Written by Mark Seall
Published on January 31st, 2008
High speed trains, jet engines, or solid German engineering? What gets you there faster, in more style and with less stress? There is only one way to find out.
Air travel is widely regarded as the bad boy of the green world, yet it is essential for many of us who must regularly travel due to work, family or other commitments. Therefore the airplane is frequently seen as the only option for international travel.
However, airlines in Europe are coming under increasing pressure from the train as a viable means of long distance travel. In France and Germany the TGV and ICE rail networks are providing stiff competition to airlines on many routes, offering reduced check-in, security and boarding formalities, fewer delays and direct connections between city centres.
Travelling at speeds in excess of 300kmh, these services are encroaching on what has until now been the plane’s primary advantage – speed. Recent upgrades to the Paris to London Eurostar service bring the journey time down to little over 2 hours, and passengers generate less than 1 tenth of the Co2 than they would travelling by air.
But just how realistic is the rail alternative in practice? And how does it stack up against that icon of the industrial age, the automobile? The only way to find out is to pit each against the other in a head to head race across the continent.
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Written by Gavin Hudson
Published on January 31st, 2008
Dear Readers,
Yesterday, Pem Charnley asked for less rhetoric and more investment in public transportation.
This week, we are featuring articles on public transportation around the world.
With the auto industry taking heat for emissions, it’s important to look to other feasable alternatives to personal transit.
How far has any country come toward achieving a high-tech, fully integrated transportation system? Where do we need to improve? These are some of the questions we will seek to answer.
Please join the conversation and continue to check back during the days that follow as we explore public transportation around the world.
Written by Pem Charnley
Published on January 30th, 2008
Carbon emissions from transport, as a contributing factor to climate change, is a hugely complex subject. Yet we must continue to address it, look for solutions, if we are ever to tackle global warming.
Transport is too vast a topic to discuss as a whole. Instead, I want to just look at our behaviour on the roads. Can it ever be possible to curb this behaviour when we seemingly continue to believe that the car is the only way forward?
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Written by Joshua S Hill
Published on January 29th, 2008
Lake Victoria, also known as Victoria Nyanza, is one of the Great Lakes of Africa. Measuring in at 68,800 square kilometers (26,560 mi²), it is the continent’s largest lake, the largest tropical lake in the world, and the second largest fresh water lake in the world in terms of surface area. But as a result of two hydroelectricity damns, its health is being threatened.
The health of the lake and its inhabitants are at not the only ones at risk, considering the peoples living on its shores who are entirely dependent on the lake for food.
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Written by Mark Seall
Published on January 28th, 2008
It has been said that any truly mature technology is indistinguishable from magic. However, as much as it has transformed our lives, the magic of electricity is something that we mostly take for granted – it’s readily available, relatively dependable, and cheap.
But this may change during the next decade as many European countries begin to face energy shortfalls. Many governments have been caught short as the decommissioning of old power stations, increasing demand for electricity and new EU targets for renewable energy have all coincided, causing many analysts to predict a demand / supply deficit of up to 20% over the coming years. Read the rest of this entry »
Written by Pem Charnley
Published on January 28th, 2008
Citizens across the UK will have the chance to expand their knowledge of all things green with a London expedition due to run in May.
Entitled LONDON AWARE 08, the exhibition gives people a chance to meet and talk with the exhibitors.
And as the website tells us:
LONDON AWARE 08 will be a meeting point for everyone – businesses, charities and experts, as well as people who are taking their first steps into a greener world.
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Written by Gavin Hudson
Published on January 26th, 2008
Not many of us link our soy chai latte or our occasional fast food splurge with Amazon deforestation. However, travel up the Amazon river and you’ll be greeted not by endless lush forest, but by soy farms and cattle ranches.
We’re all familiar with the statistic: every minute, an area of forest the size of five football fields is clear-cut in the Amazon. But a report just released from Brazil’s National Space Research Agency (INPE) reveals unparalleled deforestation in the last part of 2007. To make things worse, this follows three years of some of the heaviest clear-cutting ever. Despite world-wide attention, the Amazon rainforest is disappearing faster and faster.
In the wake of the report, Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, called an emergency meeting to formulate a plan for saving what’s left of the Brazilian rainforest.
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Written by Gavin Hudson
Published on January 25th, 2008
Each January since 2001, the World Social Forum (WSF) has assembled NGO’s and activists in a “developing” nation under the banner, “another world is possible.” The WSF hopes to counterbalance the World Economic Forum (WEF), which attracts the world’s rich and famous to Davos, Switzerland each year. The WEF motto: “entrepreneurship in the global public interest.”
I attended the WSF in Venezuela and was awe-inspired by the level of intense, multi-lingual dialogue. There were workshops on everything from equitable resource distribution to organic farming in Brazil.
This year, the WSF is trying something different. Instead of meeting in one, two, or even three cities around the world, they have organized a Global Day of Action on January 26.
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Written by Mark Seall
Published on January 24th, 2008
Commercial aviation is coming under increasing environmental pressure due to its high emissions, noise and rapid growth. Militarily aviation in Switzerland is now starting to feel some of the same pressures.
Swiss hotel owner and environmentalist Walter Knutti has become tired of the noise and concerned by unnecessary emissions from military aircraft on training flights from the nearby airbase of Meiringen. Taking action, Knutti has collected enough signatures to force the issue to a popular vote – under the Swiss system of direct democracy voters have a right to challenge parliamentary laws or pass constitutional amendments by collecting a minimum number of signatures to force a ballot.
Under Knutti’s initiative, Swiss voters will decide next month if military jets should be banned from tourism zones. Read the rest of this entry »
Written by Pem Charnley
Published on January 24th, 2008
Perhaps one of the more confusing factors regarding global warming is the suggestion that parts of the planet will indeed get a whole lot colder. It doesn’t seem to equate, does it?
Surely, as harmful emissions trap heat from the sun, then logic would dictate that the planet would uniformly heat up as a result.
Well, perhaps that is a little outmoded now. The constant reporting on climate change has left a majority of us with a good grasp of the situation. Perhaps that’s why I personally feel “climate chaos” best describes the planet’s current transition.
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High speed trains, jet engines, or solid German engineering? What gets you there faster, in more style and with less stress? There is only one way to find out.
