China is a huge paradox when it comes to climate change and energy issues. Soon to be the world’s greatest polluter it is also a country whose leaders understand they cannot sustain growth without dealing with energy and environmental issues. This great article from Wired describes an astounding architectural challenge: The design and building of an entirely new city, Dongtan, near Shanghai. The site is the size of Manhattan, the populace will number 500,000 and, because it is a stop for migratory birds, the entire project must be very green, literally.
This is really exciting stuff. And it gets better. When Arup, the UK-based architecture and engineering firm presented their extensive plans they projected that the new city would generate 60% of its energy from renewable sources. They had a staged plan to get to 100% over several years. Their Chinese clients liked the plan but wanted 100% renewable from day one! And that’s what they’re building.

Franke James posted one of her great art blogs about giving up her SUV back in February. Now she wants to remove her interlock driveway which takes up the entire front of her urban home in North York which is a part of the greater Toronto area. No car, why have a paved yard? It turns out that she is required to have a driveway so she wants to use pavers that have gaps you can grow grass in, offering a greener alternative and helping the paved-over city’s water retention issues. In spite of having a self-proclaimed ‘green’ mayor, the city of North York says no.
Somehow I’m guessing Franke will have her way eventually.
We just had a new asphalt drive put in. I like the idea of the green pavers but our drive is steep and hard to get up in the winter so I don’t think they would work for us. Of course we have a half acre of gardens so its a totally different situation.

Go Franke!

Ordinarily I do not plug the media, especially thick glossy magazines, however the current issue of Vanity Fair is a must read for anyone interested in climate change and global warming. Last year they decided to do a major focus on green issues on an annual basis. What they’ve done is create a current report on the state of the world:
- The politics of denial (really frightening)
- The business of water (people in China are paying up to 25% of their income for water)
- Vehicle technology
- The tipping point for the end of the rainforests
And many more very in-depth articles. Despite a stupid photo series dedicated to green ‘celebrities’, the issue is a tour de force look at the green movement and our very real enemies.
I am off to St.John in the US VI and plan to spend some time reading through the mag (along with the new Einstein bio and my boss’s account of his Everest expedition) so blogging will be light for a week or so. No Internet connection and I’m not taking my laptop…bliss.

You might call this an anti-technology post because its about hanging clothes to dry. Today’s Times has a back to the past story from a woman in California who bypassed the rules of her community and put up a clothesline. I remember my grandmother having a line that ran from her second floor open porch down to a pole in the backyard. It was a continuous loop on pulleys so she could hang the laundry from the porch, give the line a pull and add more without leaving the house. Clothesline technology.
The first house my parents had had a t-shaped set of poles set in concrete in the backyard for multiple lines. I also remember a pole-mounted carousel type of thing that was round and rotated.
For a compendium of all things laundry-wise visit laundrylist.org- I couldn’t resist borrowing the image on this post from their site.