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Cisco’s Big Bet on New Songdo: Creating Cities From Scratch

By Carey on February 9th, 2010

By Greg Lindsay | FAST COMPANY | February 1, 2010

Cisco's Wim Elfrink and developer Stan Gale plan to standardize many elements of New Songdo (rendering above) in other cities. (Photograph by James Whitlow Delano)

The world is bracing for an influx of billions of new urbanites in the coming decades, and tech companies are rushing to build new green cities to house them. Are these companies creating a smarter metropolis — or just making money?

Stan Gale is exultant. The chairman of Gale International yanks off his tie, hitches up his pants, and mops the sweat and floppy hair from his brow. He’s beaming like a proud new papa, sprung from the waiting room and handing out cigars to whoever happens by. Beckoning me to follow, he saunters across eight lanes of traffic toward his baby, delivered prematurely days before.

Read on: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/142/the-new-new-urbanism.html

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Consumers really can affect global warming — particularly if they live in the US

By Carey on February 9th, 2010

by Robert McClure in Dateline Earth/InvestigateWEST | February 8, 2010

I’ve always been just a hair skeptical about all those admonitions to consumers to save the world — you know, the “Live simply, that others may simply live”-type instructions. They felt a little too much like guilt-tripping to me, with perhaps not enough corresponding actual environmental good being done. It seems like a way for consumers who are feeling guilty about something — say, those SUVs they drive — to assuage their guilt by doing something that doesn’t really hurt, like turning off the lights when leaving a room. And of course, we’ve seen how this mindset can backfire:

What? You want me to do something more to help the environment? I recycle, ya know!

So environmentally, my frame of mind was: No pain, no gain.

Read on: http://invw.org/2010/02/consumers-really-can-affect-global-warming-particularly-if-they-live-in-the-united-states/

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Forgive me, Planet, for I have flown. Frequently.

By Carey on February 8th, 2010

Carbon offsets reflect the tendency of environmentalism to act like a new religion. Remember European history about the buying and selling of indulgences? But there can be good sense in donating to atone for our offenses against the environment.

By Anthony B. Robinson | Crosscut.com | February 5, 2010

Carbon offsets: If you fly, must you buy? Airplanes landing at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport (Photo: Magnus Baeck/via Wikimedia Commons)


The other day I, half-joking, told a Canadian friend who is a United Church of Canada pastor that I needed to do penance for all the air travel I am doing for work. He fired back an email with a new United Church of Canada-connected web site that would allow me to calculate my carbon footprint and make a donation to offset it. My donation would help fund the “greening of the buildings of different faith communities.”

Actually, I liked the idea and the website, and was heartened to see that driving my Honda Insight (hybrid) for the last 10 years, a car that still gets 55 miles a gallon, helped balance out my sins as a frequent flyer.

But the Protestant in me did find myself wondering if this were some sort of new system of indulgences. Remember indulgences? It was abuse of the system of indulgences within the Catholic Church that was a spur to the Protestant Reformation some 500 years ago. The wealthy could buy their way into heaven, or into the good graces of the church hierarchy, or both, depending on your view. Martin Luther thought it tacky.

Read on: http://crosscut.com/2010/02/05/climate/19571/

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A Seattle chef proves that traditional sushi and healthy oceans go hand-in-chopstick

By Carey on February 1st, 2010

by DARBY MINOW SMITH | grist | January 31, 2010

Not your typical sushi chef. Not your typical sushi. (Photo by Phu Son Nguyen of sushiday.com)

Growing up in small-town Montana, two things just made no sense: vegetarians and sushi. Why eat tofu, or raw fish, when you could just as easily have a big juicy steak? Coming from generations of cattle rancher stock, I read Jonathan Safran Foer’s ringing defense of vegetarianism, Eating Animals, with trepidation. But the only beef I ended up having with Foer was that he ruined my ability to enjoy the raw and the rolled—right after I had moved to sushi paradise, Seattle.

“Imagine being served a plate of sushi. But this plate also holds all of the animals that were killed for your serving of sushi. The plate might have to be five feet across,” Foer writes. At current rates of fishery depletion, scientists predict the demise of most seafood by 2048.

Foer describes modern fishing as warfare. Hajime Sato has a similar take: “[It’s] like someone is beating somebody and I’m just walking by and noticing it but not doing anything about it.”

Read on: http://www.grist.org/article/2010-01-29-a-seattle-chef-proves-that-traditional-sushi-and-healthy-oceans/

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Way out front: Changing lawns to gardens to save the world

By Carey on January 22nd, 2010

Los Angeles architect Fritz Haeg looks to change the world by changing our notions about landscaping

by John Bentley Mays | The Globe And Mail | January 22, 2010

Fritz Haeg in his LA dome residence/headquarters

For millions of Americans and Canadians, the front lawn is a sacred place. It symbolizes home ownership quite as forcefully as the house itself does. Kept vividly green and neatly clipped throughout the summer months, the open space between front door and street expresses for all to see the pride and care of its owners. Most importantly, it advertises a dream of prosperity and stability.

But the lawn has its enemies. One of them – a gentle, thoughtful foe, indeed – is Los Angeles architect Fritz Haeg, who was in Toronto yesterday to speak at the World Without Oil symposium held at the Design Exchange in conjunction with the Interior Design Show. (The trade fair continues through Sunday at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.) For the past five years, Mr. Haeg has been teaming up with museums in several regions of the United States, and in London, to transfigure carefully selected front lawns into kitchen gardens. The results of this gesture have been written up admiringly in Time Magazine and The New York Times, and numerous design magazines in the United States, Europe and the Far East.

Read on: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/way-out-front-changing-lawns-to-gardens-to-save-the-world/article1439096/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheGlobeAndMail-Front+(The+Globe+and+Mail+-+Latest+News)&utm_content=Google+Reader

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The Great American Slowdown

By Carey on January 20th, 2010

Library of Congress/Dorothea Lange - A famous Dust Bowl image of "Migrant Mother"

We’re less mobile and more place-bound, and it’s not just the recession that’s slowing restless America’s nomadic habits. This is good news for Seattle, the environment, and mossbacks.

by Knute Berger | Crosscut | January 20, 2010

Developers love predicting that growth isunstoppable and inevitable, but the Great Recession is showing how untrue this really is. Some previously booming areas of the country are now declining in population, especially the Sun Belt and parts of the West. More people are now moving out of Florida, Nevada and California than are moving in. The huge growth in recent decades was driven not by their inherent desirability but by bad banking and loan practices that artificially goosed development and made growth a business in and of itself. Americans were encouraged to be on the move because their mobility was exploitable by banks, builders and Wall Street.

But the Great American Slowdown is a bigger trend. A new Brookings Institution study finds that domestic migration is at post-war lows and has been steadily sliding for the last half century. In the 1950s and ’60s, 20 percent of Americans changed homes every year. In the boom 1990s, it was 16 percent. But in the last two years, it’s dropped to just over 12 percent. Americans are becoming more place-bound. It’s partly due to an aging population, and higher rates of homeownership. But the current downturn has speeded the trend having “cemented” many people in place, says the Washington Post. You can’t sell a home, buy a home, or find a job, so make the best of where you are.

Read on: http://crosscut.com/2010/01/20/mossback/19512/

Communication, Ecohumanitarian, Technology No comments yet

This Satellite Could Help Save Humanity

By Carey on January 20th, 2010

But DSCOVR remains grounded. That fact is key to interpreting the so-called ‘climategate’ emails.

by Mitchell Anderson | TheTyee.ca | January 20, 2010

NASA's stalled Deep Space Climate Observatory (artist's rendering).

The media missed the real story about the so-called “climategate” scandal.

After thousands of emails were mysteriously stolen from the University of East Anglia and distributed just before the climate conference in Copenhagen, many news outlets seemed content to report the story as it was presented to them rather than bothering to read the emails in the context they were written.

A closer look at these candid messages reveals a very different problem than the supposed scientific conspiracy theory that’s been in high rotation in the media. This previously unreported story also shows why launching the long-mothballed Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) is more urgent now than ever.

Read on: http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2010/01/20/DSCOVRSatellite/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=200110

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Meet Your Makers

By Carey on January 15th, 2010

From EduPunks to food jewelers, people are using new tools to take learning, art, entertainment, technology, politics, and even science into their own hands. Behold the growing Maker Movement.

Hands-on approach: Maker Culture.

By Pia Bahile, Curtis File and Kevin Young |  TheTyee.ca | Today (as good as any day)

[Editor's note: The Tyee is proud to co-publish with Rabble.ca a multi-part, multi-media investigation of Maker Culture -- the do-it-yourself movement fast evolving in North America and beyond. In this first episode, the authors, who are Canadian student journalists, explain what Maker Culture is and look back on their journey as writers and unwitting makers. And they give you a small taste of what you can expect here on The Tyee on Fridays to come.]

What is a Maker?

In Austin, Texas Cathy Wu is making jewelry out of dried fruit. In London, Ontario Brian Frank is educating himself in digital media. John Hammel, in St. Jacob’s, Ontario, owns the last handmade corn broom plant in Canada. In the U.S. Rustbelt ordinary citizens are dropping by a community college to use laser cutters and 3D printers. And in homes all over the world, people are connecting to the Internet to discover galaxies or unfold the secrets of Alzheimer’s and Parkison’s Disease. What do they all have in common? They’re all part of the same movement: Maker Culture.

Read on: http://thetyee.ca/Life/2010/01/15/MeetYourMakers/

Full series here: http://thetyee.ca/Series/2010/01/15/MakerCultureSeries/

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The ills inequality brings

By Carey on January 15th, 2010

by Jerry Large | Seattle Times | January 13, 2010

It is possible to improve the lives of the poor, the middle class and the well off, by addressing one big problem.

It turns out that reducing economic inequality can reduce a whole range of social problems, from teenage pregnancy and youth violence, to heart disease and depression.

The authors of a new book say the world’s rich countries have benefited about as much as they can from economic growth. Improvement in the quality of life now hinges on increasing economic equality.

Read on: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/jerrylarge/2010787375_jdl14.html?syndication=rss

Communication, Technology No comments yet

Google to end censorship in China over cyber attacks

By Carey on January 13th, 2010

Decision from world’s leading search engine comes amid a clampdown on the internet in China over the last year Google challenge to China over censorship

A Chinese Internet user browses for information on the popular search engine Google. Photograph: Reuters/Corbis

by Tania Branigan in Beijing | The Guardian |  Wednesday 13 January 2010

Google, the world’s leading search engine, has thrown down the gauntlet to China by saying it is no longer willing to censor search results on its Chinese service.

The internet giant said the decision followed a cyber attack it believes was aimed at gathering information on Chinese human rights activists.

Read on: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/12/google-china-ends-censorship