greenswitch – climate change and cleantech solutions

Germany: Nuclear power plants soon offline?

German environmental agency minister Juergen Trittin is considering to shut down nuclear power plants (there are 19 left in Germany) in case of a terror threat in Germany — he said that everybody knows that German nuclear power plants won’t withhold a hit by an airplane. However, environmentalists fight for shutting down the power plants immediatly — it would take a week to actually shut-down the nuclear power plants. And there are already calculations on how many people would die from such a (hypothetical) catastrophe: at least 4.8 million people…

Yahoo! Schlagzeilen – Trittin will Atomkraftwerke notfalls kurzfristig abschalten Bei konkreter Gefahr terroristischer Anschläge will Bundesumweltminister Jürgen Trittin die deutschen Atomkraftwerke notfalls kurzfristig abschalten. Ein vorübergehendes Herunterfahren beseitige das Risiko zwar nicht vollständig, minimiere aber die Gefahr einer unbeherrschbaren Kettenreaktion, erklärte der Grünen-Politiker am Dienstag in Berlin.

BP asks for it!

How would you answer the question “What do you think about oil companies and their practices”? I wonder which criticism BP is going to show in their ads and which ones they are going to cut..but still, I think this is a remarkable move; much more personal than to show little cute Koala bears and to whisper in an angelic voice: we care about you and the environment…

SolarAccess.com | REAccess News ] In an unusual move to boost its image, BP is running a non- traditional advertising campaign that includes controversial and candid discussions on energy issues with people on the street across the United States.

BP, the largest oil and gas producer in the country and a major retailer of gasoline, says the interviews were conducted with people on the street who expressed their views on oil companies, energy and other issues. The ads are running on television, in magazines and newspapers around the country.

The road to hell is paved

This is an interesting piece I found at ‘Orion’s..It’s about ‘the asphalt nation’. It’s about mobility and our sense for place and nature.

Orion > Curmudgeon in the Wild Alaskan nature writer Richard Nelson says: “What makes a place special is the way it buries itself inside the heart, not whether it’s flat or rugged, rich or austere, wet or arid, gentle or harsh, warm or cold, wild or tame. Every place, like every person, is elevated by the love and respect shown toward it, and by the way in which its bounty is received.”

Civic planners have a responsibility to insure that our parks, greenways and open spaces remain bountiful. One thinks back to that grand era of public spaces designed and executed by the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and his contemporaries. His was the generation who gave us our national parks, national forests, and great city parks. His was the generation who knew that we can’t survive without roots in nature. His was the last generation who could imagine a landscape without an automobile.