Faced with public pressure to lower their carbon footprint, and the high cost of setting up sustainable energy supplies, businesses and governments now have a third option. The United Nation’s ‘Sustainable Energy for All’ initiative adds weight to the growing voice pushing low-carbon ‘green’ growth over conventional ‘brown’ development and its heavy reliance on […]
Archives for July 2014
Venezuela climate summit calls for end to “green economy”
Posted on July 25, 2014 Written by
UN-backed event ends with unusual call from civil society groups to end capitalism A UN-backed conference in Venezuela has ended with a declaration to scrap carbon markets and reject the green economy. The Margarita Declaration was issued at the end of a four-day meeting of around 130 green activist groups, which the Venezuelan government hosted […]
Your iPhone may be rigged to spy on you
Posted on July 25, 2014 Written by
iOS forensic examiner Jonathan Zdziarski may know more about iPhones than any other non-Apple employee. Yet even he can’t find a reason for some of the mystery features buried within the iOS operating system, which look an awful lot like security backdoors that bypass user-designated data protections. The features could be there to let Apple […]
Urban development: mixed use, mixed results?
Posted on July 25, 2014 Written by
Ever since Jane Jacobs celebrated diverse, high-density neighborhoods in her 1961 classic “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” city planners, politicians, academics and even some developers have been jonesing to recreate New York’s homey West Village where she lived back then. Of course, to adopt Jacobs’ prescriptions for the perfect city — short, walkable […]
Agenda 21: Home Sweet Home in Freight Shipping Containers
Posted on July 23, 2014 Written by
While the world is sizzling and percolating in conflicts and wars, and U.S. is roiling in manufactured crisis after crisis, real or imagined emergencies, overwhelmed by the constant invasion of illegal immigrants, The Washington Post writes on the front page, “Thinking inside the box on D.C. housing costs,” living in repurposed dinged freight shipping containers. […]
Poverty, environment, even traffic fatalities: UN’s sweeping sustainable development goals aim to fix everything — on paper
Posted on July 22, 2014 Written by
End global hunger and all forms of malnutrition and poverty by 2030, along with all urban slums around the world. Halve the number of deaths from road traffic accidents globally (an estimated 1.24 million in 2010, according to the World Health Organization) by the same date—and “reduce levels of violence and halve related death rates […]
Blowback from the NSA Surveillance
Posted on July 20, 2014 Written by
There’s one piece of blowback that isn’t being discussed — aside from the fact that Snowden has killed the chances of any liberal arts major getting a DoD job for at least a decade — and that’s how the massive NSA surveillance of the Internet affects the US’s role in Internet governance. Ron Deibert makes […]
Two More Governors Turning Against Common Core
Posted on July 20, 2014 Written by
Two more state governors have hopped on the anti-Common Core bandwagon, urging either a second look at it or pushing for outright repeal. Gov. Gary Herbert of Utah ordered his attorney general to conduct a review of the controversial multi-state education standards Thursday, while Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker announced that he wants the state’s legislature […]
