The disruption to Jordan’s natural gas supply from Egypt has finally awoken a sleeping giant: renewable energy. Long focused on oil shale and nuclear energy instead of renewable sources, the Kingdom has recently entered negotiations with no fewer than 20 international wind and solar-energy suppliers.
These are mostly small or medium-sized firms that will provide up to 80MW each. Among them, China’s Trina Solar has expressed willingness to invest $200 million on a photovoltaic plant.
A sweltering heat wave has swept through Tunisia, disrupting both electrical and water supplies just days before Ramadan begins. Extreme heat destabilizes electrical cables, with as many as three cables a day fraying under the pressure in some cities. Disruptions in the electricity supply in turn cause water pipes to malfunction, leaving many homes, businesses and hospitals without a steady supply of either.
In a surprise but welcome move that prioritizes people over commerce, the National Water Supply and Distribution Company (SONEDE) in Gabes cut its water supply to a chemical company that has long threatened the southern city’s water resource.
Unprecedented Highs in Tunisia
The National Institute of Meteorology reports that an unprecedented rise in atmospheric pressure from the great desert is responsible for the heat wave that has caused such havoc in Tunisia, according to Tunisia-Live.
Temperatures of 42-47°C have been recorded in the past week, reports engineer Sahar Shickhawi.
“All the temperature data that we gather are from shaded areas, but sunny areas are normally 4-7 °C hotter, so we must account for that. In the summer, we are used to the temperature being in between 32-36 °C in the coastal areas and 38 to 42 °C the interior regions in the month of July,” Shickhawi explained.
Although energy shortages have rarely lasted for more than two hours, according to SONEDE employee Mohamed Sadoke, which pales in comparison to 12 hour energy shortages in Lebanon, Gabes residents preparing for the Ramadan fast are concerned.
Energy and Water Shortages Become “Complicated”
One housewife told Tunisia-Live that the situation is becoming more “complicated.”
But for hospital workers and patients, the shortages are more than complicated. Men and women with broken legs haven’t received treatment at the Regional Hospital of Gabes since the X-Ray machines can’t function without electricity. And Hospital Tahr Sfar atop a mountain on the coast was without water for nearly a week.
In order to alleviate supply disruptions to Gabes residents, SONEDE has cut off water supply to the local chemical manufacturing plant which has historically used more than its fair share of both water and electricity.
“We cut the water supply on the chemical complex because we have to prioritize,” said Mbarak Haddad, the switch board operator of Gabes SONEDE.
In Gabes, people are more important than chemicals.
More on the Region’s Heat Wave:
Safari Animals Get Blood, Fruit and Fish Popsicles to Cool Off
The Wrath of Global Warming and the Middle East
Israeli Environment Minister Proposes Cuts to Gaza Electricity to Bridge Energy Shortfalls
Turn sick buildings healthy with a probiotic air filter from Israel. Above, dust mites.
Better Air of Rishon LeZion, Israel is using a new approach to improve indoor air quality. Their probiotic Biozone cleaners harness natural bacteria to break down biofilms and reduce contamination from molds and other allergens. This approach is intended to prevent sick building syndrome (SBS.)
Want to quit smoking? There’s an app for that.
Last week, experts lit up an Israeli conference with new strategies to curb smoking using email, text messages and smartphone apps. Hebrew University’s School for Public Health, in cooperation with The Medical Society for Smoking Prevention and Cessation in Israel and the Hadassah Medical Organization, sponsored a forum focused on using modern communication to help smokers kick the habit.
At the conference George Washington University‘s Dr. Lorien Abroms delivered the keynote lecture, “Using Mobile Phones for Smoking Cessation”. Abroms researches the influence of modern communication technologies on human behavior: how emails, text messaging, and smartphone apps can alter unhealthy habits. She developed several quit-smoking programs, including an iPhone app and a smoking cessation kit for young adults. She created a text-messaging program for adult smokers, a service currently offered to callers in selected American states.
We live on our phones. They feed our demand for immediate information. We’re instantly reachable and can perform functions that only recently became common verbs: google the best restaurant, mapquest our way there, then facebook friends so we can meet up. It’s inevitable that this connectivity will be exploited for other uses.
We’ve seen social media be tapped to solicit wide-scale emergency fund-raising: consider relief money raised in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake. Now political candidates and charities have jumped on mobile phone fundraising.
Phones convey environmental messages: Green Prophet’s reported on an SMS campaign that encourages water conservation in Jordan. Phones also promote fitness. My healthier friends use exercise applications on their phones to guide workouts and track calories consumed. Apps are constantly being developed to support other lifestyle choices. Like extinguishing smokes.
Conference topics included use of social networks to quit smoking and the impact of online information searches on smoker habits. Dr. Diane Levin-Zamir, director of the Department of Health Education and Promotion for Clalit Health Services, discussed the role of mass media in conveying health data and influencing behavior in her presentation “Media, Media Health Literacy and Smoking Among Adolescents”.
Other speakers included Dr. Hagai Levine of the School of Public Health, and Haim Pilosof, the smoking cessation call center manager at Maccabi Health Services, Israel’s second largest healthcare provider.
The Simple Message: Do or Die
Tobacco use is the most common preventable cause of death: half of all longterm smokers will die of smoking-related problems.
Quitting isn’t easy. Short-term effects such as weight gain, irritability and anxiety top the list of turn-offs for folks who try to stop. But for those who stay the course, soon after stubbing out the last butt, circulation begins to improve and blood pressure starts to return to normal. Sense of smell and taste return and breathing becomes easier. Your risk of getting cancer decreases with each year you stay smoke-free.
Now the tools to tackle quitting can be texted to you anywhere. Pick your own pocket: grab the pack of smokes or choose to check your phone. Green Prophet hopes you answer the call to quit.
Egypt’s social protests deeply rooted in issues connected to environmental ones.
It’s definitely a hot time in our world this summer: there are massive brush and forest fires in the American states of Colorado and South Dakota, there’s a full fledged civil war going on in Syria that has resulted in indigenous plant seeds being stored away in a vault in Norway ; and worst of all, a 58-year-old down and out man in Israel who set himself on fire during a night time social protest rally in Jerusalem. How are all these events connected?
Charging our clothes to credit cards is nothing new. Now our clothes may be doing the charging.
Scientists at the University of South Carolina (USC) have devised a way to turn the material in a cotton T-shirt into a source of electrical power. They envision a future where electronics are part of our wardrobe.
A few years back, my daughter haunted me for a hoodie with built-in ear buds, a novelty garment that allowed her to look stylin’ and also stay connected to her ubiquitous digital music device. USC Professor Xiaodong Li, the tee-shirt project mastermind, takes tech fashion to new heights, anticipating an emerging need for flexible energy storage: new methods of juicing our technical tools in remote locations, off the grid, and on the go.
The Gulf obesity epidemic in has come under increased scrutiny recently. Supersized boys and girls are barely recognizable and four of the world’s fattest countries hail from Gulf nations – a staggering number that has increasingly tragic consequences.
Just 19 years old, an Emirati boy who weighed 170 kilograms was flying from Dubai to Bangkok to receive treatment for obesity when he suffered a fatal heart attack. The pilots of Emirates Airline Flight EK 374 were then forced to make an emergency landing in Hyderabad, where the teenager was pronounced dead at the Apollo Clinic.
His body will be flown back to Dubai on another flight.
Government officials in Dubai have launched a fitness competition that will take place during Ramadan in order to combat this growing problem. Although people fast during the day, at night, when they break the fast, they tend to make up the lost calories without doing any kind of exercise.
The event sponsored by Majid Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktourm, Chairman of the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority and Fitness First Middle East will award massive cash prizes to the “Fittest Man” and “Fittest Woman” in Dubai and hopefully encourage more citizens to lose the extra weight they’re carrying around.
:: Gulf News
“In Qatar, the birds have built their own hidden city. They live in the towers and stairwells of an abandoned palace…”
Over at Guernica Magazine, I stumbled across a beautiful short story by Autumn Watts who is a lecturer of writing at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar. Evoking the hidden and unseen aspects of nature and the animal kingdom, ‘The Cities of Animals’ is a stunning must-read. In it she talks about the dark and abandoned places that animals such as birds, cats and horses learn to live and also harsh ‘kingdom’s of asphalt’ where they die. A thought-provoking story which I just had to share. Especially as it reminds us of the rugged beauty and resilience of nature in the Middle East. I also got in touch with Autumn Watts to ask here what inspired her short story.
To continue feeding its addiction to Iranian oil, Turkey exported eight times as much gold to Iran in the first five months of 2012 versus 2011.
In March, the United States and the European Union imposed sanctions on Iran in response to its uranium enrichment program. Later that month, Iran was cut off from Swift, the global bank communication network, barring the country from international financial transactions. To keep sales of its main export, crude oil, from crashing, Iran has since begun accepting alternative currencies — including a very large amount of Turkish gold, reports the Turko-file at Eurasianet.
Spencer Tunick will return to Israel this September to celebrate the anniversary of last year’s wildly controversial Dead Sea naked photo shoot. Designed to draw attention to the plight of the hyper-saline (and dangerously endangered) lake shared by Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Territories, the art campaign was enormously successful even though it drew widespread criticism from local politicians and religious groups opposed to public nudity. This year’s float serves a dual purpose: to maintain the momentum against activities that jeopardize the lake and to support freedom of artistic expression.
This building is located in Niavaran, Tehran – a district in the northern foothills. The climate in this area is completely different than the south and center of Tehran because of the nearby Alborz Mountains. Unfortunately, many old gardens in the area have been destroyed by urbanization projects over the last century. But Mohammed Reza Nikbahkt took a different approach with the Niavaran residential complex by building around existing trees in order to preserve them.
After a test trial on about 250 cars Israel’s Better Place electric car company has opened its doors to the general public this week. Apart from announcing new pay-as-you-charge deals, instead of the off-putting flat rate, the company offers a new twist on the limited mobility of EVs: battery switch stations located throughout the country for people who need a quick charge. Normally it can take hours for an electric battery to recharge, thus limiting the range and driving distance of cars.
Azza Abdel Hamid Faiad was the winner of the 2011 European Union Contest for Young Scientists for finding a new way of turning plastic into biofuel.
A sixteen-year-old Egyptian student, Azza Abdel Hamid Faiad from the Zahran Language School in Alexandria has identified a new low-cost catalyst which can generate biofuel by breaking down plastic waste.
The idea of breaking down plastic polymers into fuel feedstocks, the bulk raw material used for producing biofuel , is not a new idea. But Faiad has found a high yield catalyst, aluminosilicate catalyst, that breaks down plastic waste producing gaseous products like methane, propane and ethane, which are then converted into ethanol to use as biofuel.
On his first visit to Ethiopia as President of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi stressed his country’s desire to peacefully negotiate with other Nile Basin countries regarding a longstanding dispute over Nile River water rights. That Morsi visited Addis Ababa at such an early stage of his presidential term reflects his determination to maintain Egypt’s annual share of 55 million cubic meters granted in a 1929 treaty. But it won’t be easy.
Trash Theatre is a free theatre performance about trash – it’s taking place across Lebanon’s coast
Lebanon is drowning in trash. Now artists are making theatre out of the mess. I think it’s safe to say that ‘10453: A Story About Life in 1 km2 of Trash’ is unlike any theatre production you have ever heard of. I’s free and takes place outdoors in various locations across the Lebanese coast. Secondly, the stage and props (and some of the costumes) are made entirely out of everyday trash collected and reclaimed by the artists over a couple of months.
And thirdly, the play is taking place in collaboration with the Lebanese environmental NGO IndyACT and hopes to encourage locals to recycle. So, for these reasons we got in touch with the organisers at (B)IM project to find out more.
“Theatre has to power to move people emotionally, or at the very least, to make them take notice,” explains Denise Maroney, producer of The (B)IM Project to Green Prophet.
“Our collaboration with IndyACT allows the audience to take action and learn concrete facts about where to recycle in Lebanon, how to reduce daily waste and what NGOs/initiatives are currently working to improve Lebanonʼs environment.” As well working in collaboration with IndyACT, a fair will take place at each (B)IM production to showcase various local green initiatives and pass on practical advice.
Beginning on the corniche of Tyre, the (B)IM project will move across the corniche of Saida, Beirut and Tripoli. 10453: A Story About Life in 1 km2 of Trash is an original play developed with a cast of five actors and written and directed by Camille Brunel-Aoun. It examines Lebanese social behaviour towards trash whilst injecting a dose of humour and original music to inspire people to take action.
“The play is a journey through the life and habits of 5 characters who deal with garbage, both consciously and unconsciously,” explains Maroney to GreenProphet.com. “The play offers metaphors for the absurdity of a society that ignores the dirt it is breathing in every day and the danger it is creating for itself. The title ‘10453’ references the official square area of Lebanon (10,453 km2). We added an extra kilometer (10453) to allude to the growing kilometers of trash that are popping up across Lebanon’s coast,” she adds.
Denise Marony told me that she hoped the play will strike a chord with the audience about the tragedy of trash pollution in Lebanon. That it will help ‘sensitize’ them once more to the trash all around them and inspire them to take individual action to stop the pollution.
Brunel- Aoun who wrote the play added: “It is necessary that we reflect upon ourselves, both our familial and social life. We must break the infernal cycle of things we produce, consume and dispose… We nee to criticize bad behaviour with humour – this is what we are doing with a crazy hope that theatre has the power to transform people!”
Cast: Daniel Balabane, Hadi Deaibess, Tony Kahoush, Raghda Mouawad & Kholoud Nasser
Writer & Director: Camille Brunel Aoun
Set Design: Charbel Samuel Aoun
Costume Design: Denise Maroney
Sound Design: Jana Saleh
Produced by: The (B)IM Project
For more information about the play and when the performance will take place go to http://www.thebimproject.com
For more eco-initiatives in Lebanon see:
Burning Tires the Bokja Way – A Colourful Protest Against Beirut Pollution
Green Wheel is an Energy- Harvesting Machine for Beirut Runners
Mayor Launched ‘Beirut is Amazing’ City Greening Plan
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