Carte Blanche on Green Cities

Here.

Keeping an eye on the Joule

I hadn’t checked the website for a while, here are some news items from the site:

All electric from the Financial Mail

Where has all the oil gone?

Featured on Carte Blanche

A few notes

The recently released World Bank report on Africa’s infrastructure, together with commentary.

Guardian’s top 10 green living myths.

An honest appraisal of  BMW’s recent Mini EV trial – useful hard data to direct efforts on the obstacles that need to be overcome.

Renewable energy grid for Europe

Here.

Talk of electric car charging network in South Africa

Is this the first mention? I have never heard any other proposals for SA.

Sperate but related: 10 ev charging players by earth2tech

Tarmac – thinking for tomorrow

Lighter roads need less road lighting. Who would have thought that something as simple as changing the colour of the road surface in road tunnels could have such a dramatic effect? It’s a simple idea, but the best ones always are. Just like low carbon concrete and fi bre reinforced concrete, porous asphalt, ultra durable paving and recycling roads. Each one of these innovative solutions improves environmental performance and reduces programme costs making them more sustainable in every sense of the word. Developing sustainable products that reduce emissions, cut waste and save money, is just one example of how Tarmac is thinking for tomorrow, today.

http://www.tarmac.co.uk/thinkingfortomorrow/

Corruption in Africa: China is not helping

Following my recent post on corruption, here’s more depression from the Times:

While the rest of the world recoiled in horror at recent events in Guinea, where at least 150 pro-democracy supporters were killed and dozens of women publicly raped by government soldiers, China has sensed an opportunity to steal another march on Western competitors in Africa.

Nice. So will Africa ever learn? Or will they just replace the shackles of one set of colonisers with another?

Kaaimans River Bridge

Kaaimans River Bridge

This is ususally photographed with a steam train crossing the bridge but significantly there is none in this photo. The track has been damaged and there are no funds and less political will from Transnet to invest in reopening this section of the line. My hope is that the private sector and enlightened municipalities can take it over and restore this regoinal icon.

Kenya’s Mau Forest – a water crisis

More depressing news from Africa, and the root cause is political mismangement and courting votes and essentially trying to find a quick solution to problems at the expense of the environment. What is quickly being learned is that then environment is not an infinite sink for our problems: there are limits and when they are exceeded it leads to big problems. In this case so big it is affecting other countries outside Kenya and millions of people. The effects are massive as this BBC article attests.

The bad news: the scale of the problem is massive; the good news: the politicians are actually realising this and doing something about it.

A related note but of little consequence: my wife and I were once on the same Kenya Airways flight as the Nobel laureate Professor Wangari Maathai of the famous Green Belt Movment.

Corruption in Africa: when is it going to change?

Three recent news items on corruption leave me with mixed feelings: it is wonderful that the shameful corruption is being exposed and in the case of the Nestle/Mugabe ‘bloodmilk’ scandal, the outcry has caused positive change. For the other two cases Mabey & Johnson (in the construction industry) and BAE arms dealers, while it is great that the murky dealings are being exposed, it is depressing that the Britsh governemnt is as soft on corruption as the African ones. I used to be optimistic that in the new millenium the continent had turned a corner but now I am not so sure: change never seems to arrive. Whats worse is that politicians easily get amnesty (in the case of SA’s arms deals) or shamelessly carry on as normal (pretty much anything to do with Mugabe).

I know corruption is a complex issue: but there is no doubt that it has to be eradicated if Africa is ever to reach its potential. Business and morals cannot be seperated.