Suchergebnisse

Current trends of urbanization, population growth, and economic development have made cities a focal point for mitigating global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The substantial contribution of food consumption to climate change necessitates urban action to reduce the carbon intensity of the food system. While food system GHG mitigation strategies often focus on production, we argue that urban influence dominates this sector's emissions and that consumers in cities must be the primary drivers of mitigation. We quantify life cycle GHG emissions of the United States food system through data collected from literature and government sources producing an estimated total of 3800 kg CO2e/capita in 2010, with cities directly influencing approximately two-thirds of food sector GHG emissions. We then assess the potential for cities to reduce emissions through selected measures; examples include up-scaling urban agriculture and home delivery of grocery options, which each may achieve emissions reductions on the order of 0.4 and ∼1% of this total, respectively. Meanwhile, changes in waste management practices and reduction of postdistribution food waste by 50% reduce total food sector emissions by 5 and 11%, respectively. Consideration of the scale of benefits achievable through policy goals can enable cities to formulate strategies that will assist in achieving deep long-term GHG emissions targets.

BACKGROUND: Do the environmental impacts inherent in national food-based dietary guidelines (FBDG) vary around the world, and, if so, how? Most previous studies that consider this question focus on a single country or compare countries' guidelines without controlling for differences in country-level consumption patterns. To address this gap, we model the carbon footprint of the dietary guidelines from seven different countries, examine the key contributors to this, and control for consumption differences between countries. METHODS: In this purposive sample, we obtained FBDG from national sources for Germany, India, the Netherlands, Oman, Thailand, Uruguay, and the United States. These were used to structure recommended diets using 6 food groups: protein foods, dairy, grains, fruits, vegetables, and oils/fats. To determine specific quantities of individual foods within these groups, we used data on food supplies available for human consumption for each country from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's food balance sheets. The greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) used to produce the foods in these consumption patterns were linked from our own database, constructed from an exhaustive review of the life cycle assessment literature. All guidelines were scaled to a 2000-kcal diet. RESULTS: Daily recommended amounts of dairy foods ranged from a low of 118 ml/d for Oman to a high of 710 ml/d for the US. The GHGE associated with these two recommendations were 0.17 and 1.10 kg CO(2)-eq/d, respectively. The GHGE associated with the protein food recommendations ranged from 0.03 kg CO(2)-eq/d in India to 1.84 kg CO(2)-eq/d in the US, for recommended amounts of 75 g/d and 156 g/d, respectively. Overall, US recommendations had the highest carbon footprint at 3.83 kg CO(2)-eq/d, 4.5 times that of the recommended diet for India, which had the smallest footprint. After controlling for country-level consumption patterns by applying the US consumption pattern to all countries, US recommendations were still the highest, 19% and 47% ...

2009 wird Linz europäische Kulturhauptstadt sein. Das ruft nach neuen Profilierungen für die oberösterreichische Landeshauptstadt, die bereits in der jüngsten Vergangenheit ein bemerkenswertes Talent zur Neuerfindung gezeigt hat. Von wem kann Linz lernen und was können andere von Linz lernen? Was hat Linz mit Madrid, Wolfsburg oder Seattle gemeinsam? Welche Eigenschaften findet man auch in Moskau, Manchester oder Davos? Ein urbanes Road Movie macht sich auf die Suche. In Form von bildhaften Dialogen mit anderen Orten eröffnet LINZ TEXAS eine atmosphärische und zugleich herausfordernde Lesart einer Mittelstadt, die weit über die bisher bekannten Methoden der Stadtdarstellung hinausreicht. Mit Textbeiträgen von Shumon Basar, Angelika Fitz, Klemens Gruber, Martin Heller, Bart Lootsma, Angelika Schnell, Dietmar Steiner und Roemer van Toorn.

Biographical note: Prof. Dr. Angelus Eisinger is a Lecturer at the Institut für Geschichte undTechnikgeschichte (Institute for History and the History of Technology) at the ETH Zürich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich). He also works on issues of urban development and planning with various architectural firms as an independent professional. Prof. Dr.-Ing. Iris Reuther is co-owner of the Büro für urbane Projekte (Office for Urban Projects) in Leipzig and professor of town and regional planning at the Universität Kassel (Kassel University).