Carbon taxes have to rise sharply to avoid climate crisis, says IMF

By Anne workforce / October 11, 2019

Fund says governments could use money to help vulnerable people or invest in green energy

Avoiding dangerous global heating will require governments around the world to impose stringent taxes on fossil-fuel usage that will mean a 43% jump in household energy bills over the next decade, the International Monetary Fund has said.

The Washington-based Fund said the battle against climate change could only be won if the average carbon tax levied by its member states increased from $2 (£1.63) a ton (907kg) to $75 a ton.

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Read more: theguardian.com

David Pocock and Wallabies teammates lead sporting charge on carbon emissions | Andrew Stafford

By Anne workforce / October 10, 2019

Exclusive: Pocock convinces Bernard Foley and Dane Haylett-Petty to join him in encouraging the sports industry to play a bigger role in sustainability

Wallabies flanker David Pocock, along with Rugby World Cup teammates Bernard Foley and Dane Haylett-Petty, have announced their partnership with a scheme that aims to compensate for the carbon emissions associated with travel.

Earlier this year, musician Heidi Lenffer, from Australian band Cloud Control, launched FEAT. (Future Energy Artists), an initiative that would allow Australian musicians to invest in a solar farm in south-east Queensland.

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Read more: theguardian.com

Green Star Energy won’t switch off fraudulent account

By Anne workforce / October 10, 2019

The firm’s slogan is ‘take back control’, but I can’t stop it sending debt collectors

I have had ongoing issues with Green Star Energy. When my bank detected fraudulent activity on my account, Green Star was one of the payees. My compromised bank account was refunded and closed, and my credit file updated. Green Star confirmed that a fraudulent email address had been used to set up an account in my name and promised to investigate, but in the year since then I have heard nothing except for letters threatening to send debt collectors.

I am 24 and have always lived with my parents who have been with Scottish Gas for 10 years. Green Star has, on numerous occasions, told me it can’t give me any information about the account as I can’t confirm the email address – which it has already told me is fraudulent.

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Read more: theguardian.com

Amager Resource Centre review – green energy goes off-piste

By Anne workforce / October 8, 2019

Bjarke Ingels’s splicing of power plant and ski slope confirms the Danish architect’s transition from enfant terrible to global brand

If you look out from the summit of Copenhagen’s new-made alp, you see a landscape of artifice – wind turbines, the bridge to Sweden, the sea canalised into old docks and harbours, the city itself, all set against a level horizon with which the thing on which you are standing is, at 85 metres high, in notable contrast. Around is ex-industry awaiting regeneration. Diggers are clawing at the bulky wreck of a nearby decommissioned waste-to-energy power station, its replacement being housed inside the aforesaid aluminium-clad and concrete-framed alp.

Below you a slice of replica Swiss meadow swoops steeply down, then veers left and out of sight. Its grass grows through a green plastic mesh, the brush-like finish of which gives the same coefficient of friction as snow. Which means you can ski down it, even when it’s verdant. Knobbly concrete tracks, for people who like running up and down mountains, wind through vegetation, with flues and extracts popping up here and there. An external climbing wall rises the full height of the main structure. A glass-walled lift, for those who like to take the easier route to the top, offers glimpses of mighty machines inside.

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Read more: theguardian.com

6 space-themed novelty items we totally forgot about

By Anne workforce / October 8, 2019

5115914061_19407be3e6_hFlickr Creative Commons/Brian

Space-themed novelty items were popular through the latter half of the 20th century and into the early 2000s. 
Some have been discontinued, but many, like Tang, Moon Boots, and freeze-dried foods, are still around today in limited form.
Here are a few of the space-themed items that once captured the national imagination — and our wallets.
Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories. 

World Space Week is upon us.

In honor of the annual UN-backed holiday, which runs from October 4 to October 10 this year, Business Insider has compiled a list of some of the lesser known items brought to us by the great space race.  

Adults who grew up in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, during the heyday of the space race and NASA’s Space Shuttle program, are probably familiar with a bevy of space-themed products capitalizing on the national fervor around the US space program. 

From Moon Boots to dehydrated ice cream, these space-themed novelty items were once all the rage.

And though some have been discontinued, the memory of their absurdity lives on.

And who knows, perhaps they’ll be revamped and available once again to the public as the next great space race gears up in our time.

Here are six space-themed oddities you may have forgotten about.

1960s kids might remember snacking on Space Food Sticks.
Pillsbury

If you’re of the silent or baby-boomer generations, you might remember Space Food Sticks.

These caramel, chocolate, and peanut butter-flavored snacks had their origins in the space food cubes developed by the Pillsbury Company for a NASA mission in 1962. Space Food Sticks hit grocery store shelves in 1969, according to General Mills’ history of the product.

While they may not have the same branding anymore, in a sense, Space Food Sticks never went away. They live on in the form of now ubiquitous energy bars made by dozens of food manufacturers. The brand faded by the 1980s but was purchased and subsequently re-released in 2006 to science and space centers and novelty shops.

Tang drink mix is associated with 1960s space travel, even though it wasn’t actually designed for astronauts.
Flickr Creative Commons/Brian

Tang is probably the novelty product most associated with the space program, with many people thinking it was developed by or for NASA.

That’s actually a common misconception, according to the agency itself

The powdery drink mix was, however, forever immortalized when John Glenn took the drink on the Friendship 7 orbital spacecraft in 1962, and has been associated with the space program ever since  — even though Buzz Aldrin hated the stuff, according to NPR

Given the product’s notoriety, it might be hard to argue we’ve forgotten about it. Although, when was the last time anyone you knew tossed back a cold, refreshing Tang?  

Believe it or not, though, the drink lives on internationally, making $900 million annually for producer Mondelez International. It’s most popular in Brazil, Argentina, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico, according to the company

Moon Boots captured the imaginations of avid skiers and snow bunnies in the late ’70s.
Matthew Sperzel/Getty Images

Fashioned after the actual moon boots worn by Apollo 11 astronauts on the moon, the Moon Boot debuted in the early 1970s to capitalize off space-race fever. 

Developed by outdoors company Tecnica as aprés-ski footwear, Moon Boots came into vogue at the height of the Cold War, and have occasionally popped up again over the decades whenever a retrofuturist fashion trend resurfaces, according to The New York Times.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

See Also:

An adorable photo shows 9 astronauts and cosmonauts hanging out in the International Space Station. Here’s why the orbiting lab was so crowded.The ocean on Saturn’s moon Enceladus contains the building blocks of life, NASA data reveals16 recently discovered exoplanets could offer our best chance of finding alien life outside the solar system

SEE ALSO: 9 of the biggest pivots in tech history, from Nintendo to Instagram

DON’T MISS: 14 animals that are surprisingly legal to own as pets in the US


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Google signs up to $2bn wind and solar investment

By Anne workforce / September 21, 2019

Tech giant’s push for greener energy prompts biggest renewable energy deal in corporate history

Google’s chief executive has revealed plans for the biggest renewable energy deal in corporate history.

Sundar Pichai said the clean energy deal will include 18 separate agreements to supply Google with electricity from wind and solar projects across the world.

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Read more: theguardian.com

Scientists set out how to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030

By Anne workforce / September 19, 2019

Strong civil society movements are needed to ramp up pace of change, says study

Greenhouse gas emissions could be halved in the next decade if a small number of current technologies and behavioural trends are ramped up and adopted more widely, researchers have found, saying strong civil society movements are needed to drive such change.

Solar and wind power, now cheaper than fossil fuels in many regions, must be scaled up rapidly to replace coal-fired generation, and this alone could halve emissions from electricity generation by 2030, according to the Exponential Roadmap report from an international group of experts.

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Read more: theguardian.com

The history of WeWork — from its first office in a SoHo building to a global company preparing for a much-hyped IPO

By Anne workforce / September 7, 2019

WeWork Press Kit - Common Area in Dalian Lu #1WeWork

WeWork parent company, The We Company, publicly filed its IPO paperwork in August.
The We Company is now considering a valuation of around $20 billion for its IPO — roughly half of the company’s $47 billion valuation from its last private round of funding — according to reports from The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg on Thursday.
The company could also delay its IPO to 2020, according to The Wall Street Journal.
WeWork started as one office space in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City. Now it has nearly 800 locations open or coming soon in 124 cities around the world.
The We Company is composed of WeWork, WeLive (a co-living venture), WeGrow (a “conscious entrepreneurial school”), and Rise by We (a “complete wellness experience”).
Read all of Business Insider’s WeWork coverage here.

WeWork, the nine-year-old co-working-space startup, filed for its IPO in August as part of The We Company.

The We Company is considering a valuation of around $20 billion for its IPO — roughly half of the company’s $47 billion valuation from its last private round of funding — according to reports from The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg on Thursday. The Journal also reported that the We Company may delay its IPO to 2020.

Founder and CEO Adam Neumann opened the first WeWork space in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City in 2010. Since then, the company has rebranded as The We Company and expanded into other ventures, including co-living subsidiary WeLive and the “conscious entrepreneurial school” WeGrow, among others.

Read on for the history of WeWork leading up to its highly anticipated IPO.

Melia Robinson originally authored this post, which has since been updated. Additional reporting by Lisa Eadicicco.

Read more: WeWork isn’t even close to being profitable — it loses $219,000 every hour of every day

WeWork founders Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey met — where else? — at the office.
Scott Legato/Getty

Neumann came to New York City in 2001, fresh off his service in the Israeli military. He started a company called Krawlers, which sold clothes with padded knees for crawling babies.

“We were working in the same building as my co-founder Miguel McKelvey, a lead architect at a small firm,” Neumann told Business Insider’s Maya Kosoff in 2015.

“At the time, I was misguided and putting my energy into all the wrong places,” he added.

Source: Business Insider

Neumann also had an interest in real estate — he fell in love with a vacant warehouse on Water Street while he was working in Dumbo, Brooklyn.
Google Street View

In an interview with Fast Company, Neumann recalled approaching the landlord and asking for the building. The landlord said, “You’re in baby clothes. What do you know about real estate?”

Neumann said he shot right back: “Your building is empty. What do you know about real estate?”

He and his new friend McKelvey struck a deal to start a real-estate business there: Green Desk, which still exists today.

 

Source: Fast Company

In 2008, Green Desk became an early incarnation of WeWork. The company offered sustainable co-working spaces featuring recycled furniture, free-trade coffee, and green office supplies.

Instagram Embed: //instagram.com/p/BwFvEEdgQLu/embed Width: 540px

 

Customers, called “members,” could rent a desk or a private office month to month. Neumann and McKelvey made money by charging more for those spaces than their lease payments.

Green Desk offered most things individuals and small companies needed: fully furnished offices, conference rooms, high-speed internet access, utilities, printing, and a stocked kitchen.

Source: Dumbo NYCForbes

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

See Also:

WeWork is just one of the businesses owned by the $47 billion company that just filed for its IPO — check out the full listThe life and career rise of Adam Neumann, the billionaire WeWork founder and CEO taking his company publicWeWork files for IPO, revealing spiraling losses of $1.6 billion

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