pure convience

Water is a some thing the world will need forever. Sustainable use of water is key for the future. I have been doing lots of reading and research on the change of use of the water. It has always been that 80% of the water in the US has been for agriculture. The issue become what is needed to be produce that is water intensive. An example of this is the tar sands in Canada it would only be possible to get the oil for it with out water. The logic of using something as important as water on extracting oil. The documentary liquid assets hit a lot of important points http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu0S3tp66Rg&feature=channel . There is nothing to switch to when there is no more water. People all over the world have been looking to water as an income source but finding that no amount of water in the world can be equal to a water supply. With more and more people going with out water it will be interesting to see what will be the optimum path to a global solution. If it will be government policy or capitalistic market policy, only time will tell.

ArborSculpture, A Primer: An Alternative to Milled Lumer

I had a Tough time getting the formatting to work right in Blogger. Here is an embedded frame; And if that doesn't work a direct link to the Blog Post.

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1jSH4_BqDlNXiPv7kNNf0dpmEUIakDyhlN-QV_31EItg

Green Guide

David Suzuki is a Vancouver, Canada native and attended Amherst College in Massachusetts receiving his B.A. and received his Ph.D from the University of Chicago in Zoology. He has created the David Suzuki foundation in which he states they work with the government, businesses, and individuals alike to conserve the environment. 

“Our mission is to protect the diversity of nature and our quality of life, now and for the future.” Suzuki states on his website that Canada is doing everything they can to remain on the path of avoiding dangerous climate change and is also taking the right steps to create a safe level of greenhouse gas emissions. One of the top priorities at his foundation is the issues of climate change, something in which Suzuki is very passionate about and has created controversy when giving speeches, encouraging people to find a way to prove what certain leaders are doing to harm the environment is illegal and sending them to jail. 

The foundation also promotes outdoor learning and encourages people, especially the younger generation, to learn what it is to live healthy and embrace outdoor living. On his website, Suzuki also offers tips of how to live healthier and what everyone can do to make informed decisions to decrease their environmental footprint. Among the website are tips to even eat sustainable seafood: “Eat locally caught or farmed seafood that shows up on the green or yellow lists on the seafood guides. This helps reduce the amount of energy used to provide seafood to your plate.” 

Suzuki also talks of illegal acts such as dumping mine tailings into freshwater to spread the word of how to maintain nature. A lot of his focus is on the environment and how to bring communities closer to their natural habitats. He also encourages people to take action for smarter regulation of chemicals in cosmetics. Although its becoming a trend to advertise natural ingredients in food, the topic of chemicals in cosmetics is something not mentioned as often. Overall, Suzuki’s foundation provides tips to live more sustainably and the importance of everyone becoming involved.

Sustainable Transportation

The movement of people and their possessions from one place to another has always left its environmental footprints on the land, but, as we learned, the modernization and mechanization of transportation had much grander effects on the land than any seemingly ancient transportation methods ever did. As David Suzuki points out in his Green Guide, America and Canada currently boast the largest transportation footprints. With more cars than drivers in the U.S., a 6-ton carbon dioxide emission quota per person on average in both Canada and the U.S., and a looming environmental problem that’s largely anthropogenic, it’s clear that our present-day transportation habits and patterns are causing us more harm than convenience.

When the awareness of our detrimental transportation habits is met with our desire to continue living lives filled with things, and travels, we create a transportation compromise. There’s a lot going on right now regarding sustainable transport, which, by definition, is any kind of transportation that produces a low impact on the environment or is attempting to progressively decrease it’s impact on the environment. Examples of sustainable transportation obviously include the basics, like walking, running, cycling, rollerblading, paddling, or skateboarding (a personal favorite). Other methods include public and mass transit, as well as transit-oriented development, which seeks to encourage and develop more ecologically friendly cities based on mixed-use residential and commercial designs with a transit station at the center. Environmentally friendly vehicles, or green vehicles, have experienced an outburst in popularity recently, which is good news; these cars, whether electric, hybrid, hydrogen powered, solar powered, biodiesel powered, or fuel cell powered, all produce significantly less harmful impacts to the environment than traditional vehicles.

Other methods of sustainable transport include, as mentioned by Suzuki, “better planning ... car sharing, carpooling, home delivery of groceries, videoconferencing, and telecommuting.” Suzuki also recommends buying the most fuel-efficient vehicle possible within your means, improving - and lessening - your driving habits, and switching to cleaner fuels. I especially took Through a bit of research, I’ve also discovered that there are numerous organizations dedicated to assisting people in the planning and execution of a sustainable travel experience, also known as sustainable tourism or eco-tourism. Though not exactly a method of transportation, the sustainable building and upkeep of the infrastructures that propel and connect our transportation systems is also prevalent in modern discussions. Such sustainable building and planning can help to ensure a more seamless, space-saving, waste-erasing and efficient way to move from point A to point B.