Slow Factory: August 2007

Friday, August 31, 2007

Two related stories from Spain

People are allowed to kill us, each other and the place they are going to:

"...And, of course, "El Boom" has continued, with all the familiar consequences.

The Med can expect to receive 230 million visitors this year making it the world's most popular tourist destination.

It is predicted that by 2020 the influx will have risen to 350 million.

Already 22,000 sq km of this once beautiful and productive coastline are covered in asphalt and concrete and the urbanisation is bound to continue.
During a recent visit to the Costa Brava to report for Crossing Continents, I re-read a book by Norman Lewis who is, in my opinion, one of the best travel writers of our time.

In the 1950s, Lewis lived and worked as a fisherman in a small Spanish fishing village.

He was on the Costa Brava as the first wave of tourists arrived and in his book "Voices of the Old Sea", he quotes the reaction of a small-town mayor.

'Although we've come to live off these people, we intensively dislike them. Why? Because we resent what they are doing to us. It's a kind of sickness. Now we suffer from tourists. But it will die out in the end. This is only a passing fad, they'll all go and we'll be back where we were before.'..."

- By Julian Pettifer, BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents

full article

***

.... but if there is some kind of other threat all of the sudden their safety is paramount:

"...The shark, which is said to measure around 1.5m (5ft), was spotted off the coast near Murcia on Wednesday and on Thursday. Its type is not known.

Several beaches have been closed as a result of the sighting..."

- BBC News , "Spanish beach shut as shark seen"

full article

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

What's that you say? You're endangered? Oh, I couldn't hear you...

Pandawash? WWF Netherlands has made a deal with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. The deal is about carbon; this illustration is about something else. Read the press release (with translation help) and let me know what you think...

Thursday, August 23, 2007

UK: Fight to save 'set aside' schemes

The UK government has to make a decision very soon on the future of an arcane farming subsidy called set-aside.

Although it sounds of little interest to the non-farming public, conservationists say it has, accidentally, become a powerful environmental tool - and stopping it could be devastating to some of our rarest wildlife.

full article

Related article: EU proposes scrapping fallow land

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Bicycology Manifesto

To read on click HERE

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Halt all expansion of airports, & ban short-haul flights

"The Plane Stupid! agenda has two other demands: halt all expansion
of airports, and ban short-haul flights."

August 14, 2007
The Independent/UK

We Should All Be At Heathrow Protesting - It is collective pressure on government, not consumer choices, that the world needs now.

by Johann Hari

This week, two thousand people will gather at London’s Heathrow airport with tents and sleeping bags - not to EasyJet to the beach, but to alert their fellow citizens to the Weather of Mass Destruction we are unleashing.

If you need to know why this is necessary, take a look at the world the deniers are so glibly averting their eyes from. The two countries doomed to drown by global warming in my lifetime have already begun to disappear beneath the waves. Almost half of Bangladesh is under water as you read this, following monsoons four times more ferocious than they should be. Ten million people are now homeless in the
region. In the Maldives, a series of massive swell waves stretching to 4.5 metres drowned 68 islands this spring. The residents know the waves are getting bigger every year, and soon they will swallow their homes forever...

full article

Saturday, August 11, 2007

TrashTrain Praha 1/12

This is a concept for an all-electric & human-powered logistics system for Prague... it's called TrashTrain BUT it's much more than that...

... cities all over Europe (well, Western Europe, so far) restrict (not just) delivery vehicles based on their emissions. See plan for London ... Milano will be implementing something similar starting in 2008.

Of course it is certainly not just about emissions! The most recent - and exciting - development in what I call "street de-chaosification" AND emissions-free logistics is in Amsterdam, with City Cargo . See longer video here . In Switzerland electric vehicles have been used for years in the mountains, and there are also cargo trams in Zurich.

For more innovative concepts in urban logistics check out Bestufs .

To continue with this presentation, click here.

TrashTrain Praha 2/12

To continue with this presentation, click here.

TrashTrain Praha 3/12