Inspirational and good news.
Planet Green has some tips on how to save time and be greener during the holidays. It’s easy being green.
Be casual about the holidays.
The holidays are about spending time with the family not getting all decked out in formal gear and having a five star meal. Spend Christmas at home with your family and instead of your holiday best, wear PJs and relax. Assign each family member a dish that can be prepared ahead of time so you won’t be a slave to the kitchen for hours and hours.
Today Portugal turned on its offshore wind farm, the wind farm will provide energy for up to a million people.
A total of 120 windmills are dotted across the highlands of the Upper Minho region of Portugal as one of western Europe’s poorer nations continues to forge its reputation as a renewables champion.
“Europe’s largest onshore wind farm is now fully operational,” a spokeswoman for France’s EDF Energies Nouvelles, which co-owns the farm, announced this morning.
The two megawatt turbines on each windmill deliver electricity to a single connection point with the electricity grid and should supply around 1% of Portugal’s total energy needs.
Lots of countries are handing out stimulus packages to try to stop economic turmoil. It’s great to see that China realizes that the future of the economy is green. China is investing in knowledge-based employment and green infrastructure.
For several years, the Chinese government has been sponsoring a shift from energy-intensive to knowledge-intensive jobs and economic activity. China’s recently-announced $586 billion stimulus package (Rmb4,000bn, £380bn) will transform its economy even faster, by promoting economic restructuring and essential green infrastructure.
The slowdown makes this transition all the more urgent, because GDP growth in China’s service sector produces more jobs than does the industrial sector. With recent GDP growth rates above 10 percent, China’s heavy industry generated enough new jobs.
But with slower growth forecasts, continuing large cohorts of high school and college graduates, and its rural population moving to non-agricultural employment, China needs to generate even more jobs from its economic investments.
Many details on China’s stimulus package have yet to be released, but what we know so far is promising. It includes 12 percent for direct energy efficiency and environmental improvements. In addition, the programs doubles—to $85 billion—investment in rail transport (a lower-carbon alternative to road and air transport), and adds $70 billion for new electricity grid infrastructure.
New, more flexible and sophisticated grid infrastructure is vital to increasing the efficient use of both traditional fuels and renewable energy sources. Furthermore, the stimulus package promises considerable investment in health, education and rural services. These sectors are both less energy intensive and strong on promoting jobs and welfare.
I’ve never built a roof before, but now I want to build a reciprocal roof. Go ahead and take a shot building your own roof!
What is a reciprocal roof?
A reciprocal roof is a beautiful and simple self-supporting structure that can be composed of as few as three rafters, and up to any imaginable quantity (within reason, of course). Reciprocal roofs require no center support, they are quick to construct, and they can be built using round poles or dimensional lumber (perhaps with some creative notching). They are extremely strong, perfect for round buildings, and very appropriate for living roofs, as well. The reciprocal roof design was developed by Graham Brown in 1987.
Growing your own food is good for the planet and for your pocketbook – so why don’t people grow their own food? It’s a really good question (particularly for those who choose to live in the suburbs to have a backyard), and we really should be growing locally. There are more and more people saying that governments of all sizes ought to encourage people to grow their own grub.
Well, opinion formers such as Monty Don showing the way forward is always going to help. That’s why I really like the idea of the WHO Farm Project in the US. It’s an attempt to convince Barack Obama to also reach for the spade when he takes the keys to the White House in January and symbolically dig up the famous front lawn in order to toss in some vegetable seeds. It’s exactly what the Roosevelts did during the second world war and it helped to inspire over 20m so-called “Victory Gardens” across the US.
The garden at 10 Downing St isn’t blessed with quite as many rods of prime growing land, but Buckingham Palace, and other world-famous sites across the UK, certainly are. It’s not as if a decent veg patch needs to take up that much room. And just think of all those other wasted spaces where veg could easily be grown – parks, verges, roundabouts (OK, that might be a little dangerous) and all those monoculture corporate HQ landscaped gardens.
And if Gordon Brown, or any other leader, is thinking about their legacy, what would be better than knowing a vegetable variety has been named after you in recognition of your services to vegetable gardening. The problem for the grateful public would be deciding which vegetable should represent which leader …