A cool new leg of a cool nonprofit is helping cities reduce their emissions across the board by linking cities’ emissions data to its effect on climate change. In all, 21 cities are starting out reporting their emissions data to the Carbon Disclosure Project, including some biggies like New York, Las Vegas, and New Orleans. They will describe their major sources of greenhouse gas emissions to the project, which compiles the info and publishes reports.

The project isn’t a see-how-much-these-cities-suck type of effort, but rather a look-at-where-we-are effort that gets people talking about what has become the c-word…Change. The cities are voluntarily supplying their info so that they can make changes. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m in California, but as I watch the Olympics (non-stop since they started) I’ve noticed that every single commercial break includes at least two renewable energy commercials. Renewable energy and “Going Green” are trendy. And to see cities heading in to projects like this show that it is actually moving beyond trendy and niche-y, into serious analysis, accountability, and action. And that is needed.

"Over 70% of total global emissions are generated from cities, and if you don't measure these emissions, you cannot manage them," said Paul Dickinson, CEO of Carbon Disclosure Project, in a statement.

The project has been collecting corporate emissions info since 2003, and moving on to cities is a great expansion. The results of this city info collection will be published in January, and will help us see what’s going on in cities, and start up dialogues about what can be changed now and in the future.

The other cities participating in the Carbon Disclosure Project are Albany, NY; Albuquerque, NM; Anchorage, AR.; Arlington, VA.; Burlington, VT.; Denver, CO; Dubuque, IA; Edina and St. Paul, MN; Fairfield, IA; Haverford, PA; North Little Rock, AR.; Pacific Grove and Rohnert Park, CA; Park City, UT; Portland, OR.; Washougal, WA.; and West Palm Beach, FL.

Via Cnet

Parisians would make smog alerts pretty, wouldn’t they. In a far more artistic way than a freeway-side scrolling marquee, a giant helium-filled balloon changes color to tell passers-by the ambient air quality.

Created by Aérophile, the AERO30NG Aérophile 550 model was launched in the Parc Andre Citroën in Paris. Using data registered by the air quality organization in Airparif, the balloon changes colors depending on pollution levels in the air. Green is crystal clear air, light green is clean, yellow is moderately icky, orange is breathe shallowly, and red is put-on-your-gas-mask. It also displays the air quality at major traffic intersections, so you know where to hold your breath.

It is as much eco-PR effort as practical alert system, which I like, and is such a clever way to alert a whole lot of people at once since it can be seen as far as 12 miles away. Farther than that, though, and you’ll need to check out pollution levels on Google Earth.

What is really neat is it actually functions as a balloon and can lift as many as 30 passengers up to 150 meters above the city. So I guess if the balloon is glowing red, you can hop on to try and get above the junk into some cleaner air. No matter what the color, it'd be pretty awesome to see Paris from a balloon.

Via PhysioOrg, Ecofriend