Category Archives: Environment

Tiny Dioramas of an Abandoned World

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Fine-art photographer Lori Nix is adding her eerie vision to the mix with an exhibition called “The City” — in which “public spaces devoted to history and science lie deteriorating and neglected while nature slowly takes them back.” The twist is that Nix’s photos aren’t Photoshop manipulations — they’re real images of tiny, painstakingly detailed dioramas that Nix has designed just for these photographs.

Now on display at New York’s ClampArt Gallery until December 18, and then at Chicago’s Catherine Edelman Gallery from January 7 to February 26, 2011

Local Action Blog

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This blog will follow U.S. local governments that are curbing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing energy consumption, utilizing renewable energy sources, adapting to the impacts of climate change, and developing more sustainably. It will showcase their challenges, accomplishments, innovations, strategies, and lessons learned.

ICLEI’s Local Action Blog launches to make available information on cities and counties on the front lines of climate, sustainability, and energy action.

Environmental Contamination at Kingston, TN

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The extent of the spillage of an estimated 1 billion gallons of sludge containing years’ of waste from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s coal-burning power plant over an area of 300 acres cannot be better described than these pictures taken by Dorothy Griffith.

The entire region is a brownfield and I wonder how many years, resources, and money will it take to clean it all up. I wonder if anyone will be held accountable.

Dubai's Next Island

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Just because you can doesn’t always mean you should. “This gleaming hunk of urban development is about to rise on an artificial, perfectly square island off the coast of Dubai” [source]. Dubai has been going crazy creating all these islands off their coast probably because coastal properties enjoy greater demand and thus elicit higher prices. But in the long run, these islands are proving to be an environmental disaster as they end up destroying the marine life and coral reefs in the vicinity which are an integral part of the ecosystem. This 6.5 square kilometer mini-city is being designed by noted architect, Rem Koolhaas. Why would you care for the environment when your paycheck from this job alone can let you retire in riches?

Anti Smog Architecture

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Architect Vincent Callebaut’s latest project balances public galleries, meeting rooms and gathering spaces over canals and abandoned railroad tracks in the 19th Parisian district. Callebaut describes the process as an intention to “absorb and recycle by photo-catalytic effect the cloud of harmful gases (Smog) from the intense traffic near Paris” [source: Inhabitat].

Definitely a worthy and proactive effort at going beyond the traditional green architecture.

The Green Collar

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“Try this experiment. Go knock on someone’s door in West Oakland, Watts or Newark and say: ‘We gotta really big problem!’ They say: ‘We do? We do?’ ‘Yeah, we gotta really big problem!’ ‘We do? We do?’ ‘Yeah, we gotta save the polar bears! You may not make it out of this neighborhood alive, but we gotta save the polar bears!’ ”

Thomas Friedman writes about including the minority low-income populations in the ‘green movement’. Imposing conservation and sustainability on people usually doesn’t work. Rather you have to make the case that it is beneficial to them in the long run. Only then will they listen. Just like the corporations listened when it affected not only their image but also their bottomline.

The Greenest Building in the World?

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A new swanky possibly the greenest building comes up in Athens:

The five-story structure in southern Athens produces zero emissions, uses no fossil fuel and meets virtually all its own energy demands — in winter and in summer — thanks to a computerized system that draws on both solar and geothermal sources. It even produces electricity on the side, some for selling back to the state [source]

I hope you didn’t imagine a building with terraced gardens.