Algae is amazing and as we find more ways to use the powerful, small, creatures we’ll improve our carbon footprints. Already algae is used to clean sewage, clean landfills, and so much more. This week at the Milan Expo EcoLogics Studio revealed their algae canopy for urban centres. The canopy
Continue readingAuthor: Adam Clare
Things Are Good: Beer as Medicine
Beer is delicious and it can be healthy to drink on its own. Apparently, back in the day, beer was used to deliver medicine. It turns out that this isn’t a crazy idea and can be a good way to deliver need medicinal ingredients to patients. Another option was to
Continue readingThings Are Good: New Solar Cell Technology, Perovskite, Shows Promise
Solar power is getting cheaper every year and that trend seems to never end. Now there’s a new (and maybe even cheaper) technology for solar energy generation. The reason this new approach of using perovskite solar cells is important is that it permits the easy implementation of solar technology into
Continue readingThings Are Good: Curiosity (and art) is Addictive
A new theory based on some old research is that our drive to figure things out can be as addictive as doing drugs. If you’ve ever had to deal with a complex problem and found the solution you know that particular feeling of success. it turns out that our brains
Continue readingThings Are Good: Cuba Creates Great Doctors
Cuba is a beautiful country filled with nice people. Many of those people are educated doctors who go around the world saving lives for free, and they do the same at home. Al Jazeera has a nice long piece looking into the quality and motivations behind these great Cuban doctors.
Continue readingThings Are Good: Pick Up Your Butts
In Canada, like elsewhere with snow, when the spring thaw comes it reveals plants and it also reveals something gross: discarded cigarette butts. Everyone already knows that smoking kills, but some people may not know the damage done by butts. Butt Blitz has set out to do two things: raise
Continue readingThings Are Good: Infrastructure That Cleans the Air
Barcelona is going to build a road bridge which may be the cleanest bridge yet. Of course it’ll have pedestrian walks and bike paths, however, what makes the bridge really noteworthy is that it will clean the air. Concrete is notoriously energy-intensive to create so any carbon offset is beneficial.
Continue readingThings Are Good: Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center create Anti-Environmental Archives
Some nifty news out of Greenpeace’s PolluterWatch program and the Climate Investigations Centre. They have release an archive of documents that show the deceitful tactics used by climate change deniers and their ilk. A new tool to fight against people who deny the future. In the spirit of the Tobacco Archives and Chemical
Continue readingThings Are Good: Rethinking Environmental Education Under Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is the current way of thinking about the economic state of the world. It’s the thinking that has led to the financialization of nearly everything in the world – think about how we justify our thinking in economic terms and not other terms. The critiques of the mind-numbing neoliberal
Continue readingThings Are Good: Happily Find Where You’re Going
This TED talk is all about modifying maps so that you can find the most joyous route to your destination! Mapping apps help us find the fastest route to where we’re going. But what if we’d rather wander? Researcher Daniele Quercia demos “happy maps” that take into account not only
Continue readingThings Are Good: Buy Experiences, Not Things
If you have surplus cash it’s better to spend that money on experiences than buying objects. That is, if you want to live a happy life. Researchers who have looked into what makes us happy over our lifetime have concluded that experiences contribute more to happiness than objects. You might
Continue readingThings Are Good: A Competition and Journal Looking Into Philosophy and Games
Games are a very popular cultural medium with a reputation for not being very “deep”. Game Praxis is a new project I’ve co-founded to encourage game makers and players to ask big questions through gameplay. It’s a game competition and a journal focused on philosophy and games. The goal is
Continue readingThings Are Good: Turning Trash Into Health Care in Indonesia
Indonesia has a rather large number of people on reactively small landmass and as a result solid waste has become a problem. Enter Garbage Clinical Insurance which is a company focussed on turning trash collection into health care. It’s a simple solution insofar that people who can’t afford to see
Continue readingThings Are Good: Seoul Starts Vertical Farming
Vertical farming is a possible food production solution as suburban sprawl consumes arable land. The new style of farming essentially is a farm in a skyscraper; they have yet to demonstrate commercial value but it’s inevitable that these farms will be normal fixtures in urban centres; Korea wants to be
Continue readingThings Are Good: Ontario Joins California and Quebec’s Cap and Trade Program
Ontario is launching a cap and trade carbon program that matches with the existing programs in Quebec and California. This is a good thing for adoption of carbon-conscious economics even if the system isn’t perfect. The program is being praised by Greenpeace and other environmental NGOs. And this program is
Continue readingThings Are Good: Vancouver Aims to be Powered by 100% Renewable Energy
Vancouver has a new goal: be powered by only renewable energy. This announcement was made the same week that an oil spill hit the city’s shores. Indeed, the city is so sick of wasting money on carbon-based power sources that their 100% goal even includes cars, trucks, buses, etc. This
Continue readingThings Are Good: Faster Than Oil, Clean Energy on the Rise
Economists are really bad at predictions, but their views carry sway over large amounts of capital. Their most recent inaccuracies have been in the energy sector. Clean, renewable, energy is making faster progress than previously predicted. Renewables have seen faster implementation, more investment, and quite massive technical gains in the
Continue readingThings Are Good: Young Investors Care More About Using Money for Good
It turns out that people born after 1980 care more about investing in companies that make the world better than investing in companies that don’t. Traditionally investors were told to only care about one thing: profit. Younger investors have seen that way of thinking not work out given the ongoing
Continue readingThings Are Good: Urban Living Cheaper, More Sustainable Than Suburban
Years of car-focused suburban designs have unleashed problems in the 21st century that we will have to deal with and accommodate. The years of the suburbs are coming to an end and it can’t be soon enough. With every passing years more and more municipalities discover that urban design is
Continue readingThings Are Good: Canada Can be Fossil Fuel Free
Canada has an international reputation as being a dullard when it comes to the environment. That’s not shocking given that the present “conservative” government has sabotaged international climate meetings, has climate change deniers as leaders, and openly supports the world-destroying tar sands. All of this can change though. A group
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