Adam Clare

Renewable Energy Use Grows Fastest in Poor Countries

Renewable resources are good for the environment, good for remote areas, and don’t need expensive infrastructure. All of these benefits of renewable power generation have led poorer countries to embrace distributed renewable energy!

The boom in renewables is often made for economic reasons, Ethan Zindler, a Washington-based Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst, said in an interview. An island nation like Jamaica, where wholesale power costs about $300 a megawatt-hour, could generate electricity from solar panels for about half as much. Similarly, wind power in Nicaragua may be half as expensive as traditional energy.

â€œClean energy is the low-cost option in a lot of these countries,â€ Zindler said by telephone. â€œThe technologies are cost-competitive right now. Not in the future, but right now.â€

Abandoned Walmart Becomes a Library

Walmart is best known for predatory corporate behaviour that damages communities and for the “interesting” people who shop there. One thing that Walmart does is pit one small town against the other to get cheap land and better tax rates, this sometimes means that an existing Walmart gets abandoned.

A small Texas town decided to turn their vacant Walmart into something useful: a library!

Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle transformed an abandoned Walmart in McAllen, Texas, intoÂ a 124,500-square-foot public library, the largest single-floor public library in the United States.

The design won the International Interior Design Associationâ€™sÂ 2012 Library Interior Design Competition. MSR stripped out the old ceiling and walls of the building, gave the perimeter walls and bare warehouse ceiling a coat of white paint, and set to work adding glass-enclosed spaces, bright architectural details and row after row of books.

Using Turntablism to Address Climate Change

Turntable Art

Climate change id the biggest issue facing humanity today and it’s no surprise to see artists express this through art. In Calgary this month there’s an exhibit by John Folsom which was inspired through a walk in the rocky mountains looking at sound and climate change. The way he does this is through a mixture of recordings, turntables, and Alpine horns.

Amidst a series of his two-dimensional works blurring the line between photography and painting, John Folsomâ€™s sound installation Diminishing Returns highlights the problems associated with climate change at higher altitudes, in particular how it affects birdâ€™s migratory zones. This sound installation will be on exhibit at Newzones in Calgary, Canada from October 25 through November 22 with an Artist Reception held on October 25 from 1 to 4 p.m.

Diminishing Returns consists of cast Alpine horns, turntables and lathe cut vinyl records. The sounds of avalanches and bird songs play continuously. As the turntable stylus auto repeats, the ongoing cycle of play effectively erodes the vinyl, diminishing the sound quality. Over time, repeated plays will slowly eliminate the birdcalls resulting in a final wall of white noise. This sound piece aims to call attention to the ominous signals from wildlife in the hope that mitigating the effects of climate change will produce a brighter future.

See more here.

Condesned Forests for an Urban Canopy

Shubhendu Sharma has found a way to get a small area of land to become a thick forest nearly impossible to walk trough. The idea is to take useless spaces in cities (like car parking) and turn them into miniature forests. These mini-forests can cool the local temperature, clean the air, and increase local happiness.

What’s more, the process uses native plants so it is a self-sustaining setup of plants. Sharma has created a company, Afforestt, to sell the plant-growing service to cities.

“It’s the natural process of growth, but amplified,” says Afforestt founder Shubhendu Sharma. Through an intensive process of building nutrients three feet deep in the soil and carefully plotting out a mix of trees, Sharma’s team can fill up an entire plot of land with a forest so thick it’s impossible to walk inside.

The technique was originally developed by Japanese scientist Akira Miyawaki, who demonstrated it at Toyota while Sharma worked there. The engineer was so inspired that he ended up building a similar forest in his own backyard, and eventually left Toyota to start building small super-forests everywhere.

Bringing Burmese Cats Back From the Brink of Extinction

Cats are adorable, but not all cats get the same respect. There are wild breeds that are threatened due to anthropogenic environmental changes while others, like the Burmese cat, have been negatively impacted due to conflict. Thanks to the effort of focused individuals the Burmese cat is back from the brink of extinction!

One of the casualties of Myanmar’s 1962 coup was the Burmese cat, which had to be repatriated from from foreign pedigreed stock about ten years ago. Wong How Man ofÂ China Exploration and Research SocietyÂ describes how he reintroduced them.Â The cats were brought in from the UK and Australia after considerable negotiation, and they now have their own private compound at the Inthar Heritage House, Inpawkhon Village, on Inle Lake. By the looks of the second video, the food is amazing, too!

See more here.