Earth Hour A Reasonable Success

Earth Hour Was A Global Success

Published Date: April 6, 2009

This year’s Earth Hour seems to have gone off pretty well, if the early figures are to be taken at face value. An increase in the energy saved as part of the global initiative has been reported, with some individual cities reporting results which represent a doubling of the decrease in energy use. Along with this, some cities which joined in for the first time have reported large savings of electricity which have exceeded expectations. The big headlines appear to be the Philippines, where 647 cities and towns (and an estimated 15 million people) joined in with the initiative to deliver results way beyond what was expected.

Although there has been controversy over the event, with many people and news outlets, among them FOX News, weighing in on the skeptical side of things, a cautious welcome has been given to the results that Earth Hour 2009 has managed to bring about. In The Philippines, while some data is still being ratified, more towns and cities joined in than anywhere else, with Greece coming in second. However, there are other results with importance too – not least in Delhi, India, a first time participant, where the power demand dropped by 1000 MW.

In Canada, Ontario as a province managed a saving of 6% on electricity with Toronto on its own displaying a decrease of 15.1% having posted 8.7% for Earth Hour 2008. Figures like these certainly seem to suggest that Earth Hour is getting a message through to people, and encouraging a more stable use of electricity. The skepticism which continues to ride high centres around the fact that savings on the financial side of the matter have been more or less symbolic, but this misses the point. By showing that it is possible to make large-scale energy savings, Earth Hour may yet be able to drive home the point that our dependency on non-renewable forms of energy is something that can be broken.

A message is getting through to people that if they want to cut their dependency on these forms of energy, such a thing is possible. If people can see that it is not too difficult to live without the constant use of electric lights and non-essential power-driven appliances, then it is something that can be harnessed to allow us to live a cleaner, greener future as a planet. For one thing that has come out of Earth Hour 2009 is the sheer spread of the message.

Canada has always been among the most prominent areas in the vanguard of the green movement, but the continuing advances made by this year’s most compliant countries are telling as well. Countries as distant geographically and as divergent culturally as Canada, Greece and the Philippines, along with the likes of Sweden, Ireland and Vietnam are showing an ability to take the message and run with it, something that gives us all hope for the future. With the positive news still being digested, it is now important that no-one thinks the work is done, as there is a lot still to do to ensure that the non-essential energy usage stays low, and that Earth Hour 2010 is one of the last ones we need.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on April 6, 2009.

Australian Parliament Rejects Emissions Plan

Green Movement In Australia

Published Date: Aug 16, 2009

The green movement in Australia has suffered a blow this week, as the parliamentary vote on tackling global warming saw the opposition win out with 42 votes to the government’s 30. This is seen as a major setback for the movement in Australia but not a final blow, as Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said after the vote in the country’s senate that the government would seek to re-introduce the bill after the mandatory three month waiting period. This brings into the situation a possibility of some very interesting developments not just on the environmental issue but some potential constitutional developments.

One of the notable eventualities which could arise from this reverse in the Senate is that, if the government pushed forward the same legislation and was then defeated, it could potentially trigger a general election. This makes the potential legislation quite a powerful issue, and could well lead to some political horse-trading as the ruling Labour party looks to win over some of the current skeptics. As things stand, t he votes against the bill outnumber the votes for it by twelve. In order to gain a majority, seven senators would be required to change their vote.

As things stand, opposition to the legislation makes, as politics often does, for strange bedfellows. The government was essentially leveraged by opposition on both sides – from Green members who did not feel that the measures proposed went far enough towards tackling climate change, to members of the Conservative opposition who viewed it as being excessive. The measures proposed certainly go further than any yet proposed by a government, in offering a system of carbon trading which would require the more polluting companies to pay for their carbon emissions and rewarding companies who went some way to being carbon neutral.

One of the issues raised by conservative opposition legislators was that to adopt the propositions of the bill would be to put Australia in a disadvantageous position ahead of the conference on climate change to be held in Copenhagen in December. The government has argued that their position would only be weakened by going to Copenhagen without having adopted a coherent and radical plan for the reduction of carbon emissions. This gives the government a dilemma. Trying to win over enough senators means either adopting tougher measures to win over the Greens and alienating the conservative bloc, or vice versa.

Prime Minister Rudd may not be overly inconvenienced by an early election. Australia is due to go to the polls in late 2010 anyway, so bringing the election forward by a year while his approval ratings are high (and they far exceed those of the leader of the official Opposition) may not be the worst thing that could happen. It would also give the government a clear mandate. Australian voters are believed to favour strong action to cut down on pollution, and if they backed an incumbent Premier on a platform of environmental reform it would make it significantly harder to oppose the legislation in Parliament.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on August 16, 2009.

Some Facts About Philippines Economy

The economy of the Philippines

First Published Date: April 8, 2014 ADawnJournal.com

With its over 100 million population and 95.4 percent literacy rate, the Philippines – a once poor country that suffered from sluggish economic growth – turned out to be one of the fastest growing in the world. GDP growth was 7.6, 3.9, 6.8, and 7.2 percent in from 2010 to 2013 consecutively.

In the first and second quarter of 2013, GDP grew at 7.7 and 7.5 percent, making the Philippines the fastest performing country in Asia followed by China and Indonesia. The Philippines economy in 1998 was less affected by the Asian Financial Crisis than any other Asian countries.

Filipino economy is made of 57 percent services sector, 31 percent industry, and 12 percent agriculture. The Philippines has the world’s largest business processing outsourcing centre and a strong industrial manufacturing sector for electronics for multi-national corporations.

In terms of natural resources, the Philippines is rich in oil, coal, copper, chromite, and nickel. Its major trading partners are Japan, USA, China, Hong Kong, and South Korea.

In terms of its 2012 GDP, the Philippines is the 40th largest country largest economy in the world. Its unemployment rate is at 7.01 percent and 26 percent people live below the poverty line. The Philippines ranks 59th out of 148 countries in the 2012 – 2103 Global Comparativeness Index, 89 out of 178 countries in the 2014 Economic Freedom Index, and 94th out of 175 countries in the 2013 Corruption Perception Index.

The Philippines, while greatly improving its economy, still it has a lot of work to do. The country faces many challenges, such as improving governance and the judicial system, upgrading its infrastructure, improving its extreme poverty, improving ease of doing business, attracting more foreign investments, and reducing corruption.

As we look forward, the Philippines is working hard to move forward into the future with its remarkable growth. Goldman Sachs predicts that the Philippines will be the 14th largest economy in the world by 2050. HSBC predicts that by 2050 Philippines will be 16th largest in the world and the largest in Southeast Asia.

Alexandria Day Trip – Part 8 | Egypt Travel Blog: Day 1 (Part 13)

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

Bibliotheca Alexandrina | Alexandria Library

At present day, The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is a revival of the legendary ancient library, which was the largest library in the ancient world. The original Alexandria Library, destroyed in a huge fire around 2000 years ago, contained works by Homer, Plato, Socrates, and many others, and used to be the centre of learning in the ancient world.  

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is an 11-story library that sits along the ancient harbour in Alexandria. The library has 4 million volumes of books and can accommodate eight million books and 2500 readers. I saw carved letters, pictograms, hieroglyphs and 120 different human scripts on the granite exterior walls.

The Alexandria Library is also home to four permanent museums, a planetarium, a conference centre, lots of exhibitions, a children's library, a multimedia library, a library for the blind, and possibly many others.

The library building is a feast of architectural marvel combining ancient and modern styles. It spans 160 meters in diameter, 32 meters in height, and 12 meters into the ground in its circular, tilting form.

The timeless and bold circular design represents cyclical fluid knowledge throughout time and its tilting, glistering roof represents the ancient Alexandrian lighthouse providing Alexandria the light of knowledge.

I saw a reflecting pool and an open plaza surrounding the building. I also noticed something like a footbridge or overpass linking it to the nearby University of Alexandria.

The construction started in 1989 and completed in 2001. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina project was made possible by the global cooperation of 18 countries, oversighted by UNESCO. The architecture was completed by Norwegian Snøhetta, consisting of ten members from six different countries, who won the contract among 1400 entries.

A funny thing that makes me laugh to this day is that inside the museum I was so immersed in taking pictures and videos that I lost my group and had to complete the tour alone. I was able to meet them after the tour at the exit gate.

In Copenhagen And Closer To Home, Carbon Is The Priority

Keep Green Issues Simple

First Published Date: Sep 9, 2009.

For those of us who have an environmentalist outlook on things, there is often a problem with the size of the issue. Yes, the environment is a matter for concern – no-one could possibly deny that and retain a modicum of credibility – but which part of it do we look at first? Taken as a whole, the environment itself covers such a broad range of topics that it is difficult to pin down. This is perhaps where the movement has failed in the past – as much goodwill as there is for green issues, it has been difficult to nail down a list of priorities which will allow the problems to be dealt with on their merits. As a result, from the outside the green movement looks like a disorganised rabble squabbling about which issue should take precedence. As time goes on, it is hoped that this will become a thing of the past.

As we await the December conference on the Environment in Copenhagen, Denmark, the environmental movement does seem to be shaking its priorities into some sort of order. Top among them seems to be the issue of carbon and its related problems. Carbon deposits in our atmosphere have all sorts of effects that we would be well advised to avoid, but we as a global population have been slow to stop them from increasing. Although most of the world’s nations have a Green party which participates in national elections, in no major country has such a party been elected to form the basis of a government. Parties of government tend to offer more vocal support than logistic solutions where the environment is concerned, and thus the will to do something is often frustrated by issues such as the economy or defence.

The hope is that the conference in December, set to be the focus of a previously unseen level of media and public interest (for an environmental issue), will galvanise governments into actually doing something cogent to improve the state of the environment. After the Kyoto protocol were decided in 1997, the plan laid out to reduce carbon emissions by a significant level over the following twenty years slowly unravelled, as the United States refused to ratify the arrangement and other nations which had ratified showed little thirst to stick to their guns. Copenhagen is seen as a chance to move on from the disappointment of the aftermath.

Already, however, we are hearing that Copenhagen may not herald the signing of any new deal on carbon emissions – or at any rate, any deal which will mean much globally. For those of us with an eye on a greener future, it could be a frustrating fortnight. In order to ensure that something is at least done, the best bet may be to do it yourself. We as individuals may not be able to deliver the kind of results the governments could, but this is no reason to back off from your own plans. A lot of small steps can make up a long journey, and it is worth remembering that.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on Sep 9, 2009.