Posted in Cars & Transportation on Nov 22nd, 2008
A couple of months ago we wrote about how the Israeli Ministry of Tourism is investing millions of shekels towards developing clean, green, eco-friendly cycling tourism. That’s great, but how can we make green transportation part of our everyday lives - and not just something we enjoy on the weekends or on vacation? How can [...]
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Posted in Cars & Transportation on Nov 20th, 2008
Air pollution from transportation is costing Arab countries $5 billion in damages, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Minister of Environment and Water recently announced. The cost is calculated based on the number of deaths, medical care for health problems and chronic diseases that are attributed to air pollution.
The minister, Dr. Rashid Ahmed Bin Fahad, added [...]
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Posted in Food & Health on Nov 8th, 2008
With America’s and the world’s financial markets going belly up, it will be interesting to see what happens to the carbon market. Smart CEOs will realize that a less carbon intensive business is better for the bottom line, as most companies can kick a lot of wasteful carbon habits, simply by doing a carbon audit. [...]
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Posted in Cars & Transportation on Oct 10th, 2008
Although there are Israelis who hop between Eilat and Tel Aviv on a plane rather than brave the four-and-a-half hour Egged bus ride, for the most part Israel’s postage stamp size makes the country easy to tackle without taking to the skies.
Not so for the USA.
I decided last week that I will visit my alma [...]
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Posted in Cars & Transportation on Aug 26th, 2008
Israel’s tourism industry has made some serious changes recently. The Ministry of Tourism announced a few months ago that it was going ‘green’ for 2009, stating that it had a plan that included “environment-sensitive planning and development; preservation of the cultural and social heritage; developing tourism and new jobs in agricultural areas and the periphery [...]
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Posted in Science & Technology on Aug 22nd, 2008
(Image credit: Corbis)
It’s bad for the environment, but you know you want it. You want those strawberries in the dead of winter. You know you should be eating local produce year round to avoid all of the carbon emissions associated with flying in food from distant places or using energy guzzling greenhouses to grow produce [...]
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Posted in Book Reviews on Aug 20th, 2008
In this week’s green book review, guest reviewer Rabbi Julian Sinclair unpicks the recent ‘Breakthrough’ by US writers Ted Nordhaus & Michael Shellenberger.
Last month Al Gore gave a rousing speech on climate change, throwing down an audacious challenge to the American people. By 2020, Gore declared, let American by powered [...]
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Posted in Business & Politics on Aug 18th, 2008
How many shades of green can a Jaffa orange be? Israeli fruit and vegetable grower and supplier Mehadrin (owned by Hadarim, a property and building group, and a succession of other parent companies) is working with British supermarket chain Tesco in a bid to mark all its Jaffa oranges with the Carbon Trust label, a [...]
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Posted in Science & Technology on Aug 14th, 2008
Well, that depends on how you look at it…
Scientists are predicting that climate change will cause upheavals in the patterns of rainfall, drought, floods, and desertification. The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that temperatures in the Middle East have increased between 2-3 degrees Celsius in the last century, faster [...]
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Posted in Travel & Nature on Aug 7th, 2008
Here in the Middle East, echoes of the Biblical prophets are never far off–even in environmental discourse.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in the famous cedars of Lebanon, which have been a wonder to the world for thousands of years, and were used to build King Solomon’s palace. Some of the remaining cedars in Lebanon [...]
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