查看更多>>摘要：Early this decade, Parisian city planners grappling with traffic congestion, air pollution, and other challenges ventured outside the box. They were well aware that traditional transportation remedies such as widened roads and expanded parking typically relieve congestion in the short term but seed even greater longterm crowding while worsening pollution and carbon emissions. So they decided to use bicycles—some 20,000 of them, scattered across the city at metro stops and other convenient locations—to extend the reach of the Paris public transport system and to provide inexpensive. healthy transportation for short trips. Not your father's transit plan, to be sure, but Paris's public bike initiative symbolizes the new respect bicycles are getting in a growing number of municipal governments worldwide.
查看更多>>摘要：Africa might just be positioned to cope best in a resoyree-constrainecl world.illiam Kamkwamba became an African entre-preneurship superstar when international media caught on to his exceptional engineering skills. In 2001, only 14 years old and with limited formal sdhooling, he managed to build a fully functioning windipill to provide his family with electricity, basing the construction on pictures foimd in books at the local library and using mainly scrap metal and wood. The Malawi native later drew international attention as a speaker at the inspiring online TED conferences, which led in turn to a coauthored bestselling book on his life and achievements (The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind). And he's still not coasting: William continues inventing and fundraising for various projects in his home village.
查看更多>>摘要：WorldWatch Senior Researcher Danielle Nierenberg spent two months earlier this year touring several countries in southern Africa in search of farming innovations that are adaptive, sustainable, and ecosystem-friendly. Supported by a major grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, this and related work will culminate in State of the World 2011, a report designed to guide policymakers, foundations, and international donors interested in the most effective agricultural development interventions in various agroecological and socioeconomic settings. The material below is adapted from blog entries Danielle posted during her trip. Updates and more information can be found daily at our "Nourishing the Planet" blog (www.nourishingtheplanet.org).
查看更多>>摘要：Snapshots of efforts around the globe to preserve uniQue ways of thinking and spealiing.Libu Lakhi ignored his parents. He paid no attention to his classmates. None of them understood why the 18-year old student would leave his village to study something as useless as the Tibetan dialect Namuyi Khatho. He knew it would not lead to a well-paying, secure job like his parents wanted for him, but he was drawn to studying the language that he could neither speak, read, nor write. "Why did I want to study Tibetan?" Lakhi recently asked himself. "I wanted to study Tibetan because I am Tibetan."
查看更多>>摘要：Humanity stands at a cross-roads. One path leads to a severely deteriorating climate accompanied by major economic costs, while the other can provide energy services to all that are secure, clean, and sustainable. The positive outcome is within reach—if we act now and adopt policies to unleash the full potential of renewable energy resources that cost-effectively displace fossil fuels. Recent advances in technology and policy will allow renewable energy and energy efficiency to meet most global demand for energy services while reducing carbon dioxide (GOj) emissions in the next two decades. Renewable energy technologies are rapidly scaling up and, in concert with efficiency gains, can achieve far greater emissions reductions than either could independently.
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