One Planet Living...

Zero carbon: the increased change in our environment is because of people style life and increase gassing CO2 in the air.

Zero Waste: the way we get ride of our waste from discarded products and packaging affect the environment and damage natural resources.

Sustainable Transport: all kinds of transport (air, land, sea) affect the environment and cause different kind of pollution (climate, noise, land, etc).

Local and Sustainable Materials: the development of industrial and manufacturing sector has increased the damage to the environment and in the same time didn’t benefit people.

Local and Sustainable Food: local ecosystems are harmed by the production of uncertain quality of food, which also include high transportation.   

Sustainable Water: Local supplies of fresh water are less than human need because of the pollution disruption of hydrological cycles.

Natural Habitats and wildlife: loss of biodiversity because of the development projects at natural areas and damage of natural resources. 

Cultural and heritage: loss of local culture (identity and knowledge) because of the world globalization.  

Equity and fair trade: local demands aren’t satisfied as not all industrialized countries rich and we can find poor people and shortage in supplying basic needs to the country population.  

Health and happiness: an increasing awareness and thinking about the secret of high wealth, health and happiness in order to be health and satisfied.

Conclusion - “We’ll save the planet only if we’re forced to” – Your Opinion..

According to the writer of the article people aren’t facing the hard truth that their activities and behaviors have harmed the environment. In his view, it is time for us to wake up and see what are doing as we clearly can notice the change in the planet climate. He explained that before 10,000 years it was difficult to grow agriculture because of the violent planet climate, however, when the climate settled into safe parameters things changed and developed human civilization. Moreover, he is concerned about whether the increase of warming gases from human activities into the atmosphere would affect the safe parameters and result in a return to the violent. In the writer view it is time to put our hands together to find solution to this problem instead of blaming each other. He referred to Green campaigners experience when they prompted the Mayor of London and forced SUV drivers to pay £6,000 as penalty to drive through the city and forcing them to change to greener cars. The writer agrees that people have the freedom of choosing to change to greener cars but he sees that the freedom of choosing ends when the matter exceed the individual level to a public issue. Now more people are concerned about the environment health and safety so if our activities endanger others life we should respect and stop this activity as all people have the right to live in safe, healthy environment. In his view, we have passed the time for requesting people to safe the environment and its time to force them to do that by governmental laws and regulations.  

 

Through out the reading I have made on the same topic I have realized that we humans are really harming the environment and damaging the area around us. There are many reasons for that but the most important one is that we aren’t taking the responsibility of taking care of our environment seriously. Furthermore, we think that things will be solved by itself as in our minds we think that an individual behavior won’t affect that much forgetting that we all share the same air, land, see and damage is caused on big level not small. From my side, I share the writer view that time is passed for explaining, thinking and requesting and its time to perform an action and even force people to do it. Moreover, people have to change their thinking and issuing government laws would result in a big change, which we need in the time been. As people behavior won’t be changed easily unless there a law that stop them and make them think. In short, change isn’t difficult but it takes time, which we don’t have our time is limited and its necessary to take immediate actions. Our environment health and safety is an important issue the neglecting the reality won’t do any good for us.

Why I would/would not like to live in Masdar city..?

Masdar city will be one of the first Cool City in the world which will have zero carbon footprint and zero waste. I personally believe that this project will help us to evaluate the damage we cause to the environment by only comparing the clean and healthy place in Masdar city and other cities. It will be an honor for me to be one of few people who lives in this cool city however I have to change my life style. I think all the world luxury worth to be lost for a clean environment with zero pollution. We as individuals have responsibility to provide next generation a world they can live in and give them what our parents gave us.

Cool Cities (SDCJ)...

The previous few years have seen significant development in the industrial sector which led to an increase in pollution rate and caused various environmental issues. One of the recent important issues that we are facing and got the attention of many is “Global Warming”. As recently the Global temperatures on both land and sea have increased because of different issues such as increase the amount of CO2.  

Sustainable Urban Development Consortium for Japan (SDCJ) has come up with a solution for this issue in project called “Cool City”. “Cool City” is an eco-friendly infrastructure and energy consumption project which reduce the amount of pollution mainly CO2 into the environment mainly. As about 90% of the pollution is caused by transportation and infrastructure; the Cool City use up to 60% less energy using green technology and low carbon footprint.

So, in SDCJ “Cool City” project new methods have been developed to fight these problems. For instance; new means of transportation have been developed using green technology such as trains, solar boats and hyper cars. Moreover, they change the way of infrastructure using low carbon footprint. The new technology will use the wind power to cool the apartment and the offices and use solar power to get electricity.

It is clear that “Cool City” aims to provide people healthy environment by reducing the increase of CO2 in the environment. Moreover, it is an efficient life style as it makes use of the available power like sun, wind, water to generate electricity and use it in our life. If the concept of Cool City is adopted by countries it will not just make us healthier but also it will save our Earth from destroy.  

My Carbon footprint ....

Carbon footprint is a way to measure the impact of human activities on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gasses produced by us in units of (CO2). I did the carbon footprint calculation and found that I am living like in 3 plants and it is really a big number in my opinion. In this essay, I’m going to outline the problems and the possible solution for this problem.

The increase of Carbon footprint is mainly because of our different human activities that indirectly affect the environment around us. If we take a close look on those activities we will find that most of them are just because of our luxury life style we are living. For example, I am one of the people who use the electricity a lot and usually leave the TV open most of times even if I left the home which waste the use of energy in good purposes and harm our environment. Moreover, I have my own car and use it all the time even to go the supermarket 10 minutes away from my house. Now in most of the houses we can see that each person has its own car so if there are 10 individuals in the house so there will be at least 6-8 cars. This behavior isn’t just unhealthy it’s also adds to the air pollution and damage our environment. In addition, as we living in a fast world we use airplanes for long distance travel and helicopters for short distances. I travel 3 times a year to visit my relatives so using airplane to travel and it increase my carbon footprint amount. It also amazed me how much we are careless about the health of our environment as the simplest behavior such as recycling our waste we don’t do which doesn’t only decrease pollution but also help us use things effectively. 

 I have realized that we always see our environment beautiful but we aren’t thinking of the damage we are causing to it. In our objective to develop our life style and make things easier we have harmed the environment and our continuous behavior will led to the death of the environment and make it unhealthy place for our children’s and next generation to live. It is unrealistic to advice others to do things that am not personally do so I will start with changing my behaviors which will influence people around me sooner or later. I would start to use electricity power more correctly and guide my family members to do that by not keeping TV open if they aren’t watching it or leaving electricity open in non-necessary time of places. Furthermore, I would personally start to share my car with my family members and friends instead of letting each one drive alone to the same distance. Moreover, I would think of different recycling methods the ones that we can do it in home such as reusing the print our papers, collecting cans and send it to recycling companies, etc. Lastly, I think participation in environmental programs will give me more information about how I can change my behaviors to save my area, stop the damage am causing and make it healthier for my children.  

In conclusion, we have to know that our plant is in danger and we have to make the first move if we want to make good future to our children to live in healthy environment. There are many things we can start doing it on a personal level that would share in saving our place years and years after. 

"Is Abu Dhabi a Cool City?"

Being a cool city is not an impossible task to do. However, Abu Dhabi is on the right track as my classmates mentioned. I believe that Abu Dhabi is going to be a cool city one day but they have to work harder. So far it is not a cool city yet but with Masdar City project it is going to achieve its goal and I think Abu Dhabi will be able to achieve its goal because the government of Abu Dhabi want to do that.

American Cool Cities....

1. Seattle: They reduced global warming pollution by more than 60 percent by constructing green buildings and operating alternative fuel vehicles.

2. Washington DC: DC has replaced 414 of its polluting diesel buses with buses that burn natural gases.

3. Houston: convert a substantial portion of the city of fleet of cars and trucks.

4. Marion County/Florida: they use gas-electric hybrid vehicles.

5. The city of Scottsdale: has introduced Arizona’s first green building program which helps builders and home owners learn about how to integrate energy efficiency and water saving.

6. Salt Lake City: they changed 861 traffic lights to LED light signals.

7. Colorado: is working to produce 50 percent of the city electricity with renewable energy by 2017.

8. Charlotte: they switched from a gas only Ford Taurus to a hybrid Toyota Prius or Honda Civic and that would save city taxpayers approximately $800-1200 per vehicle including over $400 in annual fuel cost.

9. Twin Falls/ Idaho: Reduce energy cost and cut pollution by increasing the energy efficiency of its 11 schools.

10. St. Paul: they use a system that uses heat drawn from a biomass-fired power plant.

Global Warming (Made by My self)

An Inconvenient Truth

This movie called An Inconvenient Truth because al Gore thinks nobody in the world will be happy to know the truth. Most of people are happy in the way that they live and it's hard for them to change their life style so it's An Inconvenient Truth for them.

My reaction about (An Inconvenient Truth) movie

After I saw the movie it changed the way I think about pollution. Because the movie shows me that I can harm the environment by doing some things that make pollution like driving cars which makes CO2.I think it's important to start thinking about new ways to reduce using cars which affect the environment and we should find some other alternatives. Also in this movie I realized how dangerous is the increasing of the sea level and how it can be destroyed in future so we have to use critical thinking to save the planet.

Introduction

In the last few years pollution has increased because of technology and development. Nowadays Pollution started to cause lots of problems to the environment and human beings Because of that many organizations have started some campaigns to save the planet from the pollution like building new cities which will be without any kind pollution. I am glad to have one of the first cool cities here in my country which is called Masder it will be CO2 free city and they will use only solar energy. In my blog I will write about cool city and about our carbon foot print and I will try to be a critical thinker while I think and write about my researches.

An Inconvenient Truth

In this movie Al Gore discusses the scientific knowledge of climate change and gives some information to let people know that global warming is one of the biggest problems. The amount of the carbon dioxide has increased in the environment and this make the temperature very high. Al Gore said that there are many harmful industries which affect badly the atmosphere. The high temperature causes glacier to melt which help people need to drink the fresh water, irrigation, plants and animals. Also global warming could cause damage to the world and especially to the nature, for example when the glaciers melt by the heat of the global warming it has a bad effect on the sea because it's increase the sea level.

Critical Thinking

Click here to see the PowerPoint:-

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2606561/newpowerpoint

Indoor sea japan

Imagine a beach where the sky is always blue, it’s never too hot or cold, the water isn’t filled with salt and pollution, and the surf is always perfect - welcome to Ocean Dome, the world’s only indoor beach. Amazing photos.

Conflict Diamonds

Click here to listen:

http://voicethread.com/share/86496/

Lebanon

Lebanon is one of the most beautiful countries in the Middle East although they had war with Israel many times. This is the tourism century for Lebanon, as it received many people from all around the world due to plenty of nice place, beaches, mountains and museums to visit. Beirut is the capital of Lebanon; it's famous in fashion and shows. It was called the land of mile and honey in the Bible also the nickname was Paris of the East. It located between five countries Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Cyprus. There are 17 religions in Lebanon most of them are Muslim and Christians. Arabic, French and English are the languages officially recognized in Lebanon.

1943 was the day that Lebanon became independent when France gave the government to the Lebanese. Balance of power was for Christians and little for Muslim. In 1948 100.00 Palestinians were evicted from Israel and here starts the attraction between Muslim and Christians. In 1975, tensions boiled over when some members of a radical Christian group attacked and killed a bus full of Palestinians in downtown Beirut. Because of that Syria sent 20.000 troops to save people from each other. In this tension 2000 Palestinians were killed. In addition, Lebanon cost was between 150,000 and 200,000 of citizens who died in the civil war. Also about 300,000 were wounded also quarter of the population left to the near countries like Gulf and Egypt. At that time economy was affected quite a lot because of war and it was paralyzed for 4 years. Finally, people in Lebanon opened new page to live together and forgot the past and they started building Lebanon again with the help of some business men from the Arab countries.Now Lebanon is trying to return back as in the past to be Paris of East again but there are some problems that needs to be solved like the pollution and traffic.

Sex Change operation

Ali Askar is example of many people in Iran planning to have sex change. His father threatened to kill him if he went ahead with the surgery but for Ali it was very hard for him to live as a boy because of his sexuality. But Iran has allowed this kind of operation since 1979 .He did the operation and become a woman. In my opinion this article mentions a very important case that most of people don’t know about it. I think it's really painful for those with this problem and this operation solves their problems.