Adam Clare

How Oslo Builds for a Sustainable Transit Future

Oslo: The Journey to Car-free from STREETFILMS on Vimeo.

Oslo’s transition from car-focussed to people focussed transportation is well underway and is causing ripples around the world. Other cities are noting how the scandinavian city works with locals to get them out of their cars and onto the streets. Last year we saw how they started to ban cars downtown and it benefited everyone. Oslo is now full tilt into supporting bicycles by providing infrastructure to encourage cycling in hopes to get people out of cars and fully packed trams. If Oslo can support year-round cycling then there’s no reason other northern cities can’t do the same.

In addition to population pressures, environmental concerns are also driving the cityâ€™s newfound commitment to bikes. Norway may be famous for its pristine fjords and forestsâ€”it doesnâ€™t take long for Aas and I ride to hit Osloâ€™s thick pine-tree edge as we ride along the waterâ€”but air quality in its cities can be remarkably poor, thanks to winter temperature inversions. According to the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, air pollution causes 185 premature deaths in Oslo alone each year. Transport accounts for more than 60 percent of the cityâ€™s greenhouse gas emissions. Replacing more car trips with bikes would help clean that up, and in other cities too. This is why Norway is endeavoring nationally to reduce car use and fossil fuel consumption, with huge incentives for electric vehicles and a nearly $1 billion investment in bike highways around the country.

Modern Shipping Uses Sails

The shipping industry recently agreed to care about the environment and this led the Guardian to examine how the industry will change. Here at Things Are Good we’ve been keeping an eye on old-school propulsion used on ships since 2005 and one difference now from over a decade ago is the efficiency of hybrid systems. Mixing solar, sails, and other kinds of enhancements with industrial shipping is being explored by all kinds of companies now. In another decade news that ships are more efficient than ever before will likely be standard news – stay tuned for 2028! In the meantime we can envisage what ships will look like and how they’ll reduce the carbon footprint of the shipping industry.

But much could be done more quickly by retrofitting existing ships with technology to cut their fuel use and hence emissions, according to the ITF. Here are just four:

Fitting shipsâ€™ bows with a bulbous extension below the water line reduces drag enough to cut emissions 2-7%;

A technique known as air lubrication, which pumps compressed air below the hull to create a carpet of bubbles, also reduces drag and can cut emissions by a further 3%;

Replacing one propeller with two rotating in opposite directions recovers slipstream energy and can make efficiency gains of 8-15%,

Cleaning the hull and painting it with a low-friction coating can deliver gains of up to 5%.

Big Boxes Have Failed us; Supporting Downtowns will Save us

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We’ve all heard about how downtowns have failed in smaller cities while big box stores like Walmart succeed; what we don’t really talk about is why and what’s the solution. First we need to establish that suburban big box stores are horrible for people and the economy (which is easy); then we need to address those core issues. The folks over at Strong Towns do exactly that and recently published a great piece exploring how the costs of running a big box operation from the perspective of a city is high. The solution then should be easy: reinforce local economies for success.

And we should also recognize where our wealth really comes from. It comes from our downtown and our core neighborhoods (those within walking distance of the downtown). It certainly doesn’t come from people driving through those places. It doesn’t come from people commuting in. It doesn’t come from tourists or developers or the potential of land development out on the edge. Our wealth â€” the wealth built slowly over generations â€” is slowly seeping away in our downtown and its surrounding neighborhoods.

Put these things together â€” the need to build resilience and the historic wealth that still remains in our core â€” and the strategy becomes too obvious to ignore: We need to piece our economic ecosystem back together. We shouldn’t spend a penny on the mall â€” we should be willing to let it fall apart and collapse if the market can’t support it. But we should support those investments in the core that are already paying our bills.

And here’s the really sweet thing: the downtown doesn’t need millions of dollars of investment. There are some trying to force that down the city’s throat, but we don’t need it. It’s already the most successful area in the region. We just need to start reconnecting things.

New Zealand Bans New Offshore Drilling, Plans Fully Renewable Future

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While Canada continues to condemn the future to climatic destruction by supporting the tar sands, their common wealth partner has decided to plan for the future. New Zealand has declared an all out ban on new offshore drilling projects and have even taken a step further to ban exploration for more stored hydrocarbons. Exploration for oil and gas greatly disturbs marine life forcing whales and fish to leave entire areas because the noise is so deafening.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern continues to do what every other national leader should be doing – acknowledging the current and oncoming challenges of climate change and reacting to it by creating a sustainable economy. It’s great to see New Zealand set itself up for future success while protecting the planet!

“We’re protecting industry and protecting future generations from climate change,” said Ardern.

“This is a responsible step, which provides certainty for businesses and communities that rely on fossil fuels.”
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Ardern and the ministers are expected to outline plans for their version of a managed transition towards a carbon-neutral economy by 2050 and a goal of achieving 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2035.

Stopping Microfibres from Entering our Ecosystem

The impact that microfibres have on our environment are little known, but new research is coming out that makes microfibres look almost as bad as microbeads (which have been banned in a lot of places). Thankfully people are already working on solutions from better clothing processing to filters put on laundry machines. For now, the best thing you can do to alleviate additional pressure on the environment from your fashion choices is to simple buy less clothing.

Jollimoreâ€™s Lint luv-r could be a key weapon of defence against microfibres. After an ecologist in California first documented the pollutant as a global problem in 2011, several researchers became interested in testing Jollimoreâ€™s filter. (One test is showing it can catch over 80 percent of fibres.) Rossâ€™s team is studying filters, including the Lint luv-r, as viable household solutions, and conducting a kind of forensic analysis on microfibre samplesâ€”matching a single fibre to its source. â€œI liken it to studying snowflakes,â€ he says. â€œWeâ€™re not talking about a chemical that we can measure in the lab.â€ Although the study of microfibres is still in early stages, the fact that our clothing could be poisoning waterways around the world would be an enormous hurdle for a clothing industry that has faced immense criticism over its lack of environmental responsibility.