Monday 14 May 2012

Rio +20 animation

I've just been sent a link to an animation called Rio+20: Turn the Tide for Our Ocean, by Pew and ZSL.

The narrative begins with an idealised future, setting up for a stark comparison to the current state of our oceans. The piece is obviously intended as a call to action for those at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, urging them to make the choices that lead to the ideal future presented at the start of the video. Nice to see some very positive messaging out there.

Video here: http://youtu.be/GkQa1cyvHXE

Tuesday 8 May 2012

A better day the 100 way

The team behind the German project "Ein Guter Tag hat 100 Punkten" (A better day has 100 points) have recently released a (mostly) English version of their site. The idea is to show how people could live sustainably, with a budget of 100 "points" of greenhouse gas emissions. They've tried to set their scale so that if everyone used only 100 "points", the global temperature would remain constant (at current population levels). They plan to adjust the points values in line with scientific developments and population growth.

The strength of the idea is in its simplicity. While there are of course gaps in their lists of products and activities, it is a good start for anyone interested in knowing about their contribution to climate change. They also produce simple stickers that can be used to put on different products and objects. They tell me that these are particularly popular with schoolchildren.

Their site is here:
http://www.better-day.org/
You can use it to look up the "points" value of specific items, calculate and store the value for your day, or order the stickers that you can use to spread the word...