Dancing and singing ON the train

Trying doing this is in your Tata or Indian-built Škoda! (Read more here).

The song is "Chaiyya Chaiyya" from the movie Dil Se.

Positive Public Transport in Pop

From 1999, by Luscious Jackson. This video was shot in NYC, their hometown. The singer described herself recently as a city person who always used the subway and her bike. Why can't more bus rides be like this?

Nine years later the singer, Jill Cunniff, continues having fun on public transport.

Greenwash in the Czech Republic

This was featured at my stand for World Carfree Day in Prague, 22 September, 2007.

This is the "partners" webpage from Nadace Partnerství (Czech Environmental Partnership Foundation). The various companies are listed... Skanska as a builder of highways, Ceskomorasky Cement as a provider of materials for highways, Toyota etc. doing their nonsense.

More materials from the stand coming soon...

UK 'exporting emissions' to China

BBC: The UK's increasing dependence on Chinese goods is contributing to a rise in carbon emissions, a report suggests.

The New Economic Foundation (Nef) says such reliance is adding to CO2 levels because China's factories produce more CO2 per item than British ones.

The report also says many similar goods are both imported and exported, adding needlessly to CO2 output in transport.

Full story.

Toronto: World Record Walk + Anti-Car and Out of Balance

In this video, Toronto's poet laureate describes how walking (and smiles) create community, as Toronto participated in a World Record Walk.

***

It's time for Toronto to give less priority to cars and more to other modes of transport, a senior Toronto official bluntly told the city's works committee yesterday.

"Maybe a balance is no longer appropriate," said John Mende, Toronto's director of transportation management...

... "I think it's time now to tip the scales in favour of the other modes of transportation, and perhaps create an imbalance in favour of those other modes," he said.

Read full story.

Pollution in Paris... from bicycles

"... hundreds of electric billboards have sprung up all over town. These are part of the deal in which the council provides extensive use of advertising space to an urban display company in payment for its provision of the Vélib’ service.

An anti-advertising group yesterday announced a mass outing to attack the billboards on Friday night [28 September]. The Déboulonneurs organisation, which has made a splash with guerrilla-style raids on Métro station posters, said: “This is visual pollution of the city . . . and energy pollution because each billboard consumes as much electricity as the average household.”

from TimesOnline story on Vélib’

Read press release from Collectif des déboulonneurs and summary of action and response (both in French) . Photos of action.

Prague's new parking zones - Residents use loophole to register cars in their childrens' names

The City Hall's plans to introduce parking cards in the city centre as of October 1st has triggered an unexpected side-effect. Prague may soon top the world ladder in the number of young children who own luxury vehicles. People who own two or more cars have found a loophole in the new regulation which says that every citizen of Prague [in central districts one, two, three, five and seven] - including newborns and centenarians - has a right to a parking pass for the price of seven hundred crowns a month [PER YEAR, actually... about USD 35]. The price of a pass jumps steeply for a second or third car to 7 thousand and 14 thousand crowns respectively. News of how to get around the regulation spread like wildfire and in recent weeks the authorities have noted a massive transfer of car ownership to young children. The kids are happy to brag about their new Toyotas* and Volvos but the city hall is not so happy [I am sure some politicians predicted this]. However it seems that there is little it can do legally and it has decided to bide its time and see how things develop. - Radio Praha

Original story

Very related bad news

... don't miss the story at the first link which talks about fake policemen and women being stolen...

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GREENWASH ALERT NO: 1 * Toyota is a "partner" of the Czech Environmental Partnership Foundation (Nadace Partnerství/NP), arguably the most important member of the Environmental Partnership for Sustainable Development, a member of the European Greenways Association (EGWA), which is itself a new member of World Carfree Network. A representative of NP is the treasurer of EGWA. Other partners include Škoda Auto, Peugeot and Citroen, plus the investment group Penta, which owns a company that produces weapons sub-systems used by the U.S. Navy in Afghanistan and Iraq. Penta is also considering developing a second international airport in Prague which is likely to target lowfare airlines.

Norway: Cars neither "green" nor "clean"

OSLO (Reuters) - No car can be "green," "clean" or "environmentally friendly," according to some of the world's strictest advertising guidelines set to enter into force in Norway next month.

"Cars cannot do anything good for the environment except less damage than others," Bente Oeverli, a senior official at the office of the state-run Consumer Ombudsman, told Reuters on Thursday.

Full story

Russian mayor bans excuse making

The mayor of a city in western Russia has issued a list of excuses that he will not tolerate from civil servants.

Alexander Kuzmin, mayor of Megion in western Siberia, said that officials must stop using phrases such as "I don't know" and "it's lunch time".

Mr Kuzmin said city officials should help improve people's lives and solve their problems, not make excuses.

The mayor's press office said the list consists of 27 forbidden phrases, including "there's no money".

BANNED PHRASES INCLUDE:
What am I supposed to do?
I'm not dealing with this.
We're having lunch.
The working day is over.
Somebody else has the documents.
I think I was off sick at the time.

Mr Kuzmin warned in a statement that "the use of these expressions by city administration officials while speaking to the head of the city will speed their departure."

He said he was taking action as he was tired of civil servants telling him that problems were impossible to solve, rather than offering practical solutions.
From BBC World Service

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

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...

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

Bicycology Manifesto

To read on click HERE

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   

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 .

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TrashTrain Praha 2/12

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TrashTrain Praha 3/12

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TrashTrain Praha 4/12

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TrashTrain Praha 5/12

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TrashTrain Praha 6/12

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