The Weekly Sneak: Lean, Green and Mean

I have had bicycles on my mind lately. I like bicycles. As inventions go, this one was a good one. They are fun. They make sense. And they are useful. And there's been a lot of depressing news lately flowing around locally (Jairo!) and internationally (Ghaddafi!) none of which is conclusive or comforting in the least. Time for something uplifting, like bicycles. In the East African:

"A reader asked recently why the fuel crisis did not result in a search for viable alternatives. Maybe we just didn’t look at the right t-shirt slogans."

And that's it. See you in the comments section sometime next week, I hope.

TEDxDAR: Selemani Kinyunyu

"Green is Sexy." Yes it is. With this message, Selemani aimed to recruit the participants into doing their bit for climate change* in Tanzania. Whether that means biking to work, separating trash and composting, not printing every email or any host of daily activities that can actually make a difference, however small, in the ultimate fate of the environment. He's already doing his part. Selemani's talk was about what climate change has to do with Tanzania.

I asked Selemani to try and explain what the heck this carbon trading business is all about. And he did: the market for the environment aims for reduced emissions from avoided degradation and deforestation. Carbon emmission is a good measure of environmental degradation. Since 60% of Tanzania's GDP comes from the extraction of natural resources (tourism, mining, agriculture), climate change will directly affect how NRs will be used in Tanzania. In effect, through this carbon trading market we can, as nations, buy and sell 'carbon emissions' in a global market. And this is where I leave you to venture ahead on your own because I 'failed' Economics more than once due to my complete inability to understand let alone speak Economese.

*In the interest of time I am not going to blog what Climate Change is and the fiddly bits of the Kyoto and Montreal Protocols. Please watch Al Gore's movie and use your Googling skillz.