A University of Eindhoven researcher has teamed up with Ford to develop software that improves the fuel efficiency of automobiles. "By adding a piece of software and a simple cable, cars can save 2,6% of fuel consumption", explains the scientist John Kessel.

This software simply switchs the battery-charging dynamo off when it is inefficient for the engine to power it, and back on when it is more efficient for the engine to
do so. Many hybrid vehicles already use this strategy.

All vehicles equipped with a engine computer can implement the solution. For Kessel, there are still concerns about the extent to which car batteries would be degraded by the software.

But what is 2,6% ? For you, it's about a few tens of dollars or euros. But for the planet ... a quick calculation ... the world consumes 80 millions barrels a year. At 159 litres by barrel, we get 13 billions liters of oil. If we remove the usage of kerozene or fuel oil, we can consider that the half leaves on the roads. And then 2,6% represents 170 millions of litres a year!

If you want to minimize greenhouse gas emissions, following the shortest route from your navigation system isn't the best idea. Neither is the quickest road.

Swedish researchers from the Lund Institute of Technology have created and tested a GPS navigation system programmed to work out the most "efficient" route. In the streets of Lund, the three women proved that their system can calculate routes that are significantly less polluting than the standard options. An average fuel saving of 8,2% in one area, 8,2% less pollution. Eva Ericsson (the boss) estimates that 4% is more realistic for a global use.

To develop the all thing, the team assigned fuel consumption factors for 3 types of car on 22 streets in the digital map database. To get there, they merged information on thoses streets: width, speed limit, typical traffic flows in both peak and off-peak hours.

But the suppliers of digital maps are more skeptics. By Navteq for example, assign a fuel factor to every street would be too expensive. But they imagine probe vehicles that would transmit data on their fuel consumption as they travel around so one can use them in real time or store them as historical data.


Source: NewScientistTech, yesterday.

In our mind, the mobile phone's not associated yet with the environmental, social or economic problems that it leads to. However, some figures are scary: nearly 30 kg of raw materials are necessary to manufacturate a device of about 100 grams! And in the world, one estimates that a billion devices are living!

In Belgium (and that must be about the same thing in the neighbor countries), the average lifetime of a mobile phone is around 18 months. Briefly, a belgian mobile is abolished every 10 seconds! In one year, that represents 3 million devices. Among them, only 2% will be recycled.

Conclusion: at the end of your mobile's lifetime, the WWF advises to not simply give it up in a drawer, nor to throw it away, but rather to give it to a friend or a company of social economy. You can also exchange it while you purchase the new one, with the guarantee that it will be reconditioned for one second life. If it can be used never, abandon it in a park of selective collection or to a distributor that collect old mobile phones for free.

Source: WWF.be

Last week, La Première, a Belgian public radio station, has proposed a talk show about Economic Decreasing.

The speakers' comments were so interesting that everybody should be challenged by the ecological cause seen under this angle.

To be brief, the decreasing is a concept which affirms that infinite economic growth, i.e. the perpetual increase of an economic indicator, is simply not acceptable by the ecosystem of the Earth.

The decreasing comes from the fact that the planetary resources are not inexhaustible. A simple figure: 80% of the resources are exploited per 20% of the world population. It's almost the end of fossil resources (gas, oil): one speaks about 20 or 30 years. And thus the infinite growth is not possible for the limited Earth.

Serge Latouche, highly skilled professor of economy at the University of Paris-Sud :

The decreasing is a provocative slogan which aims to fight with the set language: for the growth, always more... While we know very well that the growth brings us right in the wall . Thus behind this word, there is the questioning, the change of direction for our growth society [...] This is about finding what the experts call a bearable ecological footprint, i.e. a way of life more frugal (does not mean antiquated) to be compatible with the regeneration of the biosphere.

Space available on the planet is 126 billion acres but useful space, bio-productive, is only 30 billion. And since we're about 6 billion, it makes 4.5 acres available to nourish us, to dress us, for all our consumption and especially (it is often forgotten) to recycle our waste. Because each time we burn 1 liter of gasoline, 50 square feet are necessary to absorb emitted CO2. This space, we exceed it of 30%. Globally, if everyone was European, we would need three planets. And if everyone was Australian or American, we would need six of them. It's still possible for the moment because, contrary to the generally accepted idea, the South countries give us a considerable technical aid since if everyone was from Burkina Faso, a tenth of the planet would be enough.

Vincent Cheynet, founder of "casseurs de pub" and chief of the magazine "La Décroissance":

We approach the peak oil, from the moment we will extract the maximum of oil from the ground. After that, the oil extraction will decline, one imagines 3% per year and today, there is no alternative source of energy which has the same capacity as oil. Thus if we do nothing, quite naturally, the regulation is likely to be done by chaos and will create major socio-economic problems. And that's also an enormous stake of the decrease: vis-a-vis this rarefaction of the natural resources, today we must anticipate this movement. [...]

That's the reason why, for example, we fight for the suppression of the Grand Prix de France de Formule1. Obviously, a Grand Prix like this one does not represent an extraordinary pollution (it is certainly a consequent pollution), but we especially attack the symbol which the Grand Prix de France represents, i.e. a kind of paroxysm of pollution, plundering of natural resources, wasting and we think that we will manage also to transform the society by attacking this type of symbol. This way, we'll make understand people that this insane race to technics, growth and wasting cannot continue eternally.

Alain Gras, professor of sociology in La Sorbonne :

It is only in 1900, therefore hardly more than one century ago, that fossil energy won against renewable energy. Today, we just know the fossil energy as a mean of development. Thus, I think that it would be necessary to try to return to other energy, obviously to renewable energy. And try all of them. And indeed, a new frugality in the use of energy. [...] To modify our behaviour with energy, it's obviously to have less comfort in the everyday life and in particular also to decrease mobility. Because mobility is the large greedy one, it's the big catastrophe on the energy level .

Integral script of the show (in French) (many thanks to the speech recognition)

"It's now time to understand how much the desire of going quick is insane when we turn around " (Albert Jacquard)