Truly Smart Cities are Actually “Dumb”

- Adam Clare

Montreal

Earlier this year Sidewalk Labs (Google) opted out of building a “smart” neighbourhood in Toronto due to local pressure (protests work!). What the “smart” neighbourhood wanted to do was monitor and control the activities of occupants and visitors, which would have likely violated many laws. The business plan was even more outrageous since it set out to mire the city in debt by loaning money to the government to pay for the construction. These so-called smart initiatives are really the privatization, through surveillance capitalism ,of the urban space by massive corporations.

If we want resilient, robust, and nice places to live then we ought to get inspiration from the past. Ice in the desert without AC? That’s possible with technology dating back hundreds of years. We need to take a look at work at the past and implement those solutions in modern ways.

As for dumb transport, there can be no doubt that walking or cycling are superior to car travel over short urban distances: zero pollution, zero carbon emissions, free exercise.

And there’s a dumb solution to the spread of air conditioning, one of the greatest urban energy guzzlers: more plants. A study in Madison, Wisconsin found that urban temperatures can be 5% cooler with 40% tree cover. Green roofs with high vegetation density can cool buildings by up to 60%. Or you could just think like a bug: architects are mimicking the natural cooling airflows of termite burrows. Mick Pearce’s 350,000 sq ft Eastgate Centre in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, completed in the 1990s, is still held up as a paragon of dumb air conditioning: all it needs are fans, and uses a tenth of the energy of the buildings next door.

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Germany Proposes Law to Protect Insects

- Adam Clare

bee

We’ve witnessed one of the greatest die offs of insects in history and Germany wants that to change. The country is considering a new law which will protect insects from needlessly dying due to human intervention. The country has already committed to eliminating the use of glyphosate, a weed killer which kills more than weeds. It’s been proven many times over that insects are beneficial for increased crop yields and greater biodiversity, so let’s hope that even more countries follow Germany’s lead on protecting these little critters.

Light traps for insects are to be banned outdoors, while searchlights and sky spotlights would be outlawed from dusk to dawn for ten months of the year.

The draft also demands that any new streetlights and other outdoor lights be installed in such a way as to minimise the effect on plants, insects and other animals.

The use of weed-killers and insecticides would also be banned in national parks and within five to ten metres of major bodies of water, while orchards and dry-stone walls are to be protected as natural habitats for insects.

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Africa Free of Wild Polio

- Adam Clare

We can deal with diseases, viruses, and other health ills through collective efforts. This week it’s been announced that the entire continent of Africa is free of polio spreading in the wild. After decades of working to eradicate it, people can now rest easy. There was no single solution that worked, instead it was a series of measures that culminated in such success!

Polio is a virus which spreads from person to person, usually through contaminated water. It can lead to paralysis by attacking the nervous system.

Two out of three strains of wild polio virus have been eradicated worldwide. On Tuesday, Africa has been declared free of the last remaining strain of wild poliovirus.

More than 95% of Africa’s population has now been immunised. This was one of the conditions that the Africa Regional Certification Commission set before declaring the continent free from wild polio.

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A Feminist Economic Recovery Plan for Canada

- Adam Clare

The economy isn’t performing too well right now thanks to years of thoughtless growth followed by the hit of COVID-19. The people most hurt by the COVID-19 crisis are the most vulnerable. It’s been widely reported on how women have lost a lot of gains made in the workplace as the “traditional” household roles are now being put back on them. We can do better, and we know how to do better than this.

The previous decade of growth was made at the expense of the environment and people’s wellbeing, the current reboot of the economy doesn’t need to be thoughtless. This time around we can generate economic growth that includes everybody.

YWCA Canada and The Institute for Gender and the Economy at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management have partnered to create a Feminist Economic Recovery Plan for Canada, which proposes a new path forward for Canada’s economy – one that focuses on changing the structures and barriers that have made some groups more vulnerable to the pandemic and its fallout than others. The report highlights 8 pillars for recovery with a focus on supporting the care economy, investing in social infrastructure and supporting women-owned businesses.

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A Torrent of Good News About Our Understanding of COVID-19

- Adam Clare

Dr. John Campbell has been the most levelheaded individual providing regular updates on the state of COVID-19 that I’ve been able to find (other than government and academic reports). Since February he’s been tracking the development of COVID-19 and our response to it. Along the way he’s been doing an excellent job of educating viewers on all he’s learned. A really great thing about Dr. Campbell is that he readily admits what he doesn’t know and if he’s wrong about something he provides an update, thankfully he rarely speculates (unlike other YouTubers who benefit from fear mongering).

Here’s his latest video and it’s all about how we’re getting better at fighting COVID-19 and understanding how our bodies respond to the virus.

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