» 2009 » March

When you buy A Real Tree app, a real tree gets planted.

A Real Tree works with organizations that provide materials and education to local communities to plant trees in an ecologically-beneficial manner. Local communities learn how to plant trees while avoiding toxic pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. Local communities plant trees that produce nutritious fruits and crops that they can live off and make a living on.

By enriching their land and their lives, these communities build a foundation that they can proudly pass on to future generations. Pride in their community gives them something that logging companies can’t compete with.

Source: www.arealtree.com

LS » If I had an iPhone I would buy A Real Tree for sure. It’s sort of dumb but also very clever and at only 99¢ it is a great idea, the world needs all the trees we can get.

The solar energy you haven’t heard of is the one best suited to generate clean electricity for generations to come.

One of oldest forms of energy used by humans — sunlight concentrated by mirrors — is poised to make an astonishing comeback. I believe it will be the most important form of carbon-free power in the 21st century. That’s because it’s the only form of clean electricity that can meet all the demanding requirements of this century.

Certainly we will need many different technologies to stop global warming. They include electric cars and plug-in hybrids, wind turbines and solar photovoltaics, which use sunlight to make electricity from solid-state materials like silicon semiconductors. Yet after speaking with energy experts and seeing countless presentations on all forms of clean power, I believe the one technology closest to being a silver bullet for global warming is the other solar power: solar thermal electric, which concentrates the sun’s rays to heat a fluid that drives an electric generator. It is the best source of clean energy to replace coal and sustain economic development. I bet that it will deliver more power every year this century than coal with carbon capture and storage — for much less money and with far less environmental damage.

Source: www.salon.com/…

LS » This article may be almost a year old by the time I got around to reading it, but it offers hope that we can change our dirty energy habits and options for actually creating renewable and carbon-free energy. I hope some of the governments and companies that can make things like this happen weren’t as slow to notice this technology as I have been.

Robert Falls was inspired by the creation of the David Suzuki Foundation. Now he calls it an obstacle to restoring degraded ecosystems.

If NASA’s James Hansen is right, the task ahead isn’t simply to stop adding greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere. It’s to take them out. Hansen and nine other prominent scientists warned recently that the concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, now 385 parts per million and rising by ~2.5 ppm a year, is already over the tipping point of ~350 ppm that implies a degree of warming greater than our civilization can tolerate.

There’s only one way to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. It’s called photosynthesis and only plants do it, building wood, flowers and leaves from solar energy and minerals.

For that reason, and because a fifth of human greenhouse gas emissions globally come from felling trees, few climate wonks doubt that forests are critical to forestalling climageddon.

Source: www.thetyee.ca/…

LS » Forest and ecosystem restoration may not do anything to curtail actual emissions levels or develop renewable energy alternatives but it is very, very important for carbon sequestration and making communities and our environment more habitable. There is no magic cure-all, global warming takes a multi, multi-pronged approach.

How a Toronto developer creates ‘cost-effective’ condos sold to families making as low as $32,000.

“We don’t call what we do ‘affordable housing’ anymore,” said Toronto developer Michael Labbé. “We call it cost-effective housing. Because what we do is build ownership housing that’s less expensive than rental.”

Labbé is the founder of Option for Homes, a not-for-profit company that produces condominiums for tens of thousands of dollars below market rates, helps its customers scrape together large down payments, and has accumulated a multi-million dollar endowment that could fund its work in perpetuity.

Since 1993, Options has started 10 developments in the Toronto area, and completed more than 1,500 homes.

“If we could get government behind this model — not with hand-outs, but strictly through policy support — then Canada’s housing problem would be over within a generation,” Labbé said.

Source: www.thetyee.ca/…

LS » Is this a revolutionary idea that can bring housing to every one in this era of real estate madness where people make as much money as they capitalistically can even though they are providing a building block commodity that is a human necessity just above food and water? Or is some sort of real estate pyramid scheme?