Today’s topic for my reading: Breathing Cities in China. They have been trialling the use of Urban Ventilation Corridors in Chinese cities to improve air quality, regulate temperatures and make the whole thing feel nicer. It’s akin to the buildings that use termite mound principles to allow airflow. Almost everything I can find is behind paywalls on scientific journal sites at the moment (I have access through my university) but I did find one. Please note the article talks about blowing smog away, which in one sense is just moving the pollution elsewhere, BUT with lowered electricity use (due to the lower local temperatures) you can create less pollution in the first place. Better city planning sometimes means retrofitting in ways that are just a stepping stone to a better place, but don’t get all the way there. Ideally new cities include proper ventilation as part of their overall plan.
My current lifestyle would use the total of 3.7 Earths’ resources if everyone lived the way that I do.
Find yours here:
Found this site through Your Money or Your Life. My current living situation is not how I want to live, limiting my cooking capabilities, driving an average of 500 miles a week, no recycling, and a PUD that only uses 9% of renewable resources for energy.
That’s a good link, I had actually been wondering that exact question. Thanks!
Apparently my result is 1.5 Earths, then I went and adjusted the Home category because I forgot to account for the fact that we leave the air conditioning/heat off six months of the year usually but that only brought it to 1.4.
I did it for our current eating plans (occasional meat meal Maybe once a week) and got 0.9 earths. We don’t have air con in our house and I think heating and cooling are the biggest ones? I’ve done it before and got maybe 1.2 or something like that but I think that was before we moved here.
I was surprised by the house size. We have about a 90m2 house and it is described as “medium” within their slider bar. Our house is tiny.
But then we got 3.9 planets. I know it isn’t the goal of these tools, but as a lover of science fiction they’d make a great justification for settling the moon and Mars.
“Our calculate shows you need 3.9 more Earths - please click here to petition your politicians to establish a terraforming project”
Getting people into space is a matter of physics. What’s more difficult is getting new people once we’re in space. Pregnancy requires a gravity of 1 earth to work properly, and we know how hard it is to get right even then. Otherwise the fetus doesn’t develop properly.
YES. I don’t remember what the article or interview was, but I remember hearing about how complicated medicine is going to be!
We will need to be able to form artificial gravity whether on a station or on a surface. That is theoretically simple for a station, but expensive to research and develop.
But house size is globally tiny medium or big! North American, and Australian are going to always be pretty big.
I’ve been being driven everywhere for the last month … so I’m up to 1.4 earths. Energy efficiency (no control) and transport were the only areas that I was way above. I think that I can maybe trim flights another third
If I move back to Last Town, I could sell my car. Public transit is now free there. Potential New Job and housing is right downtown, central to the community college, folk art school, groceries, farmer’s markets. Maybe I could get below 2 earths.
I just messed around with the calculator. I’m currently at 2 earths. If I cut all long-distance travel and had a job in town that I could bike to… I’d be down at 1 earth.
