Earth Art

At the recent United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP 17) in Durban, South Africa, world leaders punted once again. Instead of taking meaningful action on climate change today, they put off creation of a global emission treaty until 2020 -- a commitment few believe will be honored without massive public intervention. Anticipating this failure, Earth Day Network and their global partners, including Tck Tck Tck, met in Durban to develop a plan for global action in advance of the next major meeting of world leaders at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in June.

The plan calls for using Earth Day as a springboard to pressure world leaders and will organize a global coalition of environmental, faith based, and human rights groups that together with nascent movement building organizations will take action on Earth Day, April 22nd 2012 and Mobilize the Earth™. Together they will demand immediate action to reverse the damage of climate change and other environmental tragedies. Read on for details to come shortly on how you too can Mobilize the Earth™!

Local Governments Lead Global Change

Mayors and local elected officials from around the world did make history by joining together to sign the Durban Adaptation Charter for Local Governments, requiring cities to increase their mitigation and adaptation efforts immediately. (Read more about the Charter at the Earth Day Network blog)

On December 5th, Earth Day Network, in partnership with National Religious Coalition of Creation Care (NRCCC), hosted an event in Durban where Ela Ghandi and other prominent women faith leaders spoke about the importance of women's voices in the environmental movement and the need for simple solutions to address carbon emissions. Together, Earth Day Network and NRCCC will continue to encourage faith communities to implement sustainable initiatives in their everyday lives and places of worship.
WHAT YOU CAN DO - LOCALLY and GLOBALLY
April 22, 2012: Plan an Event

Help your community plan an Earth Day event! Using the universal platform of Earth Day, invite your friends and neighbors to voice their concerns for the environment and join us as we call upon governments around the world to protect our planet. If you can, please join us on the National Mall in Washington, DC on April 22, 2012 for the world's largest Earth Day event, an all-day gathering of the world's top musical talent and most exciting speakers, uniting our voices in a call for a sustainable future for all.

GREEN JOBS - Get Ready for our Future

White House top economic adviser, made this point very clearly during his interview on Fareed Zakaria's GPS on CNN: "Some of the jobs that were lost aren't going to come back, but some of the jobs are going to come in new places," Summers said.

Globally, research from the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) has shown that a shift to a a low-carbon and sustainable economy can create millions of green jobs across many sectors of the economy. Similarly, the employment outlook from the US Department of Labor for job growth between 2008-2018 indicated a significant growth of green jobs this. Of course, this prediction is largely based on President Obama's pledge to invest $150 billion to create 5 million green jobs in the US over the next 10 years. The focus on green jobs is tremendously important not only to create jobs, but also to have a tremendous positive impact on our environment.

How To Build A Better Lightbulb

When changing out incandescent light bulbs for energy efficiency, there are usually two options, CFL and LED. However, the start up company Vu1 is adding another light bulb option (not to mention acronym) to the mix, the Electron Stimulated Luminescence (ESL) bulb. The Vu1 ESL innovation re-purposes technology from our tried and true friend, the cathode ray tube (CRT) television. ESL uses accelerated electrons to stimulate phosphor and create light, thus making the bulb surface glow. For the most part, the ESL bulbs are made of recyclable material, namely the plastic and the glass. But like many electronic devices today, the semi-conductors and electronic components are not as easily recyclable. The good news is that unlike CFL's, we do not have to worry about heavy metals such as mercury with the ESL.

The ESL technology has also been nominated for a 2011 Edison Best New Product Award. It will be judged along side other nominees on several criteria including societal impact, marketplace innovation, and technological innovation.

Thinking Global Yet?

Taking A Look At How Wind Works - That Works for Me and You!

Large wind farms are being built around the world as a cleaner way to generate electricity, but operators are still searching for the most efficient way to arrange the massive turbines that turn moving air into power. To help steer wind farm owners in the right direction, Charles Meneveau, a Johns Hopkins fluid mechanics and turbulence expert, working with a colleague in Belgium, has devised a new formula for the best spacing for a large array of turbines.

Turbines used in wind farms for commercial production of electric power are usually three-bladed and pointed into the wind by computer-controlled motors. These have high tip speeds of over 200 mph, high efficiency,tubular steel towers that range from 200 to 300 feet tall. The blades rotate at 10-22 revolutions per minute. The newest wind farms, which can be located on land or offshore.

Currently, turbines on these large wind farms are spaced about seven rotor diameters apart. The new spacing model suggests that placing the wind turbines 15 rotor diameters apart - more than twice as far apart as in the current layouts - results in more cost-efficient power generation. The research is important because large wind farms, with hundreds or even thousands of turbines are planned or already operating in the western United States, Europe and China. Earlier computational models for large wind farm layouts were based on simply adding up what happens in the wakes of single wind turbines and they are underperforming. The new spacing model takes into account interaction of arrays of turbines with the entire atmospheric wind flow.

In an industry first, HP today announced it has developed an engineering breakthrough that enables the use of post-consumer recycled plastics in the production of new Original HP inkjet print cartridges. More than 200 million cartridges have been manufactured using the process thus far. HP used more than 5 million pounds of recycled plastic in its inkjet cartridges last year, and the company is committed to using twice as much in 2008. The company's innovative recycling process facilitates the combination of multiple sources and grades of recycled plastics from everyday water bottles to highly technical HP inkjet cartridges. In addition to closing the design loop, using recycled content saves energy and keeps plastic out of landfills . Since piloting the process, HP has used enough recycled plastic to fill more than 200 tractor trailers.

GOOGLE HELPS BOOST GREEN TECHNOLOGIES

Google Inc is prepared to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in big commercial alternative-energy projects that traditionally have had trouble getting financing, the executive in charge of its green-energy push said on Wednesday. The Internet search giant, which has said it will invest in researching green technologies and renewable-energy companies, is eager to help promising technologies amass scale to help drive the cost of alternative energy below the cost of coal.

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