Barry Benjamin Web site

BY Jim Harding

A workshop on “Saskatchewan Oil Impacts” was held in Regina January 24-25, 2014. It was organized by oil industry researchers Emily Eaton, geography professor from Regina and political science professor Angela Carter from Waterloo. It was attended by over 50 people from nearly twenty organizations across the province. Those attending ranged from indigenous and naturalist to surface rights and ecumenical groups.

The workshop began with a presentation “From the Front Lines of Fracktivism” by Elaine and Dan Thomas. The Thomas’s are from Cochrane, Alberta, an area under siege from fracking. Their rural retirement home west of Calgary is surrounded by toxic flaring from fracked wells. Retired from the industry, Dan spoke of the industry’s use of “speed, stealth and secrecy” to accomplish its goals. The Thomas’s described how they have been largely powerless to deal with the assault by the oil industry while it has government processes…

It is always a very nice feeling when you find thoughts similar to yours in an influential publication. Once upon a time, some 1 1/2 years ago, I published here a text entitled Stop Debating Growth and Focus on What Is Important (yeah, I admit that titles are not quite a strength of mine). Today I read a paper by Jeroen van den Bergh, published two years ago in the Ecological Economics journal, entitled Environment versus growth — A criticism of “degrowth” and a plea for “a-growth”. To my pleasure, his credo is very similar to what I wanted to emphasize in the Stop Debating text.

Conservation – a term that is heavily used nowadays in relation to encouraging people to reduce their water usage, energy usage, etc. Conservation is important because the population is currently growing faster than our resources can handle. For example, the City of Vancouver is placing a heavier emphasis on enforcing the lawn water restrictions in the summer. Approaches such as these are in place to change people’s habits to contribute to a greener, more sustainable economy.

Enter Neurio. Neurio is a technology product created and developed by Vancouver-based company Energy Aware, which was founded by Sauder’s own Janice Cheam. In short, the basis of Neurio is to monitor your home’s energy usage, alert you about energy changes, and provide an analysis 0n your energy usage. All this is done with the three components of Neurio: Neurio Sensor, Neurio Cloud, and Wattson. The Neurio sensor is a device that…

Sunday the 2nd February is World Wetlands Day which commemorates the signing of a world-wide convention to protect wetlands. The Ramsar Convention was signed in 1971, in Iran, on the shores of the Caspian Sea. This day aims to raise awareness on the importance of wetlands.

Wetlands are one of the most biological diverse ecosystems but are also one of the most threatened ecosystems in the world.

There are a number of wetlands in and around Cape Town, however urban development has changed many of them. Many small wetlands have been drained or filled in, while others have become permanent lakes because they receive large volumes of water from storm-water drains, e.g. Zeekoevlei and Princessvlei. Wetlands are threatened by nearby developments, pollution, fertilisers, sewerage, stormwater run off and livestock manure. Read more.

Why are wetlands important?
• Wetlands improve the quality of water – they act like a natural…

Palm Beach State College’s Institute for Energy and Environmental Sustainability (IEES) hosted the third annual Florida Colleges Energy Education Forum on Jan. 31 at the Palm Beach Gardens campus.

K-12 and college-level teachers met with representatives from renewable energy companies, the Energy and Materials Center at The Scripps Research Institute, South Florida Water Management District, the Southeast National Marine Renewable Energy Center and the Florida Department of Education. The daylong event featured presentations and workshops on biofuel, wind, ocean and solar energy—all with the real potential to make Florida a leading force in renewable energy production, requiring a skilled workforce.

In the photo, Amy Patterson, Florida Power & Light electric vehicle coordinator, shows one of 55 Ford F-150 trucks converted to a plug-in hybrid, part of FPL’s “green fleet” that will include 200 hybrid bucket trucks by the end of the year. Looking under the hood as…

via Transparent, flexible, organic, abundant materials, and cheap solar cells to become widespread – FUTURISTECH INFO.

Transparent, flexible, organic, abundant materials, and cheap solar cells to become widespread 01/27/2014 The dwindling resources for conventional energy sources make renewable energy an exciting and increasingly important avenue of research. However, even seemingly new and green forms of energy production, like silicon-based solar cells, are not as cost effective as they could be.  An OIST research team led by Yabing Qi is investigating solar cells based on organic materials that have electrodes both flexible and transparent, enabling the fabrication of these solar cells at a low cost. In a recent paper published in the journal Organic Electronics, Qi and his research group characterized the electrodes made with new materials, including plastic, conductive material and zinc oxide. They also successfully identified methods by which to clean the electrodes to restore their conductivity and work…