In 2008, green events emerged one after another. You may learn some stories in newspapers, magazines and online. What are the contents and future trends of these green events? Let's learn more about the top ten most important green events.
1, China hosts "Green Olympics".
In 200 1 year, when Beijing won the right to host the 2008 Olympic Games, it promised the world to realize the "green Olympics". In 2008, Beijing fulfilled its green commitment to the international community and was highly praised by international public opinion. It can be said that the biggest gold medal in China this Olympic Games is the "green gold medal". In order to host the Green Olympics, China invested 654.38+08 billion US dollars to solve the long-standing pollution problem, and adopted many measures, including restricting millions of cars from the road and transforming thousands of coal-fired boilers to create a cleaner and greener Beijing for the Olympics.
Since Beijing's successful bid for the Olympic Games, under the impetus of the concept of "Green Olympics", the Olympic greening, urban greening and the construction of three green ecological barriers have been comprehensively promoted around the goal of "holding a green Olympics and building an ecological city". It involves 3 1 Olympic competition venues, 45 training venues, and more than 60 Olympic greening projects1Olympic forest park. Its green area is 1.026 hectares, with 370,000 trees planted, 265,438+10,000 shrubs and more than 460 hectares of ground cover plants. The survival rate of trees is over 99%. On August 13, 2008, US Treasury Secretary Henry Merritt Paulson also presented the gold medal of "Pioneer in Energy and Environmental Design" to the Beijing Olympic Village on behalf of the American Green Building Association. At the awarding ceremony held in the Beijing Olympic Village, he praised the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games as the most environmentally friendly and green one in Olympic history, and the Beijing Olympic Village contributed a lot.
In addition, Beijing has also accelerated the construction of three green ecological barriers: urban green isolation belt, plain and mountainous area, which has significantly improved the city's ecological environment and presented an ecological landscape of "surrounded by green hills in the city, surrounded by forests in the city, and surrounded by blue sea and countryside in the suburbs".
2. Fair trade promotes the healthy development of environmental protection.
If you buy a cup of coffee in the store, where will the money flow? Every link of commodity circulation makes a little profit. How much money really went to the bean farmers? Consumers pay more and more attention to their purchasing power, and some people prefer to choose natural products.
Fair trade is an organized social movement. It advocates the fair standards of global labor, environmental protection and social policies among products labeled with fair trade and related products. Its products range from handicrafts to agricultural products, and the campaign pays special attention to the exports of these developing countries to developed countries. Through close cooperation with marginalized producers and workers, the Fair Trade Movement tries to transform them from a weak role into economically self-sufficient. It also tries to empower them to become stakeholders in their own organizations and play a more active role in the global market to promote the fairness of international trade.
The Fair Trade Movement aims to improve the living standards of low-income farmers and producers of agricultural products such as coffee, cotton and rice. By reducing middlemen, the Fair Trade Organization can benefit those who need it most, and is also responsible for supervising the production and certification of goods. If consumers pay more money, they usually want better products. Many fair trade products are of good quality and are green products.
3. Can washing sewage solve the global water crisis?
You may have noticed that many cars are dirty and lawns have withered because of the total ban on outdoor watering. But you probably saw some public signs that it is not illegal to sprinkle water voluntarily. People are facing the threat of "water crisis".
Washing sewage refers to the sewage from your shower, washing vegetables and washing clothes, which is different from black water (black water refers to the wastewater from toilets and sewers). Washing sewage can be reused without too much treatment. Because there is a small concentration of detergent, food particles and excrement in the washing sewage, it is not suitable to water your lawn and ornamental plants with gray water.
You can use a professional installation system to connect to your washing machine and bucket to collect washing sewage. Although the utilization of washing sewage can not prevent the occurrence of global "water crisis", it can at least alleviate the deterioration of "water crisis".
4. Clean coal technology
Some people think that "clean coal" is an incomprehensible compound word. After all, black coal has never been associated with the reputation of "cleanliness", and it is difficult for people to associate the two. However, since the industrial revolution, scientists have developed more and more advanced clean coal technology, which can make the pollution generated in the process of coal-fired power generation less and less.
Clean coal technology is the general name of new technologies developed in coal processing, combustion, conversion and flue gas purification. Clean coal technology includes: new coal preparation technology, coal water slurry, fluidized bed combustion, flue gas purification, new coal gasification liquefaction technology, coal-based fuel cell, new coal gasification technology, direct ironmaking, briquette popularization and so on. The purpose of adopting clean coal technology is to reduce the environmental pollution caused by coal combustion and transformation, improve coal utilization efficiency and reduce costs.
Clean coal technology can reduce the emission of carbon dioxide, a harmful component that causes global warming. This technology can certainly make coal clean, which is why people spend money on this technology to clean dirty fuel instead of investing money in alternative energy sources. We have established a strong world power market, providing 50% of the electricity for the United States. China and India are leading large emerging market economies. Before other fuels are as cheap and abundant as coal, it will help to build and transform power plants and factories.
5, the vampire power of electrical appliances
When you are not using the computer, it is undoubtedly a good way to save energy. But you know what? Some equipment and electrical appliances (including computers) still consume electricity after being turned off. This is a phenomenon called standby power consumption, sometimes called vampire power supply, standby power supply, standby power supply or energy leakage. Standby power consumption refers to the phenomenon that the equipment continues to consume power after being turned off. For example, VCD, DVD, mobile phone charger and other electrical equipment are plugged into the wall socket, even if these products are idle, they still consume electricity. Consumers usually think that their equipment is turned off, but in fact, the equipment is just in standby state and still consumes power.
For example, when you use the remote control to turn off the VCD, the VCD still consumes power in standby or sleep mode, because the power inside the VCD is still on and supplies power to the remote control receiver. Although the power consumed by the remote control receiver is very small, about 0. 1 W, the power supply with inefficient technology (such as linear power supply) is not smart enough to reduce the power consumption in standby state, and as a result, several watts of power are often wasted. This is what we call standby power consumption.
Although the standby loss of a single device seems insignificant, if the number of houses is multiplied by the number of home appliances and the standby consumption of each home appliance, the problem will soon be highlighted. According to the estimation of the International Energy Agency, 5- 15% of global household appliances consumption is generated in standby state. In the United States, the cost per watt of electricity is about 1 USD to 1.5 USD per year. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates that the standby loss of American households will exceed 5 billion in the annual electricity bill. According to the report of the U.S. Department of Energy, the standby power used in the United States every year is equivalent to the power generation of 26 power stations of average size! With the popularization of household appliances and the increase of new equipment with electronic control and multifunction, this problem will become increasingly prominent. So in order to reduce power consumption,
Up to 90% of standby power consumption is caused by inefficient power supply design and components that do not need to be powered on. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates that if new equipment is adopted, the standby power consumption may be reduced by 75%, and almost all standby functions can be performed with equipment with a total standby power consumption of 1 watt or even lower. To achieve this goal, we can adopt improved power supply technology and design, that is, use smarter switching mode power supply instead of inefficient linear power supply.
6. Controversial seabed drilling.
Submarine drilling platform is the working base of submarine oil and gas exploration and development, which marks the level of submarine oil and gas development technology. The transportation of personnel and materials between the platform and the land is generally completed by helicopters. Offshore oil and gas fields are generally far from refineries, and the produced oil and gas should be shipped to the destination through oil loading stations or directly transported to the coast through submarine pipelines. Submarine drilling platform has drilling, power, communication, navigation and other equipment, as well as safety life-saving and personnel living facilities.
When gasoline prices continued to soar in summer and autumn this year, many motorists greatly reduced the number of times they drove. Some of them share a car, some take a bus, and some even work remotely when business permits, that is, they do not go out and work through the network. Some U.S. congressmen put the issue of seabed drilling, which has been debated for many years, on the table. Should it be banned for a long time, or should it abolish the federal ban on submarine drilling and open more offshore waters for submarine drilling to exploit oil and gas? Although supporters of drilling believe that expanding overseas business will reduce dependence on foreign oil and have less impact on the environment, opponents believe that the establishment of protected areas will lead to only a small amount of oil production and destroy fragile ecosystems. US President Bush lifted the enforcement ban in July 2008. Two months later, the US Congress announced that the 26-year ban had expired. But during this year's presidential election, seabed drilling is still a controversial topic.
7. Is ethanol really more environmentally friendly than gasoline?
With high oil prices and rising food prices, it is easy to think that ethanol is economical and can solve the food famine.
We all hope to control air pollution. Ethanol, a clean fuel extracted from corn or sugarcane. Only a small amount of greenhouse gases are emitted during the combustion process. Using ethanol as fuel reduces dependence on foreign oil. However, from the overall production process of ethanol, it is not very environmentally friendly.
Mark Jacobson, a professor at Stanford University, said: "It is true that ethanol does reduce some pollution, but ethanol also increases other things."
What's wrong with extracting ethanol from corn? First of all, ethanol contains less energy than gasoline. This means that the energy consumed in producing and transporting ethanol is greater than the energy contained in ethanol. In addition, planting corn is not an easy task, which requires a lot of cultivated land. Converting corn into ethanol to extract energy, the process of producing products will emit carbon monoxide and other chemicals, including formaldehyde, into the air.
Ethanol is more volatile than gasoline, that is, ethanol evaporates faster, which actually wastes energy.
8. A new term for environmental protection "carbon footprint"
What is a carbon footprint? Carbon footprint is the carbon consumption of a person or group, and "carbon" is natural resources such as oil, coal and wood. "Carbon" is consumed much, and carbon dioxide, the culprit of global warming, is also produced much, so the carbon footprint is large, and vice versa. Everyone has his own carbon footprint, which refers to everyone's greenhouse gas emissions, calculated on the basis of carbon dioxide. This concept is compared with the image of "footprint", which shows that each of us has left our own traces in the increasing greenhouse gases in the sky.
A person's carbon footprint can be divided into the first carbon footprint and the second carbon footprint. The first kind of carbon footprint refers to the carbon dioxide directly produced by using fossil energy. For example, a person who travels frequently by air will have more first carbon footprint, because airplanes consume a lot of fuel and emit a lot of carbon dioxide. The second carbon footprint is the carbon dioxide indirectly emitted by various products. For example, the consumption of an ordinary commodity will bring a second carbon footprint due to the carbon dioxide emissions generated during its production and transportation.
Although carbon footprint involves many factors. However, it is not difficult to calculate. Many websites have special "carbon footprint calculators". As long as you input the relevant information, you can calculate the carbon footprint of an activity, and of course you can also calculate the total carbon footprint of a month or a whole year. The greater your carbon footprint, the greater your responsibility for global warming.
Individuals, organizations, businesses and governments should take measures to reduce their carbon footprint and avoid environmentally unfriendly habits. Reducing their carbon footprint should start with everyone. Climate change is a great challenge for a country, a company or a community to solve this problem alone. The International Tourism Organization encourages travelers to choose an environmentally friendly way to emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as little as possible. According to the tourism organization, even for short trips, the amount of carbon dioxide released by air transportation is at least three times higher than that by train. Traveling between cities, taking a car may be more environmentally friendly than taking a high-speed rail. Encourage travel agencies to contact customers as little as possible when giving them to customer orientation; We are not encouraged to take business class; Improve the aircraft attendance rate and minimize the service life of the fleet.
From our own point of view, we can pay attention to the details of life, and we can reduce the emission of "carbon footprint": when we don't use computers, we should replace screen savers with standby, choose public transportation as much as possible, buy less unnecessary clothes, replace incandescent lamps with energy-saving bulbs, use green refrigerators with little or no Freon, and replace plastic bags with cloth bags.
9. "Local Diet" Campaign
"Native eater" is a new word. It appeared in the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the summer of 2005. This word mainly means: only eat agricultural products produced within 65,438+000 miles (about 65,438+060 kilometers) from home. In 2008, "local meals" became popular in many parts of the United States.
This is a new grain consumption trend. It focuses on self-cultivation, or the consumption of food produced and processed near home. This trend has also shifted the focus from "organic" food to "local" food. Focus on the origin of food and post-harvest treatment of crops, such as packaging, transportation and refrigeration. Different from the previous "organic", it pays more attention to how to cultivate crops. This trend is to deal with the waste of energy and the dilemma of organic production. But it also tries to protect the agricultural land and small farmers on the periphery of life and re-establish various relationships between people (producers and consumers, community residents).
Many people are willing to take part in this movement. Some people no longer believe in organic certification standards and don't want to waste petrochemical energy on food, so they choose a new way out-using local materials. It is considered that local food is seasonal and does not need long-distance transportation and refrigeration, but it feels better in taste and nutrition. Energy is wasted in the current industrialized food system, and many people are tired of the existing energy-consuming food production methods. Some people want to support local agriculture in this way. Others join for political, economic or environmental reasons.
In food propaganda, "native produce" has become a popular word now. Some American stores, no matter how they define "local", even choose farms when they buy local goods. Farmers' markets have also become popular. Generally speaking, these farmers' markets usually trade once a week in a large open space. Some people grow food in their own homes or community gardens. Some restaurants have also joined the movement to support local food. The National Restaurant Association reports that Americans have great demand for locally produced products.
10, the dispute about the peak value of global oil production
As early as 1953, Hubert, a famous American geophysicist and geologist, boldly predicted that American oil production would peak around 1969, and would continue to decline after reaching the peak. Although many experts questioned his prediction at that time, at 1970, what he predicted really happened. Since then, oil experts have called this situation "peak oil".
Later, after Campbell, Simmons and others spared no effort in propaganda, the theory of "peak oil" was deeply rooted in people's hearts and was likely to become the mainstream public opinion. For a period of time in 2008, with the soaring oil price at that time, the "peak theory" of oil once again caused controversy. The so-called "peak theory" of oil refers to the fact that the global (or a certain region) oil production reaches the highest capacity and begins to decline, which leads to the expected price increase and eventually pushes up the real price. According to this theory, as long as we can find the highest point, we can calculate how many years the local oil can still be produced according to the demand. Although there is still much controversy about when the peak of global oil production will come, most people know that it will come sooner or later.
But this seemingly simple theory has not been accepted by many oil experts. According to this theory, as early as one day in February 2005, the10 billionth barrel of crude oil on the earth was consumed. This is only half of the total output of the earth, which means that from that day on, the oil production of the earth began to decrease irreversibly day by day. In fact, except Saudi Arabia, many oil exporting countries have been facing the problem of production reduction in recent years. In recent years, with the rising oil price, the theory of "peak oil" has been paid attention to.
Some experts do not strictly distinguish between "peak theory" and "exhaustion theory". In their eyes, the essence of the problem is the same: as the supply decreases, the price will be higher and higher. If the world's proven oil reserves are 1.238 trillion barrels and the daily consumption is 80 million barrels, when will these oils be used up? The answers will never run out. Because when the oil price is too high, people will turn to its substitutes as fuel. The remaining oil will not be used up because the development cost is too high and no one develops it. Historically, firewood and coal have not brought the end of mankind, and I believe that oil will not.
Time magazine published ten scientific discoveries in 2008.
On February 9th, 65438, Time magazine published the top ten scientific discoveries in 2008. The European Large Hadron Collider, which was put into use and shut down this year, topped the list, and China Shenzhou VII astronauts were also on the list.
1. The Large Hadron Collider is on.
In September this year, the 27-kilometer European Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was launched for the first time. At that time, some people suspected that the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator and collision opportunity would form an artificial black hole, which could devour the whole earth. Of course, no clear-headed scientist will take this concern seriously, but they do expect the Large Hadron Collider to run as advertised and recreate the post-BIGBANG scene.
Everything went well at first, but then the helium leak caused the Large Hadron Collider to shut down less than two weeks after it was turned on. At present, the repair is still in progress, and it is estimated that the particles will spin quickly again in June next year.
2. Phoenix landed on Mars
In the past, all the probes orbiting or landing on Mars have never been to the polar region of Mars, and the polar region is the place where the most ice water is stored, so it is also considered as the most promising place to find signs of life. All this changed in May this year when NASA's Phoenix probe landed at the North Pole of Mars and began to dig, sample and analyze its surrounding environment. Although the Phoenix probe has not found any evidence to prove that there is life on Mars, it adds more evidence to the statement that Mars once had water and was rich in organic life. Because it is difficult for Phoenix to survive the severe winter on Mars, it stopped running in June 5438 +065438+ 10 and was buried on the red planet.
3. Scientists create life
To say that humble creatures are bacteria, the genome is only a few hundred thousand, and the body structure can't be simpler. However, some people still want to create one. This is what Craig Venter, a geneticist who is famous for his participation in mapping the genome, did. Venter first sewed together 582,000 pairs of genomes, forming the basic genetic information needed to make a new bacterium. His next step is to implant this DNA fragment into an organism without genetic material to see if this organism can be activated. Venter has no doubt that it will succeed because all software designers know that if you know how to write code, you can make it do almost anything.
Chinese astronauts walk in space.
In September this year, China sent astronauts into space orbit and carried out extravehicular activities. Some people may not care, because Americans sent astronauts into space as early as 1962. However, the pace of China's development in the space field is amazing: the first manned space flight was successful in 2003; In 2005, two astronauts were sent into space; Three astronauts went into space for a spacewalk for the third time this year. No matter from which point of view, it is remarkable to achieve such results in just five years. Moreover, China's Chang 'e-1 probe is currently flying around the moon, and they also intend to land on the moon before 2020. Don't you think this is a big deal? Then you must have never seen the Olympic Games.
The number of gorillas is more than expected.
This is definitely good news for the endangered lowland gorillas in West Africa-the latest survey conducted by the Wildlife Conservation Society this summer found that the number of wild gorillas is much more than originally guessed. It is believed that there are 125000 gorillas in the forests and swamps in the north of Congo * * *, which is twice the previous estimate! However, there is no double happiness. The war between neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo and China has spread to Virunga National Park, directly threatening the survival of about 350 mountain gorillas there, while the number of mountain gorillas in the world is only about 700.
6. Newly discovered exoplanets
For a long time, scientists have thought that there are many planets outside the solar system orbiting other stars, but it was not until 1995 that they began to discover these so-called "exoplanets". It's just that these planets are very big and close to their home stars, so there can be no life. In June this year, Swiss astronomer Michel Major discovered 45 much smaller planets, one of which is only 4.2 times the size of the Earth. Although most of them are in thermal orbits, Major found that some planets have large orbits, which makes the surface temperature of these planets lower, which means that these planets are suitable for living. In June this year, 5438+065438+ 10, two research teams in the United States and Canada discovered four exoplanets and took visible and infrared photos of them for the first time.
7. invisibility cloak
Two research groups at the University of California, Berkeley, invented two kinds of materials that can change the direction of light this year, and made a breakthrough in the development of human invisibility cloaks. These are two kinds of nano-materials, one is to use nano-metal mesh structure to reverse the direction of light, and the other is to use slender nano-silver wires. Scientists call them "metamaterials" because their composite structures have characteristics that natural objects do not have, such as negative refractive index. Of course, the current research is only experimental, and there is still a long way to go to put this idea into practice.
8. It is possible to resurrect mammoths.
A mass of hair has become the news of international concern, and there are not many such things. But in June this year, 5438+065438+ 10, such news really appeared. American scientists have successfully deciphered 80% of the genome of this prehistoric behemoth through its hair. The genetic code gives scientists a new understanding of the evolution of mammoths and shows that they are closer to modern elephants than previously thought. This dim hair has made scientists take another step on the road to resurrecting mammoths.
9. Scientific literacy has improved.
Don't you think Americans are smarter than before? From 1979 to 2006, the proportion of American adults with "scientific literacy" doubled to 17%. A survey conducted this year by a professor of political science at the University of Michigan found that this number increased again, but the increase was very small. At present, 25% of Americans are considered to have "scientific literacy".
According to the researchers, this result means that only14 adults in the United States can read and understand the stories published in The New York Times Science Edition every week. You know, what the United States requires of ordinary voters is to understand or master complex issues such as global warming and stem cell research. It seems that even though the public's scientific literacy has improved, most people are still not up to standard.
10. Discover "the first family"
A group of archaeologists recently discovered the remains of the earliest known "nuclear family" in Germany. They are a couple and their two sons, who lived in the Stone Age 4600 years ago. The family may have died in an attack by a rival tribe. Archaeologists confirmed their identities by detecting DNA fragments of their bones. The two boys are only 8 and 4 years old respectively. This archaeological discovery shows that modern family values flourished before Stonehenge was established in England.
Dr Parker, head of the Department of Archaeology at Bristol University, said: "This is a particularly important discovery, because we can identify a family buried together for the first time. Hundreds of bones were also buried in the previously discovered grave. This tomb may be a watershed in the rise of family importance, because previous evidence shows that sustainable wealth is an important factor in family life during this period. "