In order to be a cool city

Global warming is getting worse and governments must set some rules and find some solutions to stop the people from producing more carbon emissions and reducing their footprints. One of the solutions that could be done to help this issue is to build green cities that use sustainable substances and clean power source such as: Masdar city. But what about our current cities? will they keep on polluting our environment ??. We could also change our current cities to cool cities, which means a city that cares about environment and trying to reduce its carbon emissions.

In order to be a cool city, there are some steps that should be followed and they will benefit in reducing global warming rates and prevent high rates of pollution. First of all, we should not depend on one power source, there are several new power generators that works by natural substances such as: wind and water turbines, solar systems and recycling used energy. Moreover, to reduce our electricity consuming, our buildings should be more efficient and proportional with the surrounding nature to help in the prevention of entering cold and heat, and closing all the leakage areas to stop wasting energy.

Furthermore, changing the light bulbs to saving power and efficient light bulbs can do a huge difference in reducing pollution because it's using one quarter of energy used in the old bulbs, and by that simple change you can save 40% of electricity used in lightening. And now you can imagine the difference in being a cool city if the governments change the whole light bulbs in the city.

The technology also can help in this issue, we can use emails as an alternative of using mail boxes, even transporting paper letters from country to another is causing pollution, another thing is to pay bills online instead of polluting by going there, and that is easier and cleaner. Also we can read newspaper and magazines online without wasting papers and cutting trees. And set the courses online for people who live in far away places and that should be easier to them and cleaner to the environment.

The last thing that could be done to is helping our nature is to recycling everything we can. And by this way we can save energy of producing new stuff and reuse the old thing instead of throwing it. There are a lot of new technologies in recycling process but unfortunately they are ignored and no one is using these technologies. Not only the energy that can be recycled, we can recycle glass, papers and even cloths and some home stuff.

In conclusion, I wanted to say that all these solutions can be done in any city wherever it was and no matter how they are, even in Abu Dhabi, if people have the will and are aiming to do a difference they can do something for their earth and the next generation.




http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/environment/0,28757,1602354,00.html

the island of future

In my opinion, I think that Al-Saadiyat Island is the most interesting one because it will contain a lot of interesting new developments and international museums, theaters and hotels. In think that these developments will be very useful to Abu Dhabi because these developments will give more global attention to Abu Dhabi and will rise to a higher level, but that will not give a positive effect to the environments and global warming issue in Abu Dhabi.

"In Hadid’s Performing Arts Centre concept, a 62 metre high building is proposed housing five theatres – a music hall, concert hall, opera house, drama theatre and a flexible theatre with a combined seating capacity for 6,300 seats." *

Gehry Partners >>>>>

http://www.arcspace.com/architects/aghn/aghn.html *

TDIC developments in Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi is starting some new projects in several areas in the city, and in the other way they are trying to be more pollution free and environment friendly city. The new projects will be constructed in the next 10 years and it's going to change the map of the city and the life style of the people who are living in it. I personally think that these projects are going to be green from the outside as a view only but they will cause more pollution damage, because they will increase carbon rates while constructing them and will damage the sea life and the wild life, and a lot of trees will cut down to build them.

http://www.tdic.ae/Default.aspx

the ten guiding principles

Zero carbon: trying to decrease the carbon footprint emission of the world and zero emission of the city.

Zero waste: means recycling all the main materials and elements and reuse them in other useful things.

Sustainable transport: use clean vehicles technology that helps in decreasing the pollution and global warming.

Local and sustainable materials: trying to use local materials to benefit the community and environments.

Local and sustainable food: using locally gown food decreasing pollution that occurs from transportation and importing.

Sustainable water: supplying water locally with environment friendly way and meeting the WWF standards.

Natural habitats and wildlife: widen the natural areas that include nature resources to increase the biodiversity of the wildlife.

Culture and heritage: Masdar city will be built with a local design to decrease temperature and make a shade.

Equity and fair-trade: fair trading governments to create the equity and insure a fair and stable life for everyone.

Health and happiness: people in Masdar city will have a healthier life because it's pollution free area.

I think that Masdar will not do some of them 100%. I think they will do sustainable transport, zero carbon and sustainable water. But they can't do a city with a zero waste and local sustainable materials and foods and equity.

The goals of the One Planet Living Programme:
1. Build a world-wide network of One Planet Living Communities and other exemplary projects to demonstrate One Planet Living in action.

2. Establish One Planet Living Centres in each One Planet Living community as a focus for education.

3. Promote the imperative for One Planet Living and its guiding principles to catalyse change with governments, business and individuals.

One planet communities:
Jin Shan (china), Sibaya (South Africa), OPL London project (UK), Meadowbrook Montreal (North America)

The officially endorsed one planet communities:
Sonoma mountain village / Mata de sesimbra / one gallions and one drighton

http://oneplanetliving.com/

2.55 planets to support me

Global warming issue is becoming as serious problem in this century and everyone should look at his actions and life style and look how many carbons he is producing. In this essay I'll talk about my carbon footprint and state some solutions.

There are several problems in my life style that increases my carbon footprint. The first problem is the food, we depends sometimes on imported food that needs a lot of energy and burning oil to be available in the UAE markets. For example the rice, most of the emaratis depends on rice as a main food at their lunches. The second problem is the transportations, a lot of people cannot live without a car, and also don't travel by public busses or another clean vehicles. The last problem is turning on the unneeded and not efficient stuff, most of the carbon footprints per person in the UAE came from the air conditioning and that why the UAE has got the highest rate of carbon footprint in the world. All what was mentioned is my problems and most of the local people problems.

There are so many solutions that can help to decrease my carbon footprint, the first solution is to depend in our food at a locally grown food and seasonally food in order to decrease the carbon emission that produced from shipping. The other solution is traveling by bus or other clean vehicle, and that is impossible without getting support from the government, busses should run by gas or hybrid engines not at diesel.

In conclusion, if one tried to do something he will not affect the whole society, we should join together and do some solutions to our life style.

My opinion about Masdar city

In my opinion, I think that Masdar city will be a model of future living way, and it will not be totally as mentioned and every one knows about it. It will not be zero waste 100%, also they can't change people's life style and their standard of living suddenly and get them used to living in zero-free carbon and zero waste city and change their way of living to a totally environment friendly life style. Personally I wouldn't like to live in Masdar city, because I lived whole of my life in Baniyas and I can't move to another place easily, and it is not equivalent to our culture because we depend on cars, and our culture doesn't allow women to transport by train alone or ride a bicycle. So I can't live there with my family, but if I was alone I would prefer to live in free-carbon city.

USA Cool Cities

1. Seattle: They reduced global warming pollution by more than 60 percent by constructing green buildings and operating alternative fuel vehicles.
2. Washington DC: DC has replaced 414 of its polluting diesel buses with buses that burn natural gases.
3. Houston: convert a substantial portion of the city of fleet of cars and trucks.
4. Marion County/Florida: they use gas-electric hybrid vehicles.
5. The city of Scottsdale: has introduced Arizona’s first green building program which helps builders and home owners learn about how to integrate energy efficiency and water saving.
6. Salt Lake City: they changed 861 traffic lights to LED light signals.
7. Colorado: is working to produce 50 percent of the city electricity with renewable energy by 2017.
8. Charlotte: they switched from a gas only Ford Taurus to a hybrid Toyota Prius or Honda Civic and that would save city taxpayers approximately $800-1200 per vehicle including over $400 in annual fuel cost.
9. Twin Falls/ Idaho: Reduce energy cost and cut pollution by increasing the energy efficiency of its 11 schools.
10. St. Paul: they use a system that uses heat drawn from a biomass-fired power plant.

What Should Be Done In Abu Dhabi To Make People More Aware Of Global Warming?

I think that global warming is something that everyone should be concerned about, because it's an issue that will affect our environment and the generations after us. So we need the people first to know what is global warming and what it can cause to our earth and us, and how did global warming begin or what increases global warming rates? With this knowledge people can resist it and do something that benefits their environment.

I think that wallpapers and basic advertisement ways will not be affective on people. For example, everyone looks at the advertisements that talks about” stop smoking and get a healthier life”, but smokers look at it carelessly and continue smoking. For that reason we need advertisements that include short movies, charts, numbers, pictures of polluted places and facts about what have we done. So to give people the chance to look of what they did to earth and at what rate did our polluting reached. Also we can create an organization that welcomes people to sign up for an agreement for the people who want to participate to live in clean earth and give the people who participated a name and lead and guide them to the right way of living. And when the numbers of participations of this organization increase, it can talk loudly to people around the emirates and can take some serious decisions if there are participations that work in good jobs or responsible about something that affects the environment such as the municipality or the sewerage service department. And by that way we can force the government to deal with some major issues that affects the environment badly, especially if we reached 50% or 60% of participations of the population in Abu Dhabi.

cool cities, coolant of earth

One of the main issues in this century is global warming, this is an important issue and the reason behind that is, because our life now and the next generation depend on it. Global warming is the increase of the atmosphere’s temperature. Its increase is due to two separate issues; greenhouse effect and climate change. Greenhouse effect, this warms the temperature of the atmosphere, its effect is extremely beneficial. Climate change is another example of global warming, research suggests that temperature may increase by between 1.4 to 5.8C by the year 2100. This may be caused by human producing large amount of greenhouse gasses. But our government have to start preparing for climate changes to protect the next generation, because global warming is a serious issue. But as we all know our government already thought of that and started the project “Masdar” which is the world’s first zero-carbon, zero-waste city fully powered by renewable energy. Construction of Masdar City has now officially commenced with a formal ground-breaking ceremony on February 9, 2008. The City will be constructed over seven phases and is due to be completed by 2016. Masdar’s control center is part of phase one and will be completed by the end of 2010. This is something that we should appreciate because as I said earlier that global warming is a serious issue and our government is working on it now and thinking of our future so lets help them in any way we can so that we can have a good life now and a better future for us and the next generation.

Critical Thinking

terrorism at forests

Indonesia, the fourth biggest population in the world is suffering not from conflicts and disasters only, but from illegal tree logging and that can cause a big difference in Indonesia's environment. Also about 10% of animals are found only there will be homeless. Indonesia now has the highest rate of deforestation and 70% of its forests are disappeared. Unfortunately, 90% of the woods are smuggled to border countries illegally. And because of this the floods and landslides are occurred. In 2005, the biggest smuggling of merbau wood in the rainforests of West Papua happened, and most of it is smuggled to china which is about 300.000 cubic meters every month. In 2001, the government stood up and stops the strugglers, but they had other ways of smuggling woods. In December 2002, China and Indonesia cooperate to decrease smuggling woods but the bribes were taking place at that time. It's expected that in five years all the forests in Indonesia will be deforest, if there is no action against it.

First women to break Egyptian traditions

For the first time in the Muslim world an Egyptian women is selected to conduct Muslim marriages. Amal Soliman, 32, mother of 3, with a master in Law has overcome 10 men by her education to be chosen to that position. She says her job has many advantages to the Egyptian community and that she can manage to solve the difficulties that will face her in this job. Also she thinks that she will be closer to the bride to know if she is forced to do this marriage and to discuss the women about the divorce reasons.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7269848.stm

strong like its mountains

Introduction
"The land of milk and honey" that what's said about Lebanon in the bible. Lebanon has borders with four countries which are: Jordan, Syria, Israel and Cyprus. The capital of it is Beirut, the undead land and Paris of the east. Lebanese are known with their multiculturalism such as the famous singer shakira is half Lebanese.

Modern history
In 1943 Lebanon got its dependency from France and at that time the Christians were holding and controlling the country while the Muslims have no word. Till 1948 the tension increased between them. In 1975, the tension reach its peak when a group of Christians "The Phalange" attacked a bus full of Palestinians in Beirut and then the revenge killing begin. In 1982, Israel attacked the Palestinians Liberation Organization (PLO) and as a reaction they defense for their land then Israel throw bombs over them and invaded west Beirut. The peace showed up at 1989, but as a result of this conflict about 175,000 people were died, 300,000 were injured and nearly quarter of the population immigrated to other countries. Moreover, the economy of Lebanon was frozen.

Lebanon now
Unfortunately, the undead city can recover its economy by being a famous tourism city. Also there are a lot of things that the tourist can be interested in, such as: the history and culture of Lebanon, the beach in summer and snowboarding in winter, bars, belly dancers and nightlife. But the war traces still exist and some people are suffering from it. The life had became harder and very expensive, also most of the young people went away so there are few people to rebuild this country again, and there are a lot of traffic on the streets and that what cause the high rate of pollution.

"Eye on Lebanon." Spring 2006. 10 Mar. 2008 http://www.globaleye.org.uk/.

wanna see cooool video...

IF you wanna see a coooool circus wait till 2 minutes and see it till the end

waiting for ur comments

The World Diamond Trade

Diamonds are the most precious stones in the world. Have you ever though of how they get from the earth to your fiancé's finger? I will now describe important locations along the trade route these most valuable of rocks pass.

De Beers, the biggest diamond mining company in the world, they are most mine in south Africa, and they trade and control tow thirds of world's rough diamonds. In advantage of that they can control the price by limiting amount supplied. Diamonds was first discovered in India before 3000 years ago, now 90% of the rough diamond are cut and polished there because of their cheap labor which is 40 cent per gem. Antwerp in Belgium was the diamond center for 600 years, 80% of rough diamonds pass throw the city, today 1500 polishers and cutters are left in the city and the Indians are the most associated with the diamonds trade in Antwerp. Tel Aviv is also participating in the position of trading diamonds with Antwerp now. A new growing city in diamonds trading is Dubai, the government is trying to attract diamonds traders to the city. Now, this business worth 1billion pounds in this small city.