Tag: climate

“Universal Echoes”: a new album by Kuné. The world in a (global) orchestra, tacklin’ climate change with music

TORONTO – Kuné means “Together” in Esperanto, the language created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof in 1887, who intended to create the universal language for international communication. So, what better word (and language) to name an orchestra made up of elements from every corner of the world? 

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Electric vehicles: part of a global climate change solution

Electric vehicles (EV) may not solve the issues associated with climate change; they may play a key role in helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). According to Our World in Data, the energy sector is responsible for 73% of all GHG emissions. That rate includes roughly 16% of emissions associated with transportation, of which 12% is related to road transportation.

In Canada, road transportation accounts for roughly one-fifth of the nation’s total GHG emissions. Eliminating carbon emissions from passenger vehicles is part of the national plan to reach net-zero by 2050. (more…)

Bangladeshi architect Marina’s success in Climate Change

As the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 just ended in a compromised deal in Glasgow in the United Kingdom, Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum, who won the 2021 prestigious Soane medal among the first architect from the global south for her design of Khudi Bari, a modular mobile house for the climate victims, appeared as ‘A £300 monsoon-busting home: the Bangladeshi architect fighting extreme weather’ in the Guardian newspaper on November 16.

In her words, Marina says, “As architects we have a responsibility to these people. The construction industry contributes half of all global emissions, but the people being affected by sea-level rise in the coastal areas have zero carbon footprint.”

Founding Marina Tabassum Architects in 2005, she embarked on a project called Bait ur Rouf mosque in northern Dhaka that gave her international prominence 11 years later for winning the Aga Khan award. Currently they are working in the Cox’s Bazar, home to 1.2 million Rohingya Muslims fled from ethnic persecution in neighboring Myanmar. Tabassum and her team have been designing food distribution outlets and women’s centres – for both the camp and its host community – aiming to create a more dignified experience than the usual tents for receiving handouts.

In the pic (from Sir John Soane’s Museum’s Twitter profile – @SoaneMuseum), Marina Tabassum

Climate, energy, Covid in agenda for the “Three Amigos”

TORONTO – Ottawa, June 29, 2016. Justin Trudeau, along with U.S. President Barak Obama and his Mexican counterpart Enrique Peña Nieto, chairs the North American Leaders’ Summit (NALS), better known as the Three Amigos Summit. Since then, the leaders of the three countries have not met again. The break, which lasted over five years, was wanted by the previous Us administration led by former President Donald Trump and, last summer, by the uncertainties caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, we are facing the turning point, with an attempt to normalization relations between Canada, the United States and Mexico.  (more…)