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Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger has announced the creation of the new Columbia Climate School, the first new school at the university in 25 years. The school will focus on research initiatives targeted toward generating scholarship and pedagogical momentum around the issue of... View full entry
Local Laws 92 and 94, which went into effect on November 15, 2019, require all new buildings and major roof alterations to be capped with a green roof, solar panels, or some combination of the two.
If successful, the new policies could transform New York’s skyline.
— Urban Omnibus
In their publication Urban Omnibus, The Architectural League of New York asked experts from the Green Roof Researchers Alliance to elaborate on the implications of NYC's ambitious decarbonization legislation, the Climate Mobilization Act, which — since November 2019 — requires all new... View full entry
The Indonesian government is involving three international consulting firms in developing the masterplan of the country’s new capital city, which is to be located in East Kalimantan.
[...] American engineering company AECOM, consulting firm McKinsey & Company and Japanese architectural and engineering firm Nikken Sekkei would design the city, which is to feature the latest technology and be environmentally friendly at the same time.
— The Jakarta Post
In August 2019, Indonesian President Joko Widodo had announced the selection of a 450,000-acre site in East Kalimantan province on Borneo Island where the nation's new capital would be relocated to. Jakarta, the current capital on Java Island, is traffic-choked, increasingly prone to floods, and... View full entry
The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University have announced the winning entries of the 2020 Course Development Prize in Architecture, Climate Change, and Society. The... View full entry
Perhaps the biggest risk is that the appeal of natural-sounding solutions can delude us into thinking we’re taking more meaningful action than we really are. It “invites people to view tree planting as a substitute” for the sweeping changes required to prevent greenhouse-gas emissions from reaching the atmosphere in the first place, says Jane Flegal, a member of the adjunct faculty at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society. — MIT Technology Review
James Temple, writing in the MIT Technology Review outlines the argument against viewing tree-planting as a climate crisis silver bullet. While planting trees might seem like a quick and easy way of helping to abate the climate crisis, Temple explains, increasingly, researchers are finding that... View full entry
The government of France is set to require that all new public buildings must be made at least 50% from wood or other sustainable materials from 2022 as it pushes for sustainable urban development.
The local government in Paris had already pledged a greater use of natural materials such as wood, straw and hemp, and any buildings higher than eight storeys built for the 2024 Paris Olympics must be made entirely of timber.
— Global Construction Review
As part of President Emmanuel Macron's climate action plan, a new measure announced by the country's Minister for Towns and Housing Julien Denormandie requires all new public buildings financed by the French State to contain at least 50% wood or other organic material, such as straw or hemp, by... View full entry
Google Arts & Culture has launched a new online initiative calling attention to five Unesco World Heritage sites under threat from climate change. The Heritage on the Edge series reveals how rising sea levels, coastal erosion and extreme weather patterns are endangering landmarks across the world [...]. — The Art Newspaper
The five threatened Unesco World Heritage sites featured in the online Heritage on the Edge exhibit are Easter Island's iconic moai statues of Rapa Nui; the Old and New Towns of Scotland's capital Edinburgh; the flood-prone mosque city of Bagerhat in Bangladesh; Tanzania's port city of Kilwa... View full entry
In 2018, 60 workers died due to temperature extremes, according to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data on workplace fatalities.
Though the climate crisis is creating conditions where workers are facing hotter temperatures on a more frequent basis, there are no federal safety protections for workers in extreme temperatures, and only three states, California, Washington and Minnesota, have heat stress workplace protection standards.
— The Guardian
The Guardian's Michael Sainato takes a look at the increasingly dangerous nature of outdoor work as climate change makes extreme heat a greater danger for people who labor outside. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 783 workers in the United States died and more than... View full entry
The US has become terrible at building big things, and negligent in even maintaining our existing infrastructure. [...]
That all bodes terribly for our ability to grapple with the coming dangers of climate change, because it is fundamentally an infrastructure problem.
— MIT Technology Review
MIT Technology Review senior editor, James Temple, penned an urgent plea for a renewed, but sustainable, American public works boom that could significantly speed up the painfully slow infrastructure planning process in the face of rapidly changing climate conditions. "To prepare for the climate... View full entry
It is unlawful for governments to return people to countries where their lives might be threatened by the climate crisis, a landmark ruling by the United Nations human rights committee has found.
The judgment – which is the first of its kind – represents a legal “tipping point” and a moment that “opens the doorway” to future protection claims for people whose lives and wellbeing have been threatened due to global heating, experts say.
— The Guardian
The Guardian reports that the United Nations human rights committee has issued a landmark ruling that could establish a precedent for granting asylum rights to people displaced by climate change. The non legally-binding ruling is poised to inform how the global community handles up what could... View full entry
The massive brushfires in Australia have damaged a large portion of the country's landscape. As of today, according to BBC News, "more than 100 fires are still burning in the states of New South Wales and Victoria." Many have lost their homes and family members in addition to the amount of... View full entry
Now that 2020 is here, many are looking to the new year with optimism and initiative to face the world's pressing issue of climate change. Amid the constant reminders of the globe's current climate crisis, a December editorial piece and report from Nature.com elicits a reason to reflect... View full entry
Canberra has experienced its worst air quality on record, as bushfire smoke became trapped by atmospheric conditions and residents were told to stay indoors and brace for more smog in the coming days.
The ACT’s acting chief health officer, Dr Paul Dugdale, said the smoke was the worst since the 2003 bushfires and was “certainly the worst” since air quality monitoring started in the city 15 years ago.
— The Guardian
According to The Guardian’s reporting, Air Quality Index (AQI) readings in Canberra city reached 3,463 on Wednesday afternoon, with readings above 200 considered to be hazardous. According to reports, the fires have burned at least 14.6 million acres around the country so far with... View full entry
[...] a team of Canadian science and engineering graduates is pitching a dream to plant a billion trees by 2028 using drones. The project is dubbed Flash Forest and combines the use of drones with specially-designed pods and an accelerated seed germination process. According to Flash Forest, its technology can plant trees 10 times faster than a single worker and at a cost that is 80 percent cheaper than traditional tree planting methods. — New Atlas
On their Kickstarter page, the team behind the Toronto-based Flash Forest project explains what happens before and after heavy-lift drones pneumatically fire their custom-designed seed pods into the ground: "Before we plant our pods, we pre-germinate the seeds inside using our own 'secret sauce.'... View full entry
As scientists continue to advocate for further development of [geoengineering] technologies, the field’s demographics are drawing more scrutiny. Some researchers argue the lack of diversity affects both which geoengineering projects get discussed [...] and how their risks get calculated. — Wired
In a recent article, Wired writer Sarah Sax dives into the troubling demographics of the White male-dominated geoengineering field, a largely theoretical research program with the potential for global impacts, both anticipated and unforeseen. Explaining how the monocultural makeup of the... View full entry
