Mongolia is entering the sustainable energy market and the country aims to export renewable energy to its neighbours. It’s great to see countries that are not as well-off as others build the needed infrastructure for a sustainable future. Mongolia is so windy and has such harsh winters, in fact, that
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Things Are Good: Organic Farming is Better than Factory Farming for Carbon Capture
It turns out that not only is eating organic food better for you than processed foods, growing organic food is better for everyone. Organic farms (and likely home gardens) are better at capturing and retaining carbon than farms that are focused on mass production. Last year, researchers reexamined all 74
Continue readingThings Are Good: Bees are Great for Honey and Sleep
Bees are wonderful little beings that spread pollen to places that need it and, as a bonus they create delicious honey. It turns out that a spoonful of honey can help you sleep! Suffering from yet another poor night’s sleep? Then how about trying some local beekeeper’s honey for a
Continue readingThings Are Good: USA Raises ‘Carbon Price’
Climate change is happening and it’s costing a lot of money to deal with. More floods, tornados, hurricanes, and other natural events are happening with greater frequency thanks to planetary temperature increase. The reason the planet’s temperature is increasing is thanks to the way previous generations have dealt with waste.
Continue readingThings Are Good: Dogs and Cats are Great for Your Health
Having a pet cat or dog is beneficial for your health, with dog owners seeing huge decreases of heart problems. A pet can lower blood pressure and cholesterol by their very being. There’s no word yet on if pets are magical If you’re thinking of getting a pet make sure
Continue readingThings Are Good: Get Help Choosing an Ethical Career
80,000 Hours is a student run organization at Oxford University that helps people find a job or career in something that makes the world better. This is great for so many obvious reasons – but the one I love the most is that it shows how philosophy can be applied
Continue readingThings Are Good: “Weirdos” Make Cities Better
Joi Ito, the director of the Media Lab at MIT, proposes that one way to make cities a better place for people and economies is to let weirdos flourish. What he’s getting at is that cities attract creative people who can generate wealth and culture so therefore we need to
Continue readingThings Are Good: Lower Your Energy Consumption in Easy Ways
With more technology around the home more energy is required to power the devices, and this adds up when millions of people plug things in. There are enough energy consumers out there that needlessly leave things running leads to a ton of wasted energy being produced. Fortunately there are many
Continue readingThings Are Good: Formula E is the All-Electric Alternative to Formula 1
Car racing is a popular sport around the world and it used to be a great testing bed for new, more efficient, technology used in internal combustion engines. Today, the technological improvements seem to be more on material science rather than fuel efficiency (most racing leagues still allow leaded gasoline).
Continue readingThings Are Good: Moscow and New York City Both Launch Bike Sharing Services
Mayor Bloomberg in New York City has been clear that streets are meant to move people around and not just cars. The efforts the city has made to open up streets to people are working and the most recent push comes from their new bike sharing program. “I expect to
Continue readingThings Are Good: Use Buycott to Support Companies Which do Good
Most people are familiar with the concept of a boycott to punish companies who do negative things by not buying their goods or services. The opposite of that is a new app called Buycott which helps you buy from companies who you ideologically support. I’ve been using the app for
Continue readingThings Are Good: Save the Environment, Live in a City
The IEEE Spectrum recently interview William Meyer who is the author of the book The Environmental Advantages of Cities: Countering Commonsense Antiurbanism. The book’s central thesis is that we need to change the discourse around cities from a negative one to a more positive conversation about the efficiencies of cities
Continue readingMike Powell Fanclub: Radio Topics for May 28th
You know that Summer is really here because Adam is back from BC. At 8:05 Mike will be speaking with Erin George, the co-founder of Cycle for Sight about their upcoming Ottawa event. As well we will have our usual mix of music, news and current affairs. We air every
Continue readingThings Are Good: Brazil Restructures Debt With African Countries
Brazil has announced that they will essentially “write off” about $90 million in debt from African nations. This is for helping the countries alleviate their huge levels of debt while helping create stronger economic ties between Brazil and their indebted partner nations. “To maintain a special relationship with Africa is
Continue readingThings Are Good: 3D Printing for Peace
3D printing got a lot of attention recently because an American organization found a way to print a handgun. A direct reaction to that has been to launch a contest to promote the true potential of 3D printing by having a contest which encourages people to create designs that better
Continue readingThings Are Good: Triple Bottom Line Companies on the Rise, Propose New Corporation Classification
A triple bottom line corporation is one that watches closely not only profitability but also it’s sustainability. Triple bottom line companies are on the rise not only in performance but also in popularity as more people realize the fragility of the planet and the lack of attention we give it.
Continue readingThings Are Good: Embrace Serendipity With Shuffle My Life
Shuffle My Life is a cute website that encourages you to bring some randomness into your life by giving fun and easy tasks. It’s a play on all those to-do lists people have which tend to be filled with boring activities. To bring a sense of adventure into your life
Continue readingThings Are Good: The Conflict Kitchen
Conflict Kitchen is a take-out restaurant that serves cuisine only from countries with which the USA is in conflict. It’s located in Pittsburg and founded/operated by artists and chefs to humanize the international conflicts that the USA engages in around the world. It functions as a space to get food
Continue readingThings Are Good: Greenpeace Launches Wikileaks Inspired Site
Wikileaks has been a great source of information that governments and corporations wanted to deny or keep secret. Now Greenpeace has modelled a site, Arctic Truth, for whistleblowers who work in the world of arctic drilling for oil. As climate change turns the frozen north into accessible waters oil companies
Continue readingThings Are Good: Worldviews Conference Looks at Media and Education
Universities and colleges do a lot of research and sometimes their findings can make a large difference on the world around us. Unfortunately, it can be hard to get the media to represent what the research actually means and how the media can best work with academics to ensure that
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