Up to 20 square miles of virgin desert in New Mexico will soon be home to the nation’s newest town, only with a twist — no one will live there. Developer Pegasus Global Holdings (a communication, technology and defense contractor) and the state of New Mexico have announced plans to create a “mid-sized” smart city that they are calling The Center for Testing, Evaluation and Innovation. Details are vague, but the concept is clear enough: design a town that mirrors real cities in order to test sustainable infrastructure and technologies to see if they would work in the actual built environment without fear of disrupting real communities. Think of it as the green version of Westworld – only if something goes wrong nobody gets hurt.
The Oak Grove School District in San Jose, Calif., is not just bringing renewable energy into the curriculum – they’re using it to power their classrooms. In partnership with Chevron Energy Solutions, the district celebrated the completion of a 1.8 megawatt solar photovoltaic system that will save more than $13 million in energy costs over the project’s lifetime.
This blog post originally appeared in the Canadian edition of the Huffington Post. Get all the newest posts by signing up to Zerofootprint CEO Ron Dembo’s Huffington Post blog RSS feed.
Climate change is one of the most hotly debated issues of our time, both from an economic and a moral viewpoint. And whenever someone makes a case for action from a moral stance, most often they’ll justify it by invoking the future plight of the world and the children that will inherit it. It’s a delicate subject, after all, what’s more important than our children?
This spring, the Toronto Catholic District School Board became our newest school board partner in the Zerofootprint Challenge.
To kick this off, every school in the TCDSB proudly displayed Zerofootprint’s Carbon Cube in their halls, our tool to help kids visualize the size of 10 grams of CO2 in our atmosphere. Students also buzzed about their participation with the help of our snappy Youtube video - check it out below!
Roberta Oswald of the TCDSB Science Department tells us of the building excitement in their schools: “The Zerofootprint Challenge is provoking plenty of interest, especially in our certified Eco-Schools who are looking for an engaging way to reduce their carbon footprint even further. Joining the Challenge is a logical next step.”
We’ve already seen how pay-as-you-throw trash metering can cut landfill waste in half, and we’ve witnessed whole cities make composting mandatory. So there’s little doubt that much, much more can be done by most cities to cut waste, and keep precious resources out of landfill. That’s why an announcement from my hometown that it will completely eliminate waste to landfill within three years is particularly exciting. But is it enough?
We’re becoming increasingly aware of the impact that our actions have on the environment and our quality of life, but sadly while many of our homes and buildings are being built and modernized to be greener, many of our children’s schools continue to waste energy and contain materials that are toxic to kids health. In fact most schools spend more on electricity bills than on books and computers.
The way we teach our kids is…well, stupid. Our overcrowded classrooms with one-size-fits-all solutions teach good students that success and knowledge is the ability to complete tests with little or no relevance in the real world, and leave students who struggle in a spiral of failure that can dictate the limits of their future. It is a system that is good for no onenot teachers, not parents, not students, and definitely not an economy receiving more bored drones than engaged minds.
Khan Academy, the YouTube open-course series, began as verbal contract with a 7th-grade girl. His younger cousin, Nadia, was struggling in math class and had agreed to sit in on remote tutoring sessions. After she skyrocketed a few grade levels in ability, more family and friends wanted in on the action, eventually forcing Khan to record the lectures online.
Students learning in a green environment offered by a mobile classroom or portable buildings will better understand the issues related to ecology. A school fitted with environmentally friendly features such as solar technology for generating electricity or heating water, or a sedum roof with grasses and plants that soak rainwater will teach students how to appreciate their environment. Seeing how eco-friendly technologies are put to use to create a mobile classroom or portable buildings will provide students a way to better understand how the impact of new greener technology can help create a healthier environment.
Action for Nature (AFN), a San Francisco nonprofit that supports youth action for the environment, announced the application opening for its annual Eco-Hero Awards. The competition recognizes youth ages 8 to 16 years old for exceptional environmental activism or projects.
Among last year’s winners was Felix Finkbeiner of Germany, who took the first place prize for inspiring youth to plant more than 1 million trees. The 12 year old said he was inspired by 2004 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Wangari Maathai of Kenya, who first introduced the idea of community-based tree planting in 1976 and grew into more than 40 million trees on community land.
Zerofootprint congratulates the 16,400 students from around the world who have used the iEARN Youth Calculator. Together, you have pledged to reduce your personal carbon emissions by over 10,000 tonnes - a remarkable achievement!
By Andrew Michler
by Angeli Duffin, December 16th, 2011
