CAT is one of the first words a child learns to speak and spell and hopefully the meaning will shift from our feline friends to the new class of compressed air powered cars. Developed by Guy Negre in 2002 Guy’s fundamental shift in design moves away from distributing fossil fuels across vast distance to fuels that are arguably the most abundant, air. C.A.T. (which stands for compressed air technology) cars would be able to fill up virtiouly anywhere in the world for pennies per mile, only the cost to compress air which could be supplied by renewable energy. Within urban areas the car uses compressed air up to speeds of 50 km/h with ZERO pollution. Highway transit uses a mixture of fossil fuels and compressed air. Imagine a world where the resources are so abundant and renewable and accessible that everyone could afford a car and there is little to no pollution and most importantly wars are not fought over resources.
Category: Environment
Sustainable Cities in China
China has started a pilot project for sustainable cities in Liaoning Province named the Cradle to Cradle Village.
“The design of the village aspires to draw power from the sun, to maintain materials in closed-loop systems of technical and biological nutrition, and to create an intergenerational community of people productively engaged in restorative commerce. Its goal is to provide a higher quality of life for the villagers and to exemplify a more hopeful future for the children.”
For more information the BBC has a good article looking into sustainability in cities.
Fake Meat no Longer for Vegetarians
NASA has been looking into making meat in a lab. A recently published academic paper proves thatchicken nuggets no longer need to be attached to those clucking chickens.
In addition to the obvious life-saving benefits, manufactured meat would allow the manufacture to control how much nutrients are in each slice. For example omega 3, which is a good thing, can replace omega 6, which is not as good for you.
One reason some people are vegetarian is because of the environmental effects of raising livestock for human consumption; lab meat will make environmentally unfriendly farming obsolete.
Sure some vegetarians may have to reexamine if they should/can eat lab-made-meat, but the fact that sentient beings may no longer be killed for human consumption is good.
Plastic Steel
Scientists from Australia have figured out a way to turn plastic by-products into steel. This will have a huge impact on how much waste is sent to landfills since many plastics can now be used to enforce steel.
Scrap steel and plastic waste is put into a furnace where they are heated to extreme temperatures. The plastic provides some carbon which then enforces the steel, which means less coal is needed too.
Harry Potter the Environmentalist
This is somewhat old news, but it is still good news.
Raincoast Books is the company that is publishing the Harry Potter books for Canada is very eco-conscious. The books have been/continue to be printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper. 30,000 tress may be saved as a result. BoingBoing has more info.
From the link:
Raincoast isn’t the only publisher seeking to put a green tint on the wildly popular Potter books. Publishers from Germany, Italy, Britain, and Israel also comitted to printing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on large percentages of recycled paper and/or “ancient forest friendly” paper.