We need to massively reforest the planet, in a very short period of time. Flash Forest’s drones can plant trees a lot faster than humans.
This week, on land north of Toronto that previously burned in a wildfire, drones are hovering over fields and firing seed pods into the ground, planting native pine and spruce trees to help restore habitat for birds. Flash Forest, the Canadian startup behind the project, plans to use its technology to plant 40,000 trees in the area this month. By the end of the year, as it expands to other regions, it will plant hundreds of thousands of trees. By 2028, the startup aims to have planted a full 1 billion trees.
Electric vehicles for the US Postal Service would reduce noise, air, and carbon pollution in every community.
With the US trapped in a historic lockdown, everyone agrees that enormous federal spending is necessary to keep the economy going over the next year and beyond — and everyone has their own ideas about how, exactly, that federal spending should be targeted. A whole genre of essays and white papers devoted to clever stimulus plans has developed almost overnight.
I’ve contributed to that genre: Go here for my ideal recovery/stimulus plan, here for what I think Democrats’ bottom-line demands should be in stimulus negotiations, here for my take on the wisdom of investing in clean energy, and here for why devoting stimulus money to fossil fuels is short-sighted.
Now I want to offer a much more modest idea — a fun idea, even. It’s a win-win-win proposal that would be worth doing even if the economy were at full employment, but a total no-brainer in an economy that needs a kickstart. The cost would be a tiny rounding error amid the trillions of dollars of stimulus being contemplated, and it would produce outsized social benefits in the form of improved public health, more efficient public services, and lower climate pollution.
The pandemic’s silver lining is the chance to experiment with technologies and co-operative approaches across borders that could lead to safer, more sustainable and more inclusive global futures.
The theory of punctuated equilibrium, proposed in 1972 by biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, holds that populations of living organisms tend to experience a significant amount of evolutionary change in short, stressful bursts of time. Gould and Eldredge argued that evolution isn’t a constant, gradual process—it occurs during episodes when species are in environments of high tension or especially crisis.
The human species is going through such a period right now: the Covid-19 pandemic. The profound pressures that individuals, organizations and societies face in this crisis are accelerating the fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), blurring the boundaries between the physical, digital and biological worlds. The current state of emergency compels us to consider the necessity of structural shifts in our relationship with the environment and how we conduct ourselves as a global community.
Three decades and $23.7 billion later, the 25,000-ton International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is close to becoming something like the sun.
UNTIL 1920, HUMANS had no real sense of how the sun and stars create their vast amounts of energy. Then, in October of that year, Arthur Stanley Eddington, an English astrophysicist, penned an essay elegantly titled “ The Internal Constitution of the Stars.” “A star is drawing on some vast reservoir of energy by means unknown,” he wrote. “This reservoir can scarcely be other than the sub-atomic energy which, it is known, exists abundantly in all matter; we sometimes dream that man will one day learn how to release it and use it for his service.”
From that moment, scientists began the quest to harness unlimited, carbon-free power on earth. They’ve built more than 200 reactors that have tried to slam hydrogen atoms together and release fusion energy. It’s a dream perennially called delusional, impossible, and “always 20 years away.” In 1985, recognizing that no country had the will to solve the world’s most complicated puzzle alone, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev called for an international effort to give it a go.
In 1988, engineers began designing the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, now just ITER. Along the way, 35 nations have split the $23.7 billion price tag to construct its 10 million parts. Now, surrounded by vineyards in France’s Saint-Paul-lès-Durance, the 25,000-ton machine is set to be flipped on in 2025.
A new study claims that EVs are better for the environment than gasoline-powered vehicles in 95 percent of the world
Comparing the eco-credentials of electric cars and their gasoline-powered counterparts isn’t as simple as counting the carbon emissions coming (or not) from the tailpipe. New research is claiming to have settled the debate once and for all by taking all factors into account, including the production of, and electricity generation for, EVs and found that they are better for the climate in 95 percent of the world.
While there is no debate that EVs pollute less once they are actually on the road, some argue that the CO2 generated during the manufacturing of EVs and in the generation of the electricity to charge them actually outweighs that produced by cars with internal combustion engines (ICEs). The thinking is that while renewables can play a part of the energy mix, EV owners still need to rely heavily on coal- and gas-fired power plants to keep their cars charged and running.
The new research was carried out by scientists at the University of Exeter, University of Cambridge and University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands, and found that while there are exceptions, electric vehicles are generally better for the climate in the vast majority of places.
Electrification goes beyond the passenger car industry and it is now starting to take hold in the construction equipment industry.
Case, one of the largest construction equipment companies, has unveiled a new all-electric backhoe, which it claims has up to 90% lower cost of operation.
The company says that the new vehicle, the CASE 580 EV, has equivalent performance as its diesel counterparts:
“The CASE 580 EV (electric vehicle) delivers backhoe power and performance equivalent to its diesel counterpart while also providing instant torque, lower jobsite noise, lower daily and lifetime operating costs, reduced maintenance demands and absolutely zero emissions.”
Microlino 2.0 electric microcar and Microletta e-trike for Europe
What you’re looking at is the Microlino 2.0 electric microcar and Microletta electric trike from Switzerland’s Micro Mobility Systems.
The Microlino is a complete redesign of the original concept revealed in 2015, and demonstrated today for the first time in public. Unfortunately, the event had to happen over a live stream due to the cancellation of the Geneva Auto Show. Today is also the first time we’re seeing the three-wheeled Microletta electric motorbike that goes 80km/h (almost 50 mph) but doesn’t require a motorcycle license.
The four-wheeled Microlino is a new version of the microcars that once skittered along post-WWII streets in Europe until the 1960s. This electric two-seater bears more than a passing resemblance to the Italian-designed Iso Isetta “bubble car” manufactured by BMW and others. Yes, Steve Urkel had one.
It’s been touted as the builder’s “most spacious model to date.”
After making a major splash in the marine world earlier this year, Silent Yachts is doubling down—or tripling, perhaps—on its groundbreaking solar-powered catamaran. The Austrian-based builder has just unveiled a brand-new tri-deck version of its flagship Silent 80 series.
Touted as the marque’s “most spacious model to date,” the triple-decker boasts an epic panoramic air-conditioned saloon on the flybridge—a feature which sets it apart from its predecessor. The layout can be arranged with either a sweeping skylounge on the top deck or an expansive 295-square-foot fly deck—whatever the owner desires.
“We thought we can make another step forward with the new model,” Silent Yachts founder and chief executive Michael Köhler said. “The additional sky lounge is a very convenient space and helps stretch out the period of using the boat. The extra space on top extends social areas onboard, while offering new opportunities in terms of layout.”
You don’t normally think of freight tractors in terms of visual appeal: they are enormous machines meant to haul stuff all across the world, so whether they’re pretty or not is of no consequence.
But that doesn’t mean that they can’t be pretty, though. When it comes to good looks, this concept from Art Lebedev Studio takes the crown: there is simply no prettier truck cab out there, real or only in concept stage. This is no coincidence, either: the design team specifically set out to show the world that you can have both brawn and beauty in a single truck cab. And brains, to boot.
Meet Gruzovikus (which literally means truck in Russian), the electric, self-driving truck cab that hauls merchandise from point A to point B, and looking fabulous while doing it. It’s the result of 43 days’ of work for the team at Art Lebedev Studio, and it remains the most startling and impressive concept to this day, a few good months after it was made public.
Clearly, the future of transport is electric and autonomous. This truck has them both, with a good dose of good looks to go. It’s incredibly slim, to the point where it forms an L shape when viewed from the side. It has no windows or doors, because it doesn’t need any. All it has is a giant computer screen that houses the computer, the sensors and the cameras, and everything else needed to make long-distance travels safe.
Graphic image of a thin film of protein nanowires generating electricity from atmospheric humidity. (Ella Maru Studios)
Soon having to replace batteries or spend time recharging your phone could be a thing of the past. Scientists in Amherst are developing a new technology that will use the moisture from the air to create a charge.
The device is still in early stages having only been made public on Monday on the UMass website. It uses a natural protein to create electricity from moisture in the air and could have significant implications for the future of renewable energy, climate change and the future of medicine.
In layman’s terms; “We are literally making electricity out of thin air,” said the laboratories of electrical engineer Jun Yao. “The Air-gen generates clean energy 24/7.”
Dozens of studies find remote workers happy and productive. Why not let them be?
It’s 2020: we finally live in the future! Or at least a future—one where broadband Internet connections and portable, reasonably high-powered computing tools are pervasive and widely accessible, even if they aren’t yet universal. Millions of workers, including all of us here at Ars, use those tools to do traditional “office jobs” from nontraditional home offices.
Tens of millions of jobs at all points of the income and skill spectrum are of course not suited to remote work. Doctors, dentists, and countless other healthcare workers of the world will always need to be hands-on with patients, just as teachers need to be in schools, construction workers need to be on building sites, scientists need to be in labs, wait staff need to be in restaurants, judges need to be in court, and hospitality employees need to be in hotels. All of that said, though, many more of the hundreds of different kinds of jobs Americans do can be done off-site than currently are.
Dvele homes will now come with a new thermal enevelop, solar power, and a backup battery system
High-end prefab home builder Dvele just got a little more high-tech—and eco-conscious. The San Diego-based company, which is known for its luxury prefab designs, announced this week that it would start exclusively building fully self-powered homes going forward.
Since its founding in 2017, Dvele has branded itself as a sustainable option in the prefab space, but its new initiative takes it a step further with homes that run entirely on solar power and stored energy. Dvele’s models are similar to other eco-minded prefab homes in that a major focus is to limit the amount of wasted energy produced in the first place.
