Earlier this year, we were thinking about possible vacation destinations, and cruising down the Mediterranean sounded like a cool idea.  One of my coworkers raved about a 3 week cruise she took to Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, which compelled me to investigate further.

Just as I was starting to get excited about the prospect of taking a cruise, I came across this article in the NY Times.  Basically, cruise lines are not well policed when it comes to compliance with environmental policies.  For example, did you know:

• Most ships run on bunker fuel, which is the dirtiest and cheapest fuel oil
• A one-week voyage on a large ship is estimated to produce 210,000 gallons of sewage, a million gallons of gray water (runoff from sinks, baths, showers, laundry and galleys), 25,000 gallons of oily bilge water, 11,550 gallons of sewage sludge and more than 130 gallons of hazardous wastes

Until the industry changes its ways and makes significant strides in reducing its carbon footprint, I won’t be taking a cruise anytime soon.

So meat eaters in Australia, there’s a new study out that indicates that if you want to reduce greenhouse gases by grazing livestock, you should switch to eating kangaroos.

Farming kangaroos instead of sheep and cattle in Australia could cut by almost a quarter the greenhouse gases produced by grazing livestock, which account for 11 percent of the nation’s annual emissions, said a new study.

Removing seven million cattle and 36 million sheep by 2020 and replacing them with 175 million kangaroos, to produce the same amount of meat, could lower national greenhouse gases by 3 percent a year, said the University of New South Wales study.  [Source]

Unlikely that this will happen though, don’t you think?  The mindset shift that would be required to start eating kangaroos seems like too big a barrier.

Fortunately Google offers great transit instructions in 50 cities worldwide, including the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, Austria, France, Italy, Poland, Russia, Swizerland and the UK? Just go to Google Transit, and enter your start point and destination!

This link shows the results I get from Google Transit for a trip from my alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley to the Google campus.

You can also get the same transit help on your mobile phone via Google Maps for Mobile (GMM), which is actually a great app that I use all the time. Go to the GMM page to download the app to your phone (works on some phones) or just to learn more. There’s even a video about how it works!

That’s pretty impressive if a 20% reduction can really be had in a mere four years.

Below are just some of the ways our city has taken steps to be more green (not all of these are necessarily related to greenhouse gas emissions):

• SF has the largest City-owned solar installation in the country – a 75 kilowatt solar array atop Moscone Center (convention facility)
• 100% of SF’s taxi fleets are to be converted to hybrid or alternative fuel vehicles by 2011
• SF has a new green building ordinance which imposes strict new green building requirements on newly constructed residential and commercial buildings, and renovations to existing buildings – by 2012, it is expected to reduce CO2 emissions by 60,000 tons
• Local restaurants are now banned from using Polystyrene foam (Styrofoamâ„¢) disposable food service ware
• In March 2007, SF became the first U.S. city to ban plastic shopping bags
• SF currently has a 70 percent recycling rate. The city’s goal is 75 percent by 2010 and zero waste by 2020

But enough about us – tell me how your city stacks up and what is being done to curb global warming in your neck of the woods.

As you’ve likely heard, China has embarked on several measures to improve air quality, such as limiting the use of cars and the closing of dozens of factories.

Apparently, these efforts have had little impact. The Air Pollution Index, or API, (the API measures particulate matter) in Beijing has hovered over 101. To qualify for a “blue sky day,” which is supposedly safely for athletes, the API must be below 101.

As a result, the Chinese are implementing an “Emergency Green Plan”, banning 90% of the 3.3M private cars from the roads, and temporarily closing even more factories.

What do you think? Is it going to work? Or is it too late?

Apparently, Apple’s iphone will offer packaging made of potato starch, and supplied by PaperFoam.  According to PaperFoam’s website, their packaging is carbon friendly, has low CO2 emissions, and 100% recyclable.

The company that I work for offers boxed software, so I often get pulled into meetings to talk about packaging.  It’s been a struggle for us to find an eco-friendly solution (it costs a lot), so I’m totally digging the fact that there are more and more eco-friendly alternatives out there.

Scientists are now looking for the trigger or tipping point which caused this to occur. It’s important since the current global warming trend may have a tipping point as well. For example, with current warming trends, are we near the tipping point at which melting ice will cause an increase in the rate polar ice caps are melting, resulting in huge amounts of greenhouse gases being released in the air? If there is methane and other large amounts of trapped greenhouse gases in the Arctic permafrost and ice caps, reaching this tipping point may cause the planet to warm up by tens of degrees.

I won’t go into the details of what an ugly situation this will be if it happens, but I will tell you this is one heck of a scary thought. Even for those who don’t believe in global warming, it’s like playing Russian Roulette to me. Do you really want to take the “small” chance the chamber you’re betting on isn’t loaded? If you can avoid the risk in the first place, why not I say!

Instead of a 40 hour work week over 5 days, workers are being asked to work 10 hours a day, 4 days a week.

It is estimated that 1000-3000 state buildings will be closed on Fridays, resulting in a reduction of about 20% in energy costs.

What do you guys think?  Good idea?  Bad idea?

Refusing to be outgreened by Honda’s announcement of three new hybrids, Toyota recently confirmed that it will be introducing two new hybrids, in addition to a plug-in version of the Prius and a new third generation Toyota Prius due out next year.

Toyota’s executive vice-president of R&D, Masatami Takimoto, confirmed the new Toyota hybrid will be larger than the Prius. In addition, Toyota’s Lexus line of vehicles will have a new hybrid only model, which is rumored to be Lexus’ new entry level vehicle. Both of these cars are expected to debut in the Detroit Auto Show.

All of this comes on top of Toyota’s announcement late last year that it will be coming out with a Toyota iQ model. It’s Toyota’s attempt to answer red hot Mini Cooper sales and the new SMART car. The iQ concept, seen here in a comparison with the sub-compact Toyota Yaris, will be over 2.5 feet shorter than the Yaris. It’s expected to be powered by a 1-liter engine and will have room to sit four people. I’m not sure if it’s just me, but this car looks tiny! If we still have all those large SUVs on the road, I’m not sure how safe I will feel in one of these.

The hybrid and sub-compact battles will only get more heated as gas prices continue their endless climb upward. It’ll be exciting to see all the innovation and new cars over the next few years. Perhaps this is finally the time we will start seeing a real move towards smaller cars with less power… whenever I go to the gas pump, less (size and power) definitely will mean more (money in my pocket)!

The microeconomic changes needed to increase carbon productivity at the levels required will not occur without the active leadership and collaboration of governments and businesses globally. We need new policies, regulatory frameworks, and institutions focused on four areas: creating market-based incentives to innovate and raise carbon productivity; addressing market failures that prevent abatement opportunities from being captured profitably; resolving issues of allocation and fairness, in particular between the developed and developing worlds and between industry sectors; and accelerating progress to avoid missing critical emissions targets. 

Thanks to Climate Progress for pointing this out.