Adam Clare

The Transformation of Paris from Traffic Jams to Quick Movement

Paris once had a reputation for horrible traffic, long queues of cars and taxing journeys via cars. When you have a problem stemming from one element sometimes it’s best to just get rid of it. That’s exactly what Paris is doing. By getting rid of the car traffic jams are going away and travel times for everyone are decreasing. By adding more mobility options people are able to navigate the city faster, easier, and are reliant on only one mode of transport. They have the freedom to choose how to get around.

OK, quickly: At the start of the 20th century, in the ’20s, ’30s, the car asserts itself as a travel mode in urban centers, which are transformed. Paris is clearly an old city with many centuries of history with an urban fabric. Even though it was transformed by Haussmann in the 19th century, it has an extremely dense urban fabric with a lot of small streets and a configuration a priori not adapted to the auto. When the car arrives, we transform what we can call public space, and this public space becomes automobile space, with the logical system of the car imposing itself in Paris. And public space is completely devoured, eaten away, and in a certain way privatized to one single, unique use.

Very quickly we see the limits of “total car” in Paris, even in the ’60s and ’70s. We try to say, “How can we preserve this city?” Well, by putting cars underground. So we construct parking, even whole highways, under Paris. But there’s opposition to the highway on the Seine. There were protests. When we did the parking under Notre-Dame, there was a lot of opposition, because they were going to graze the crypt underneath.

Beer Cans for Passive Heating

They aren’t just for transporting a yummy beverage, beer cans can be used to create passive heating too. A simple contraption that you can make in your spare time can save you heating costs and help reduce your carbon footprint. A beer can heating system, like the one in the video above, is just a series of cans in a row painted black out in the sun under a casing. The dark cans heat up from the sun and move air through them using basic convection.

A DIY beer can heating system is perfect for a shed, garage, or even using it augment your home’s existing heating system.

The concept is relatively simple. The aluminum cans have both of their ends cut off and are fashioned into a series of long metal tubes, painted black. With a fan at one end, and some fins cut into the tubes slowing down the airflow, the metal is positioned in a way to get heated by the sun as the warm air is pulled into the building.

Thirteen years later, the same old beer cans are still chugging along, helping keep the space warm and heating bills low – about $300 annually, McLauchlin estimates.

“It’s -22 C right now and my furnace didn’t come on today,” he said over the phone in early December.

Thanks to Mike!

Whales Share Knowledge to Defend Against Whalers

Animals warn each other whenever a predator approaches, and in some cases they help each other. In the case of sperm whales they share defensive measures to avoid being killed by whalers. When whalers first started hunting sperm whales they were very successful; however, their effective harpooning rate soon started to drop. Researchers have been able to demonstrate that the whales shared knowledge to help them survive.

This provides another example of group intelligence in animals and can add to the argument that animals need protection as nonhuman persons.

Animals can mitigate human threats, but how do they do this, and how fast can they adapt? Hunting sperm whales was a major 19th Century industry. Analysis of data from digitized logbooks of American whalers in the North Pacific found that the rate at which whalers succeeded in harpooning (striking) sighted whales fell by about 58% over the first few years of exploitation in a region. This decline cannot be explained by the earliest whalers being more competent, as their strike rates outside the North Pacific, where whaling had a longer history, were not elevated. The initial killing of particularly vulnerable individuals would not have produced the observed rapid decline in strike rate. It appears that whales swiftly learned effective defensive behaviour. Sperm whales live in kin-based social units. Our models show that social learning, in which naïve social units, when confronted by whalers, learned defensive measures from grouped social units with experience, could lead to the documented rapid decline in strike rate. This rapid, large-scale adoption of new behaviour enlarges our concept of the spatio- temporal dynamics of non-human culture.

How to Free Yourself from Gas at Home

When it comes to emissions we often think of cars and factories, but we can’t ignore the impact we can make at home. In much of the northern hemisphere houses are built with infrastructure supporting the burning of non-renewable fuels which destroy the planet. The decisions made by people who are now retired will cost us, but the faster we change houses to renewable the greater the savings for the planet and homeowners. But how can we make the change from subsidized gas to market rate renewables?

Over at the National Observer Seth Klein records how he switched his house from natural gas to all electric. He outlines the process and how one can save money and the planet at home by changing their energy source.

A couple of years ago, my family’s home — a 12-year-old, 1,400-square-foot, well-insulated duplex in East Vancouver — was heated with a high-efficiency gas boiler. The boiler produced hot water for both our direct water needs and for pipes that provided lovely radiant heated floors in the winter. We also had a gas fireplace in the living room we rarely used, and we cooked on a gas stove.

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No doubt this conversion has also increased the value of our home, as future owners will not face the inevitable need to fuel swap down the road once robust climate policies are in place, and they will benefit from the upfront capital costs we assumed for the solar panels and heat pump.

People Live Longer in Non-Profits

The COVID pandemic has revealed problems in our society which we will need to fix. Thankfully researchers are identifying what problems are fixable by looking for the cause. Long term care homes (LTCs) are one such area of our society that we can improve, and do so very easily too. It turns out the non-profit LTCs are safer places for people to live and that they will live longer in a place that puts people ahead of profits.

Let’s make all LTCs non-profits. The profit motive and the goal of caring for people don’t always go together.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed that for-profit long-term care homes had worse patient outcomes than not-for-profit homes. A new study found that of those for-profit homes, long-term care homes (LTCs) owned by private equity firms and large chains have the highest mortality rates.
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“Financial firms are in seniors’ housing for what they can take from it, not .what they can contribute. This approach – and the prioritization of profits is what guides financial firms,” she said. “It’s at odds with the social and moral imperatives that underline the need to provide good homes, high-quality care and dignified environments for our elderly populations and the workers who care for them.”