POOR PEOPLE OFTEN SPEND TWO HOURS EACH WAY GETTING TO WORK FROM THE OUTER SUBURBS OF MEXICO CITY. TO CUT CO2 EMISSIONS AND OTHER AIR POLLUTANTS THE CITY IS CONVERTING DIESEL BUSES TO GAS AND PLANS DEDICATED BUS LANES TO SHORTEN JOURNEYS AND ENCOURAGE MORE USE OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT.
as a human beeing ( living in europe) i’am a shamed.a shamed for the way we behave ourselves towards other people.
The only thing we care about is that we can send this email with our newest computer, that only take a few seconds of our working day, so not the two hours she is needing for go to her workplace.
Thank you for the great work. I too am very concerned about climate change and all of the other environmental degradation issues such as soil salinisation and declining fertility and biodiversity issues. I am currently studying Natural Resources at the University of new England (Australia). I believe that we in Australia could be totally solar powered within 10 years if our government and “opposition” were not totally corrupted by the fossil fuel parasites. We could do this by adopting the technologies explored in the USA’s National renewable energy laboratories (now incorporated in the DOE) they used algae to grow oil, starch (for ethanol) and also produced gasoline, methanol, methane, and stock feed, (there is the potential to grow fish also) they found that using salty water which was unsuitable for other purposes they were able to grow 30 times the oil per hectare per annum than any comparable oil seed crop. THis algae technology could be employed in the Murray Darling Basin where we have much degraded land and existing groundwater interception schemes which pump up to 550,000 megalitres of saline water a year, this water is mostly pumped into ’sacrificial’ lakes and evaporation pans, and allowed to seep back into the ground and evaporate. My proposal is that this water be used to supply the algae farms ,and once the water had been through the farms it could be desalinated with waste heat from solar thermal installations of the type featured in an ECOS magazine article (published by CSIRO Australia, ECOS, April - May 2005) this solar thermal technology uses salt as a heat storage medium (Sodium Chloride) which melts at 801degrees centigrade and has a high latent heat of fusion. The electrical power is generated by using a stirling engine and generator. Larger systems could use closed cycle gas turbines or even conventional steam turbines. The fresh water and microclimate provided by the solar thermal installations could be used to regenerate the vegetation (15 Billion trees removed from the Murray Darling Basin alone) - I do not wonder why it rains much less than it used to in eastern Australia. The added cloud (low level) would directly cool us and the increased rain would aid in fixing carbon into vegetation and perhaps more importantly into the soil. I do not think that carbon neutral fuel is the whole answer due to the nitrates produced however it would be a useful interim measure, Compressed air Vehicles would be better. I am just beggining my second year of study (I am 40 years old but doing ok for my first attempt at uni’ study - I have been privatly studying climate change since 2000 but am now getting the tools that I need to try to make a difference) I shall polish this proposal with as many details as I can (Maths, Maps,Graphs, etc) but it will take a little time. When finished I will send you a copy. Thanks again for the great work. cheers
The sad thing is, that people take more than 2 or 4 hours at least. Most cant get work and some do this thing anyway asking for money in most of the main streets of the city to get enough to eat for the day and for the way home. Then, we have a GIANT problem with corruption and believe me, the problem goes more deep into our system. It is sometimes hard to live here in Mexico City and feel so limited for the things you can do about it. At least knowing you dont share your treats with corruption is fine.
Switching from diesel-powered buses to gasoline in fact increases CO2 emissions by 10-15%. This change does, however, reduce important air pollutants such as particulate matter and nitrous oxides, which contrubute to ground-level ozone formation.
Here in the UK people commute by themselves in cars for 2-4 hours each day either because they can’t afford city house prices or prefer a large country house.
UK cities need to examine examples such as this and implement transport strategies to help both poorer people who have been priced out of city living and wealthier people who don’t worry about spending on petrol to save money, time and emissions.
Just because we’re rich doesn’t mean we’re smart.
Question of clarification - when you say gas, do you mean gasolene, or do you mean LNG (liquid natural gas)? LNG burns cleaner and produces less greenhouse gases, though Americans commonly call gasoline ‘gas’ hence the confusion.
The picture of the boy and the horse carrying trash in Nezahualcoyotl city (2 million of inhabitants) is the acurate reflect of the urban life in Mexico. But it also shows the effort to improve.
Today in that part of the municipality, a reconversion of the environmental pasive becomes a social and economical active turning the 2 million tons landfill into a modern schools, sportsfacilities, hospitals and and stores. I was very impressed the first time I saw in the UN meeting in Montreal, these wonderful pictures of Gilden thanks to the contribution of our environment friend Di Carpio.