have been beaming a message on the Kremlin and floating a life-sized iceberg past the Eiffel tower to call for urgent action from world leaders to save the climate.”

1000 Green Steps considered this as a call for our leaders, and might as well for you (if you are a leader), to start a change for our environment by doing both small and big green steps. In the picture we can see the activists used a laser projector to create a call to action visible from President Obama’s hotel: “Leaders Act! Save Climate!”

Happy Green Living!

]]> http://1000greensteps.org/2010/09/05/step-77-leaders-act-save-climate/feed/ 0 http://1000greensteps.org/2010/09/02/step-91-switzerland%e2%80%99s-winning-green-steps/ http://1000greensteps.org/2010/09/02/step-91-switzerland%e2%80%99s-winning-green-steps/#comments Fri, 03 Sep 2010 04:39:43 +0000 Valencia http://1000greensteps.org/?p=996

Switzerland

In case you wonder what the greenest country in the world is, you don’t have to worry now. 1000 Green Steps is here to tell you the top 3 greenest countries.  This list is generated through Environment Performance Index (EPI) calculation.

1. Switzerland
Switzerland is a country synonymous with scenic Alps, posh pocketknives, fine chocolate, world-class watches, and of course, a clean environment. The country’s achievements and measures in environmental protection can be seen in people’s daily lives.

2. Norway
Through the action plan, the Government wishes to ensure that sustainable development is given a permanent place on the political agenda. The Government considers it important to link the sustainable development effort to central political processes and economic policy documents.

3. Sweden
Finnish national sustainable development policy is a wide-reaching participation of various societal actors both in the definition of the contents and implementation of the measures. The approach is already referred to as the “Finnish model”, in which broad-based, multi-stakeholder participation is combined with high-level political leadership.

Happy Green Living!

The French Constitutional Council has rejected a tax on carbon emissions strongly backed by President Nicolas Sarkozy that was to take effect Friday. But his ruling conservative party said the measure would be redrafted so it could be passed into law next year.

The council, which evaluates the constitutionality of proposed laws, ruled late Tuesday that the bill contained too many exemptions for polluters, broke with past practices and threatened to make tax collection unfair. Sarkozy could make the tax more, er, simple, but “it remains unclear how the bill could be modified to meet the demands of the council without fierce objections from French industry.”

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) already loan $1.6 million for Nissan to modify its Smyrna, Tennessee plant to build battery electric vehicles as well as the batteries to power them. The loan came from DOE’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program (ATVMLP), a $25 billion program authorized by Congress in 2007. Nissan has to be able to produce about 150,000 electric vehicles a year and 200,000 battery packs. Those vehicles will be ready at 2012!

Not just that, that same DOE ATVMLP loan had approved 8 other companies to do the conversion of USA vehicles into electric drive transportations. Those companies mentioned above are Tesla Motors, Maryland Science Center, Altcar, Maya Electric, Electrovaya, Exxon Mobil, IBM’s Big Green Innovations and IBM Almaden Institute.

Congratulation and Happy Green Driving!

Green Roof

2009 Awards of Excellence: OMP goes into Chicago! We all know that Chicago was an old city built in 1673 and it is very well-known for its beautiful architecture. Here is where those skyscrapers were born and finally reach other sides of the globe.

After more than 100 years, Chicago finally made a new innovation by approving Green Roof. Since 1999, Chicago has planted 24,000 hectares of Green Roof on top of the buildings, shops, and offices. One of the largest benefits of Green Roof is Water Management ability, where Green Roof can absorb up to 50-60% amount of raindrops. After Green Roof absorbs raindrops water, when the sun shines, then the plants will be able to transpire again and return the absorbed water into our atmosphere. A little amount of water will stay on the soil to be used for plant’s growth. The residue will go to a water pipe which makes even more benefits because it makes the building doesn’t need Town Water Management where water pipe upgrading and expanding could be very expensive

Start putting Green Roof and save your money on water pipe. That saves our environment a lot, you know?

Happy Green Living!

So, now that Copenhagen Climate Talk is over, some of you might be wondering on what actually is happening and hopefully changing in tropical forests now. Not much it seems. Forests remain under threat for all the same reasons that we’ve historically cut them down—illegal logging, industrial agriculture expansion, and destructive “development” projects. At least for one more year, business as usual is certainly going to continue and tropical forests will probably continue to be lost at the shocking rate of 1 acre/second.

But the most depressing fail for the forests out of Copenhagen is the lack of binding targets to reduce fossil fuel emissions and start to halt climate change. If global temperatures rise above 2 degrees C, most scientists predict that tropical forests will be profoundly affected, experiencing extreme droughts, increased forest fires and other catastrophic weather events. Even if a separate deal to reduce deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries had been agreed upon, the lack of commitment to deep fossil fuel emissions in a legally binding climate change agreement would continue to threaten the world’s forests.

We can’t save the forests if we don’t save the climate. And that means that REDD without a larger climate deal is no deal at all.

Environmental Traffic Light

There are environmental phenomena that are far from the experience and knowledge of people. For instance, when we speak of temperature and give it a value of 25 degrees Celsius, we easily have an idea of what it means, but when we talk about 2.1ppm CO2 it is not the case. The same occurs with phenomena such as humidity, air pressure, etc. which also cannot be perceived easily with our senses. For people to understand these phenomena they need to become familiar with them. It is necessary to start thinking about information systems, data visualization and the interaction with them that encourage understanding and contribute to disseminating this knowledge. Urban planning has provided rules for issues such as insulation, height, usage etc., but equally important facts like the various interactions of the ecosystems in which we are immersed are often ignored and neglected.

Just as there are traffic lights that help us regulate traffic vehicular and pedestrian, why not to talk about environmental signals that support decision making on environmental issues? They could give us information – not only phenomena but also the environmental state of our ecosystems. We can imagine these lights in different parts of the city, in parks – in contaminated or abandoned contexts.

The environmental traffic light consists of a series of units for independent phenomena; each has sensors displays that provide visual information to the public about the measurement on site. The collected data is sent over the network and stored for further analysis.

Happy Green Living!

Cows Eating Garbage

Sounds so simple, but saying is always easier than doing it. Follow these 5 tips from 1000 Green Steps to find yourself ‘cured’ from your littering addiction. Act now!

1. Think about the danger

Think about how one plastic bag left on the ground would affect your environment and soil. Think about the money that has to go to waste to hire people to collect that garbage. Are YOU ready to get blamed?

2. Get yourself informed

Do you know that the several trillion toxic cigarette butts littered worldwide annually are responsible for fatal fires and the deaths of numerous mammals, birds and reptiles that eat them? Get yourself informed and I’m 100% sure you will not litter anymore if you still got heart.

3. Make an effort

Try to find a trash can anywhere or simply keep a litter bag in your car at anytime. You won’t have an excuse if you do so

4. Just pick it up!

The simplest way but might happen to be the hardest one if you didn’t get use to it. Try it and you’ll regret why you didn’t start it earlier.

5. See the right people

Join the right communities such as these organizations 1000 Green Steps found for you: Keep America Beautiful or Adopt a Road program.

Happy Green Living!

Angelina Jolie as Goodwill Ambassador

Angelina Jolie is not exactly the greenest celebrities 1000 Green Steps have ever seen. However her effort to sacrifice her personal life to make people become greener is something we should give applause for. Jolie is a Goodwill Ambassador for the U.N. Refugee Agency for 5 years, which assists around 20 million refugees in over 100 countries.

Jolie even made a website containing her personal journal from her various visits to the world with the U.N., including Sudan, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Ecuador and Namibia. Angelina is one celebrity using her status to focus media attention toward something other than herself.

Jolie has received various awards including UNCA Citizen of the World by the U.N. Correspondents Association and the Global Humanitarian Action Award from the U.N. Association of the USA and the Business Council for the United Nations.

Now it is our turn to take the action. Start from trying to influence people around us to care about environment.

Happy Green Living