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Archive for the ‘Small Great things’ Category

Are top world companies fighting against Climate Change?

img_5015These news explains some reports and surveys that state the increased compromise of World’s Top Corporations in this sense. Just three fast thoughts:

  • It shows that the economic establishment does not follow the skeptics ideas. As overwhelming amount of scientific work shows climate change is happening, it is happening because of our greenhouse gas emissions and international agencies, governments and top companies believe it. Skeptics are less than it seems from mass media and even blogs, internet,…
  • The real commitment of all this institutions has not been enough to even start decreasing CO2 emissions. So are really top companies committed to change the emission path. I would like too and I suppose that some are but not all, for example the companies that obtain great revenue from fossil fuels, or the ones worried by electricity costs. In  fact, skeptic blogs and media have many private financial sources.
  • It would be great that companies really committed to change their emissions path to obtain a prize from the worldwide customers to compensate their effort. But in that case good and reliable evaluation methods would be required, to ensure the mechanism is really working.. This way the normal citizen would have another instrument to fight against climate change.

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Interesting Consequences, Small Great things

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CSA, Community-Supported Agriculture, a great Climate Change oriented idea

One week vegatables, or just

Vegetables for the week, or just “the bag”, Image from Wikipedia

2 months ago I wrote about a personal/familiar experience I was happy about, now I know how it is called in english: Community-Supported Agriculture. To write in English is many times a challenge for me.

I learnt the term from this post that explains the concept better than me. This is the kind of small great things that can really make a difference for the two great objectives of climate change:

 

  • Mitigation: The reduction of transport requirement will certainly help, as transport is roughly the source of one-third of CO2 emissions. But even more, local production can make better choices regarding land usage, another 10% of emissions
  • Adaptation: Some of the most terrible consequences of climate change in a world approaching 10 billion will be the pressure in food production and distribution: another word; food security. Making it profitable to produce near home will be a warranty of some food production, and, even more, a comprehensive supply chain will avoid disagreeable surprises from markets we do not understand.

Of course, I do not think this is the ultimate solution for climate change nor the only possible source of food for me or anyone close to me, it’s just a good idea, reasonable, and helps and works.

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Small Dictionary, Small Great things

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Conclusions from 2012 regarding Climate Change.

ice cubes

ice cubes

This final part of the year is always an opportunity for making a balance.

In my opinion the balance is clearly negative as we are still sending not only too much CO2 to the atmosphere, we are sending more than ever. And this is the important part, because any possible improvement will not be effective until it gets a real effect on emissions.

The annual meeting in Doha, COP18, were not a significant step forward, and in spite of alleviating Obama’s victory and strong commitments in renewable energy as in Germany, the global emission path is still upwards with the driving force of emerging economic powers, mainly China.

In the other hand renewables are growing in many places and electric cars are not just in the labs.

I do not think the skeptics are winning the concept battle, I think there is more and more people convinced about climate change in most places of the world, the problem is that much more action is needed and fast. Maybe the two main topics this year have been the record low ice surface in the Artic and extreme weather events as Sandy hurricane, just in time to show american skeptics what is coming next. They are important because one is very visual (my cousin, not involved in those issues, told me se was impressed by the ice surface record), and the other very important for our everyday life.

I have not written about those two subjects for lack of time, as with many other posts I have in the waiting list, so my personal balance is that I have not written about many interesting issues I should but at the same time I am happy for writing more than previous two years, arriving to 100 posts, and above all, I have learnt a lot and I still want to write posts about climate change although I doubt about the approach or style.

So, happy new year and let’s hope we, the world, will go a step forward in 2013. Because we can and we must.

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Small Great things, Uncategorized

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Renewable possibilities in the third world

 

Bangladesh location in the earth from Wikipedia

Bangladesh location in the earth from Wikipedia

The installation of solar panels to electrify 1 million houses in Bangladesh is in my opinion great news, not just for the KWh produced for those people by clean means reducing some CO2 tons.

It also means that for poor people off-grid solar energy makes more sense than whole big investment in new grid systems fed by fossil fuels with uncertain costs in the future.

Al also means that the technology developed in rich countries (and not so rich ones) after a fossil fuel based 200 year industrialisation maybe effectively used to start using low-carbon electricity in places that have not known it before.

Symbolically means that it is possible to start improving every day  life conditions based on solar energy of small-scale without going the fossil way from the beginning, becoming rich and after that reducing emissions.

And finally, it means that for many people living with almost nothing in many places, they can dream of improving their living standards without spoiling the climate of their grandchildren.

Category:

Renewable energy, Small Great things

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Local vegetables reduce Carbon Footprint

At home, we take part in a local group of vegetable and egg buy/sell. The idea is good and simple. A local producer grows vegetables (in this case ecological ones but it is not compulsory for this idea), it packs some bags every week with some variety of them depending on the season and leaves them on monday in one place. During that day the ten customers take the bags and discover the surprise of that week in form of fresh, healthy and local food. The payments are done for three months periods and the producer gets a fixed customer group that visit  him/her every year.

There are many advantages as promoting local jobs in primary sector, avoiding complex intermediate markets, the confidence between customer and producer,… and the reduction of Kms for the vegetables and the associated CO2, I always consider funny that the lettuce I am eating has traveled more than me in the last year.

This possibility is possible, it is reasonable and it is growing!

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Small Great things, Uncategorized

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Senda Viva entertraining, but a lost opportunity for climate change

Photograph from Senda Viva, a flag showing environmental commintment

Photograph from Senda Viva, a flag showing environmental commitment

Last weekend, we enjoyed a very nice day at Senda Viva . A place I would define as a combination of Zoo, amusement park and small circus. It is focused on children and does its job well.

Maybe for the focus or just for the paths of my mind, I remembered my recent experience in Loro Parque. But this time I did not find the smallest mention to climate change, it is true that any other messages were scarce too so in some sense it could be too much to ask them for this kind of favored approach. However I found three small reasons to do so:

1.- The first is for survival. Senda Viva has good installations and attractions but suffers from extreme weather in summer and winter. With changed climate it can be even worse, and this can negatively affect the future of the project.

2.- When children are involved the educational point of view is always present in some sense. So it is better to remain them the challenges of their future world.

3.- The last is just a detail. There is a very nice view of the whole region in the top of a small mountain and some windmills are named along with some thermal power stations, why not other windmills of solar power stations that are an unavoidable part of Navarre’s landscape?

 

 

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Small Great things

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Hiriko CityCar, some news

From Hiriko web, http://www.hiriko.com

Some time ago I mentioned this promising project called Hiriko a small electric city car following the concept by MIT . It seems a great idea but not always great ideas become real things, because the way to the great public is hard.

Nevertheless I read two positive news about this project in the last months, this piece of news in the very prestigious thinkprogress web , and this one mentioning the interest of the German railways on it.

None of them means real life success but they are small steps towards it. And this is hopeful for me because transportation is one of the key aspects of  Climate Change and needs maybe more innovation than others due to the lack of maturity of the alternative technologies.

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Small Great things, Uncategorized

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Summary of my climate change snapshops from my holidays in the Canary islands

My holidays are getting very far, evolving into not very clear memories. Yet I wanted to write a summary post with my thoughts and I have been delaying it, but today, in one way or another I have posted it.

When I travel, I frequently look for images or facts related with climate change, renewable energies,…  This year I have even post some of them as:

My mental short summary now is that Canary islands have a lot to lose from climate change because having a wonderful climate any change will likely be negative and climate is central for the two main economic sectors there: agriculture and tourism. But, this scaring risks can also become opportunities as the experience of making El Hierro a renewable island shows, and I firmy believe in the potential of Canary islands. In fact, the same stubbornness of La Palma inhabitants not to allow any new industry they consider contaminant could lead them to a more renewable energy. They have two great advantages,  they do not have to feed a large electricity hungry industry and they do not suffer from cold or heat at their homes (for the moment).

By the way, why not try to reasearch geothermal generation possibilities in islands with active volcanos,  if they are useful to amuse the tourists by cooking tasteful meals (in Lanzarote) they could also be useful for something more productive.

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Small Great things

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Climate Change Snapshots from my Canary Island Holydays (IV)

This summer I was lucky to enjoy some vacation days in the very nice Canary Islands, concretely in Tenerife and La Palma. It was just holidays but Climate Change appeared, subtly in certain occasions I want to share with you again in this post as did in the previous ones.

In this case I share a fact, slightly negative but an opportunity at the same time. We hired a car in Tenerife. Certainly the cost was very competitive and it was with Hertz company. But it contained a disagreeable surprise, the deposit was full of gas and it was directly charged to us. This condition was not clear when we booked the car and supposed a considerable increase in the price for a three-day use of car but in my opinion the worse thing is related to one story the seller explained me at the desk:

As one customer was so committed to “use” all the product bought, that before returning he finished making rounds in the parking lot of the hiring company until depleting the car fuel

This customer was quite extreme, even ridiculous to waste his holiday time this way but he was just following the feelling created in most of us after facing one of those experiences: to waste the fuel because it is paid, because I hava been forced to pay it.

I have nothing in particular against Hertz company, there were very nice otherwise and I was told that this kind of practise is widespread in Tenerife nowadays due to the low earnings of the hiring companies. I even had  a very good surprise in the past with Hertz when the offered me a Prius car (like mine) in sustitution of another smaller one a trip some time ago, showing some commitment with Hybrid cars. But those commitments are of no use if you incite customers to burn gas without sense and add some more Kgrs of CO2 to the atmosphere, this kind of small actions show clearly that our conscience of climate change is still quite theoretical in the best case and that there are many opportunities for improvement of energy efficiency, without doubt the most CO2 saving of any energy source and cases like this, the most profitable one too.

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Small Great things

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Climate Change Snapshots from my Canary Island Holydays (III)

This summer I was lucky to enjoy some vacation days in the very nice Canary Islands, concretely in Tenerife and La Palma. It was just holidays but Climate Change appeared, subtly in certain occasions I want to share with you again in this post as did in the previous one and second

The image is from the wildfire La Palma island, concretely in Mazo town. The wildfire burned more or less 2000 Ha in the island out of 73000. It was close to several houses for moments as seen in the image taken from the main road of the island. In any case it was much better than the wildfire in nearby island La Gomera  which lasted for two weeks and burned more than 10% of the land.There were two more in Tenerife. Most of them were human caused, but climate change played a role with an extremely dry year, making very difficult fire extinction work. Some places in La Palma were really dry without rain in almost a year. To help even more a heat wave came to La Gomera adding more fuel to the flames.

Those fires did not come from the climate but it helped to make them greater and more dangerous. In the future it can be even worse. Who will pay for the firefighters bills in the future and the increment of their need? Will fossil fuels contribute is some amount to this bill, or will be just for everybody?

A photograph of the wildfire in La Palma during August 2012, image taken from the road

A photograph of the wildfire in La Palma during August 2012, image taken from the road

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Small Great things, Uncategorized

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