Word: eco
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...year 82.4 million visitors found their way to this lost paradise. And last month Governor Charlie Crist unveiled a $1.75 billion deal to buy the U.S. Sugar Corp. and its 187,000 acres of farmland, a move that would help restore the Everglades. It's the state's best eco-news in decades...
...save the world." But Club4Climate's silly-sounding premise--that partygoers can groove their way to a greener planet--is based on real science. The environmental group, founded by British real estate mogul Andrew Charalambous, is set to open what is being touted as the world's first eco-club on July 10 in London. And as the dancers get pumped up, Club Surya will get powered up. Literally. The dance floor is designed to harness the energy of the people stomping on it based on a principle called piezoelectricity. Piezo, Greek for pressure, uses crystals or other materials that...
Charalambous, the owner of Club Surya, calls the human body the "ultimate energy battery." His dance floor appears to be the first commercial application to use piezoelectricity on such a large scale--a separate group has been trying to work out the kinks for a similar eco-club in the Netherlands--but the technology isn't new. Piezoelectricity was used in early sonar devices in World War I and can be found in electric cigarette lighters and some gas grills...
...club has lots of other eco-bells and -whistles. Dancers' perspiration will help turn heat-sensitive walls different colors. The toilets will be flushed with rainwater, and even the booze is pretty green: organic, fair-trade alcohol will be served, along with bio-beer, whose makers claim that the aloe vera in it helps increase vitamin uptake as well as reduce the harmful effects of alcohol on the liver. Also, Surya is offering free admission to clubbers who can prove they traveled there by foot, bicycle or public transportation. Of course, given the price of gas these days, it seems...
...Which brings us back to the environment, the bummer indicator to end all bummer indicators. If nuclear annihilation was the apocalyptic mainstay through the decades of the Cold War, the eco-apocalypse has clearly taken its place. In some ways, the "Al Gore Scare Machine," as Kutner puts it, is more of the same. Like nuclear war - or like the more fantastical possibilities that Kutner imagines, such as a robot uprising or an unleashed super-plague - global warming will be an apocalypse of our own making. End times stories are tales of sin punished, and climate change is no different...