Sustainable living
« Previous EntriesTrouble in the Third Pole
Monday, June 28th, 2010With respects to the amount of ice it contains, the Earth has a third pole – the Tibetan plateau. With 46,000 glaciers at an average height of 13,000 ft above sea level, it is the Earth’s third largest ice mass. This “Third Pole” is less well-known than the Arctic and Antarctic, but like them, is [...]
The Great Train Race
Thursday, April 8th, 2010I have always loved trains – they have always occupied a sweet spot in travel for me between the intimate contact with the land that car travel offers and the fast, but depersonalized and remote sense you get from air travel. I had resigned myself to the fact that passenger trains might one day disappear [...]
Global Solar – Entrepreneurs Take the Lead on Low Cost Alternative Energy
Saturday, February 20th, 2010All too often, when it comes to discussing clean, renewable methods for sating our global energy hunger, solar energy is omitted from the conversation. A shame when one considers that solar power may be our most abundant source of potential energy, and one that lies mostly untapped despite years of advancements in the necessary technology. [...]
Plug-in Hybrids Go for a Spin in 2010
Monday, January 18th, 2010Well, they shouldn’t be faulted for their enthusiasm. 2010 is here – slated to be the Year of the Electric Car – and automakers are still working out the glitches before the long-promised, much-hyped vehicles hit the production lines. To be fair, the year is still young – and with the Nissan Leaf expected to [...]
California’s Unquenchable Thirst
Saturday, January 16th, 2010‘Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.’ – Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell Folk icon Joni Mitchell’s hit 1970 song ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ was written in response to the slow encroachment of mankind across the Hawaiian islands – but in modern times, the lyrics could serve [...]
Searhcing for Wind Power via Land, Sea and Air
Monday, December 7th, 2009Before oil, gas, coal, hydroelectric and nuclear power – there was wind. It advanced the spread of civilization – by powering the sailing vessels of the earliest explorers and once settled, enabling them to efficiently irrigate their fields and mill their harvests. To our ancestors, wind must have appeared to be a coy mistress – [...]
Peak Phosphorous – A Looming Crisis
Thursday, November 19th, 2009Consider it an unforeseen consequence of our rapidly advancing ability to control the elements of our natural world – phosphorus, a key building block for life, is facing a shortage. Used as a key component in the production of fertilizer, it may not have the star power of other prized elements (such as gold, silver, [...]
The Socially Responsible MBA
Thursday, November 12th, 2009It’s been over two decades since Gordon Gekko (played to eerie realism by Michael Douglas) uttered the now famous phrase ‘Greed is good’ in Oliver Stone’s 1987 film Wall Street. The idiom has since become a cultural tag – one that personifies the material excesses, dog-eat-dog business tactics and wealth mentality of 1980′s America. As [...]
Planning for the Electric Car Infrastructure
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009The future is almost here, but are we prepared for it? After years of research and development, several of the world’s largest automakers are preparing to deliver the next gen electric car to showroom floors in 2010. But they’re going to have to contend with a lot more than simply changing the mindset of a [...]
How the World Would Live Without Us
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009How permanent are we? This is a question that has intrigued some of the greatest creative minds of our civilization. In our modern lives, we are surrounded by the seemingly eternal (steel, concrete, plastics, a global human population of billions) to such a degree that it can be difficult to envisage a world in which [...]
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