Sunday, November 28, 2010

Will Green Jobs Promote a Green Economy?

So this week I decided to go back and look to see what Captain Planet and the Planeteers were talking about. The lastest information they're talking about is green jobs and a green economy. I found this article at http://captainplanet.me/archives/2269 and it talks about how to create green jobs and a green economy by just weatherizing your house and making buildings more energy efficient. The director of this program is Kalia Lydgate and she tells us that about 40% of carbon emissions come from buildings. Kalia is planning on weatherizing thousands of homes in New Bedfor, Massachusetts which will create more jobs, lower their carbon emissions by a huge percent and save residents there aroung $7,000,000 in utility bills. Kalia does all this through 'barn-raising' where a team of volunteers weatherizes a few homes on a Saturday.

On this website they have a video up from youtube that talks some more about the project. I have embedded here on my blog so you can see it.


I went and researched some more and found this information out: (http://www.marioninstitute.org/programs/green-jobs-green-economy-initiative) on June 10, 2010 the city New Bedford recieved a prestigiour $300,000 award with the P.A.C.E. YouthBuild to receive a grant from the Wal-Mart Foundation to help expand training programs for Green Jobs.

This relates to class because we have been talking about the carbon cycle and how what we do effects it. By doing a simple thing like this we can help improve the carbon cycle.

I think that this is a great idea. Who knew that something as simple as weatherizing your home could help improve the carbon cycle. If everyone did this we would make a huge impact on the carbon cycle and hopefully other enivronmental changes.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

China Setting the Standards for the Future

This week a came across this article called China's Urban Low Carbon Future in Shanghai by Warren Karlenzig. I found this article at http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/011697.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+worldchanging_fulltext+%28WorldChanging.com+Full+Text%29&utm_content=Google+Reader.
Picture from : http://reconciliation.typepad.com/chinaencounters/images/2007/12/18/chinapavilion121807.jpg

The photo above is a picture of the Shanghai World Expo and it was closed in hopes that is will become the "plants primary hope for a low-carbon future. China's Premier Wen Jiabao then talks about how this "will influence the way we live and will lead the course of industrial development in the future."

The article then goes on to talk about how this World Expo center is the world's largest in history and that it has had 73 million attending it. Next it says that by 2050 China plans to have 350-600 million more urban resident will change the earth's scale in the areas of climate change and the economy. With this China will now be focused on the fifth global industrail wave which is low-carbon or green economy. Sir Nicholas Stern says that this is a new industrial revoluion and will cause "low-carbon growth to be cleaner, safar, far more attractive while high-carbon growth will kill itself. China is well placed for this industrial revolution."

In Baoding, a low-carbon city, has added 20,000 new jobs in wind, PV solar, and other renewable energy technologies in the last three years. The World Expo is planning on adding "more than 500 new technologies in solar, heat pumps, energy efficiency, transportation and advanced material" in a six-month run. China is really pushing the idea of sustainable cities. This sustainablitiy is encouraged in every aspect of there life and their concern for the climate change is high. By cutting their gas emissions this way China could only be cause 17-18 percent of the world's population of greenhouse gas.

I wasn't quite sure what the Shanghai Expo center was about so I looked it up and found this information at http://en.expo2010.cn/a/20081116/000004.htm. The Shanghai Expo is an event. The theme of this center is about having a better city to make a better life. THey gather together to find new ways to make the planet better and better the ecomony.



I think that is is a great idea to have people always looking at the future and how to better it. Espeically since they deal with the environment, if we don't take care of that then the world won't last long. If this continues to happen hopefully the world will develop in a good.

In class we've been talking a lot about cycles and what we do to the environment effects how this cycles work. This article related to class because if we've doing things to improve the environment hopefully the cycles should run smother. Also the food chain won't be affect as much because the animals won't be dieing out because of pollution.