Green Options

Technological innovations can solve some of the world’s biggest problems right? That’s what a firm of Chilean architects would like us to believe. They’ve come up with a creative idea for how land-locked Bolivia could regain access to the ocean. It was not too long ago, in 1883 to be exact, that Bolivia lost the little coastline it had in a war with Chile. Since it’s only be gone for a short time, now’s the perfect time to get it back!

Earlier this month, one of Peru’s major newspapers reported that Disney might open a park about an hour south of Lima on Peru’s coast. Would a Disney theme park be good or bad for Peru?

That’s the question that is now on many peoples’ minds. Comment threads on popular Peruvian and expatriate websites show a diversity of opinions. Some people think a Disney theme park would be great for providing jobs in a country that needs them, while others think it would amount to exploitation.

While Peru’s long strip of coastal desert is not as well-known by foreigners as are Peru’s mountain highlands and lush tropical rainforests, it has enticed the interest of climate change researchers who are investigating why this part of Peru is strangely getting colder, while the rest of the world is heating up.

Climate change effects such as this one aren’t unique to the coastal area of Peru– in fact they are now becoming the norm across the country’s ecologically diverse regions.

To better understand why Peru’s coast has become colder, an international team of researchers commenced work this week on a research project in the Pacific Ocean off of Peru’s coast.  They are using a variety of equipment, such as a satellite-controlled submarine, to collect data from the atmosphere and ocean. During the research, they also hope to learn more about the infamous and periodic El Nino and La Nina climate occurrences.