With the use of electric vehicles on the rise, there’s a lot of buzz about how environmentally friendly they are. While operational impacts are low compared to vehicles powered by internal combustion engines (ICEs), a...
Tag - climate change
Wasting food: a brief guide.
With the human population on this little planet of ours expected to grow to over 9 billion in the next few decades, food security is being consistently identified as a pressing problem. That might sound Malthusian, but...
Unburnable Carbon: Bill McKibben’s frightening math
An article by veteran American environmental campaigner Bill McKibben appearing in Rolling Stone a couple of years ago framed the issue of dealing with climate change in a simple and remarkably vivid way. McKibben posed...
Open source for climate innovation
Nobody is likely to argue with the claim that innovation is at the root of human prosperity. So it is hardly surprising that technological innovation is the main response of society as we grapple with the consequences...
Beyond Heavy Oil – 8 Future-Proof Cargo Vessel Technologies
Think global, buy local? The idea of limiting one’s personal consumption to national, regional or local boundaries is an excellent way to reduce personal carbon footprints and help establish small, human-scale...
Chance or Catastrophe? Towards a Constructive Media Coverage of Climate Change
Instead of using the opportunity to promote a low-carbon society, media reports of global warming generally convey only two messages. First, “watch out, the apocalypse is coming”, and second, “we don’t really know...
Turning World War II History into a Renewable Present – 3 Striking Sustainable Adaptations from IBA Hamburg
Hamburg, Germany’s second-largest city, saw more than half its building stock destroyed during world war II. The war is way over, but many buildings still tell of its story. A big building-exhibition now displays...
Carbon Neutral Online Shopping – How Green are Mail Order Companies?
In the last 150 years, three major trends have changed the way humanity consumes. First, industrialization shifted production from self-sufficiency to consumerism. Second, ongoing economic development allowed local...
The OECD Turns Green – Why Saving the Planet Pays Off
Continued degradation and erosion of natural environmental capital is expected to 2050, with the risk of irreversible changes that could endanger two centuries of rising living standards. What sounds like a new warning...
Avoiding the Relocation of Emissions – How to Face Carbon Leakage
In the course of the last 20 years, some of the more developed countries achieved a remarkable reduction of carbon emissions. However, taking a closer look at this, we see that a reduction in one place can be closely...