Energy efficiency in china -interesting panel discussion
A panel from april at Yale university including panelists from HSBC India and several representatives with experience in China discuss challenges in implementing energy efficiency and renewable projects in china.
The different view points (corporate, policy making, investors and local networks) give interest insight in challenges and progress in the area of energy efficiency in both countries.
Lately I have heard the word Permaculture mentioned more often, but did you know that the first book on it was written before I was even born! More than 30 years ago the Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren were looking into ways of permanent agriculture (hence the name Permaculture), for the industrial agriculture was bad for soil fertility, but good for pests (which then were fought of with chemical warfare).
So what is all this about?
=> It’s about increasing biodiversity, which amongst other things stops pests (and us worrying about how to get rid of them), but provides us with a good variety of food throughout the year.
=> It’s about studying the land carefully and making adjustments that rainwater will be available to the plants for longer, thus making plants happy (and us too as we don’t have to water them ourselves).
=> It’s about letting newspaper and other mulches fight against weeds (rather than us doing so in back-breaking activities).
=> It’s about allowing certain weeds to grow for a while as they provide nutrition to the other plants.
=> It’s about even more than that, I think it’s certainly about time that I bought my mother (who loves her garden) a book on this (so she will not ask me to plug weed again next time I’m in town).
To sum it up, if permaculture has been set up carefully it will behave like a little paradise without depleting the nutrition, without letting wind and water take the soil away (which in turn could ruin water systems by changing their nutrient level) and all of that with hardly any human effort.
A small boy, age 9, wades through the stinking city dump outside Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh looking for trash to sell. If he does not bring home enough Riels (Cambodian currency), he risks that his parents, child soldiers under the Khmer Rouge, won’t have dinner for him when he returns home after a days work of collecting and selling garbage.
His life path seems set, but there is a chance it could all still turn different..
In 1995 Christian des Pallières, young retiree in humanitarian mission for reconstruction of a primary school system, had visited a Phnom Penh garbage dump and was appalled by seeing kids eating its filth. He and his spouse, Marie-France, had to act, first with bringing meals to the dump, then by establishing an association called “Pour un Sourire d’Enfant”(PSE, in English: “For a smile of a child”), which by now provides schooling and professional training to 6000 kids like the 9year old mentioned above! In addition children that have been beaten or worse are provided with a new home.
I learned about this organisation through Patricia, a colleague of mine,who had spend her summer vacation at PSE looking after groups of 40 kids aged 3 to 17 over the summer months as the real teachers were off. Breaking the regularity of the kids coming to school over the summer months would risk them not coming back in September.
Her enthusiasm really touched me and after talking to her, I saw the video of PSE and it touched me even more. (Let me know if you are interested in watching it also and I can lend it to you.) There is also alot more information on what PSE is and has achieved on their website, as well as information on how to get involved.
It’s time for Nuit Blanche again! On Saturday night Brussels city centre around St Catherine will be turned into an outdoor galery and concert space for artists from all over Europe. And we’ll be part of it.
This year our installation is called e-Pong. Our team decided to make a tribute to the game Pong (one of the first video games).
E-pong is an interactive gaming art-installation that enables you to experience a 360º projection of a pong game inside a ball-shaped tent. Four players can play at a time, each of them being in control of a light bar that is used to bounce balls back to the top of the tent. Find out more about the project here!
If you are in Brussels, come and experience the installation!
Date: 2nd October 2010
Time: Public access from 21:00
Place: Fish Market, 1000, Brussels (view map)
More info about Nuit Blanche Brussels 2010: http://2010.nuitblanchebrussels.be
Greenpeace is using social media to stop facebook from using coal energy to run a big new data centre in Oregon/USA. Over half a million of participants have joined the campaign since february. Here the campaign trailer:
Surrounded by gentle Welsh Hills, close to the Pembrokeshire National Park lies the little ecovillage “Tir Y Gafel”. Only since March 2010 all inhabitants live on its land, which is divided into nine eco-smallholdings, each of them operating rather independently from each other. All came for the natural lifestyle, but each has a different plan on how to live from the land. According to Welsh legislation 75% of one’s needs, need to come from the land. All will use hydro (and solar power) for electricity. Once the whole energy system is setup, an expected 20 000 Pound worth of power will be fed back to the electricity system. They will live in low-impact houses, which are currently being constructed from locally found building materials, such as old bricks and wood from their own forest or by reusing of existing materials such as wood planks from IBM acquired via eBay. After years of livestock on its fields, the soil is claimed as too poor for crops. Mono culture crops this is, for each single inhabitant has proven that vegetables grow here. The bio-diversity has already increased and more bird varieties have been spotted circling the land. They will supplement their income by making willow sculptures, furniture, farming fish and pigs and producing own cheeses.
In July I had the opportunity to spend a week volunteering there and experience community life up close. Hoppi, the main contact for volunteers did a great job in organising and so I was able to help out on several pots, learning different things from stripping trees, cleaning bricks, liming a round house, repairing a water way and chopping firewood. Others helped the beekeeper to find the queen or put the reciprocal roof onto a roundhouse. We were six volunteers in total and a nice bunch of people – everybody coming from a different angle. I learned alot in terms of alternative constructions, saw an example of a community and had lots of interesting conversations.
The inhabitants are people like all of us, they came because it was their childhood dream or because of a very environmental consciousness or the urge for a change in their life. They might have a little bit of experience as hobby gardeners or hobby furniture makers, but all have lots to learn still and I admire their courage. One thing that stood out for me was a very strong sense of the motto Learning by doing: “If the roundhouse gets a crack, well then we have to fix it. Next time we will know what to do different.”
The ecovillage is part of the Lammas Project, which aims to show that there are sustainable solutions to the challenges of climate change, peak oil and rural regeneration. There will be also a community hub building that allows others to learn about this kind of lifestyle and benefit from lessons learned at Tir Y Gafel.
All the best to all plot holders and thanks for a great week,
Sylvia
PS: For all who would like to visit themselves. There are guided tours offered and another volunteer week is coming up in September, just subscribe to the Lammas mailing list to be kept up-to-date.
A few months ago I was talking with an American friend who proudly told me about the Mozarella cheese, he had just made – in about half an hour, he said. I was impressed. Living in Mainland Europe, it should be even more tasty due to access to fresh milk, he claimed. I really wanted to try myself! But where to buy rennet (needed to split the curds from the whey)? The only place where I found it was in a pharmacy for 20Euro and this did not feel quite right!
So I partly gave up and focussed on other things, such as vegetarian paté, tzatziki, houmous, bread, gnocchi or vindaloo curry from the base incredients. All alot easier to make then I would have expected (except maybe for the curry paste) and really yummy, not to talk about the excitement and joy of exploration.
Then I found rennet by chance in a Welsh store whilst on vacation. So I re-embarked on my cheesy goal, I still needed to get a cheese cloth and a thermometer and some fresh milk. All of which I found at or close to the Marché des Abattoirs in Anderlecht (Belgium). Onto the internet it was for some instructions, in the end I settled on a goat cheese (which does not even need rennet, but just some vinegar!) and now I am a happy owner of my first (yummy) cheese.
There was a meadow and then people from all over came and the meadow turned into a bustling village. A month later the tents were gone and if he would not have seen it with his own eyes, he would never have known they were there..
photo by Flickr user: fireflies604
A few days ago on my way back home from vacation I sat next to another home-coming guy, who had just left 30 degree warm Finland, where he had spent close to a month at a Rainbow Gathering. What’s that?
Wikipedia describes it as follows:
“Rainbow Gatherings are temporary intentional communities, typically held in outdoor settings, and espousing and practicing ideals of peace, love, harmony, freedom and community, as a consciously expressed alternative to mainstream popular culture, consumerism, capitalism and mass media.”
Jean-Louis, the man from the bus, goes there every year. It’s back to a simple way of life for him and the place is full with good musicians. He told me that everybody finds a place in the community, be it entertaining or cooking or chilling or helping with other chores. Imagine a bunch of people preparing yummy food, being surounded by musicians and then when the meal is served a hat is passed around and you put in there what you like. Some will put 10Euros each meal others not a penny in four weeks. And it’s all good.
Organicvision – a world tour dedicated to sustainable lifestyle (by Johanna from Organicvision)
Curious about alternatives to mainstream urban lifestyle?
Wondering how our society can change to become ecologically viable?
This is precisely what we want to find out on our journey around the world visiting 30 exciting projects covering permaculture, eco-construction, herbology, self-sufficiency, homesteading, transition towns, eco villages etc.
We, that is Joanna and Franck- a German/Polish-French couple in their thirties, living in Brussels.
Some years ago, if somebody had asked us about the future, never we would have predicted that we would quit our jobs one day and do a project dedicated to sustainability…
We decided to rethink our future. After having visited several organic farms in Belgium and Spain in 2009, we were captivated by the generosity and enthusiasm of the people we met there. Compared to the authentic values these people were living, our office jobs, our hectic everyday life seemed fake and meaningless.
Many discussions and sleepless nights later, our decision was clear: We wanted to change our life.
Even more: We wanted other people to discover that it is worth to live closer to nature. But how do you do that? Our solution: Travel various countries and meet positive role models, work with them and share their inspiring ideas with others via interviews, video clips and pictures on a blog!
To this end, in October 2009 we also set up an association – Organicvision – as we wanted to show our sincere long-term investment in promoting sustainable lifestyle and setting up a network of activists in this field as our project develops.
Then we started to seriously prepare our world tour, which will start very soon with a survival training in Belgium followed by a permaculture design course in Southern France.
I went to visit the Royal Botanical Garden the other day. The garden is only open to public for a short time every year. I am generally quite reserved when it comes to tourist attractions, but this garden is just amazing and you simply forget about hundreds of people that are amazed by the flower paradise around you.
If you get the chance go and visit the place. Not just a nice thing to light up your weekend – we cannot take enough opportunities to admire the beauty and variety of life nature has created around us. Let me know if you know of similar places that you can recommend .
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