Well, possibly.  No one yet knows what role quality sleep plays in one’s life, or whether one could die from sleep deprivation.

But if it weren’t for the Couchsurfing.com network, I would be–more or less–homeless.

Since I gleefully waved goodbye to my soggy, moldy tent in mid-July, I’ve been faced with the dilemma of… well, now where do I sleep?  For a week or so, I was wearing out my welcome at my friend’s houses and at my boyfriend’s place (whose sleep schedule is around 5 hours off of mine).  Realizing that this was causing inordinate stress, both on me and on the parties involved, I knew I had to find a semi-permanent solution.

With no cash and no lease, where would I stay?  Enter: Couchsurfing.

When I first heard about CouchSurfing, I had the same instant, emotional reaction I had when I heard about Free Ride: the oh, this is way too cool to be true! feeling.  Of course, as with the other projects that I have blissfully filled my life with, it was true… and so cool I felt compelled to participate.

CouchSurfing is a website that connects travellers who need shelter for a brief stay, with hosts who wish to welcome them.  It is rare that someone will CouchSurf within their own city–yet that was exactly my situation after my grimy tent became more like a prison sentence than a home.  

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World Wildlife Fund (WWF) published a report in 2006 that documented the plunder of natural resources by human activity and warned that the globe itself could be outstripped in its capacity to support life, rendering the earth extinct in under 50 years.

Based on scientific data collected from across the globe, it revealed that more than a third of the natural world has been destroyed by human activity in just over the past three decades, because of, among others, increased emissions of green house gases into the ecosystem.

Unless consumption of natural resources was cut and the destruction of vital ecosystems was stopped, human life and that of thousands of other animals and plants would not be sustainable hence the suggestion that the earth itself could be extinct by 2050. In short, the demise of biodiversity will be the death of life on earth, as we know it.

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Speaking at the Hay Literary Festival in Powys, Wales, Wallace Broecker suggests the way forward must surely lie with the construction of millions of “carbon scrubbers.”

These carbon scrubbers would be giant artificial trees that would pull CO2 from the atmosphere via a specially designed plastic and the gas would either be liquefied under pressure to be pumped underground or converted to mineral.

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You see, in many poor countries of the world, as it were in ancient Egypt, Sumeria, China, Japan and India, it is not uncommon to use animal waste and other by-products to build houses. Or plant materials like straw bales, bamboo, grass, reeds, sedges, and rattan, as well as plant fibers and leaves. Cow dung and goat skins are very valuable building materials, but human waste!

In ground-breaking findings by Sheffield University’s School of Architecture Professor, Jeremy Till, it has just been discovered that your urine is good for green building. Urea, the main ingredient of urine, has been known as an excellent binding agent, working even better than water. “They are sustainable in literal, temporal sense…some answers are found in unexpected places. Like the bladder. But are effective in their simplicity”.

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Her name means “snowflake.” Since her birth in December, photos and videos from the zoo have been overloading the public with cuteness, stirring up “Flocke fever.”

Still, no one outside the zoo staff had ever seen Flocke in person. This week, she made her first live public appearance.

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In a report presented in Budapest on Thursday, scientists from the IPCC reported that the decline in the quantity and quality of water would affect health and agriculture in arid areas around the world.

The Western United States, Mediterranean Sea basin, and parts of Southern Africa and northeastern Brazil were singled out as places where drought could lead to less water for farming, and hence food shortages.

The UN World Food Program also reported yesterday that drought in Australia has slowed down the nation’s grain harvest, which has raised wheat prices and has diminished the amount of this food source for the WFP. The WFP has traditionally used Australian wheat to feed 80 million of the world’s hungry.

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But the question that has dogged Muslims for centuries has always been how to catch fish, using permissible methods that do not damage the environment.

“Lawful to you is the pursuit of water-game (fishing) and its use for food, for the benefit of yourselves and those who travel” (Surah Al-Maida, v. 96)

Dynamite fishing, cyanide fishing, and bottom trawling are all fishing techniques that may cause habitat destruction. A 2006 article in Science magazine said bottom trawling, the practice of pulling a fishing net along the sea bottom behind trawlers, removes around 5 to 25% of an area’s seabed life on a single run.

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The devastating aftermath of this depletion and its toll on the environment should call for another cheaper, plentiful and vastly accessible source of energy on the continent.

Solar cooking is now taking root in Africa more than ever before. Solar cooking projects are springing up on the continent mostly spearheaded by local cooperatives and non-profits working with rural women to assemble cheap solar cookers. Which works for environment.

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As expected, there were no major advances made, but unexpectedly there were few disagreements either. The wheels of diplomacy continue to grind slowly towards a solution which may or may not deliver some actual benefits. There are some who suspect that negotiators are biding their time until new US administration gets to work later this year. Then there is the other theory that the world has just gotten tired of seemingly never ending negotiations in tropical locations.

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Hard to imagine that at exactly this time last year, I drove off with the family to the neighbouring county for an Easter break and coincided our holiday with an absolute blinder of a heatwave.

The normally pallid writer who blinks mole-like in the daylight returned a week later a bronzed sex god.

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1. Asia — United Nations Climate Change Talks: “Kyoto II” climate talks open in Bangkok

“The first formal talks in the long process of drawing up a replacement for the Kyoto climate change pact opened in Thailand on Monday with appeals to a common human purpose to defeat global warming.

‘The world is waiting for a solution that is long-term and economically viable,’ U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon said in a video address to the 1,000 delegates from 190 nations gathered in Bangkok.

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]]> http://ecoworldly.com/2008/04/05/10-top-environmental-headlines-of-the-week-2/feed/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/04/04/bus-rides-to-jungletown-africa-are-fun/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/04/04/bus-rides-to-jungletown-africa-are-fun/#comments Fri, 04 Apr 2008 17:39:18 +0000 Sam Aola Ooko http://ecoworldly.com/2008/04/04/bus-rides-to-jungletown-africa-are-fun/
Public transportation in Africa can be fun and comical; even depressing or horrible, depending on how you look at it. Consider this: you are a backpacker traveling deep somewhere in the Kenyan rift valley in a 1975 Leyland bus or British Bulldog as they are known here. It is your first time in Africa and everything seems a memorable adventure to take back home. As the bus throttles uphill, belching black smoke in its wake, it gives loud engine rants that sound like Armageddon has arrived, at the top speed of 25 miles an hour.

They disregard sitting capacity here and the bus is never full until the last passenger tilts with it while hanging precariously on the door rails. And there will still be enough room for another one! The foul-mouthed crew had packed passengers at the previous stop like sardines on a hot afternoon with temperatures running to nearly 40° C (104° F) and one must endure the sticky sweat of the person sitting next to you.

That person most probably will be a rotund lady with a basket-full of damp clothes and groceries as well as sun-dried fish and a live chicken for soup on one hand. On the other will be a six-month old baby with his mouth holding on to his mother’s teat, and a two year old wailing profusely and tagging along.

The bus window next to your seat won’t open and your legs won’t fit the spacing forcing you to put your leg astride to expose your feet on the aisle, also packed with all sorts of goods, from a sack of charcoal to sticks of sugarcane. You feel like a caged animal. Sounds familiar?

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]]> http://ecoworldly.com/2008/04/04/bus-rides-to-jungletown-africa-are-fun/feed/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/04/03/cfcs-remembered-oil-wells-are-silenced/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/04/03/cfcs-remembered-oil-wells-are-silenced/#comments Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:02:16 +0000 Pem Charnley http://ecoworldly.com/2008/04/03/cfcs-remembered-oil-wells-are-silenced/ This story contains additional media. Click here to view the media.

Remember CFCs? They had the power to flavour teenage armpits and work wonders on refrigeration.

There’s two things I remember from when I was growing up. Well, not two things literally. That would suggest a woebegone adolescence. No, two things of environmental importance.

At 15, Chernobyl. A complete nuclear meltdown causing Europeans to duck for cover to avoid the prevailing winds.

Yeah, so plants are safer now, aren’t they? Well, look, personally, when you play with atoms, I still think of Hiroshima and Chernobyl, once smiling communities now nothing but cancerous shells of their former selves. Higher safety standards lead to greater complacency. No-one reading this can guarantee that another nuclear disaster won’t happen, so please, let’s leave that one alone. I’ve heard it all before.

(I don’t like things that glow in the dark really. I have innate misgivings.)

And as well as Chernobyl, we had an enormous hole in the ozone layer recognised for the first time.

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]]> http://ecoworldly.com/2008/04/03/cfcs-remembered-oil-wells-are-silenced/feed/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/04/02/play-and-generate-see-saw-electricity-this-is-africa/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/04/02/play-and-generate-see-saw-electricity-this-is-africa/#comments Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:57:17 +0000 Sam Aola Ooko http://ecoworldly.com/2008/04/02/play-and-generate-see-saw-electricity-this-is-africa/ All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, so goes the old adage. But in Africa, green innovations by very creative and eco-imaginative minds seem to be turning this adage around, and perhaps we will soon hear of: “All work and play combined sustains a green Africa”.

It all started with the PlayPump, the water system that is a children’s merry-go-round attached to a water pump and storage tank that featured on Ecoworldly a while ago.

A see-saw that generates electricity when played on by children? Now there is this simple looking see-saw which when played on by children in Africa, generates electricity to help power up their school. It has no name yet but if this trend continues, it looks like Africa will be one very big playground for green play, literally.

You wanna play, somebody?

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]]> http://ecoworldly.com/2008/04/02/play-and-generate-see-saw-electricity-this-is-africa/feed/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/31/titanics-shipyard-builds-record-tidal-generator/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/31/titanics-shipyard-builds-record-tidal-generator/#comments Mon, 31 Mar 2008 07:06:08 +0000 Mark Seall http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/31/titanics-shipyard-builds-record-tidal-generator/ In an endeavour hopefully better fated than that of the “unsinkable ship”, the Harland & Wolff shipyard of Belfast are now building the world’s biggest tidal electricity generation system.

Named SeaGen, the 1.2 megawatt installation will generate power for over 1,000 homes using energy harvested from tides in Strangford Lough, east of Belfast.

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]]> http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/31/titanics-shipyard-builds-record-tidal-generator/feed/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/31/this-week-at-ecoworldly-bus-transportation/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/31/this-week-at-ecoworldly-bus-transportation/#comments Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:01:18 +0000 Gavin Hudson http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/31/this-week-at-ecoworldly-bus-transportation/ Dear Readers,

Last week, we asked what issues matter most to you. With the initial results rolling in, we’ll concentrate first on public transportation, which currently leads as the number one issue on everyone’s minds.

Recently, Pem brought us a chilling account of England’s bus system, which has much room to improve. We’ll follow this article with a focus on the bus as a public transportation method.

All week long, EcoWorldly writers from six continents will put their heads together to describe bus travel in different countries around the world.

As we explore bus systems around the world, lend us your thoughts. What good or bad experiences have you had with buses? Do you think that taking the bus is a good transportation option?

]]> http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/31/this-week-at-ecoworldly-bus-transportation/feed/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/28/march-29-8-pm-earth-hour/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/28/march-29-8-pm-earth-hour/#comments Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:28:52 +0000 Gavin Hudson http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/28/march-29-8-pm-earth-hour/ This story contains additional media. Click here to view the media.

Earth Hour begins at 8 PM on March 29. For Kamchatka and the Kiribati Islands, that’s in just under 14 hours from now.

As the clock strikes eight in the evening, people across your time zone will be turning off their lights. It’s activism en mass. The purpose: to inspire people to take action on climate change and to demonstrate that massive and immediate action is possible.

So this Saturday night, do something that you will remember the next morning. Join the global movement, Earth Hour, and for just 60 minutes starting at 8 PM keep your lights and electricity turned off.

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]]> http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/28/march-29-8-pm-earth-hour/feed/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/27/what-issues-matter-to-you/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/27/what-issues-matter-to-you/#comments Thu, 27 Mar 2008 04:02:52 +0000 Gavin Hudson http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/27/what-issues-matter-to-you/ Dear Readers,

Every two weeks, EcoWorldly writers put their heads together to report on a single issue as it’s happening all around the planet. We have writers on six continents, so these group topics are always a great way to learn more about environmental issues from many perspectives.

Now we want to give you a chance to choose topics that matter to you. What environmental issues would you like to know more about in countries all over the world? We want to bring you news and views about the issues that matter most to you.

Take our Interactive Poll of environmental issues.

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]]> http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/27/what-issues-matter-to-you/feed/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/24/nintendo-the-stylish-option/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/24/nintendo-the-stylish-option/#comments Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:02:23 +0000 Pem Charnley http://ecoworldly.com/2008/03/24/nintendo-the-stylish-option/ Greenpeace recently released their quarterly guide entitled The Guide to Greener Electronics.

What’s the guide all about? In Greenpeace’s words:

“The Greener Electronics Guide is our way of getting the electronics industry to face up to the problem of e-waste. We want manufacturers to get rid of harmful chemicals in their products. We want to see an end to the stories of unprotected child labourers scavenging mountains of cast-off gadgets created by society’s gizmo-loving ways.”

Nintendo came bottom of the league with no public policy on toxics elimination or recycling. And although the guide describes the behaviour of electronics giants regarding toxic waste, energy usage is not taken into account – something I want to discuss here.

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