Saturday 17 January 2009

2008 -- gone in a rush!

OK, so now it's been a *really* long time. 2008 was a very busy year, and ironically my post-writing has been highly impacted by the fact that a year ago I started working in a full-time sustainability role at a major Internet & technology company. In this job, I've learned a lot more about being green, and I want to continue sharing this both here and on www.ecowhizz.com.

But in order to maintain a minimum of continuity, let's briefly look at 2008. On the EV front, it brought us the new Think, an compact city car with a great performance parameters (range, max speed and crash safety are all top). And of course the Tesla finally made it onto the streets, at least in the US. For the first time, there are two high performing alternatives to traditional vehicles available, even though they still come at a price (more than 20K Euro for the Think and close to 100 K USD for the Tesla).

On the Green Living front, well, 2008 brought us Obama! That's great news I think, because of his stance on climate change, his already announced green-jobs initiatives, as well as a major planned investment into smart grids. His election also bodes well for *the* event of 2009, the UN Climate Summit in December in Copenhagen. We now stand a chance to come up with a global agreement to significantly reduce emissions towards 2050. 

But the year is still young, and a lot needs to happen to make this happen. Stay tuned...