Forum: Science and Innovation for Sustainable Development

The Forum is an excellent resource for information on current research being done by people with specific technical and methodological skills. It is a clearinghouse of published work from international researchers, scientists, engineers, and social scientists working in the fields that related to issues of sustainability ranging from water and sanitation to agriculture to urbanism.

"The Forum on Science and Innovation for Sustainable Development is an attempt to outline the burgeoning field. Rather than looking broadly at sustainability, the Forum focuses on the way in which science and innovation can be conducted and applied to meet human needs while preserving the life support systems of the planet. It highlights people and programs that are studying nature-society interactions and applying the resulting knowledge to create a sustainability transition around the world."

NY Times Environment Section Online

The Times Science section has a new Environment subsections that is a clearinghouse for a number of different ecology and sustainability articles.

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/science/earth/index.html

Also, be sure to take a look at their blog in our links section.

The World Technology podcast

PRI and the BBC's regular radio program, The World regularly features a technology report. Many of these reports deal with sustainability, new technologies, and green issues. Their technology podcast conveniently packages them all in short audio programs which are all available for download at their website.

Some highlights below:

May 13, 2007
Who needs a car that goes over 25 mph anyhow? The all-electric car is back! What's so great about biofuels? Oil issues in Iraq an Russia. Checking in with the Iraqi blogger Riverbend. And two stories about HIV in Mexico and South Africa. Download mp3

May 4, 2007
The UN’s panel on climate change issues their third report this year: This one looks at what role technology can play. What about ocean sequestration to remove carbon from the air? Will it work? How Germans are slashing energy use. Biofuels in Denmark. A discussion about design concepts to help the other 90 percent. And, the world is moving too fast! (It’s scientifically proven.) Download mp3

April 6, 2007
A new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change looks at the impacts of global warming. This podcast explores how climate change is affecting our world: from Africa, to South America, to Europe. And what global warming could mean in your neck of the woods. Download mp3

February 23, 2007
The power of the ocean: Wave Energy takes off in Portugal. A high-tech solution to, sadly, abandoned babies in Italy. Work from home? Ever get lonely? No longer the case in France. And cars are catching on in Vietnam. Download mp3

January 26, 2007
Gas hydrates... hot new fuel source or environmental menace? A blanket of pollution covers a village in rural China. And the role of immigration in American hi-tech startups. Plus the return of The Plastic People of the Universe. Download mp3

Circle of Blue

This past week's edition of On the Media, the weekly WNYC program on media issues featured a segment on Circle of Blue, a coalition of journalists who donate their time and resources to produce news stories about water issues, drought, and desertification. It's an extraordinary group doing important and fascinating work that calls attention to stories about the water crisis.

The segment is available on their website: http://www.circleofblue.org/

Listening to the segment, I was reminded of the potential of the media to bring visibility to a set of issues and raise their level of prominence in the culture. The notion of constructing the conditions of visibility is certainly something that all the projects in the studio have the potential for as well. Many of you are dealing with fairly fluid and ephemeral forces and effects and more than a few of you are dealing with the movement of an edge or other aspects of a crisis front that may benefit from the responsive potentials of architecture as well as architecture's capacity for institutionalization, for marking position and establishing new datums.

The site also provides a rich history of journalism and journalists bringing visbility to drought issues going back to Dorothea Lang and the dust bowl and beyond. This is an excellent resource especially for those interested in water issues, but really for all you.

Times Roundup - Something for Everyone

Quite the big news day. Below, a number of interesting articles from today's New York Times


From the Front Page, a biggie:

"Carbon Calculus" A proposal in Congress to put a price tag on greenhouse-gas emissions could overturn the economics of energy Article Here.

Also Inside:

Salt Lake city finds that sound environmental policy has emerged as a central organizing principle of the city's economic growth. Article Here.

On Staten Island, a boggy green break in one of the city's most industrialized stretches of waterfront is being preserved. Article Here.

For decades, Japan pursued economic development at all costs, but in an effort to protect the environment it is aiming to reverse destruction along the Kushiro River. Article Here.

Mum's the Word: We Found a Greener Gas. What's greener than HFCs for refrigeration? Carbon dioxide. Enter a public relations problem. Article Here.

The United States is the fastest-growing market in the world for wind power. Despite a patchwork of laws and regulations, many European energy companies would like to plant their windmills here. Article Here.

Fiji Water plans to become carbon negative -- that is, to more than make up for the greenhouse gases released in the creation, transportation and sales of its product. Article Here.