Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for August 26, 2009

Electric Taxis for Tokyo

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THE company promoting the mass adoption of electric cars, Better Place, has just received an award from the Japanese government to conduct a pilot project in Tokyo for the world’s first electric taxis with switchable batteries.   

Not so long ago the company got some money to make Canberra Australia’s first city with an electric vehicle infrastructure. 
 
The Tokyo electric taxi pilot will involve the construction of a permanent Better Place battery switch site in Central Tokyo.  This project will allow for testing of battery switching duration, vehicle range, and vehicle battery life under heavy use operating conditions.   [Read more…] about Electric Taxis for Tokyo

High Fashion and the Climate Crisis

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caroline modelling 06VOGUE is an exclusive magazine about what is really fashionable. This month Vogue Australia has a feature on the ‘Climate Crisis’.

Australian Green’s Senator Christine Milne explains in the article that unless we change our ways there may be no polar bears in the wild and Australia will lose its natural icons. The Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu and the snow caps on the Snowy Mountains will apparently be gone by 2030. Also, our beaches will have eroded and many Australian cities will be in managed retreat.

The solution, according to the Senator, is for women to “roll up their sleeves just as our great-grandmothers did in the Women’s Land Army during World War 11” and reduce our personal impact on the climate by one tonne of carbon dioxide in a year.

The fashionable way to achieve this is through simple choices including turning the airconditioner down a notch, catching the train once a week and reducing, reusing and recycling what we buy.

It can’t be easy getting a story in Vogue. It is testimony to the widespread appeal of this doom and gloom issue that it is featured in this month’s issue. Of course almost all of what is written is untrue, but then fashion has never been about the truth.

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Extraordinary times call for extraordinary action. By Senator Christine Milne pg 339-340. Vogue Australia. September 2009.

Vogue images are all copyright. So my daugher, Caroline, provides a fashion theme for this blog posting … she was on the catwalk at a hair fashion event a few years ago.