Vancouver is hosting the UN World Urban Forum this week and it’s a chance to explore how to make cities more livable. This week people from the world will look at how to make cities more environmentally sustainable and how to make cities a friendly environment for people, among many other topics.
This urban forum badly needed since the majority of people now live in cities than in rural settings – a first for humankind.
There is also a website to encourage youth to be involved with the WUF.
Have you always wanted a way to make awesome advocacy happen? CitizenSpeak is all about making it easy for grassroots organizations to get their word out on the street, or at least the e-street.
“CitizenSpeak is a free email advocacy service for grassroots organizations. Inspired by MoveOn email campaigns, CitizenSpeak provides the same e-advocacy capability at the community level in English and Spanish.”
The growth of China’s economy has been staggering, and now they aim to have the similar great growth, but green. It’s wonderful to see such an economic powerhouse direct it’s energy towards environmentally friendly developments, even if the environment was ignored earlier.
“China is about to change “from emphasizing economic growth but ignoring environmental protection to emphasizing both environmental protection and economic growth,” the government said today in a policy paper covering the next five years.
Released by the Information Office of the State Council, China’s central government, the paper says that government is “fully aware” that the situation of environmental protection in the country is “grave.””
The Supreme Court of Canada is now facing a constitutional challenge regarding the federal government’s controversial security certificate process. The certificates have been issued by the Canadian Government since 2001 as means of detaining immigrants considered ‘security risks’ to Canada. However, the process offers no justice to detainees as many face imprisonment for years without charges and no access to a fair trial or evidence against them. In some cases there is risk of the person being deported back to their home country, where they face possible torture or even death. The issue has been followed closely by human rights groups such as Amnesty International, but has only recently made breaking news.
The hearings before the Supreme Court began on Tuesday and are expected to last three days. Along with much media attention ,Jim Loney ,an activist recently held hostage in Iraq, has joined a campaign called ‘Freedom Caravan’ which recently made a trek across eastern Ontario to protest the detention of 4 men currently held in Canada.
CNet has a fun article looking at which big tech company is greener – Microsoft or Google. I actually had no idea that Microsoft has so many environmentally friendly policies.
“In 2005, Microsoft was recognised as one of the top five best workplaces for commuters by the US Environmental Protection Agency, said Joan Krajewski, chief environmental counsel for the company. More than 11,000 workers at the Redmond, Washington, main campus commute, she said.
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Microsoft has a silver certification level for the US Green Building Council’s LEED program for environmental design. Microsoft also works with the Carbon Disclosure Project to track kilowatts of usage.
Microsoft also had taken steps to reduce waste from the packaging of its software products and eliminated from its packaging PVC (polyvinyl chloride), which releases dioxins that can cause cancer and harm the immune and reproductive systems.”