You are here

Epoch B

Primary tabs

The mission of the Epoch B Working Group is to identify and implement solutions to achieving resilience and sustainability in human populations on earth.

Group description: 
The Epoch B working group focuses on solutions to the global challenges to Earth's sustainability.
Group roles and permissions: 
Use default roles and permissions
Group visibility: 
Public - accessible to all site users

Members

admin Albert Gomez

Email address for group

Rising Sea Levels Could Submerge Substantial Parts of 1,700 U.S. Cities

      

This may soon be what a day in the park looks like. Reuters/Jitendra Prakash

theatlanticcities.com - by Roberto A. Ferdman - July 30, 2013

Sea levels, as we know, are incredibly sensitive to rises in global temperatures. A study released earlier this month revealed that the increase of a mere degree celsius could lead global sea levels to rise by as much as two meters. But according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the implications are especially grim for the US. At the current rate of carbon emissions, over 1,700 cities, including New York, Boston and Miami, will be “locked in” by greenhouse gas emissions by this century’s end.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Country / Region Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

Millennium Development Goals are Within Reach, but Stronger Efforts Needed – UN Report

un.org

The Millennium Development Goals Report - 2013
(64 page .PDF report)

1 July 2013 – Thirteen years after the world set the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), countries have made big strides to meet the eight anti-poverty targets by their 2015 deadline, says a United Nations report released today, which stresses that the unmet goals are still within reach, but nations need to step up their efforts to achieve them.

“In more than a decade of experience in working towards the MDGs, we have learned that focused global development efforts can make a difference,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says in the report's foreword, in which he urges for accelerated action to close development gaps.

“Now is the time to step up our efforts to build a more just, secure and sustainable future for all.”

Country / Region Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

Solar Ship Receives Grant to Build Emissions-Free Airship to Deliver Supplies to Disaster Areas

SOLAR SHIP

inhabitat.com - by Kristine Lofgren - January 17th, 2013

Submitted by Samuel Bendett

In 2011 we wrote about Solar Ship, a helium zero-emissions cargo plane that is capable of delivering much-needed goods to people in remote areas where vehicles simply cannot reach. Today, Solar Ship is now one step closer to reality after receiving a grant to build a next-generation airship that could fly critical supplies to First Nation communities in North America. In order to realize their goal, they are turning to crowd funding to raise much-needed additional financial support.

Country / Region Tags: 
General Topic Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

UN Launches Sustainable Development Network to Help Find Solutions to Global Problems

 

 

 UN News Centre

 

Sustainable development is about people. Photo: UNDP/Zak Mulligan

9 August 2012 – United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today launched a new independent global network of research centres, universities and technical institutions to help find solutions for some of the world’s most pressing environmental, social and economic problems.

The Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) will work with stakeholders including business, civil society, UN agencies and other international organizations to identify and share the best pathways to achieve sustainable development, according to a UN news release.

Country / Region Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

Wastewater Key to Addressing Growing Global Water Shortage

Wastewater reclamation plant in Lansing, KS // Source: lansing.ks.us

submitted by Samuel Bendett

Homeland Security News Wire - August 10, 2012

Parched cities and regions across the globe are using sewage effluent and other wastewater in creative ways to augment drinking water, but four billion people still do not have adequate supplies, and that number will rise in coming decades

Wildlife, rivers, and ecosystems are also being decimated by the ceaseless quest for new water and disposal of waste. Changing human behavior and redoubling use of alternatives are critical to breaking that cycle.

Those are the conclusions of a sweeping review in a special 10 August issue of the journal Science.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Country / Region Tags: 
General Topic Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

Water Sustainability Flows Through Complex Human-Nature Interactions

submitted by Samuel Bendett

Homeland Security News Wire - August 10, 2012

The fate of water in China mirrors problems across the world: water is fouled, pushed far from its natural origins, squandered, and exploited; China’s crisis is daunting, though not unique: two-thirds of China’s 669 cities have water shortages, more than 40 percent of its rivers are severely polluted, 80 percent of its lakes suffer from eutrophication — an over abundance of nutrients — and about 300 million rural residents lack access to safe drinking water

In this week’s Science journal, Jianguo “Jack” Liu, director of Michigan State University’s Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, and doctoral student Wu Yang look at lessons learned in China and management strategies that hold solutions for China — and across the world.

Country / Region Tags: 
General Topic Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

Looking Back on the Limits of Growth

      

Chart Sources: Meadows, D.H., Meadows, D.L., Randers, J. and Behrens III, W.W. (1972) /  Linda Eckstein

by Mark Strauss - Smithsonian Magazine - April 2012

Recent research supports the conclusions of a controversial environmental study released 40 years ago: The world is on track for disaster. So says Australian physicist Graham Turner, who revisited perhaps the most groundbreaking academic work of the 1970s,The Limits to Growth.

Written by MIT researchers for an international think tank, the Club of Rome, the study used computers to model several possible future scenarios. The business-as-usual scenario estimated that if human beings continued to consume more than nature was capable of providing, global economic collapse and precipitous population decline could occur by 2030.

(GO TO THE SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE ARTICLE)

Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update

The Club of Rome

Country / Region Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

UN Documents Propose Mandatory Sustainability Reporting

submitted by Albert Gomez

environmentalleader.com - January 31, 2012

Two influential documents – the Rio+20 negotiating text and the recommendations of the U.N. secretary general’s High Level Panel on Global Sustainability – both propose tighter sustainability reporting requirements for businesses, according to Chatham House fellow Paul Hohnen, writing in the Guardian.

In “Resilient People, Resilient Planet – A Future Worth Choosing,” published yesterday, the U.N. panel said one idea to consider is mandatory reporting by companies with market caps over $100 million. The paper also said that business groups should work with governments and international agencies to come up with a framework covering sustainable development reporting.

Country / Region Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

Jeremy Rifkin: The Third Industrial Revolution: Toward a New Economic Paradigm

 

Our industrial civilization is at a crossroads. Oil and the other fossil fuel energies that make up the industrial way of life are sunsetting, and the technologies made from and propelled by these energies are antiquated. The entire industrial infrastructure built off of fossil fuels is aging and in disrepair. The result is that unemployment is rising to dangerous levels all over the world. Governments, businesses and consumers are awash in debt and living standards are plummeting everywhere. A record one billion human beings--nearly one seventh of the human race--face hunger and starvation.

Green City that has a Brain

An eco-city in Portugal that its makers are aiming to build by 2015 takes its cues from the nervous system IF TODAY'S cities were living things, they would be monsters, guilty of guzzling 75 per cent of the world's natural resources consumed each year. Now a more benign urban creature is set to emerge. The planned city of PlanIT Valley, on the outskirts of Paredes in northern Portugal (see map), is aiming to be an environmentally sustainable city. And, just like an organism, it will have a brain: a central computer that regulates everything from its water use to energy consumption. The central computer of the city will act like a brain, regulating water use and energy consumption Various eco-cities are in the pipeline, but this could be the first to be fully built - by 2015 - and could open its doors as early as next year. While Masdar City in Abu Dhabi welcomed its first inhabitants this month, it will not be completed until at least 2020. And the development of Dongtan near Shanghai in China has not even got off the ground yet, following financial and political difficulties. Like other sustainable cities, PlanIT Valley will treat its own water and tap renewable energy. Buildings will also have plant-covered roofs, which will reduce local temperature through evapotranspiration, as well as absorbing rainwater and pollutants.

Pages

howdy folks