Air travel accounts for three percent of global carbon emissions, which may seem like a minor offense in the spectrum of environmental transgressions. However, according to the Christian Science Monitor, air travel is steadily increasing at five percent every year, and the number of aircraft alone will likely double in the next 10 years. With […]
With no formal waste management system, the trash in Kenya’s crowded Kibera slum piles up in the dirt rows between shacks, in open pits and on people’s doorsteps: plastic bags, raw sewage, egg shells, the scraps of people’s lives. As slum residents, aid workers and tourists on “poverty tours”—a controversial idea in itself—know all too […]
Imagine having to walk for an hour just to get drinking water or wash your clothes. Or being forced to rely on candlelight and gas lamps for all your household chores and other activities after dark. That’s what daily life is like for many rural people in Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in the […]
Most travelers have heard of the brand, if not the man, in the form of Virgin Atlantic Airlines; the Virgin Group of Companies also has stake in the railroad industry. Founder Richard Branson has committed all proceeds from the company’s transportation interests (totalling $3 billion over the course of 10 years) to be donated to […]
Preparatory construction activities are reportedly underway on a massive dam project in China’s Yunnan province that will displace local tribespeople and wash away a section of the Yangtze River valley thought to be the location that inspired writer James Hilton’s Shangri-La. The Huaneng Group, China’s largest independent power producer, is managing the project, which has […]
