Environment – Page 42 – Things Are Good

Brazil and India Defend Nature

Last year India saw that biopiracy was damaging to the country and they reacted by documenting every plant and will release an encyclopedia of all the plants. They are specifically recording how these plants are used in traditional medicine in India, making it much harder for large foreign corporations to proclaim the use of plants as their idea.

Brazil is now doing something similar:

“Brazil has published a list of more than 5,000 generic terms from the Portuguese language related to Brazilian plant biological diversity to raise awareness and prevent further misuse of trademarks that hinder Brazilian exports.

The Brazilian government has been, and is, involved in a number of trademark disputes with companies that, for example, take a name of a fruit in Brazilian Portuguese and trademark it to get exclusive rights to commercialise it under that name in a certain country or region.”

Higher Hybrid Puchases in the United States

The Green Car Congress is reporting that U.S. sales of hybrids top 25,000. This is good news, because it means less pollution. GCC points out that SUV sales have decreased, which is good news in itself considering the mayor of London thinks SUV drivers are idiots.

“Buoyed by strong results for the Prius and the Camry hybrid, sales of hybrids in the US hit a new high in July, with 25,626 units soldâ€”a 32% increase from July 2006.”

It looks like more hybrid vehicles will be purchased next year too. General Motors will be debuting Author Adam ClarePosted on 2006-08-042006-08-05Categories Environment, TransportationTags car, Environment, hybrid, traffic, Transportation1 Comment on Higher Hybrid Puchases in the United States

Simpsons Author Joins the Green Room

The Green Room is a BBC series ofÂ opinion based articles about environmental issues. In a recent issue George Meyer, long time writer for the Simpsons, talks about his take on humainty and our struggle to save the environment. I found it to be really poignant and funny.

Â “Let’s be real: even a well-planned move to Jupiter would be stressful, and tough on relationships. For this reason alone, we should not turn the earth into an apocalyptic hellscape.”

The Green Menace

ice The BBC is reporting that the media is shilling ‘climate porn‘ and that this new kind of fetish is actually making people feel bad. People feeling bad for their actions? Whoa! Well, they feel so bad that they aren’t doing anything to change it: they feel powerless.

“The style of climate change discourse is that we maximise the problem and minimise the solution,” she said.

Apparently not enough people are reading ThingsAreGood.com, because readers here know that people can – and are – making a difference. Here are some more examples of change in action:

California and British PM Tony Blair signed an agreement to address climate change and to promote new fuel technologies.
Even the United States military is fighting wars, er, their energy use. The Defense Energy Working Group has been created to tackle energy consumption in their armed forces.
And you can make diffence if you need a car, you can get a green one. What’s more is while you wait you can offset your carbon emissions thanks to Honda.

Goodbye Driveway!!

Good riddance I say, to the driveway and its cousin, the back alley roadway. A new product from Gridtech preforms the same function as your conventional driveway with the added benefits of drainage and a grassy feel. By incorporating plastic cylinders into the ground, filled with gravel and finished with regular landscaping you have a green structure that can support fire trucks. Other products in their line up include a paving to prevent ATV damage. Green Paving