How black paint can drastically reduce bird deaths at wind farms
Politicians who lobby against the renewable energy industry often use the death toll of birds at wind farms as a way to argue against wind energy. But apparently, there’s a simple solution to reduce the number of deaths that happen at the blades of wind turbines: black paint. According to a Read More...
World’s largest wealth fund drops fossil fuel investments
The world’s biggest wealth fund was built on Norway’s oil and gas production revenue. Now, the fund is shifting course and taking a stand against global warming by excluding some of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies from its portfolio. The fund, which owns about 1.5 percent of Read More...
Retreating ice in Norway has revealed treasure troves of Viking artifacts
At the Optimist Daily, we’re deeply concerned with global heating and its melting effect on Arctic glaciers. But as a publication that is always willing to see the silver lining in any situation, it’s been fascinating to see what archaeologists discover as the ice retreats. Recently in Read More...
One Norwegian town is building aviary hotels to save seabird populations
When the town of Tromsø, Norway began building more hotels to accommodate flocks of tourists searching for a glimpse of the northern lights, they received some additional unanticipated guests: seabirds. Seabirds, such as the local kittiwake, have struggled to survive in their natural sea Read More...
Why safe streets are a powerful tool for combatting climate change
It’s not hard to understand why many parents don’t let their kids walk and bike to school in Los Angeles where streets are designed for the fast movement of cars. In LA, crashes are the leading cause of death for kids aged 4 to 15. To keep kids safe, parents revert to cars—even if the trip is Read More...
Tall wooden buildings are popping up around the world. Here’s why that’s good
The tallest wooden building the world has ever seen just completed construction in Norway, standing at a total height of 85.4 meters. Surely some of you are wondering whether or not that’s a fire hazard, but while it would have been worrisome to build towering structures out of wood in the Read More...
This building produces twice the electricity it uses
There are sustainable buildings, and then there is the Powerhouse Brattørkaia—a new building from Norwegian architecture studio Snøhetta. The building, which is located in Trondheim, Norway, produces more than twice the electricity it requires each day. That makes it the world’s northernmost Read More...
What Norwegians can teach us about beating the winter blues
Today the sun will set in the Norwegian capital of Oslo at 3:30 pm. That sounds awful, especially for those of us living in the US, and makes us beg the question: how do nordic countries beat the winter blues when sunlight is so fleeting? One Stanford researcher, Kari Leibowitz, spent a winter in Read More...
Oslo wants to become the world’s first zero-emission port. Here’s how
Cargo shipping is a massive contributor to emissions, and shipping technology has not quite reached the level where we can suddenly swap fossil fuel-burning engines for electric ones. This makes decarbonizing a port a difficult process, which is something many cities are trying to do one step at a Read More...
Gas pumps are starting to disappear in Norway
Norway’s consumption of gasoline and diesel fuel is starting to decline. The reason? As record numbers of drivers switch to electric vehicles, many gas stations are either closing or changing their pumps to electric charge stations. This comes as no surprise, as Norway possesses the largest Read More...