Nike has teamed up with NASA, the U.S. Department of State, and the U.S. Agency for International Development to seek sustainable living practices in an initiative called LAUNCH, revolving around the research and development of sustainable materials and how they are made. The LAUNCH 2013 Challenge Statement is an open call for innovation to transform the system of producing fabrics. Shortlisted contestants will take part in an immersive program that provides access to capital, creativity and capacity. Read more

By Allan Brettman in The Oregonian (26 April 2013):

Hannah Jones, Nike vice president of sustainable business and innovation, was one of the speakers at LAUNCH.

Nike on Tuesday and Wednesday took another step in the strategic collaboration it joined in 2010 with NASA, the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The four partners formed their coalition to seek sustainable living practices. They’ve called their endeavor LAUNCH.

At the World Headquarters campus, 150 materials specialists, designers, academics, manufacturers, entrepreneurs and non-government organizations met to discuss the sustainability of materials and how they are made.

From a Nike news release on the summit:

NIKE, Inc. President & CEO Mark Parker kicked off the two-day LAUNCH 2020 Summit stressing the importance of innovation and collaboration.

“Innovation is most powerful when it’s activated by collaboration between unlikely partners, coupled with investment dollars, marketing know-how and determination,“ Parker said. “Now is the time for big, bold solutions. Incremental change won’t get us where we need to go fast enough or at a scale that makes a difference.”

Through a unique, multi-year incubation process, LAUNCH will uncover innovations in sustainable materials that can have a major impact on people and the planet.

The summit also unveiled the LAUNCH 2013 Challenge Statement, an open call for innovation to transform the system of producing fabrics. LAUNCH 2013 is open to individuals and teams. In August the 10 strongest innovations will be selected and participants will take part in an immersive program that provides access to capital, creativity and capacity.

Materials have a significant impact on the planet. It is estimated that around 150 billion garments were produced around the world in 2010, and by 2015, the global apparel industry is expected to produce more than 400 billion square meters of fabric every year – enough to cover the state of California.

Nike VP of Sustainable Business and Innovation, Hannah Jones said: “About 60 percent of the environmental footprint of a pair of Nike shoes is embedded in the materials used to make them. When you multiply that across our business, and across the industry, it’s clear that innovation in sustainable materials is a huge opportunity, not just for Nike, but for the world.”

Also speaking at the LAUNCH 2020 Summit was Joan Benoit Samuelson, the first woman to win an Olympic gold medal in the Women’s Marathon in 1984, and Ron Garan, astronaut and LAUNCH innovator. They both shared their passion for the environment and their unique view on the need for collaboration to achieve seemingly impossible goals.

Three years ago LAUNCH selected and helped accelerate Garan’s innovation for clean water. Independent of his work with NASA, Garan developed a concept to deliver clean water, energy and sanitation to poor communities through the combination of sustainable development and carbon credits. As part of the LAUNCH process, Garan was exposed to experts with the investment dollars and business acumen to bring the innovation to life. The Carbon for Water project has now successfully distributed one million filters that provide clean water to 4.5 million people in Kenya.

Please register online to learn more about the LAUNCH Challenge for 2013 and to submit an application.

Successful innovations from previous LAUNCH challenges include:

Carbon For Water: delivering the technology to provide access to clean water to 4.5 million people in Kenya.

Gram Power: providing thousands of people in India with affordable, renewable energy.

Bioneedle: a biodegradable, implantable needle that delivers vaccines and dissolves in the body, allowing for mass distribution and minimal waste.

Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/

Dirt. The stuff that clings to our shoes and gets wiped off when we get home. How often do we give a thought to the importance of dirt and soil? Now, it appears that soil and the organisms contained within it may well play an important role as an indicator of climate change, and in locking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Antarctic research has unearthed that this precious resource is facing increasing threat from climate change and human activities, and greater action needed to preserve it. Read more

Antarctic nematodes and climate change

By Jane O’Brien in BBC News (26 April 2013):

Diana Wall in Antartica

Climate change affects not only air temperature and sea levels, but soil as well. And an American scientist is on an award-winning quest to reverse the damage.

The frozen desert valleys of Antarctica are among the world’s most inhospitable environments. The landscape is so barren that just 30 years ago, experts did not think it could support life.

But beneath the surface, microscopic worms called nematodes thrive in a unique ecosystem – and they are helping researchers understand the effects of climate change.

Soil scientist Diana Wall has spent two decades studying Antarctic nematodes, ground-breaking work that this year earned her one of science’s top awards – the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.

“Antarctica is pretty fantastic,” she says. “I can only equate it to what it must be like on Mars. There’s just nothing there.

“The first thing I always notice is the silence – unless the wind is blowing. There are no birds. Nothing moves, and you see no green.”

All life is hidden in the soil, under frozen lakes or in meltwater streams that run just a few weeks a year.

To work in such harsh conditions, the 69-year-old director of Colorado State University’s School of Global Environmental Sustainability must pass tough physical tests and train daily to keep fit.

“I’m used to it now but I don’t take it for granted,” she says. “As I tell my students, people die here.”

But that harshness makes Antarctica the perfect outdoor laboratory for testing theories about the relationship between the earth’s climate and the creatures that live in the soil.

Nematodes and bacteria capture and store carbon that otherwise contributes to global warming when allowed to overload the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide gas.

A handful of dry soil in most other regions would contain millions of organisms, making the soil difficult to study. But in the Antarctic there is just one – Scottnema lindsayae.

The ability to isolate the single organism makes possible the study of the environment’s role in its life cycle.

“I call it the Rambo,” says Dr Wall. “It’s not ugly, but it’s a really tough-looking nematode.”

But Rambo is on the ropes. As temperatures rise and more ice melts, another nematode that thrives in wet soil, Eudorylaimus glacialis, is moving in. And as the two species slug it out for Antarctic dominance, Rambo appears to be losing, declining 65% in the last few years.

That could prove a problem. Scottnema is a great carbon hoarder, and if its population is waning in Antarctica, Dr Wall theorises a similar calamity may be striking other important nematode species around the globe, potentially contributing to climate change.

She calls for soil conservation and restoration policies.

“We take soil for granted, but we need to pay more attention to it,” she says.

“Soil needs to be managed very carefully, just as we do our oceans, the water we drink and the air that we breathe.”

The Tyler Award recognizes the contribution of Dr Wall’s work to the climate change debate and how it has raised awareness of an area of science that has often lacked the popular appeal of ocean conservation and space exploration.

“It can be a pretty hard sell,” says David Wolfe, a professor of plant and soil ecology at Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

“Diana deserves a lot of credit. In addition to being one of the major soil biologists of our time, she’s also made sure that the information is getting out.”

Soil has become sexier in part because advances in molecular biology and deep earth ecology have enabled scientists to discover new life forms far below the surface of the earth.

“This is affecting our concept of where life can exist, expanding the notion that it’s very likely we can find habitable life on other planets,” he says.

“I and others have talked about the possibility that life on our planet may not have originated in some warm, murky, little pond as Darwin had once suggested, but actually in the deep earth where life was protected from asteroid bombardment and from adverse atmosphere.”

Dr Wolfe is also working on a $5m (£3.25m) US government project focusing on how farmers can help slow the pace of climate change by conserving carbon in the soil.

In Antarctica’s desert valleys, life is hidden in the soil

“Soils are a huge global reservoir of carbon – the equivalent of the amount of carbon you would find in plants and more than the amount found in the atmosphere,” says Patrick Megonigal, deputy director of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.

He manages the world’s longest-running carbon dioxide experiment in Maryland, where scientists have created a salt marsh they hope to use as a model to predict the effects of climate change on fragile coastal regions.

“We’re beginning to understand that climate changes – changes in temperature, plant activity, rainfall – all effect the soil’s carbon reservoir,” he says. “The way we manage soils can either mobilise that carbon back into the atmosphere and contribute to greenhouse gasses – or work the other way.”

Dr Wall’s research has already contributed to US and European efforts to protect soil and address climate change. Scientists agree that government policy is critical to halting soil erosion, limiting loss from urbanisation and supporting sustainable agriculture.

Action may come too late to save Scottnema – the Rambo nematode of Antarctica – but other soil organisms that form the most complex food system on the planet may depend upon it.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/

Climate change has been cited as the cause behind a raft of recent phenomena, from increasing turbulence on planes to rising rates of malaria, dengue, and even domestic abuse. And now it’s hit the publishing world. Climate change inspires a new literary genre: cli-fi.  But we ask: what about “Cli-Fact” or “CliNonFic”? Being the author of a non-fiction work on the subject, Ken Hickson can only hope that more people understand that it’s for real. Whether disguised as “Cli-Fi” or not. An article in the Christian Science Monitor draws our attention to this new read. Read More

Cli-fi, or ‘climate fiction,’ describes a dystopian present, as opposed to a dystopian future. And don’t call it ‘science fiction.’ Cli-fi is literary fiction.

By Husna Haq in Christian Science Monitor (26 April 2013):

‘Odds Against Tomorrow,’ a novel by Nathaniel Rich, is an example of the emerging ‘cli-fi’ genre.

Climate change inspires a new literary genre: cli-fi

Climate change has been cited as the cause behind a raft of recent phenomena, from increasing turbulence on planes to rising rates of malaria, dengue, and even domestic abuse.

And now it’s hit the publishing world.

The next hot trend in books, it turns out isn’t Fifty Shades-esque erotica – it’s climate change.

That’s according to a fascinating report by NPR, “Has Climate Change Created a New Literary Genre?”

“Over the past decade, more and more writers have begun to set their novels and short stories in worlds, not unlike our own, where the Earth’s systems are noticeably off-kilter,” reports Angela Evancie for NPR. “The genre has come to be called climate fiction – ‘cli-fi,’ for short.”

Among the titles in this emerging literary genre is “Odds Against Tomorrow,” by Nathaniel Rich, a novel about a futurist who calculates worst-case scenarios for corporations, including the very scenario that landed on the book’s cover: the Manhattan skyline, half-submerged in water. (We should note, the book, and cover, were created before Hurricane Sandy.)

Other books include Michael Crichton’s 2004 novel, “State of Fear,” about ecoterrorists; Ian McEwan’s “Solar,” about impending environmental disaster; and Barbara Kingsolver’s “Flight Behavior,” about a world turned upside down by climate change.

There are two key points to emphasize in this trend. Cli-fi describes a dystopian present, as opposed to a dystopian future, and it isn’t non-fiction or even science fiction: cli-fi is about literary fiction.

As interesting as this new development is, we shouldn’t be too surprised. After all, whether it’s the Industrial Revolution, the Cold War, or the tech bubble, cultural and environmental milestones have historically shaped the world we – and by extension, the characters we read about – live in.

In this case, literature might actually prove to be a surprise secret weapon of sorts, helping scientists convey the issue to disinterested – or dubious – audiences.

That’s because “when novelists tackle climate change in their writing, they reach people in a way that scientists can’t,” says NPR.

“You know, scientists and other people are trying to get their message across about various aspects of the climate change issue,” Judith Curry, professor and chair of Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, tells NPR. “And it seems like fiction is an untapped way of doing this – a way of smuggling some serious topics into the consciousness” of readers who may not be following the science.

We’re fascinated by this emerging genre and if one cli-fi writer is on the mark, we’ll be seeing a lot more of it in coming years.

Predicted Daniel Kramb, the cli-fi novelist behind “From Here,” the 2012 novel about climate change activists, “I think when [people] look back at this 21st century … they will definitely see climate change as one of the major themes in literature, if not the major theme.”

Husna Haq is a Monitor correspondent.

Source: www.csmonitor.com/