Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIS)

* Which development do you think is the coolest (most interesting)?

Saadiyat Island, is a huge and interesting project. It will help my country to jump many steps in front in short time.

We are considered as one of the most countries who responsible of Global Warming but I think, my country is doing some of great projects trying to solve the problem of Global Warming. Saadiyat Island are being established now to help government to get more benefits from tourists. That benefits may encourage some other countries to the same project. I consider Saadiyat Island project as a huge investment project and as one of solution of Global Warming problem. I think lots of people will invest in that project. I believe that this just the beginning and the government will do the best to be the best.

Mr. Johann’s thoughts and my Opinion

I think Mr. Johann is right in what he said about our responsibilities in changing the climate by pumping a huge amount of harmful gases in the atmosphere and that thing lead to rise earth’s temperature.

Also, I agree with him, all governments in all countries should force their people to shift towards cleaner behavior. For example, I think it is not fear that you do your best to change your bad behavior as much as you can while your neighbor doesn’t care does everything he wants. I think putting some laws and regulations by governments are very suitable solution to decrease the amount of harmful gases that are used by people.

Also, I believe the people should be forced to choose the green option because the results that produced from their bad activities don’t harm them only but affect all people on the world as Mr. Johann said and I absolutely agree with him.

I think there are some people don’t want to change their thoughts about some bad activities such as using fossil fuels because those people are the same people who take profits from fossil fules.

Cool Cities

Global warming is the first enemy of the earth these days. Rising in population increasing in energy consumption as well as increasing in amount of CO2 emitted in to the air are the main reasons for global warming.

There are lots of problems related to the global warming and we have to solve them, but if we don’t, we need to find another earth to live in. Rising amount of CO2 in the air causes lots of disasters so we have to decrease that percentage to live within the capacity of a single earth. We have to decrease it by 1.5 and we call it “Cool Earth 50”. According to last surveys, 90% of Carbon Dioxide emitted in to the air comes from building and transportation.

One of suitable solutions that we have to follow is building Cool City. SDCJ are eleven corporation come together and it was the first company that built cool city. Cool City means that the city doesn’t depend on fossil fuels which responsible of increasing the amount of CO2 in the air but it depends on three kinds of safe energies like Green Vehicle Fleets, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. It consists of four zones which are Business/Public zone, Residential zone, cultural/Sport zone and Resort zone. In addition to walk to move from place to another place, there are three kinds of transportations are used in the cool city such as Manner Well, Light Rail Transit (LRT) and Water Transportation System.

In summary, as a result of all those efforts, the CO2 emitted in to the air will decrease by 60% and this thing for sure will decrease the bad effects of Global Warming.

One Planet Living

• If everyone lived like an average North American we would need five planets.
• If everyone lived like an average European we would need three planets.
• If everyone lived like an average Emirati we would need seven planets.
• Our global footprint grew by 150% between 1961 and 2003. It is now 25% above the planet’s biological capacity to support life on earth.

Masdar is going to be developed using these principles.

1.Zero Carbon: Using renewable sources energy in building and infrastructure to achieve zero emissions of Co2.

2.Zero Waste: Destroying the concepts of waste by encouraging reuse, recycling and composting which is produced from waste.

3.Sustainable Transport: Trying to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels on all vehicles to reduce Co2 as much as we can.

4.Local and Sustainable Materials: Using local materials in construction can increase stocks and boosts the local economy.

5.Local and Sustainable Food: Supporting the local food production will help to grow the local economy.

6.Sustainable Water: Implementing suitable system of reusing and recycling will reduce extraction and pollution and save water source.

7.Natural Habitats and Wildlife: Human activities lead to loss (biodiversity) natural habitats and wildlife.

8.Cultural and Heritage: Construction our building on a local cultural heritage is a main way to protect our cultural heritage and regional identity.

9.Equity and Fairtrade: Ensure that the OPL community’s impact positively on all communities on all the world and trying to prevent poverty.

10.Health and Happiness: Providing health lifestyle, physical, mental and spiritual through achieving all social and environmental goals.

• Which principles do you think will be difficult for Masdar City to maintain?

1. Local sustainable food.
2. Equity and fair trade.

• What are the three goals of the One Planet Living programme?

1. Build a world-wide network of One Planet Living Communities and other exemplary projects to demonstrate One Planet Living in action.
2. Establish One Planet Living Centres in each One Planet Living community as a focus for education.
3. Promote the imperative for One Planet Living and its guiding principles to catalyse change with governments, business and individuals.

• Masdar is one of the Emerging One Plant Communities, where are the others?
  1. Panyu Jinshan in China.
  2. Sibaya in South Africa.
  3. OPL London in UK.
  4. Montreal.
  5. Masdar City in UAE.

• Where are the Officially Endorsed One Planet Communities?
  1. Sonoma Mountain Village in Canada and USA.
  2. One Gallions in UK.
  3. Mata de Sesimbra.

• American Cool Cities.

1.Charlotte North Carolina
The government has changed the fuel of cars to a hybrid gas.

2.Washington DC
Has changed their buses to natural gas which is less than the diesel fuel to improve air pollution and cut global warming pollution.

3.St Paul Minnesota.
Providing electricity by using a renewable resource as its primary fuel.

4.Houston – Texas.
The government has started to reduce emissions by using hybrid vehicles. By the year 2010 they will have no petrol cars. A hybrid vehicles are produce about 43 tones of carbon less than the average of other cars.

5.Seattle.
They have replaced old vehicles with a “ clean and Green fleet and have sett strict rules about CO2 emission. They have already reduced green house gases by 60 percent.

6.Fort Collins.
Fort Collins uses renewable energy wind to reduce global warming and has reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 472,000 tons.

7.Waverly Lowa.
Waverly Lowa municipality has used wind energy to reduce the emission of CO2 in the city. This method who helps provide local economic development.

8.Twin falls-Idaho.

They reduce energy costs and cut pollution by increasing the energy efficiency of its 11 schools. This include the lightning, ventilation and air condition systems by this the city saved $3.5 million in energy savings.

• Living in Masdar City.
  I really want to live in Masdar City.
  It’s something will help me to feel comfortable living in Masdar City. The city which is free of Co2. I’m as Emirati; I want to do something to protect earth and to reduce the amount of Co2 in the air as much as I can. I will do my best to help my family to live there.
  

Global Warming

Conversation about Global Warming

Carbon Footprint

Carbon Footprint is a result of our bad behaviors and activities that help in increasing the amount of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in the air. It is called footprint because we leave a mark from our bad activities on the earth like the mark that we leave on a sandy beach. I have done the footprint quiz and I’ve got 2.45 planets. This score means that according to my bad activities, I need two and half planets.

There are lots of daily activities that lead to my Carbon footprint becoming bigger and bigger. One of those activities is driving a four wheel car for a long distance. That thing will increase the amount of harmful gases. The second problem is the side effects of using electricity. Keeping the temperature at my home under 20 C means using the electricity for long time and everyone knows what the result of using more electricity is? The third wrong activity is the big amount of waste with different kinds such as plastic, tin cans, glass, paper and food. All of these kinds are very difficult to destroy from the environment.

Because of all these negative effects of my activities, I’m going to display some solutions to reduce as much as I can the bad results. First of all, using a small car and public transportation will reduce a big amount of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in the air. The solution for the second problem is reducing of dependence on electricity. Turning off Air conditions and lights when we don’t need them is a suitable solution for the second one. Finally, reducing our home wastes and using the environmental friendly stuff will keep our environment clean and will reduce the size of our Carbon footprint.

To sum up, although several solutions have been mentioned, it is hard to correct our bad habits. Feeling responsibility is the first step to change our life. All people should cooperate to save planet because saving it is one of our major duties.

Reaction to “An Inconvenient Truth”

In my opinion, this film is one of the most important and fantastic documentary films that has ever produced.

I think the director and presenter did their best. Both of them used modern and scientific methods to explain their important ideas to all people. Supporting this film with some statistics, real pictures and events helped us to understand what Global Warming means. Warning people about lots of disasters that are coming to kill thousands of them is really a good way to keep the people attention in the film.
I think lots of people changed lots of their bad activities after they watched this film and this is the purpose of the film.

Critical Thinking

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2957473/Critical-Thinking2

What should be done in Abu Dhabi to make people more aware of the situation?

• Educating people about what is the global warming mean?



• Educating people about what is the negative effects of global warming and how can affect our life and environment.



• Encouraging people to reduce using of some machine that may pollute the air.



• Encouraging people to use transportation instead of their cars.



• Trying to find a new energy with less pollution instead of oil product which causes big damage in the environment.



• Let people know that keeping our environment clean and safe is one of our major responsibilities.



• Putting some new laws and regulations to punish people who don’t change their bad behavior.

Indonesia

Indonesia is an Islamic country where consists of thousands of islands close to each other in the east of Asia. Jakarta is the capital of Indonesia and its economy depends on rainforests. In this essay, I’m going to illustrate some negative effects of Indonesian forest in the environment.

First of all, the biggest forest in the world is found in Indonesia. These forest help about tens of millions of Indonesian in their livelihoods. The daily needs and wood processing sectors of the economy are produced from forest product. On the other hand, China’s economy depends on these forests to export their furniture to all over the world and the government of China put some new rules to prevent their people from cutting the trees because of flooding that happened there. Stealing timber located in Indonesia islands is a good solution for the Chinese and their government encourages them to do that. However, the weak economy of Indonesians let their people destroy 10 million hectors of forest for illegally business requirements. As a result of cutting trees, there were a lot of problems happen. First of that problem is increasing the percentage of CO2 and that thing has increased temperature in Indonesia and the surrounding countries.

Finally, to protect the environment, both governments of China and Indonesia have signed an agreement stopping cutting forest trees. Also as a new solution for their economy, by planting a new type of trees which grows fast rather than cutting forest trees? Also they agreed to judge all the illegal timbers.

Planting a lot of trees is going to solve a lot of problems that may appear as a result of cutting down the forest.

Lebanon

Lebanon is small country.It is a part of Arabic World and it is located in the heart of the Middle East. It is surrounded by Jordan, Syria, Cyprus, Turkey and Israel. The bible called it “The land of milk and honey”. Beirut is the capital of Lebanon and it is called “Paris of the East”. It is people came from amazing mixture of backgrounds and religious groups.

Any country that has a mixture of religious and backgrounds of course there will be a lot of tensions and that exactly what happened between 1943 to 1948 between Muslims and Christians. In 1943 after independence, Christians held the balance of power and Lebanese Muslims had little say in running of their country. This was one of many reasons that made tensions between Lebanese. The second reason was 100000 of Palestinians (Sunni) Muslims who get out of Palestine and poured into Lebanon, but the tensions reached a peak in 1975 when a radical Christian group “The Phalange” attacked and killed a bus full of Palestinians in downtown Beirut. Then revenge killing followed and became out of control.

As a result of civil war the army of Syria entered Lebanon and Beirut was divided in to two parts Muslims group retreated into western half of the city while Christians occupied east Beirut. In 1982 the Israeli army invaded Beirut with the aim of removing the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). The peace deal reached Lebanon in 1989. In that civil war, between 150000 to 200000 people died and 300000 were wounded. Quarter of population left the country and for many years Beirut’s economy was paralyzed.

After all that disadvantages of war, the Social and Economic recovery has happened in Beirut and there were four signs of that recovery. The first sign was the businessman in the Gulf States started pouring Money into Lebanon in a way of investment. Second, government’s invitation to foreigners to invest in the rebuilding of Beirut. Also, all groups started living in Beirut without any problems. The last sign, many investments done by rich country have been done in Beirut.

These days and after about twenty years of peace, the problems have returned back to this small country because of the old main reason which is a mixture of backgrounds and religious groups. There are two groups now and they have a lot of different thoughts. Until now those two groups can’t choose their president. Lebanon at these moment is without president and all signs on this country lead to one truth only which is “The Civil War is going to return back again”.