Things Are Good

You Want to Live in a Dense Neighbourhood

View of downtown Toronto from a drone shot above U of T

Living densely is a good thing, more specifically being surrounded by density is a good thing. Where we live can have a huge impact on our collective well being and the planetary ecosystem. Low density housing like suburbs are really bad for one’s mental health and for your communities health. When it comes to greenhouse gas emissions it’s clear that we can drastically reduce by just increasing the density of our neighbourhoods, a simple solution with wide ranging and positive consequences.

Having homes close to one another is not only good for emissions from your house, it’s good a reducing other emission sources too. Dense neighbourhoods means you don’t need to drive to get a coffee, you can walk. The network impacts of density are quiet apparent when you live in a good place.

The results show that attached homes and MURBs are 45–62 % less GHG intensive per capita than detached homes. Considering results at the neighborhood level, GHG emissions per capita decrease with higher density. We also find negative associations between GHG emissions per capita and household characteristics including household size, tenancy, and household income. The findings of this study highlight the need to integrate built forms, mobility, and transport infrastructure when assessing the potential greenhouse gas emissions of housing and neighborhoods. Besides aiming for density, the provision of walkable neighborhoods, low-emission modes of transport, and high-density housing forms (e.g., multi-unit residential buildings) can lead to low-GHG neighborhoods.

New Buildings in England Require Solar Power

Solar Panel School

In certain areas, like Ontario, homes are legally required to damage the environment by being connected to private fossil fuel companies (yes, policy like this count as subsidies to fossil fuel companies). In England that’s set to change with new building codes, no longer will people be forced to use fossil fuels to warm their houses. Moving forward new homes will require solar panels to supplement their energy usage while also including heat pumps. Hopefully this will encourage other places around the world to start incorporating renewable power directly into new buildings instead of relying on retrofits.

“The Iran war has once again shown our drive for clean power is essential for our energy security so we can escape the grip of fossil fuel markets we don’t control,” said Energy Secretary Ed Miliband.
The announced changes have been welcomed by the energy industry and those working in green technology for providing certainty that heat pumps and solar panels are worth investing in.
“It’s going to give clarity to the UK market, installers, builders, manufacturers, that there’s a significant market that’s there,” said Garry Felgate, CEO of MCS Foundation, which certifies installers of low carbon heating systems.

Phytoplankton Can Save the Planet

ocean shore

When it comes to absorbing carbon you can do a lot worse than plankton. Yes, those tiny specks of flora that float around the ocean can take on a lot of carbon to thrive and grow, which means that we could use them as a reservoir of excess of carbon in the atmosphere. As we know, fossil fuels come from old plants and animals that died out millions of years ago and now we’re burning them for power, which is the biggest geoengineering project in history. A simple proposition is to reverse the process: supercharge the feeding of the phytoplankton to get them to grab the carbon and sequester it away.

To be clear the best way to deal with rising temperatures is to stop burning fossil fuels in the first place!

So we’re not talking about some wild new speculative hypothesis or an odd-ball observation from a single contested study. We’re talking about the accumulated output of hydrothermal cruises, dust-tracking satellites, floating ocean robots, sediment cores that reach back through ice ages, shipboard chemistry experiments, and decades of chlorophyll imagery. The core relationship — feed iron-starved water, and it grows more phytoplankton, in proportion to how much you feed it, and then stops when the nutrient addition stops — is about as well-established as anything in ocean science gets.

That last point deserves notice. Reversability is a key criterion for ecological safety. You want to be sure that if the intervention you’re pursuing turns out to have a negative effect, you can stop it. You wouldn’t want to risk shifting an ecosystem into a new permanent state. Here the evidence is especially clear. Phytoplankton grows as long as you keep feeding it. When you stop feeding it, it stops growing.

Feeling Overwhelmed? Hit the Floor

Simply lying down on the floor can help calm you down if you’re getting overwhelmed. It sounds too good to be true that simply lying down can work, but the science is there and there’s hundreds of years of observation too. The act of lying down is a yoga pose (probably the easiest yoga pose too) that has been proven to change your physical and mental wellbeing almost instantly.

next time the weight of the world has got you down, let it push you to the floor. Then you can get back up again!

When you’re having a bad day, “floor time is the ultimate grounding technique,” Daryl Appleton, EdD, chief wellness consultant and Fortune 500 executive coach, told Business Insider. Research shows that grounding can reduce inflammation, pain, and stress, which may improve sleep and blood flow.

Compared to when you’re sitting or standing, lying on the floor maximizes your contact with the ground. You may notice your muscles releasing tension with your back and legs supported.

“Getting on the ground outdoors is even better because it allows your nervous system to recalibrate,” Appleton said. Physically connecting with the earth can boost your mood and help you relax and regulate your emotions.

Stay Young By Enjoying Art

Who doesn’t like art? If you find yourself answering “me” to that question then perhaps you should check out different galleries. Recent research has shown that people who regularly engage with art and feel something about it tend to age slower. Even engaging with art all east once a month show a 3% decrease in aging speed. Neat!

Stay young, enjoy art, live life.

“These results demonstrate the health impact of the arts at a biological level,” said Daisy Fancourt, the study’s lead author and the head of University College London’s social biobehavioral research group, told The Guardian. “They provide evidence for arts and cultural engagement to be recognized as a health-promoting behavior in a similar way to exercise.”

The study was conducted among 3,356 adults between 2010 and 2012, and included survey data and blood tests. Individuals’ rate of aging was assessed according to epigenetic clocks, which are analytic methods that track age-related changes to DNA and can be used to estimate biological age, which may differ from a person’s chronological age.