Urbanized: A film about the design of cities
Half of the world’s population now lives in cities. By 2050, it is estimated that this ratio will grow to over 75%. Put another way, 3.5 billion people live in cities now. Global population is project to reach 9 billion by 2050. That means that cities will need to the housing and infrastructure to absorb upwards of 2.5 billion people within the next 30 years. It is a staggering thought, and one of the great challenges of our time. An excellent... Read More
Multispace
Multispace was shot and edited in Copenhagen to compete in a 2010 short film contest sponsored by the Danish State Art Fund. Entries to the contest were directed to demonstrate how we can live more densely in order to relieve urban sprawl development pressure, enhance social opportunities, and encourage efficient use of public infrastructure. The creators of Multispace met as urban design graduate students at the University of Copenhagen. The idea... Read More
UNFCCC Climate Chief Resigns
Yvo de Boer, the Dutch diplomat who has guided international climate change negotiations over the last four years, announced that he would be resigning from his post effective July 1, 2010. Although he said he had been considering the decision before the Copenhagen conference in December 2009, Mr. de Boer has been frustrated with the slow progress on reaching a new climate accord to replace Kyoto, and in announcing that he was stepping down, called... Read More
Weekly gRound-up: 12/12/09
The 2000s Decade the Warmest in Memory The World Meteorlogical Organization has announced that the first decade of the 2000s was warmer than the previous (1990-1999), which was warmer than the decade before that. This statement should put to rest claims resonating from skeptical media that we are in a period of global cooling. Oh, and 2009 had the third lowest Arctic sea ice area on record (after 2007 and 2008). On Polar Bears and Global Warming Richard... Read More
Tuvalu and Goliath
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference in Copenhagen is now 5 days old. As expected, the gathering of 193 country delegates and a combined 16,500 international negotiators, NGO representatives, activists, and journalists at the Bella Center is showcasing some of the most difficult political and economic challenges facing the global community today. Given the importance of curbing climate change from unabatedly... Read More
What is the EPA doing in Copenhagen?
On Monday, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a declaration that outlines its authority and rational to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs). The EPA press release read, “greenhouse gases (GHGs) threaten the public health and welfare of the American people. EPA also finds that GHG emissions from on-road vehicles contribute to that threat.” U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson Yesterday, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was... Read More
Follow the Copenhagen Conference live!
Source: COP-15 You can tune into all the latest developments at Copenhagen with live and recorded webcasts from the conference. A schedule and listing of today’s available webcasts is listed here. Also, keep checking Project Groundswell for updates and summaries regarding the conference. Read More
Countdown to Copenhagen (part 3)
Check Your Head The climate change conference at Copenhagen begins in just a few days. Delegates from countries all over the world will be gathering to discuss the next steps of global climate mitigation and adaption targets to be put in place for 2012 when the Kyoto Protocol will expire. In just the last few weeks, there has been a lot of activity. A number of industrialized nations have put forth more aggressive emission reduction targets for the... Read More
The Copenhagen Diagnosis
Hot off the press is a new global climate change synthesis report by some of the world’s leading scientists. The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Updating the World on the Latest Climate Science is a review of the hundreds of scientific papers published since the 2007 IPCC fourth assessment report (AR4), and presents a sobering update on the state of the global climate. What this report convincingly shows, is that AR4 was perhaps too conservative in its... Read More
Countdown to Copenhagen (part 2)
In the introductory post of this series, I briefly discussed the need to shed light on a few areas that, in my view, are encouraging signs of things to come – of the possibilities in a post-Kyoto world. First off, as anyone who carefully follows both the scientific and political developments surrounding climate change will likely lament, optimism can be a rather vexing enterprise. Political progress is slow and tedious, and what we increasingly... Read More
Countdown to Copenhagen (part 1)
December 7 will mark the beginning of the 15th Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen. As the implications of climate change impacts become increasingly well understood, the importance of making substantial strides toward a new and improved global effort to address climate change has never been more important. Getting something done at Copenhagen is crucial in that regard. However, as we close in on the date, it appears as though we’re not quite... Read More
