BUY BICYCLES; BURY MOTORCYCLES.

'Bikes'  include the charming bicycles. Everyone knows it is 'earth' friendly and 'purse' friendly. But people prefer to cycle inside their homes on fitness bikes rather than on roads. The status conscious society often  looks at the vehicle of the man is on/in more than the man. However as we all together has brought the mother earth to her sick bed, the one option that may help her breathe better is -people returning to their bicycle days. Said easily, but we need dedicated cycle lanes in all our cities. Incentives offered for the  cycle users.


A humanistic, people-friendly city is first and foremost an accessible city, where mobility is possible for all. Many cities today are plagued by traffic congestion, and in densely populated city areas the fastest way of getting around is often on a bicycle, which is a highly efficient means of transport.


A steadily growing number of cities around the world are eager to become cities of bicycles, as part of an overall strategy on sustainable development and the desire to become green cities. The development of cycle path networks that can supplement the public transport system also makes a significant contribution to reducing CO2 emissions.

Cities of bicycles are very much people-friendly cities, and city planning that considers pedestrians and cyclists will form a significant contribution to the humanistic city of the future.
           Let us return now lest there may be no return.

Why Protect Antarctica

Antarctica is a remarkable continent. Remote, hostile and uninhabited, Antarctica is key to understanding how our world works, and our impact upon it.

Antarctica is important for science because of its profound effect on the Earth's climate and ocean systems. And the Antarctic has a crucial role to play in our understanding of global climate change. Locked in its four kilometre-thick ice sheet is a unique record of what our planet's climate was like over the past one million years.

Antarctic science has also revealed much about the impact of human activity on the natural world. The discovery in 1985 by scientists at British Antarctic Survey (BAS) of the hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica revealed the damage done to the Earth's atmosphere by man-made chemicals. As well as being the world's most important natural laboratory, the Antarctic is a place of great beauty and wonder. Its frozen wastes have fired the public imagination for generations, and around 30,000 tourists now visit the Antarctic each year to experience what life is like in the Earth's last great wilderness. However, Antarctica is fragile and increasingly vulnerable.

The UK has been a world leader in Antarctic science and exploration for more than two centuries. As the UK's national Antarctic operator, BAS has been responsible for most of the UK's scientific research in Antarctica for the past 60 years. BAS now operates five research stations, two Royal Research Ships and five aircraft in and around Antarctica.

As well as conducting globally important science, BAS helps protect Antarctica's pristine environment. It fulfils this stewardship role by working to the highest environmental standards in all its operations and by playing a leading role in the Antarctic Treaty – the world's most successful international agreement. The UK was the first nation to sign the Treaty's Protocol on Environmental Protection, which commits Treaty parties to the environmental protection of Antarctica – a continent that few of us will ever visit, but on whose continued health we all depend.

Clean Fleets for a Cleaner World

• PROBLEM

Cars, trucks and other road transport vehicles, while essential for commercial and humanitarian work, exert a considerable adverse impact on the environment. Estimates are that road vehicles consume more than a third of the world’s supply of petroleum and contribute nearly one-fifth of global carbon dioxide emissions. These vehicles are also a significant source of air pollution which can adversely affect human health and the environment. In urban areas, about 70 per cent of air pollution comes from road vehicles.

SOLUTION
Public, private and non-governmental organizations use vehicle fleets in their work. Adopting clean fleet management programmes helps them contribute to alleviating the harmful impacts of road transport.
In collaboration with TNT, UNEP’s partnership to help build capacity for clean fleet management developed the "Toolkit for Clean Fleet Strategy Development" to support fleet managers in cleaning up their vehicle pools. In November 2006, TNT Turkey used the toolkit to help it design a clean fleet strategy. Its goal was to cut carbon emissions by six per cent by 2011. By early 2008, it had already surpassed its goal, even though it had increased its fleet from 262 vehicles to 313. Some 80 drivers have been trained in environmentally friendly safe driving techniques while 122 vehicles (or 41 per cent of the fleet) have been replaced with cleaner models, including hybrid electric vehicles. Monthly carbon dioxide emissions have dropped by 15 per cent, and fuel consumption by 16 per cent, resulting in savings of 100,000 euros in 15 months. The toolkit has helped organizations, ZOOM especially in emerging economies, to develop and adopt clean fleet programs.

IMPACT

More than 500 people from 200 public, private and non-governmental organizations in 57 countries have been trained on the use of the toolkit. Some of the participants, and the strategic partners, have also been trained as trainers. A number of organizations, including Sinar and Hiba Utama in Indonesia, Maynilad and Meralco in the Philippines and TNT in Turkey, have developed plans to clean up their fleets. In November 2006, TNT Turkey used the toolkit to help it design a clean fleet strategy. Its goal was to cut carbon emissions by six per cent by 2011. By early 2008, it had already surpassed its goal, even though it had increased its fleet from 262 vehicles to 313. Some 80 drivers have been trained in environmentally friendly safe driving techniques while 122 vehicles (or 41 per cent of the fleet) have been replaced with cleaner models, including hybrid electric vehicles. Monthly carbon dioxide emissions have dropped by 15 per cent, and fuel consumption by 16 per cent, resulting in savings of 100,000 euros in 15 months.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate change has long-since ceased to be a scientific curiosity, and is no longer just one of many environmental and regulatory concerns. As the United Nations Secretary General has said, it is the major, overriding environmental issue of our time, and the single greatest challenge facing environmental regulators. It is a growing crisis with economic, health and safety, food production, security, and other dimensions.

Shifting weather patterns, for example, threaten food production through increased unpredictability of precipitation, rising sea levels contaminate coastal freshwater reserves and increase the risk of catastrophic flooding, and a warming atmosphere aids the pole-ward spread of pests and diseases once limited to the tropics.

The news to date is bad and getting worse. Ice-loss from glaciers and ice sheets has continued, leading, for example, to the second straight year with an ice-free passage through Canada’s Arctic islands, and accelerating rates of ice-loss from ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. Combined with thermal expansion—warm water occupies more volume than cold—the melting of ice sheets and glaciers around the world is contributing to rates and an ultimate extent of sea-level rise that could far outstrip those anticipated in the most recent global scientific assessment.

There is alarming evidence that important tipping points, leading to irreversible changes in major ecosystems and the planetary climate system, may already have been reached or passed. Ecosystems as diverse as the Amazon rainforest and the Arctic tundra, for example, may be approaching thresholds of dramatic change through warming and drying. Mountain glaciers are in alarming retreat and the downstream effects of reduced water supply in the driest months will have repercussions that transcend generations. Climate feedback systems and environmental cumulative effects are building across Earth systems demonstrating behaviours we cannot anticipate.

The potential for runaway greenhouse warming is real and has never been more present. The most dangerous climate changes may still be avoided if we transform our hydrocarbon based energy systems and if we initiate rational and adequately financed adaptation programmes to forestall disasters and migrations at unprecedented scales. The tools are available, but they must be applied immediately and aggressively.

THE CAMPAIGN

  Welcome To

GO GREEN  INDIA CAMPAIGN   

   
-A Mass Movement to Mobilize Men to Save Our Planet              

"To  her fair works did Nature link              

The human soul that through me ran;              

And much it grieved my heart to think              

What man has made of man."         

-Visionary Poet William Wordsworth         

Aim: To create an awareness among the people about the fragility of our planet earth and initiate actions that prevent
activities endangering the environment and launch measures that strengthen the ecosystem

Goal Cry: Nurture Nature For Your Future

Centuries back William Wordsworth lamented that
man has disassociated himself from Nature and the other fellow creatures and is hence responsible for his miserable plight. The poet is not to be seen as an admirer of Nature but a worshipper who believes that Nature has a soul that is
living and there is a link between the soul of Nature and that of all other living beings. But, unfortunately man has failed to see the link and has been indulging in misdeeds that affect this vital link.

Hence care for this Earth is in the air for quite sometime. But the 'machine led man' is misled and is mired in a 'material
dustbowl'. Greed is seen in his every deed and there is no end indeed. Let every one of us put just one step ahead and let the step  it be for caring this Nature.

 

Environmental technologies

Environmental technologiesare any technology, that either directly or indirectly improves the environment. It includes technologies for limiting pollution with the held of cleaning, more environmentally friendly products and production processes, more efficient energy and ressource management as well as technological systems that reduce the environmental impact. Examples include e.g. technology flue gas cleaning, wind turbines, water treatment, enzymes for animal feed and washing powder, biofuel production, energy-efficient pumps and substitution of chemicals with moreenvironmentally friendly solutions.

The Millennium Development Goals

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In the year 2000, 189 world leaders sat down together and formulated the UN’s Millennium Declaration, and they defined eight goals that were to safeguard a dignified, sustainable future for the population of the whole world. Since then the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have formed the benchmark for international development cooperation and thus also for Denmark’s work with development cooperation.

The eight development goals

The point of departure of the Millennium Development Goals is the desire to provide better living conditions for the poor population of the world before 2015. In concrete terms, the eight goals are:

1. Halve poverty and hunger in the world
2. Basic schooling for all
3. Increased gender equality
4. Reduce child mortality by two-thirds
5. Reduce maternal mortality by three-fourths
6. Fight HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7. Safeguard the development of a sustainable environment
8. Increase cooperation on development assistance, trade and debt remission

The MDGs are continuously monitored

Every year the General Assembly of the UN is presented with a status report showing progress achieved in meeting the MDGs, and similar reports are drawn up at national level with the support of the UNDP and the UN’s other country offices.
The first seven goals oblige the developing countries mainly to ensure that the goals are incorporated in their national poverty strategies and finance legislation.
The eighth MDG commits countries of the world to establish a global partnership. This includes the countries contributing to the realization of the goals through financial and technical assistance.

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