green bloggers unite!

If you are a "green blogger" and you're in Cape Town this Saturday, join us with Juliana Rotich, Environment Editor of Global Voices Online (she's paying a special visit to SA). This is an informal gathering, so feel free to come along this Saturday to see what the buzz is about and meet the faces behind the blogs.

When: Saturday, October 11th, 2pm
Where: Obz Cafe, 115 Lower Main Road, Observatory

Juliana thought we might like to plant some trees too, so if you have suggestions of a school or community project, then put your suggestions up on the wiki.

RSVP by putting your name on the wiki to know how many to expect.

world habitat day

The UN concept of World Habitat Day "is to reflect on the state of our towns and cities and the basic right to adequate shelter for all. It is also intended to remind the world of its collective responsibility for the future of the human habitat."  The second part of that statement could be about fighting global warming. It could be about fighting trends in urban spatial development that make towns and cities less sustainable. Or it could be about fighting a battle in our own backyards.

In the July 21, 2008 edition of The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert writes about the absurdities and forces that have given rise to the ubiquitous suburban lawn.

I recently spent a weekend in the rural South African town of Riebeek West, where there is some of the urban tendency to keep lawns trim and weed-free, but with much more tolerance for people who leave gardens untended for a while, or who grow indigenous plants instead of lawns. Here, it is much more obvious that to maintain a suburban-style lawn is to wage battle against nature. The summer is hot and dry, and water needs to be conserved.

But Kolbert writes that lawns are an invention that has spawned not only a multi-billion dollar complex of industries ("Americans spend an estimated forty billion dollars each year on grass."), but also a set of cultural forces that require conformity. The battle, in other words, is not only with the natural environment.

And here's why it's important to the future of the human habitat.

you go, girl

From solar cars to fast (sort-of-green) cars. I am not a big fan of racing, but I was intrigued by an email from the social networking site Clean Action Network about NASCAR racer Leilani Munter, who runs the site Carbon Free Girl about her search for ways to offset the impacts of her racing activities:

Leilani Münter is Carbon Free Girl and this is her story -- the story of a vegetarian hippie chick race car driver's journey to be carbon neutral; a diary of her lifetime project of sorting through the facts & fiction about alternative fuels, organic food, clean energy, green buildings, solar power, wind farms, composters, recycling, politics & more all while she makes a living driving a race car at 200 mph. It's not always easy being green but Leilani hopes that by sharing her story, she will make your journey a little easier...

earth overshoot day

If you use up your monthly salary before the next payday, you borrow money to tide you over. Which might be alright, if you have a good credit rating and you don't do it every month. But if you spend just as much next month, you just go deeper into debt. In the same way, we use Earth's resources to run our lives, and the New Economics Foundation has come up with the date we go into ecological "resource debt" each year. This year, we used up the equivalent of Earth's annual budget last week, on Sept 23. At the rate we spend, Earth only produces enough to support us for 267 days a year; after that, we use up resources that have been "banked". And these resources are not only fossil fuels, they are also habitats, fresh water, forests, fish, and so on.

Unfortunately, the date this happens gets earlier every year, with the result that we are borrowing beyond our means - and have been doing so since 1986, according to NEF's calculations. We won't be able to repay the loan unless we make drastic changes. One can argue that overshoot day is just a concept, and probably not very accurate, but I don't believe anyone can seriously suggest that we can carry on with business as usual indefinitely. Dependence on finite oil reserves alone makes that an impossibility, but the environmental degradation we are causing makes it an ethical issue.

flying close to the sun

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's part of an F16 fighter jet that is now a solar car. I had a peek at the vehicles participating in the South African Solar Challenge, and this is one of them. Very sleek and very expensive, but it has technical problems and hasn't clocked any mileage on the journey from Johannesburg to Cape Town.

In contrast, the ugly duckling in the second picture is cheaper, and not so sexy - but it works. And it's made with parts you can buy (mostly) off the shelf in South Africa. Let's see who's left standing at the end of the South African tour.

Ultimately, despite appearances, this is not about powering cars directly from the sun; it's about squeezing efficiency out of solar panels and mechanical equipment. Nobody expects cars of the future to be kitted out with huge solar arrays, but exercises like this will help test components for more energy-efficient cars and other machinery. I'm rooting for the ugly duckling because it can show how to do more with less. And because I always cheer for the underdog.