The Maldives are sinking – but its government has an idea. It’s going to set them afloat.

Well – kinda. According to a report by Popsci, the Maldivian government is working with a Dutch architectural firm to create the world’s largest chain of artificial floating islands.

Remember the Lilypad concept? This is the real thing. Secured to the sea floor using cables or adjustable mooring piles (making for a very small construction footprint), these cutting-edge constructions will be designed to ride out the fiercest storms and initially provide space for 200 luxury homes and the world’s first floating golf course.

For more details, head to the Dutch Docklands project page (which includes the irresistible line “Click HERE for our Private Submarines”).

It’s important to note who these technological marvels are currently aimed at: the super-wealthy. That’s no bad thing for the 1,200-island nation as it brings some serious tourism revenue that will help fund further development. However, to save the Maldives Waterworld-style and rehouse its 30,000 inhabitants is going to take a lot more time and money. Dutch Docklands claim that their future plans include “more affordable” housing – but when another firm is making the first commercial crop of movable island homesteads at $6 million a pop, we have to wonder what “more affordable” will look like on a nation-wide scale…

Images: Dutch Docklands

The post Sinking Maldives Finds New Way To Stay Afloat – And Play Golf appeared first on EcoSalon.

7 stops to give you a small portrait of the world we live in.

We hope you enjoyed Libby Lowe’s gorgeous glimpse of Vietnam this week! However much smaller the internet makes the world feel, it’s still just as vast and diverse as it ever was. Here’s a 7-stop trip round the globe, courtesy of our archives – a portrait of a world where easy answers just won’t cut it.

While a degree of mistrust is certainly appropriate, for the most part media reports about China’s greening efforts are reporting the truth. In 2009, China’s state council ambitiously stated that it plans on reducing its carbon intensity by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 (from 2005 levels). Its newly released 12th, five-year plan  (China’s centrally-designed map toward continued progress in 2011 to 2015), clearly indicates a continuing commitment to reducing its environmental issues, including big investments in green energy aimed at kicking its carbon habit and expanding what’s now in place. For example, China has not only overtaken the U.S. in carbon emissions, but according to the Guardian, it has also left the U.S. in the dust with its wind-power generating capacity.

7 Things You Should Know About China’s Pollution Problem

DMZ 2km is South Korea’s newest brand of bottled water, selling water from a spring that runs under the Demilitarized Zone, the 4 kilometer-wide buffer zone South and North Korea. What benefits does DMZ 2km water have over the competition? Apparently it’s all about branding, or as some might call it, greenwashing.

“We decided on water from the DMZ because it’s different and the environment there is untouched, so many people think it’s clean,” says Lee Sang-hyo, a spokesman for the company, quoted in the Guardian.

Bottled Water Mania: South Korea Sells H2O From Demilitarized Zone

Currently, Haiti is a nation of low-tech human and animal powered farming. It could be the perfect laboratory, much like Cuba was, for developing an ecological agricultural system capable of feeding the people of Haiti. Think about it: unlike our own firmly entrenched system, Haiti is not currently dependent on fossil fuels for fertilizers, pesticides, or power. Since fossil fuels aren’t going to be around forever, I hope some of the progressive people at the USDA and USAID prevail and help Haiti to develop agriculture appropriate to its needs, not the needs of Cargill and ADM.

Haiti’s Future: Food Insecurity And Agricultural Capacity In The Aftermath

…let’s imagine that the U.S. decides to follow the example of Amsterdam, which has just announced that by 2040, no petrol-powered cars will be allowed in the city. It’s electric or nothing. That gives the Netherlands 30 years to get its electric vehicle servicing infrastructure up to scratch, which probably isn’t as long as it sounds – and it leaves the door open for other municipal and national governments to peer through, wondering if that way lies popularity or condemnation.

If internally-combusting automobiles went the way of incandescent lightbulbs and plastic bags, how would America react?

Fueling Nobody: Amsterdam Sets A Brave Example

According to Ecotextile News, Lothar Kruse, a director of the independent testing laboratory Impetus in Bremerhaven, Germany examined the cotton fabrics that came from Indian farms and claimed roughly “30% of the tested samples” contained genetically modified(GM) cotton.

The head of the Indian agricultural authority Apeda, Sanjay Dave, told the newspaper they were dealing with fraud on “a gigantic scale.”

The Ripple Effect Of India’s Organic Cotton Scandal

Although local love for the national cuisine may be failing, an appreciation for good food in France has never diminished, and the commitment to keeping the tie between eating and feeling good is alive and strong. Take Le Fooding for example. Deemed “A taste of the times,” it’s a restaurant guide/food festival/food news site, and one that’s committed more to putting the “feeling” back into food.

“We are about having food with fun, and with a smile,” Le Fooding’s founder Alexandre Cammas told the Los Angeles Times. And herein lies the French paradox: food is directly tied to emotional well being. French people don’t eat because they have to, they eat because it’s a valued part of their day and their culture.

Foodie Underground: Why the French Aren’t Fat

In the environmental movement, there have been many leaders. Names like Bill McKibben, Al Gore, Carl Pope, Rachel Carson, and Annie Leonard come to mind. But few are as personally impacted by the negative effects of climate change as Mohamed Nasheed, elected president of the Maldives in 2008. As one of the most low-lying countries in the world, a rise of merely three feet of sea level would submerge the 1200 islands of the nation that lie to the southeast of India and Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean. That makes for a political agenda fueled by a sense of urgency.

The impending disaster led much of Nasheed’s policy, both nationally and internationally, and is the subject of the documentary film, The Island President, which has its U.S. release this week. The film takes a very close look at the politics of climate change, following Nasheed during his first year in office and through the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009.

The Island President: Mohamed Nasheed’s Personal Fight With Climate Change

Images: Lance Webel, Guardian, Lucas the Experience, Sammmm, Le Xav, Chiara Goia and DonkeyHotey.

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The best of EcoSalon’s stories this week.

For Mohamed Nasheed, elected President of the Maldives island chain, climate change is personal. We’ve already written about his search for a solution to the threat of rising sea levels, but now, in the wake of his ousting in February (apparently at gunpoint), his struggle has taken a darker turn. This week the U.S.documentary The Island President goes on general release – and we’re sure it’s riveting.

Abortion is a fundamental woman’s right: that’s the hard-hitting message these three mothers are keen to deliver.

“Today, as we rage against the 1 percent, it’s perhaps wise to ask ourselves, how did we get here?” Scott Adelson takes a look at the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald and finds timeless reflections on the nature of the American Dream and too many lessons we’ve failed to learn.

What happens when an uncontrollable foodie keeps a secret journal? Answer: anise in every corner, kale chips to the ceiling and an urge to write about greens (the leafy kind). Follow the madness here.

Finally, when you’re done with ranting and plotting world domination, you may notice it’s brighter outdoors. It’s called spring, and as these 30 famous quotes suggest, it’s a very good thing.

The post The Friday 5: The I Have A Dream Edition appeared first on EcoSalon.

A documentary film that makes climate change personal.

In the environmental movement, there have been many leaders. Names like Bill McKibben, Al Gore, Carl Pope, Rachel Carson, and Annie Leonard come to mind. But few are as personally impacted by the negative effects of climate change as Mohamed Nasheed, elected president of the Maldives in 2008. As one of the most low-lying countries in the world, a rise of merely three feet of sea level would submerge the 1200 islands of the nation that lie to the southeast of India and Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean. That makes for a political agenda fueled by a sense of urgency.

The impending disaster led much of Nasheed’s policy, both nationally and internationally, and is the subject of the documentary film, The Island President, which has its U.S. release this week. The film takes a very close look at the politics of climate change, following Nasheed during his first year in office and through the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009.

The world of global politics surrounding the climate change issue is complex, and often bureaucratic. How do you tell that story? By making it personal. Nasheed might be best known to the rest of the world for his underwater cabinet meeting, but this film takes us beyond the international headlines. With an intimate view of Nasheed, so personal that at times you feel like you could just as well be sitting down for a cup of tea with the leader, The Island President gives us a unique view of the fight to save not only a nation, but an entire world.

Nasheed has been in the public eye since he took office in 2008, taking the reigns from former dictator Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. After 30 years under a dictatorship, the election of a pro-democracy activist and political prisoner that was only 41 was newsworthy. That was when filmmaker Jon Shenk started thinking about the potential of an intriguing story to put on the big screen.

“As soon as he stepped into the office he started making these very provocative statements about the environment that I was bowled over by… as a character he was willing that many world leaders weren’t willing to say.”

But translating that personal of a story with a world leader is certainly no easy task. “We were asking for a level of access that would be unprecedented from a sitting head of state,” says Shenk of the process of getting the film together. “His people sort of looked at us cross-eyed.”

Fortunately, Nasheed accepted. “He kind of listened to us for a few minutes and said ‘let’s go for it’… I don’t think he quite understood how much time we were asking for… he kind of joked later that he thought we were just going to come in and do a few interviews and leave,” says Shenk. “Our pitch was ‘look, before we read about you in the newspaper, we didn’t have any idea where the Maldives was.’ To get people in the U.S. to… see the human side of the climate debate, we really felt that we had to make Nasheed as human as possible.”

That’s the power of a good documentary, taking a complex issue and turning it into something tangible.

“The same thing happens to people watching the film as what happened to me when I was making the film: I saw climate change in a completely different way. Do you believe the science or not? I think that the media is pretty saturated with that stuff. There are certain types of folks that that doesn’t work with,” says Shenk.

The solution to climate change is multifaceted, but many know that when it comes to the grassroots level, engaging the general public is just as important as top level policy work. The question is, how are we getting that engagement?

“Our minds are not made to grasp numbers in the millions and billions… it’s not like anything that humanity has ever dealt with before. I think what we can understand a lot more naturally is a human being struggling against a situation.” That message comes across so strongly in The Island President, that after a screening of the film, a 350.org activist came up to Shenk and told him, “this answers how we humanize the issue.”

“If somehow we could personalize it and make it a personal story instead of a science story, it might help people see the story in a completely different framework,” says Shenk.

As Nasheed works his way through international press and media briefings, we see him tackle the bureaucratic corridors of the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009. His case is urgent, but the response is not. As we all know, those talks failed, leaving the environmental community scrambling to figure out what to do next. In the film, we see Nasheed return home, frustrated, but not defeated. “At least we can die knowing that we’ve done the right thing,” Nasheed tells the camera.

Flash forward to February 2012 when Nasheed was forced to step down from his presidency after a political coup. Stripped of his political power, he has been forced to continue his fight from afar. Shenk brings up a recent phone call with Nasheed. “I asked him what his latest thinking was. He said that he felt in a funny way this could be a positive thing in the end. Once a population has tasted freedom and democracy, it is very difficult to take that away. If you have passion for those things, it’s a logical next step to say, if the climate is going south, we’re talking about a world where there is that much more strife. You can quickly see the environmental cause as the struggle for freedom.”

For Shenk, connecting the dots means seeing the bigger picture, and taking stock of what’s important. The idea that the environmental cause is also a struggle for freedom “articulates how so many people think and feel. There is all this petty arguing about turf battles and the remnants of tribal warfare when there are huge issues in the world that need global focus.”

In the end, although our own surroundings may not face the same immediate threats of climate change as the Maldives, the political battles of Nasheed and his people highlight a unified message. “Why can’t we all realize that this is a common struggle? That message is the same message as Gandhi and Martin Luther King: we’re all in this together,” says Shenk.

THE ISLAND PRESIDENT—A Documentary By Jon Shenk | Official Trailer from Sawyer Studios on Vimeo.

You can find screenings of The Island President here. 

Images: Chiara Goia, Lincoln Else

The post The Island President: Mohamed Nasheed’s Personal Fight With Climate Change appeared first on EcoSalon.

If you thought “Titantic” was a compelling disaster film, try wrapping your brain around the submersion of an entire nation – one of the most breathtaking and remote places on earth. This is the story currently being shot by award-winning documentary filmmaker Jon Shenk. He is trailing President Mohamed Nasheed to deliver this essential an message about how climate change can literally engulf us.

“If we get inundated with water from the effects of too much carbon in the atmosphere, then this planet is going to be a very unpleasant place to be,” says Shenk, who adds that the Maldives struggle packs a human message. “Hundreds of millions of refugees, famine – the U.S. and Europe will not be immune from this. Much of Florida will be underwater. So, I hope this film ends up being a story about people who are doing what they can to help the world.”

Shenk’s company, ActualFilms, has spent the past year interviewing the president who has been shopping for a new country to house the current inhabitants of nearly 1,200 islands and atolls in the Indian Ocean. Global warming causes the polar ice caps to melt and sea levels to rise, and the Maldives is only eight feet above sea level at its highest point. Nasheed isn’t waiting around to sink or swim, and his plight promises to be a fascinating one to observe on the screen.

“I’m not interested in scaring people or overwhelming viewers with science and other information, but I hope people watch the film and see a group of people who are frightened about their future and who are using whatever tools they have at their disposal to prepare themselves,” says Shenk. “Nasheed and Maldivians are an example of people whose nation, way of life, and identity will very likely be erased by climate change.”

Slated for release in May 2010, Dirty Business uncovers the true social and environmental costs of coal power, following visionaries leading the path to an alternative energy future. The series of stories are shot in China, Saskatchewan, Kansas, West Virgina, Nevada and New York, with Rolling Stone reporter Jeff Goodell examining the pitfalls of a continued dependency on 19th century technology linked as the largest single source of greenhouse gases. Along with the families battling the devastation on the front lines, the documentary features industry reps, political leaders, civil servants and environmental experts – all trying to piece the conflict together.

Split Estate warns, “What you don’t know CAN hurt you” and maps a tragedy in the making as citizens in the path of a new drilling boom in the Rocky Mountain West, deal with their rural homes being threatened by polluted waters left unprotected by the oil and gas industry. The citizens frustrated by the erosion of their civil liberties, communities and health, share their struggle of clashing with interest of an industry that assures residents it is a “good neighbor.” In additional to meeting victims like Laura Amos (the proverbial canary in the coalmine) the documentary features civil servants, industry reps, political leaders and environmental activists, all trying to piece together the difficult conflict of energy versus humanity.

Garbage Dreams, which first aired the end of April, is a coming of age tale of three teenage boys in the world’s largest garbage village of Mokkatam on the outskirts of Cairo – home to 60,000 Zaballeen (Arabic for garbage people). They survive by recycling 80 percent of their trash, and when faced with the threat of the globalization of their trade by disposal companies, the villagers must make hard choices about how to sustain their community. The trailer shows the enormous burden the teenagers “endure” while combing for waste amid crowded rooftops where as geese, chickens and goats grazed on remnants of waste.

As Dreams director Mai Iskander so eloquently describes the children at work: “I filmed them day after day, scavenging for tiny bits of cardboard and plastic, the hard, dangerous and dreary work of carrying and sorting garbage with their bare hands, breathing in the dust of the plastic granulators and fabric grinders, making a tiny living from tiny bits of trash.” Iskander says he hopes the world will realize that it is these dreamers who will become world leaders as they save the Earth while lifting themselves out of poverty. The film has scored 21 awards including Al Gore Reel Current and Humanitas winner of the IDA (International Documentary Association).

“Why didn’t we save ourselves when we had the chance?” Is the haunting question aptly posed in the film, The Age of Stupid, which started out as a documentary but was morphed into a futuristic drama following seven characters and narrated by  Pete Postlethwaite. The award-winning actor plays a shell-shocked lone survivor in the devastated future world of 2055 – reflecting on footage from 2008 and questioning why we sat back instead of moving on climate change.

A co-production between Franny Armstrong, first-time producer Lizzie Gillett and John Battsek’s company, Passion Pictures, was first released in 2009 to rave reviews. The New York Times wrote: “The film is a scorching appeal for humans to avoid knowingly up-ending the earth’s climate, delivered form the vantage point of 2055, when the giant London Eye Ferris wheel looks more like a waterwheel,with its bottom immersed in the Thames, along with much of central London.”

Unlike other green docs in recent years, Stupid uses dramatization to heighten emotions in prompting us to take action while we can. Filmmakers like Shenk believe that going this extra mile works better in getting people – especially Americans consumed with jobs and kids and busy lives – to care about the cause.

“I think if people saw this has a human problem they would be more likely to prioritize the issue,” Shenk finds. “I think much of the written material and documentaries about climate have focused on the facts – and the message communicated is not quite working. Movies can be great for moving hearts. Once you have the heart, the mind follows.”

To learn more about where to view these films and how to host community screenings and events, visit Working Films.

Images: Chi King, Mnn, Age of Stupid, Dirty Business, Split Estate, Haumaldives

The post New Documentaries Shed Light on Global Environmental Crises appeared first on EcoSalon.

Climate change is nonsense.

If I’m ever lucky enough to bump into millionaire Donald Trump (say at a real estate sale or divorce court), I will rush up to the man and shake his hand. He’s opened my eyes to this global warming hoax once and for all. Addressing an audience of 500 admirers at the Trump National Golf Club (Westchester, N.Y.), he uttered these immortal words:

With the coldest winter ever recorded, with snow setting record levels up and down the coast, the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back from Al Gore…Gore wants us to clean up our factories and plants in order to protect us from global warming, when China and other countries couldn’t care less. It would make us totally non-competitive in the manufacturing world, and China, Japan and India are laughing at America’s stupidity.

I bet those countries aren’t laughing now!

But if there’s one person who does look stupid, it’s me. All these years believing in the power of science, logic, reasoned argument and differentiating between weather and climate, and now the Donald’s blown that baloney into the weeds. But I can take it – after all, I’d rather get my story correct than support some thoughtless populist prejudice designed to further the political agendas of self-serving elites. Don, you’re the man.

But I want more from our Gore-slaying guru of truthiness. I want him to explain the specifics. What say you to these thorny issues, Mr. Trump?

1. Increasingly extreme weather. Any fool can see that the earth can’t be warming up if it’s snowing! So what is causing all this weird weather right now? There’s only one rational conclusion: the earth must be cooling down. (I’m blaming all these wind turbines, it’s like global air-con).

2. Crops are on the run. Guatemalan coffee growers are moving their plantations, claiming that climbing temperatures are putting their livelihoods at risk. Scottish soft fruit is in danger of getting squished. Indian farmers are insuring themselves against crop failure. To them all I say – what’s wrong with tinned food? This loose food fad has to stop sometime, might as well be now. (And don’t get me started on that organic rubbish).

3. The mountains are thawing. The glaciers are melting on Everest and the Himalayan snows are turning into lakes. What’s that about, Don? No, I’ve got it – summer’s coming! Of course. These things are so obvious if you spend the time to really think them through.

4. The seas are rising. The island chain of the Maldives is sliding beneath the waves, and its inhabitants are responding with heavy investment in a zero-carbon economy. Heavy. See what I’m saying? The heavier it is, the less it floats. (Pro tip, guys: use coal, it gets lighter the more you use it).

5. The ice-caps are melting. The Antarctic ice shelves are breaking up (here’s the latest from the US Geological Survey), making the oceans rise twice as fast as they were doing in the 1970s. The summer polar ice cap is 20% reduced from its 1979 coverage. Where’s it all going? It’s this snow we’re having! Gotcha. The ice isn’t melting, it’s just moving around! Give it a few years and it’ll be right back at the poles again, you’ll see.

Am I on the right track, Don?

Image: Trump Ice Skating Rink in Central Park, New York, by James Trosh

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