Some incredible footage from a huge sandstorm that blanketed Phoenix Arizona yesterday. One local resident said: I have been in Arizona for 20 years and have never seen a storm this size. Once the dust reached us it was as dark as the middle of a moonl…
Continue readingTag: Sustainability
350 or bust: The End Of Cheap Oil: An Opportunity to Create A Better World
“As a species with the creativity, adaptability and opposable thumbs that enabled us to create an Oil Age in the first place, we can be pretty certain that there will be life beyond it. Similarly, we may be able to prevent the worst excesses of c…
Continue reading350 or bust: Climate Change Wake Up Call: Eat Local, Eat Fresh, Get Healthier
A fellow climate activist recently said that climate change is a gift to humanity, if we choose to accept it. What I understand from that is that climate change is a massive wake-up call that we humans need to change the way we are interacting with our…
Continue readingCarbon49 - a blog on sustainability for Canadian businesses: Top Talents Attracted By Corporate Social Responsibility
Talents are key to success in today’s business. How much would a company pay to lower staff turnover rate by 12%? Best Employers in Canada winner LoyaltyOne achieved this through going green. I talked to Chief Sustainability Officer Debbie Baxter to see how embedding sustainability into their corporate culture changes the company.
Continue reading350 or bust: It’s Time To Stop Spinning Our Wheels On Climate Change
Much of the UN climate negotiations that went on in Copenhagen in December, 2009 was just so much hot air and spinning of wheels without any movement towards a liveable planet and a sustainable future for our children. But maybe things are changing. …
Continue readingopenalex: Solar Map of New York City
New York City’s new Solar Map has gone live, and it’s a beauty. With a googlemap style interface, you can zoom into any building in the greater NYC area. Click on the building and up pops an estimate of the solar power you could generate on its r…
Continue reading350 or bust: “We’re Not Growing Quality, We’re Growing Crap”
I’m taking a sabbatical from writing for a while – for how long, I don’t know. I do know that I need a bit of a change/break. In the meantime, I’ll be posting food and gardening related links and videos, as it is summer and the li…
Continue reading350 or bust: The Joys of Mushroom Hunting
It is becoming increasingly clear how important the links between food security, decreasing our carbon footprint, and eating local are. Although for decades industrial agriculture has been touted as the way to feed an increasing, and increasingly hungr…
Continue reading350 or bust: Take Time To Renew Your Spirit
There are so many societies in which the elite made decisions that were good for themselves in the short run and ruined themselves and societies in the long run…. Similarly, in the United States at present, the policies being pursued by too many weal…
Continue reading350 or bust: Bangladesh Surpasses Solar Energy Goal of One Million Homes, Sets New Target
I’ve declared today to be “Good News Friday” on 350orbust. It doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of bad news out there, but today we’re going to focus on some feel-good stories to start the weekend off. From a country …
Continue reading350 or bust: Eating Local Is Delicious With Rhubarb Kuchen
Here in northern Ontario where I live, rhubarb is the first harvest from the garden that we look forward to. In anticipation of a meal of homemade pasta and grilled eggplant that’s planned for tonight (thanks to Michael who is willing to shar…
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Built to crash: the coming economic tsunami
`Would you rather have a perfectly efficient system that, if hit by a pebble, would shatter? Or, would you rather have an adaptable system that may not give you the exact output you want, but can handle anything? According to Barry Lynn of the New Am…
Continue reading350 or bust: The Problem We’ve Created
The world needs to reduce carbon emissions. While oil and gas were cheap, there were few incentives to seek newer, cleaner and renewable resources. But time is now the biggest factor. We’re running out of cheap energy and continuing to contribute…
Continue reading350 or bust: Eating Local Is Delicious
Where we live in northwestern Ontario we don’t have access to a lot of local market gardens or farms. But what we do have on our doorstep are lakes full of pickerel and jackfish, as well as some trout and perch. Mark took our youngest daughter …
Continue reading350 or bust: Global Groundwater Depletion Is Detected From Space
Climate Change Quote of the Day: “Look, water has been a resource that has been plentiful. But now we’ve got climate change, we’ve got population growth, we’ve got widespread groundwater contamination, we’ve got satellites showing us we are d…
Continue readingopenalex: 48Hour Green Film Contest @ Cannes
Cannes wrapped up last weekend with the Palme d’Or going to Terrence Malick’s apparently slightly sprawling epic The Tree of Life. From what I’ve read, the movie looks to be a mix of personal drama and a lush celebration of the Earth’s beauty (trailer)…
Continue readingopenalex: Railway Opens Tokyo’s Largest Rooftop Farm
JR East railway, one of Tokyo’s largest railway operators, has opened a 535 sq.m. (5758 sq.ft.) rooftop farm on top of the company’s Lumine Ogikubo Building.
Part of a series of buildings linked to the Ogikubo railway and metro station, the garden is…
Continue readingCarbon49 - a blog on sustainability for Canadian businesses: Unilever’s Triple Win Sustainability Strategy
Unilever is the top Food & Beverage company on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Through Bullfrog Power, Unilever recently became the largest commercial purchaser of renewable energy in Canada at 59,000 MWh per year. What is Unilever’s sustainability strategy and why do they do it? To find out, I took a tour of their Brampton plant and talked to John Coyne, Vice President and General Counsel of Unilever Canada.
Continue readingopenalex: Bixi Sighting: New Ads Mark Roll Out of 2011 Bikes
Here are some of the first bixis of 2011, notice anything different? New ads, mounted above the wheel and on the baskets, have raised a lot of criticism on Twitter so far.
Most of the docking-stations around town are still empty. But bixis are startin…
Continue readingopenalex: Bixi Rolling Out for 3rd Season In MTL
If you are in Montreal right now you’ve seen it: the Bixi docking stations are popping up all over the city. Sitting empty they have a strange sci-fi ghost town look. But the bikes are supposed to be back on the streets by April 15th. Ottawa has al…
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