January 19, 2009
· Filed under Barack Obama, Environment · Tagged Barack Obama, Climate change, CO2, Environment, Global warming
Obama has made some interesting promises about the environment so far and it is our hope that he will go thru with them as soon as possible. I specially like the ideas of geting 1 million plug-in hybrid cars on the Road by 2015 and ensuring that 10 percent of electricity comes from renewable Sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025. There are however also other things that can have a great impact on the environment like implementing an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050, help create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future and make the U.S. leader on the fight against climate change.
With ideas like these it’s possible to change the way people think about these issues and even the way our international leaders think. All these ideas could not only have a positive effect on our environment, they can also be what our economy needs to get back on its feet. A new market of renewable energy that creates new job opportunities and new products is something the world economy needs today.
Let us therefore hope that Obama is serious about this issue and about other issues to, and gives us a leadership that just doesn’t seek short time proffit everywhere.
January 18, 2009
· Filed under Environment · Tagged CO2, Environment, Green search engine
After almost one year online we have made a survey about the nationality of our users and the figures are clear, most users are from the U.S. Of every 100 visitors. 40 are Americans.
The figures are quite surprising as Americans according to most “studies” should be less interested in the issue than Europeans are for example. Could the result indicate a change in the mentality and concern of the American people towards the question? Have Americans started to listen with more attention to people who, like Al Gore, have been arguing about the problems we are to face in the future unless we all try to do our share to help the planet? We hope so. And we also hope to see more visitors from America as well as all other countries.
Other nations that are well represented amongst our green surfers are Sweden (14%), Great Britain (10%), Canada (8%) and China (3%). The site Treehoo.com receives visits from more than 100 countries. A great lot of our visitors return and 70% of them add us to their “favorites”, thats some kind of record we think.
January 18, 2009
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged Climate change, CO2, Environment, Forestation, Global warming, Trees
Deforestation in the tropical regions of the world released 2.2 billion tons of carbon in 2007, at the same time forestation in the temperate regions absorbed 0.7 billion tons. Giving a balance of 1.5 billion tons of carbon released into the atmosphere due to this cause and contributing to global warming. This equals 15 % of the total amount of carbon released into the air that year.
In Asia deforestation is driven by a fast growing demand for timber. In Africa by the gathering of fuel wood and the clearing of new land for farming. In Latin America it’s the growing demand for soybeans and beef that are to blame. Half of all the deforestation occurs in only two countries; Brazil and Indonesia.
On the other hand three countries have implemented partial or complete bans on deforestation; China, Thailand and the Philippines. Floods and landslides have been the causing factors, which made rulers realize that it made more economic sense to keep the forests that logging them. Since then loggers in China are paid to plant trees instead of cutting them down.
It is also known that to stabilize the climate it would be needed to stop deforestation worldwide and instead plant more trees. Today deforestation is the single major source of CO2.
Deforestation is no longer a matter of local, or even national interest as it has become the major driver of global warming and worldwide rising seas.
The leading Swedish energy firm Vattenfall, has examined the large-scale potential for foresting wasteland to sequester CO2. They believe that of 1.86 billion hectares of degraded lands that exist (land that used to be forestland, cropland or grassland), half could be profitably reclaimed. They say that the maximum technical potential of these 930 million hectares is to absorb roughly 21.6 billion tons of CO2 per year, more than what is currently released every year from deforestation and many other polluting activities together.
This means we have a chance to stop global warming and its effects; all we have to do is plant those trees. And that is what Treehoo.com works for.
For further reading look at the Earth Policy Institute.
Facts for this article where taken from the article “Planting trees and managing soils to sequester carbon“ at www.earthpolicy.org and from an article in Swedish by Johan Liakka, Sveriges Television (Sweden’s public broadcasting network).
January 18, 2009
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged Climate change, CO2, Environment, Global warming, Green search engine, Treehoo, Trees
Ever since I started Treehoo.com I’ve been thinking about the possibility to make a blog, not an easy task when you´re working full time and studying part time. But now with the beginning of a new year and the great promises it brings with it, I´ll try to make a good effort at it.
“Why a web portal that plants trees?” people have asked me. The easiest answer is “Why not?”. But the most correct answer is “Because we need it!”. All statistics we posses show that the levels of CO2 are increasing and that temperatures are rising as a consequence, with terrible results to be foreseen.
Trees are the best cure against CO2 and I believe that we really need more of them. Of course there are other projects that plant trees, but they all depend on givers and most people can´t afford to give so much whatever the cause. At the same time billions of people use the Internet each day to search for facts and information or just for the fun of “surfing”. This surfing by these billions of persons worldwide is giving revenues so big, that the greatest fortunes today are in the hands of those that offer services attached to the net. Treehoo.com is of course very far from competing with those enterprises, but even a small bit of these revenues invested in our environment could be of great benefit for the human race (and all other species to).
The idea behind Treehoo.com might seem a bit naive, but as incredible as it might seem it works! People from all over the world are surfing to the page on a daily basis, many of them send us e-mails to ask about our project and to congratulate us for the initiative. We are very greatfull for all these users and for their care for the environment and their trust on us. We do however need many more surfers that get to know about us and visit us, because the more people that uses Treehoo.com the more money is collected and subsequently the more trees will be planted.
Where are the trees to be planted then? For the moment it seems that we are going to plant trees in two countries to begin with, Sweden and Uruguay. They have been chosen for practical reasons as Treehoo.com is based in Sweden and we have some relevant contacts in Uruguay. The idea is to begin to plant the first trees in natural parks in collaboration with some schools . This way schoolchildren can plant the trees and learn about the environment and the importance of conserving it. For the moment and according to the amount of money we are making each month this seems to be the best solution. The idea behind the page is however to plant trees on a more “industrial” scale in the future, we are however not there yet.
What about the other 30%? Well, the idea is to make Treehoo.com a competitive web portal/search engine and to do so one has to invest a lot. For the moment the page is relatively simple and all services offered are so called “affiliate programs”, but someday we would like to offer are our own services so even more money can go to to benefit the planet. A site that want´s to be known has also to invest in publicity (just imagine the amount of publicity that was needed before the phrase “Google it” was invented). To do all this we would need to employ people and make big investments.
Finally, will 2009 be a better year for the environment? This is very hard to say, but there are some good indicators. One of them is the new U.S. administration, it´s hard to think that they will be worse than the predecessors. If the new president takes the environment seriously it could also trigger a greater conciseness worldwide. I trust however that with more and more people getting conscious about this issue every day, politicians will have to rethink their policies and that 2009 will be an important year for us who care about our wonderful planet.
Pedro
