Using open source to track trees in the City

OSGeo is creating many new and old open source tools for geospatial purposes. There are tools for both web-based and desktop mapping. Here is one project - Urban Forest - that has used several OSGeo tools:





"...the project team has created an Urban Forest Map, which digitally pinpoints the location of each tree, maintainstree data in a consistent database, and offers web access to the tree data – key for maintenance and planting efforts. The community can get involved by posting photos and stories about their own trees that they plant and map online. With the launch of this collaborative effort and the support of the Mayor's Office, a critical step has been taken to move San Francisco's urban greening efforts forward...

One of the OSGeo tools from Autodesk is called MapGuide Open Source

Extra, extra! Read all about it.

This is a nifty thing to visualize (RSS and atom feeds). Here I use it on my own feed:



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IT investment getting greener

At least in the US for the moment, where investment agencies are moving more towards clean environment technologies.The IT companies in Silicon Valley have started to employ people and are also leaning more towards juxtapositions of IT and green technology.

Two interiews with Fritjof Capra on Transition Culture

The first part is on Relocalisation and here Capra critizes the the original "sustainability" concept for focusing too much on individual moral persuasion mainly and leaving out the important issue of how to achieve sustainable development. Capras own simplest example is to mimic ecosystems which support life, recycle, uses solar energy and thus are adaptive and sustainable. This is a wonderful approach and it makes the issue more approachable for humans and also is a good incentive for how to go about with human communities. So I really think you should read this short interview in full. Aside on relocalisation theme : There is still an unclear picture on
costs and benefits. See for example the Dec 9 2006 issue of theThe Economist "Why ethical food harms the planet". (premium content). But maybe it is relevant to add an "may" to the title of the Econimist article!

Peak Oil and climate change is the second part of the interview and it recaps some things, but in the context of the opportunities served to mankind with the current climate change. If you need to get understand more on peak oil theory, check wikipedia, but the emphasis here is on "climate change", so don't get lost in debates about peak oil.

Need startup money?

I was not aware of Ceres, until I read the Mindy Lubbers' excellent coverage of Davos on WorldChanging. Here is a quote from their investment part :



"Ceres works with investors worldwide to improve corporate and public policies on climate change and
other environmental, social, and corporate governance issues. As part of this mission, Ceres
launched and coordinates the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), an alliance of leading U.S.
institutional investors that collectively manage over $1.3 trillion in assets"



I will look closer at this and return later. They claim to be global in scope, but from the list of prominent "Ceres companies" there is mainly the large US corporate conglomerates that you'd expect. But there are also coalition members of interest.

See for yourself

This is a extremely user-friendly climate simulation software that is available for download and it also comes with many predefined environmental scenarios:

"The EdGCM Project develops and distributes a research-quality global climate model (GCM) with a user-friendly interface that runs on desktop computers. Anyone can explore the subject of climate change using the same methods and tools that scientists employ. The design of the software allows students to learn and experience the full scientific process including: designing experiments, setting up and running computer simulations, post-processing output, using scientific visualization to display results, and creating scientific reports ready for publishing to the web..."

It has been developed by EdgCM cooperative project at Columbia University.

Zooming out in time to understand climate change

I listened to this talk by the mathematical physicist John Baez last night and I must say his approach impressed me very much. The talk took place at the Long Now Foundation some weeks ago. From a summary of the talk by Stewart Brand (founder of Long Now):

"...The graphs we see these days, John Baez began, all look vertical --- carbon burning shooting up, CO₂ in the air shooting up, global temperature shooting up, and population still shooting up. How can we understand what really going on? "It's like trying to understand geology while you're hanging by your fingernails on a cliff, scared to death. You think all geology is vertical..."

After that John Baez starts to zoom out in time and sheds light on the implications of too speedy temperature change for Earth's species. His talk also has links to relevant material and can be used as a reference for global warming.

It would be great to see a followup of global warming and global dimming and what is known on how they interact. A good source for understanding global dimming is the aerosol postings on the excellent RealClimate blog. See especially this post by the researcher Beate Lipert.

Using semantic web to build environmental application

Explore our planet is a nifty site. It is utilizing the RDF-based Geo-names which anyone can use (creative commons licence). Geo-names is a fabulous semantic web data-set and Explore our planet is one open way of exploring this to put attention on emerging environental issues by layering them on top of Google maps (for now).

It provides REST web access. It is good for developing web applications that require access to GIS data, geocode and similar functionality as ArcGIS.

What can we do - make wedges

I browsed in the september 2006 issue of Scientific american and got my eyes on article called "a plan to keep carbon in check" by Solow and Pacalah. The present a pragmatic way of dealing with GHG and without choking economic global growth. they have developed a concept called "stabilisation wedge" which makes it more tractable to build emission reduction strategies and stabilize it by 2050.

The other interesting thing with their approach is the fact that it spreads the risk by having a broad spectrum portfolio which is important in order to achieve long-term sustainability (ie not betting everything on nuclear energy or carbon sequestration).

The group at Princeton Environment Institute, focus on Carbon Mitigation and the Wedge concept is described in detail on their site. They also give fifteen examples of wedges that can be used now. Their material is available in several forms, games, interactive presentations and so on. How would an emission reduction strategy look for your country ?

What can I do ?

There is a new book coming out soon from Worldchanging.com which looks promising. It covers
the following things (list cited directly from their site):

"You (which presents introductory materials and covers basic approaches for changing our thinking and designing our lives to be more worldchanging);

Stuff (which covers topics like green design, biomimicry, sustainable food, clothing, trade and technology);

Shelter (covering topics like green building and landscaping, clean energy, water, disaster relief and humanitarian design);

Cities (topics like smart growth, sustainable communities, transportation, greening infrastructure, product-service systems, leapfrogging and megacity challenges);

Communities (topics like education, women's rights, public health, holistic approaches to community development, South-South science, social entrepreneurship and micro-lending, and philanthropy);

Business (topics like socially responsible investment, worldchanging start-ups, ecological economics, corporate social responsibility and green business);

Politics (topics like networked politics, new media, transparency, human rights, non-violent revolution and peacemaking);

Planet (the big picture -- everything from placing oneself in a bioregion to climate foresight to environmental history to green space exploration)."

I am actually looking forward to reading this. Fritiof Capra has been arguing for this for a long time and has actually done a lot of projects at his ecoliteracy center. I do not know if he is a contributor to this book though. If you haven't read anything by Capra you should (but feel free to skip "The Tao of Physics"). His actual message becomes more prevalent from "The Turning Point" and onwards.

Besides that I think books by Vaclav Smil are good and as a start you might consider "Energy" published by oneworld. It is consise and to the point and really lives up to being a beginners guide to Energy. After that you might tackle his more ambitious books. For a balanced but highly debated book there is "The Sceptical Environmentalist" by social scientist (and Greenpeace member) Björn Lomborg. The debate can be read in full at the previous link but mainly it has been scientists that has pointed out flaws in but his method and numbers.

Chicago Climate Exchange

The worlds first greenhouse gas exchange - trading the major six gases:

Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX): "Our mission is to provide our members from the private and public sectors with cost-effective methods for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by building and operating a market-based emission reduction and trading program that is flexible, has low transaction costs, is environmentally rigorous and rewards environmental innovation."

They have also been very proactive in setting up a european counterpart and it runs as
some kind of sister project to CCX.

The Heartland Institute - Auctioning Pollution Rights - by Ted Gayer

The Heartland Institute - Auctioning Pollution Rights - by Ted Gayer:

A brief explanation of applications of market mechanisms to pollution rights:

"In the past 15 years, cap-and trade programs have become the preferred means of regulating air pollutants. A cap-and-trade program establishes the annual number of allowable emission permits (the 'cap'), which is set below the existing emissions level. Each regulated entity must cash in one permit for each unit of air pollution it emits. The cost savings come from allowing firms to trade permits, so that a firm that finds it costly to reduce its marginal unit of pollution can instead purchase a permit from another firm that can reduce a unit of pollution for less cost. Because the overall cap is binding, the result is a reduction of pollution to the target level at costs much lower than the more rigid command-andcontrol regulations"

In practice there has been a full spectrum of implementations on national levels and I think many countries are still a far cry from achieving cost efficiency in the usage and bonafide effects concerning the goals of lowering pollution numbers. But it is anyhow the first econopolitical instrument that has potential to be useful in the long run.

There might be better incentives in other economical instruments, like traditional "stock or in natura" exhanges.

Atlas of the Biosphere

Atlas of the Biosphere: the basic idea is to "gather as much information about the environment as possible, and deliver it to as many people as possible. We are dedicated to bringing environmental information to the widest possible audience."

It seems to give a broad survey of different important cycles like carbon, oxygen, and maps of land-use, human impact and more. I do not know right now if it still is maintained.

Taxing bads instead of goods?

This is mentioned in Stieglitz book on the "Roaring Nineties" and is attributed to president Clinton who proposed "a brilliant new idea: Why not start taxing 'bads' - pollution - rather than 'goods' - hard work and savings".

This was indeed turned down by the US energy and automobile companies at the time, and converted into a tiny US gasoline tax increase of a couple of cents.

Concerns and ideas

I have been reading several very good books on the "state of the planet and I think that sofar the best survey comes from Vaclav Smil and his MIT Press book "The Earth's BioSphere". He is very good at maintaing a holistic perspective without loosing details.

I think a popular and pedagogical version should be made mandatory during basic education. I willl maintain this blog for things related to problems concerning the biosphere and feasible solutions like self-government of (open) commons to achieve sustainable solutions (analyzed and researched by Elinor Ostrom).