Showing posts with label environment.pollution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environment.pollution. Show all posts

July 15, 2011

How do you deal with your environment

Dear Bloggers,

Last week we were watching a local TV soap they talked about environmental problems My youngest daughter all of a sudden spread her eyes wide open and said to me. “If they keep on doing this we will all get killed”. I gathered her into my arms. How could I soothe my daughter? I couldn’t picture myself saying: Don’t worry honey, when we’ve destroyed everything there is nothing else left than to die. I wondered, were other kids of her age also scared? Were we on the edge of disaster? I had to find out.



I started reading articles on the environment and talked to colleagues what their ideas were on these problems. Let me share what I found and figured out.

First, my daughter is not the only one being scared, many children are. A study found that 51 percent of children ages 9 to 17 were “very worried about harming the natural environment.”

Why are children so worried? So pessimistic? I believe that it’s because they are inundated with scary stories about environmental disasters like global warming, the growing ozone hole, the disappearing rain forest, and the loss of endangered species. Many leaders of the environmental movement believe that human beings have no more personal value than a hydrangea bush. But we are different from the beasts and plants.


Once your children understand their role in life on this planet, we can find small and practical ways for your family to be good stewards of our world hat we are living in. Here are ten suggestions to get you started:

1. Spend free time outdoors. As a family, take a walk in the forest or meadow. Observe the animals, plants, and insects. Look for animal tracks in the wet mud along a riverbank or in the forest. Learn about the flora and fauna in your area so you can understand how to work together with nature.

2. Recycle your bottles, cans, paper, and plastic bags. Older children can sort recyclables; younger ones can bag newspaper.

3. Start a simple compost pile. Our family composts leaves, grass, and yard clippings, but you can also compost fruits and vegetables.

4. Organize projects to pick up litter, plant trees, or do other projects to enhance the recreation areas in your neighborhood.




5. Kids who like detective work can trace the path of rain water in your neighborhood. Local maps show rivers and streams are running. You can visit local streams to see which way the water flows.

6. Consider making a wildlife habitat in your backyard or school yard. It is good fun to create a habitat for butterflies, hummingbirds, and other small creatures. Nature is very interesting for kids if you know what lives in your neighborhood.

7. Consider buying a living Christmas tree. Many nurseries sell trees growing in large pots. Living trees can be used for several years, then planted in your yard or local park. (If you are allergic to them like my family a good artificial tree will stand for more then fifteen years, if you handle it with care.)

8. Bike or walk instead of driving the car. You’ll help the environment by saving gas and oil–and you get free exercise.

9. Resist our culture’s consumer mentality by teaching your children to take care of their toys. Buy quality toys and encourage your children to do the same when they spend their allowance or birthdaymoney. Clean and repair old toys together, then recycle them at a yard sale or give them to a charity rather than throwing them away.

10. Work for a fair and balanced environmental legislation. Together with school, consider assigning this type of work to the older children. They’ll learn about the legislative process and what might be wrong in it. Think up a plan how to make a better place to live and how to find the money for it. Yes even kids can write letters to their local politicians and newspaper. Just to give them ammunition against those who would accuse them of not caring about the earth.



Finally, Let your children know that the environment is cleaner today than it was 25 years ago. If you’re old enough to remember, tell them what it was like in the 1970s when many of our cities were blanketed by dirty brown smog due to industrial polution. Communicating a sense of progress will give them hope. Let them know that environmental organizations often exaggerate problems to keep people focused on the problem and get them motivated to help.

Schools can be another source of scary stories. If you’re concerned about what your child is learning in school, ask to see the curriculum or confer with the teacher. Many teachers aren’t aware of the tendency to exaggerate environmental problems. By following this approach, you’ll help your child understand how he or she should live and what they can do to help. So the next time they hear about something like the disappearing rain forest, they’ll be able to say, I know that’s a problem, but my family is recycling and we have planted some trees in the neighborhood. And if I follow my ideas with all of my heart, I know that I will take care about the near future for me and my world. If we all would do this the world will become a better place to live.

Make a difference and start in your little part of the world today.
The Old Sailor,

June 27, 2010

Keepng the cars from the city

Dear Bloggers,

As a bus driver I also need to drive in the city of Groningen to get students into the right directions from Central Station to the biggest student campus you have to drive straight through the city and I must say that this is not the easiest job as bicycles are passing you on all sides and you have to try not to kill any of them. The streets are pretty narrow but there are not many cars on these roads as they are only available for busses and taxis and of course bikes are allowed here as well. I must say it is quite a challenge to drive in a city that you only know from the outskirts. The city itself is famous for its one way traffic so it is easier to walk or bike if you want to go shopping. The big shopping malls for construction, gardening and furniture are on the outside of the city and have plenty of parking space.



In Groningen, the Netherlands' sixth largest city, the main form of transport is the bicycle. Sixteen years ago, ruinous traffic congestion led city planners to dig up city-centre motorways. Last year they set about creating a car-free city centre. Now Groningen, with a population of 170,000, has the highest level of bicycle usage in the West. 57% of its inhabitants travel by bicycle - compared with four per cent in the UK.

'57% of its inhabitants travel by bicycle '

The economic repercussions of the programme repay some examination. Since 1977, when a six-lane motorway intersection in the city's centre was replaced by greenery, pedestrianisation, cycleways and bus lanes, the city has staged a remarkable recovery. Rents are among the highest in the Netherlands, the outflow of population has been reversed and businesses, once in revolt against car restraint, are clamouring for more of it. As Gerrit van Werven, a senior city planner, puts it, 'This is not an environmental programme, it is an economic programme. We are boosting jobs and business. It has been proved that planning for the bicycle is cheaper than planning for the car.' Proving the point, requests now regularly arrive from shopkeepers in streets where 'cyclisation' is not yet in force to ban car traffic on their roads.

'Businesses, once in revolt against car restraint, are clamouring for more of it'


A vital threshold has been crossed. Through sheer weight of numbers, the bicycle lays down the rules, slowing down traffic, determining the attitudes of drivers. All across the city roads are being narrowed or closed to traffic, cycleways are being constructed and new houses built to which the only direct access is by cycle. Out-of-town shopping centres are banned. The aim is to force cars to take longer detours but to provide a 'fine mesh' network for cycles, giving them easy access to the city centre.

Like the Netherlands nationally, Groningen is backing bicycles because of fears about car growth. Its ten-year bicycle programme is costing £20m, but every commuter car it keeps off the road saves at least £170 a year in hidden costs such as noise, pollution, parking and health.


Cycling in Groningen is viewed as part of an integral urban renewal, planning and transport strategy. Bicycle-friendly devices seen as exceptional in the UK - separate cycle ways, advanced stop lines at traffic lights, and official sanction for cyclists to do right hand turns at red lights - are routine.

New city centre buildings must provide cycle garages. There are tens of thousands of parking spaces for bikes, either in 'guarded' parks - the central railway station has room for over 3000 - or street racks. Under the City Hall a nuclear shelter has been turned into a bike park.


"We don't want a good system for bicycles, we want a perfect system", says Mr. van Werven. "We want a system for bicycles that is like the German autobahns for cars. We don't ride bicycles because we are poor - people here are richer than in England. We ride them because it is fun, it is faster, it is convenient."

Following Groningen's van

Groningen undoubtedly leads the way in the 'cyclisation' of Europe's cities, but many others are putting two wheels in motion to follow its example. In Germany and the Netherlands in particular, where car culture and the Green movement have both made significant impacts, many cities are building on their provision for bikes. The UK, where transport policy priorities are still dominated by motor vehicles, rather lags behind Groningen's van.

No other European city can match Groningen's record, where fiftyseven per cent of all trips around the city are on bikes, but in quite a few the ratio is rising to a third or more. Delft and Munster now have 41 per cent, and Freiburg's 27 and Heidelberg's 22 per cent are only the leading examples for what is becoming a trend across the continent.


Uniting these cities is a dual commitment on the part of central and city planners to discourage cars and to encourage bikes. Amsterdam, along with 30 other Dutch cities, for instance, voted to eliminate motor vehicles from their city centres in 1992. The Norwegian cities of Oslo, Trondheim and Bergen levy a toll on all cars entering the town centre.

Matching the disincentives for car drivers are carrots for cyclists, such as Bremen's designation of certain streets as bikes-only zones, or Denmark's provision of cycle lanes on three quarters of its roads.



Such legislative commitments do seem to be the key in getting citizens to kick the car habit. Tthe cost of the 'motorised society'. Traffic jams cost about £15 billion simply in terms of delayed deliveries and time that is wasted.

New roads, the maintenance of old ones and administration cost £6 billion. Noise pollution, racks up a further £2.1 billion in lost productivity, medical care and depressed property values, and other kinds of pollution waste another £3 billion. Road accidents, in grim addition, soak up another £5 billion.

For the moment such striking statistics have failed to steer British transport policy away from its infatuation with road building as the solution to traffic congestion, and it will be some time yet before London charts on Bicyclist magazine's top five world biking cities. In 1993 this featured Tianjin, Copenhagen, Harare and Seattle. Straight in at Number One, perhaps predictably, was Groningen

The Old Sailor,

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