Category: Environment

Changing a Mall from Useless to Useful

Dead malls are a problem in too many communities and these malls are occupying large tracts of land that can be used better. Suburbs in North America have to confront the obvious change in front of them and some communities are doing a good thing by making the malls livable for people instead of just for cars.

The redesign will be in line with many new urbanism projects. There will be shops, cafes and offices connected by walkways. Storefronts will be on the first floor and residential units will occupy the top floors. There will also be a mix of cottages, multi family homes, and condos in the neighborhood as to add variety. Parking will still be present but will be hidden behind the retrofitted mall, away from the storefronts.

More info and pics here.

Busy London Rail Station to be Solar Powered

Blackfriars station has been under some major construction in the past few years and it’s about to reopen to operations next year. While that’s happening construction has begun on installing solar panels making the bridge at the station the largest solar bridge. It’s a novel use of space in a very crowded city.

“Blackfriars Bridge is an ideal location for solar; a new, iconic large roof space, right in the heart of London,” said Solarcentury chief executive Derry Newman in a statement.

“Station buildings and bridges are fixed parts of our urban landscape and it is great to see that this one will be generating renewable energy every day into the future. For people to see that solar power is working is a vital step towards a clean energy future.”

Other energy saving measures, such as rain harvesting systems and sun pipes for natural lighting, are also being fitted at Blackfriars, as part of Network Rail’s plans to reduce carbon emissions by 25 per cent per passenger kilometre by 2020.

Read the rest of the article.

Canada Can be Powered only by Geothermal Energy

Geothermal power is yet another proven sustainable source of energy, indeed Iceland’s geothermal production accounts for 99% of their energy production. Researchers in Canada have concluded that there is enough geothermal potential in Canada to power the country solely by geothermal power a million times over!

One of the main advantages of geothermal is that it is available 24 hours, unlike wind and solar, which face intermittency issues.

British Columbia, Alberta, the Yukon and Northwest Territories are the areas where the heat exists closer to the surface, but there are geothermal energy opportunities all over Canada. The researchers estimate that 100 projects would meet the country’s energy needs.

Check it out!

Greenpeace at 40

I’ll come out and say that I”m a keen supporter of Greenpeace so I’m happy to point out all the good work they’ve done over the past 40 years that they’ve been around. You can see what Greenpeace actions we’ve covered at Things Are Good in the past.

Greenpeace has put up a slideshow on their site celebrating the accomplishments, you can view it here.

You can read Greenpeace’s blog post on the event here.

From the CBC:

“We wouldn’t see the kind of action by governments that we’ve had in the last 40 years if you hadn’t had that kind of pressure applied by the environmental movement.”

Sept. 15, 1971, is cited as the beginning of Greenpeace, the day a group of anti-nuclear activists in Vancouver called the Don’t Make a Wave Committee chartered a ship with the aim of heading off underground nuclear tests by the U.S. government on the remote Alaskan island of Amchitka. In anticipation of the protest, the vessel, Phyllis Cormack, was renamed Greenpeace, a term coined by activist Bill Darnell.

The ship was ultimately blocked by the U.S. Coast Guard before it could reach Amchitka, and the scheduled tests went ahead as planned. But the protest aroused significant public interest in the group, which was renamed Greenpeace International in 1972.

Read more from the CBC on Greenpeace’s 40 year history.

California Bans Shark Fin Soup

There are tons of reason to ban shark fin soup, and it’s not just because it’s cruel to sharks.

“Sharks have been around for nearly 400 million years, and could be wiped out in a single human generation due to an increasing demand for their fins,” said Knights. ”Fisheries regulation on the ground has utterly failed to reduce overfishing — market approaches like this are crucial.”

Fins from up to 73 million sharks per year are used to make shark fin soup, a vastly popular Asian delicacy. Captured at sea and hauled on deck, the sharks are often still alive while their fins are sliced off. Because shark meat is not considered as valuable as shark fin, the maimed animals are tossed overboard to drown or bleed to death. The process is called shark finning, a wasteful and cruel practice still legal in much of the world.

So in this context it is great to see that shark fin soup has been banned in yet another part of the world. Some people are afraid of sharks (I blame Jaws) yet sharks are vital to a healthy and function ocean ecosystem.

A hat tip to WildAid, where you can read the rest of the article.