Toronto Realizes Environment Exists, Does Stuff

Here in Canada people love their unsustainable lifestyles, and the City of Toronto realizes that these lifestyles actually hurt – so they’re going to do something about. Toronto has announced their plan to fight climate change, and Spacing has a good write up on it with some interesting comments.

The Toronto Star, has an article on how old apartment buildings can be turned green in Toronto by copying what’s been done elsewhere in the world.

Built in an era when energy efficiency was not a big consideration, these buildings are energy pigs. Counterintuitive to the accepted theory that density aids sustainability, the city’s stock of aging slab apartments demands more energy per square metre than any other housing type – a full 30 per cent more than a contemporary detached house.
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But the slabs have their plus side. Due to their relatively straightforward structure and boxy facades, upgrades can be achieved with relative ease. This has not been lost on two members of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Architecture, Ted Kesik and Ivan Saleff. After running numerous simulations, they have concluded that this building type may be the most cost-effective candidate for retrofit

Now for the Good News

Steve tells us about how The Reason has an article about how life has improved for the majority of people around the world. Despite the nay-sayers, things are good!

These improvements haven’t been restricted to the United States. It’s a global phenomenon. Worldwide, life expectancy has more than doubled, from 31 years in 1900 to 67 years today. India’s and China’s infant mortalities exceeded 190 per 1,000 births in the early 1950s; today they are 62 and 26, respectively. In the developing world, the proportion of the population suffering from chronic hunger declined from 37 percent to 17 percent between 1970 and 2001 despite a 83 percent increase in population. Globally average annual incomes in real dollars have tripled since 1950. Consequently, the proportion of the planet’s developing-world population living in absolute poverty has halved since 1981, from 40 percent to 20 percent. Child labor in low income countries declined from 30 percent to 18 percent between 1960 and 2003.

(On a personal note I find it ironic that the article teaser says “mankind.” This is saying that only half of the world’s population has improved. Apparently women have been left behind.)

Reuse Your Obsolete Technology

Old disks, keys from keyboards, and hard drives can all be used to make useful and fashionable things you can use! EcoGeek has the lowdown on a man who has created a business converting old geek trash into crafts that he sells locally. Ingenious!

There is no longer any use for a 3.5 inch floppy disk let alone a 5.25′. many a coastered CD never finds another home. And keyboard keys, well, they may be beautiful, but there’s nothing you can do with them after you (I) spilled that beer.

No Impact Man

A man living in New York City has decided to respect the environment, by making no impact. That’s right ZERO IMPACT on the environemnt while living in NYC, you probably have a lot of questions and he probably has the answers.

Here is his a snippet from the project philosophy:

Saving this planet depends on finding a middle path that is neither unconsciously consumerist nor self-consciously anti-materialist. The idea for No Impact Man is not to be anorexic but to be abundant, not to be eco-efficient but “eco-effective,” in the words of the environmental scientists William McDonough and Michael Braungart.

This dude is someone we can all learn from.