JULHO 2012=money bag

Aproveitem cada dia com amor ao próximo e a natureza!

Estamos aqui de passagem, que nossa passagem seja de semear...não deixem de declarar seu amor todos os dias!

"Se pudéssemos ter consciência do quanto nossa vida é passageira, talvez pensássemos duas vezes antes de jogar fora as oportunidades que temos de ser e de fazer os outros felizes !! "    Este ano, Julho terá 5 sextas-feiras, 5 sábados e 5 domingos. Isto acontece uma vez a cada 823 anos. Estes anos são conhecidos como 'Money bag'.  (saco de dinheiro) Passe para 8 boas pessoas e o dinheiro aparece em 4 dias, baseado no Fengshui chinês. (acho melhor enviar pra 16 pessoas...rs) Quem parar não recebe, diz aqui... Bom, não custa tentar....

 

Qualidade do ar das grandes cidades

Hoje é um dia para aumentarmos nossa percepção sobre os efeitos do homem na Terra.

 

Vcs olharam pela janela? Os olhos estão ardendo e já levantou com o nariz um pouco entupido? Conseguimos VER a poluição no ar!

 

Todos nós que moramos em SAMPA e em outras grandes cidades acordamos assim e, isso mostra como precisamos mudar nossos hábitos e pedir mais ação para nossos governantes e para as nossas marcas preferidas.

 

O que podemos fazer?

 

Primeiro de tudo fazer a nossa parte, e aí inclui usar etanol em vez de gasolina, e fazer campanha para nossos familiares, nossos vizinhos façam o mesmo. Hoje, só pq aumentou um pouco o preço, a maioria das pessoas que tem carro flex, mudou para gasolina...cada carro conta para termos um ar melhor...

 

2º – precisamos pedir mais ações contundentes dos nossos governos – a Rio+20 aconteceu e nada de realmente objetivo foi implementado...envie e-mails aos jornais pedindo mais restrição ao uso do diesel, mais frota ônibus elétrico ou etanol, mais controle das emissões das fábricas, etc...faça valer a sua voz!

 

3º precisamos pedir mais ações das nossas marcas queridas – envie e-mails pedindo processos mais limpos, que não poluam nosso ambiente, confira se o que eles estão falando é verdade e cobre mais. Nos valemos como consumidores então temos nosso valor tb para pedir ações pelo nosso meio ambiente.

 

Não se engane, a Terra vai continuar e mais uma série de seres vivos (como as baratas que são quase indestrutíveis) mas, nós, eu, vc , seus filhos, os meus, todos nós estamos em séria ameaça (hoje nem temos ar limpo para respirar!). E, não é para daqui 100 anos ou mais, é agora, já, hoje, amanhã...cada inverno pior ar...

 

Pense nisso e mude já!

 

Ar puro e água cristalina para todos!

 

 

 

 

 

 

: O que os presidentes das universidades americanas estão fazendo ...

College campuses' climate lessons for companies

By Joel Makower

Published July 02, 2012

 

For the past five years, a quiet efficiency revolution has been taking place on more than 600 college campuses. It offers potential lessons for companies on how a sector can simultaneously compete and collaborate to achieve ever higher levels of environmental success.

 

A group called the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment, which began in 2007 with a dozen schools, now boasts 675 institutions representing a third of the entire U.S. college and university student population. Each has signed a commitment to take specific steps “in pursuit of climate neutrality.” Those actions include completing a comprehensive inventory of greenhouse gas emissions, developing an institutional action plan for becoming climate neutral and choosing other tangible actions from a menu, from sustainable purchasing to waste minimization.

 

On the occasion of ACUPCC’s fifth anniversary, and the Leadership Summit it held recently in Washington, D.C., I spoke with the group’s organizer, Anthony Cortese, whose day job is president of Second Nature, a 20-year-old nonprofit he co-founded (with former U.S. Senator John Kerry and his wife, philanthropist Teresa Heinz) to bring sustainability to higher education.

 

Cortese was anxious to cite the litany of ACUPCC’s impressive achievements — reduced emissions, increased renewable energy, saved money, business model innovations, and all the rest. I’ll spare you the list, except to say that as a group, the member colleges and universities have reduced gross greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent, and more than 30 percent of the signatories have set a target climate neutrality date within 20 years. (If you’re interested in additional details, you can read about them in the group’s just-published five-year report.)

 

I was more interested in the “how” and “why” of these accomplishments: What motivated these hundreds of college and university presidents? How are they working together and leveraging one another's efforts?

 

“When we went to the presidents, we pitched this from the perspective that this is really about their core educational mission,” Cortese explained. “’Why wouldn’t you make sure that your graduates could help create a healthy, just and sustainable society, and why wouldn’t you demonstrate that on your own campuses?’ Many of the presidents who signed the commitment initially told us that the primary reason they did it is because of the students — not because of student pressure, but because they felt that the worst impact of an unsustainable society would occur on their students and their students’ children. They felt their primary purpose is to educate students so that they could have a decent quality of life.”

 

Given the group’s climate-neutral focus, it’s not surprising that the bulk of the activities the schools engage in relate to energy efficiency and renewable energy. But it’s not just light bulbs and HVAC tuning. “There has been an explosion of programs to make the campuses more bicycle and pedestrian friendly, to promote more public use of public transportation, and locally and organically grown food, and a lot more local purchasing,” says Cortese.

 

One of the ways the initiatives succeed, he says, especially given the dour economy and many colleges’ budget challenges, is through creative financing. “A number of schools have developed internal revolving-loan funds that have much better returns on investment than anything you could get in the stock market, even when the stock market was really up and before the big downturn."

 

But many schools don’t need such funds, given the attractive economics of efficiency and renewables. Says Cortese: “The University of Southern Mississippi is saying that over the next 30 years, they’re going to save $270 million in energy costs because of a deeply comprehensive program for energy efficiency and conservation. Butte College in California is completely on solar and off the grid. It’s the first carbon-positive institution, and their numbers indicate that they’ll be saving between $50 million and $75 million over the next 20 years.”

 

There are other, less-tangible benefits. “Some business offices tell us that they like the climate commitment because it can enforce some discipline on the campuses, where every department and every school wants a new building. They want more space, but they can utilize this just by saying, ‘Well, do we really need it? Can we find more effective use of our space and more effective use of our time? Can we centralize some functions that will result in the reduction in both costs and resource consumption?’”