These squares represent how much land would be needed to power the world, Europe or Germany with solar-thermal power. Photo: Treehugger

A single solar farm in the Sahara desert could provide clean electricity for all of Europe.

Scientists are investigating solar farms in the Sahara, as part of a $62 billion plan to provide all green power for a new, carbon-neutral European super-grid.

Because the sunlight in northern Africa is more intense, solar panels in the Sahara can capture up to three times more energy then panels located in northern Europe.

Arnulf Jaeger-Walden of the European commission’s Institute for Energy said today at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona that a mere 0.3 percent of the light falling on the Sahara and Middle Eastern deserts would supply all the energy Europe needed.

The proposed solar farms will utilize advanced solar technology created by the California-based firm Ausra. These solar power plants use movable reflectors to concentrate sun light on pipes. The water in these pipes is solar-heated to produce high-pressure steam, which then goes through a turbine to generate electricity.

These innovative solar plants store enough hot water to make electricity even at night, and to increase production during peak demand periods. The plants are much more effective than traditional solar panel designs, allowing the plants to generate electricity at a mere 10 cents per kilowatt hour, much less than what the average consumer is paying now.

Ausra’s technology has been made cost-efficient by advances in transportation. Jaeger-Walden explained today that transporting the solar electricity would be relatively easy using new high-voltage direct current transmission (DC) lines instead of the alternating lines currently used. Energy loss using DC lines is very low, making the usual issue of transportation over long distances less of a problem.

Sixty-two million dollars for a project of this kind seems expensive — until you compare it with the more than $45 trillion in green-energy systems the world needs over the next 30 years to avoid global catastrophe, according to the International Energy Agency.

Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK's chief scientist, welcomed the project, saying:

"A large scale renewable energy grid is just the kind of innovation we need if we're going to beat climate change. Europe needs to become a zero-carbon society as soon as possible, and that will only happen with bold new ideas like this one. Tinkering with 20th-century technologies like coal and nuclear simply isn't going to get us there."

Ciclovía Documentary shot by Streetfilms

Bogotá, Colombia is holding a 70-mile long block party. And everyone’s invited.

Ciclovía — "bike path" in Spanish — is an event that closes down major roads for pedestrian use every Sunday and holiday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Created in 1976, it rapidly grew from eight miles and 140,000 bicyclists to 70 miles and an average of 1.5 million weekly riders. Ciclovía is championed as a community building event that attracts people from all backgrounds for a day of biking, walking, skating and dancing in the streets.

In the above video, Bogota’s former park commissioner Guillermo (Gil) Penalosa discusses Ciclovía’s main appeal: social integration.

You will see people in $5,000 bikes and others in $50 bikes, and all having the same fun! Rich and poor, young and old, men and woman, tall or short... ALL!

Cited for “endless benefits” such as the improvement of personal and public health, Ciclovía has inspired other cities to develop similar programs, including Guadalajara, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; Santiago, Chile; and Paris, where an expressway along the Seine is transformed into a pedestrian refuge one month out of the summer.

Cities in the U.S. are also developing similar programs, starting with El Paso, Texas. This Sunday Portland, Ore., is clearing 6 miles of roadway for six hours in its inaugural "Sunday Parkways." New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his city's plans for Ciclovía-like event this August that would stretch from 72nd to the Brooklyn Bridge along Park Avenue.

Events such as Ciclovía are not only free, but they also bring all sorts of people together to get healthy and build a happy community. It seems like a no-brainer that every city should have a Ciclovía!

Photo: Philippe Leyroyer (flickr)

After all the protests during the U.S. and European legs of the Olympic Torch Relay, I figured a call to boycott Chinese goods may follow. Instead, it's the Chinese who are rallying behind a boycott.

The Financial Times reports on an online appeal asking Chinese consumers to stop buying French goods. Targeted brands include Louis Vuitton, Givenchy and L’Oréal.

I found one Chinese blogger who called the boycott appeal "immature" but nonetheless criticized Olympic protesters:

Olympics is like the Wedding Ceremony of PEOPLE in China, not the government. Imagine your reaction if someone try to ruin YOUR wedding, instead of your governor's wedding? Now the wedding of 13 billion people started to be ruined. Its not the government official who are not happy, it is everyone in the country who feel being hurt. Please understand the difference, and think about what is going to happen.

It remains to be seen whether such a boycott will gain popularity or have lasting effects on French companies. However, it's worth noting that France isn't even among China's top 10 trading partners, and that the same Financial Times piece notes that "a campaign against Japanese companies three years ago had little lasting impact."

On the contrary, a Chinese boycott of French goods, says Stratfor, a global intelligence service, "could come back to bite Chinese brands — potentially those of corporate Olympic sponsors."

Children learn based on their teachers-- and often national policy regarding education. This month's issue of Foreign Policy explores how the way Germany and France teach economics may spell a dismal economic future.

Millions of children are being raised on prejudice and disinformation. Educated in schools that teach a skewed ideology, they are exposed to a dogma that runs counter to core beliefs shared by many other Western countries. They study from textbooks filled with a doctrine of dissent, which they learn to recite as they prepare to attend many of the better universities in the world. Extracting these children from the jaws of bias could mean the difference between world prosperity and menacing global rifts. And doing so will not be easy. But not because these children are found in the madrasas of Pakistan or the state-controlled schools of Saudi Arabia. They are not. Rather, they live in two of the world’s great democracies—France and Germany.