Top stories from our Canadian blog:

Tokyo's Transforming Tower | Madeline Ashby

"I wish there were a way to combine these shutters and some form of external cladding, but in a year both the tower's designers and its inhabitants will understand how best to exploit this building's transformation potential."

Event Summary - 2009 Behavior, Energy and Climate Change Conference | Stefanie Bowles

We feature notes from Stephanie Bowles on a couple of talks from the 2009 Behavior, Energy and Climate Change (BECC) conference in Washington DC. Bowles, quoting Karen Ehrhardt-Martinez: "... the BECC conference organizers made the veggie lunch option the default for the conference, and you had to opt in for the meat option. Meat eating went from 95% to 20% with this simple change, and we know this makes a difference because omnivores produce 7x the amount of GhG’s as vegans."

Engineering Fun | Mark Tovey

"It's an intangible, but the folks at The Fun Theory believe they've found a way to encourage socially-minded behavior. In brief: find a task that would make a difference if significantly more people did it, then find a way to make it enjoyable."

Modelling climate trajectories in Copenhagen | Garry Peterson

"My systems modelling colleague Tom Fiddman has been working to develop a policy screening simulation model to aid with climate negotiations."

Group Editorial on Climate Change | Mark Tovey

"Even people who don't agree with the text of the editorial in its entirety may find that this is a fascinating model for aggregating views from a diverse range of perspectives, and then publicizing that consensus view for global consideration and comment."

Commercializing Jet Biofuel and Cellulosics | Mark Tovey

"Greener jet fuel and viable cellulosics—out of the lab, and ramping up for the marketplace. Of course this is no guarantee that these technologies will live up to their promise, but this is innovation worth watching."

Convincing the Social Animal to Go Green | Jen Schellinck

"McKenzie-Mohr and Smith, in their book ‘Fostering Sustainable Behavior’ note that many groups thumb their noses at social marketing strategies because they feel uncomfortable with tactics they perceive as being manipulative, whereas tactics like education seem more honest and 'pure'. If this is the case, we might turn our social marketing gaze inward and ask—what would persuade environmental activists to take up these potentially more effective tactics while still remaining within their moral comfort zone?"