The average person in a developed country spends just over three hours a day watching television. In the US and the UK, that figure is nearer four hours a day. While spending four hours a day watching television, 62% of Americans claim to be ‘always or frequently rushed’ to get everything done, 65% would like [...]
Archive | April, 2009
Contraction and Convergence, by Aubrey Meyer
Aubrey Meyer was a South-African born musician and composer. He became involved in environmental activism while researching the topic for a musical, and eventually left his musical career to found the Global Commons Institute (GCI). His particular focus was on the strategic guiding principles behind the IPCC process, negotiating a compromise between the NGOs and [...]
What we learned this week
In one of the less enlightened promotions of the year, Tesco are giving away free air miles when you buy an energy saving lightbulb. Elsewhere in the supermarket world, Sainsbury’s have renamed pollack in the hope that more people will buy the fish – it’s being sold under the name ‘colin’. There are plans to [...]
Eco-Lotus: the point at which ‘eco’ becomes meaningless
The Eco-Lotus has locally-grown hemp bodywork, wool seats, and the air-conditioning runs off solar panels. It’s still a petrol-driven sports car.
VeggieTrader
Here’s a neat idea: VeggieTrader is a new website that launched just last week as a place to sell or swap home-grown fruit and vegetables. If you get a bumper crop and have more than you can use, you can post it on the site and exchange it for something else. The site works around [...]
The question the G20 didn’t ask
I’ve been re-reading the G20′s statement today. If you haven’t read it, I suggest you peruse its contents at some point – you’ll find it here. “We start from the belief that prosperity is indivisible” it says, in point 3 of 29, “that growth, to be sustained, has to be shared; and that our global [...]
The dark side of Dubai
“Dubai is not just a city living beyond its financial means; it is living beyond its ecological means. You stand on a manicured Dubai lawn and watch the sprinklers spray water all around you. You see tourists flocking to swim with dolphins. You wander into a mountain-sized freezer where they have built a ski slope [...]
Peak Everything, by Richard Heinberg
Richard Heinberg will be a familiar name to anyone who has ever looked into peak oil, either through his books, ‘Powerdown’ and ‘The Party’s Over’, or as a regular contributor to documentaries. This, his latest book, is a series of essays based around the idea of a century of decline. Peak oil we know about, [...]
Taking the train
My wife and I booked our summer holiday over the weekend. We’re trying to avoid flying, so we’ll be taking the train to Avignon, in the south of France. It’s our third train holiday, after La Baule and Edinburgh. We’ll get the train from St Pancras, changing in Paris, and the journey will take around [...]
Time to drop the nukes, Mr Brown
On Sunday, Barack Obama announced that he would pursue US ratification of the test ban treaty, with the ambition of creating “a world without nuclear weapons”. As agreed earlier this week, both the US and Russia plan to reduce their arsenals by a third. It’s a remarkable reversal, considering a new arms race looked imminent [...]
Books
No data found
