The good news: child mortality has fallen in every single country over the past few decades. 4 million fewer children died before their fifth birthday in 2015 than in the year 2000. The bad news: according to a detailed study published in The Lancet, despite remarkable progress in the improvement of child survival between 1990 and 2015, the Millennium Development Goal…
Impressive. The Melbourne Girls College won the Zayed Future Energy Prize in the category of Global Schools - Oceania back in January of this year. Seems somewhat 'unheralded' but worthy of recognition. The Zayed Future Energy Prize represents the vision of the Late Founding Father and President of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan, who championed environmental stewardship.…
[Source: Club of Rome] I was a school student when this first Club of Rome Report was widely heralded. I was in University studying Geography, History, Literature and Politics when I looked closely at its research and findings. I was teaching when the "20 year old" report was critiqued as flawed and plain wrong. As Limits to Growth concluded in 1972:…
Google has posted an interesting [and fun] run-down of the energy pathway of an email through a well crafted online animation/cartoon. The environmental impact on growing data centres is very real and the question of sustainability is a strategic and governance challenge that cannot be ignored. The context of the current debate about carbon-pricing and mechanisms for capture and/or attenuation…
Not a plant to be seen, the desert ground is too dry. But the air contains water, and research scientists have found a way of obtaining drinking water from air humidity. The system is based completely on renewable energy and is therefore autonomous. Cracks permeate the dried-out desert ground, the landscape bears testimony to the lack of water. But even…
Oil drying up as world remains unaware.. On top of the other problems plaguing the world, such as global warming and the current financial meltdown, there’s a third pressing issue that threatens to bring the good life to an end: The world is fast running out of oil. [Environmental Health News]
Detroit Goes for Electric Cars, but Will Drivers?. Ford and other carmakers are betting billions on electric cars despite questions about consumer demand for them. [NYT > Business]
Peter McMahon, writing in the On line Opinion presents an intriguing position that... The radical impact of new information technologies and the rise of the global crises (global warming, peak oil and the like) are forcing a new kind of politics into being. He suggests [as many of us would agree] that twenty-first century society will be defined by the…