Amelia’s Magazine | Hats for Kate: New headwear from Canadian Designers to welcome the British Royals

Hats for Kate by Amy Rogers
Hats for Kate, approved Bully Beaver, abortion by Amy Rogers.

If you’ve been reading the papers you will know that our Kate and Wills have arrived for their first state trip in Canada, price in Alberta to be precise. In honour of their visit to the home of the Tarsands *the most destructive project on earth* some lovely Canadian designers have put together a range of possible hats for Kate to wear.

Hats-For-Kate-by-Gabrielle-Brittney
Hats for Kate, Tar and Feathers, by Gabrielle Brittney.

The hats were commissioned by Environmental Defence Canada and will be modelled today for the media in Ottawa.

Hats for Kate by Fawn Carr
Hats for Kate, Tar and Feathers, by Fawn Carr.

Needless to say they’ve been planned to show a more accurate picture of Canada than the Royals are likely to be shown – a *highlight* will be the impact of Tarsands extraction, busy damaging the Canadian reputation globally.

Hatsforkate_PIPELINEMEDUSA
Pipeline Medusa.

The eight hats represent new and old Canadian themes and include:

Maple Beatrice – an adaptation of the hat that got us all talking hats.
Tar and Feathers – to mark the day Canada achieved infamy when a flock of ducks mistook a massive toxic lake in the tar sands for a good place to land.
Kate’s Road to Avonlea – in honour of Anne of Green Gables.

Hatsforkate_CLIMATEDENIER
Climate Denier.

In the UK our very own UK No Tar Sands Network has been giving them some press. There should be banner advertising running on Grazia today… and of course I couldn’t resist asking a few illustrators to have a go. Follow UK No Tar Sands on Twitter and see more hat designs at Hats for Kate.

Hatsforkate_TARANDFEATHERS
Tar and Feathers.

Categories ,Alberta, ,Amy Rogers, ,Beatrice, ,Bully Beaver, ,Climate Denier, ,Environmental Defence Canada, ,Fawn Carr, ,Gabrielle Brittney, ,Grazia, ,Hats for Kate, ,Kate and Wills, ,Kate’s Road to Avonlea, ,Maple Beatrice, ,Ottawa, ,Pipeline Medusa, ,Royal Visit, ,Tar and Feathers, ,Tar Sands, ,Tarsands, ,UK No Tar Sands Network

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Amelia’s Magazine | Solar Impulse: the plane that flies with the power of the sun.

The Solar Impulse Plane. Illustration by Thereza Rowe.
solar impulse plane-thereza rowe
The Solar Impulse Plane. Illustration by Thereza Rowe.

Holiday season is steadily approaching; the time when adverts for faraway climes become ever more enticing and flight prices drop like environmentalists’ jaws when they see photos of tar sands. Heathrow and London City airports both have plans for expansion, troche whatever the cost to the surrounding area or local people. While they claim that more flights are beneficial to everybody, information pills East Londoners face ever higher levels of respiratory diseases and noise pollution, and Sipson residents wonder when the property laws became irrelevant in the face of the aviation industry. With all this contention, isn’t it about time someone threw some renewable technology into the aero-space?

Enter Solar Impulse. A weird insect-looking plane which runs on solar power, with a wingspan to match that of an Airbus A340 (roughly 63 metres) and a bulbous cockpit hanging in the centre like a spider’s egg sac. Also known as the HB-SIA, the plane has been in development for the past six years, and last week, on April 7th, completed its first two hour test flight. The man behind this project is Bertrand Piccard, a Swiss ex-astronaut who was one of the first men to complete a non-stop round the world tour in a hot air balloon, an experience which led to the realisation for him of the need to live sustainably on the planet which we are currently destroying.

The Solar Impulse Plane. Illustration by Thereza Rowe.
Illustration by Thereza Rowe.

At the moment, Solar Impulse is more of an ambassador for renewable technologies than a useable mode of transport. Much of the technology used was developed solely for, and due to, this project. The wings are covered in photovoltaic cells which convert sunlight to power the propeller. One square metre of cells provides a consistent supply of 28 watts, the equivalent to a lightbulb, over a twenty-four hour period and the planes motor achieves no more than 6kW altogether – similar to the amount the Wright brothers had for their first powered flight of 200 metres. Due to this restriction on power the plans has been stripped of all extraneous weight. The wings are made from a composite carbon-fibre honeycomb around a sandwich shape with carbon ribs placed at intervals to create the aerodynamic shape. The speed is obviously also affected by this and the plane cruises at forty-six miles per hour. The cockpit is also big enough for only one pilot, and is unpressurised, which is fine for test flights which are used to optimise the balance between weight, energy consumption and manoeuvrability, but bigger things are planned for Solar Impulse.

The next steps are more test flights to perfect this balance, and then hopefully a night flight later in the year. This ability to store power and fly over night is what marks Solar Impulse out from the other solar powered plans currently in development. The ultimate goal for the project is to develop a second plane with a pressurised cabin, capable of making a round the world tour, stopping only for pilot changeovers.

The Solar Impulse Plane. Illustration by Thereza Rowe.
Illustration by Thereza Rowe.

The purpose of the Solar Impulse project is to challenge pre-conceived notions of what can be achieved with alternative renewable energies. If a plane can be solar powered, then surely other forms of transport can incorporate this technology into their energy supplies. It has also pushed people to develop more efficient forms of solar technology, advancing this field of research and encouraging new ways of thinking when it comes to uses of alternative energy sources. We know that oil and coal are not only running out, but are derived from the environment at great cost to the planet, and in an age where people are not willing to give up their conveniences no matter how many before and after photos of boreal forests in Alberta are waved in front of them, could solar planes be the saving grace of the aviation industry?

Well, we’re not going to see solar powered jump jets anytime soon, but consider that it was only sixty-six years between a 200 metre flight and two men on the moon. Solar Impulse already has two hours under its belt, who knows where it could progress to from here?

You can read about other similar projects in Amelia’s Anthology of Illustration, available from this very website!

Categories ,Alberta, ,Bertrand Piccard, ,Fight the Flights, ,heathrow, ,London City Airport, ,Plane Stupid, ,Renewable Technologies, ,sipson, ,Solar Impulse, ,solar power, ,Tar Sands, ,Thereza Rowe, ,Transition Heathrow

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Amelia’s Magazine | Solar Impulse: the plane that flies with the power of the sun.

The Solar Impulse Plane. Illustration by Thereza Rowe.
solar impulse plane-thereza rowe
The Solar Impulse Plane. Illustration by Thereza Rowe.

Holiday season is steadily approaching; the time when adverts for faraway climes become ever more enticing and flight prices drop like environmentalists’ jaws when they see photos of tar sands. Heathrow and London City airports both have plans for expansion, troche whatever the cost to the surrounding area or local people. While they claim that more flights are beneficial to everybody, information pills East Londoners face ever higher levels of respiratory diseases and noise pollution, and Sipson residents wonder when the property laws became irrelevant in the face of the aviation industry. With all this contention, isn’t it about time someone threw some renewable technology into the aero-space?

Enter Solar Impulse. A weird insect-looking plane which runs on solar power, with a wingspan to match that of an Airbus A340 (roughly 63 metres) and a bulbous cockpit hanging in the centre like a spider’s egg sac. Also known as the HB-SIA, the plane has been in development for the past six years, and last week, on April 7th, completed its first two hour test flight. The man behind this project is Bertrand Piccard, a Swiss ex-astronaut who was one of the first men to complete a non-stop round the world tour in a hot air balloon, an experience which led to the realisation for him of the need to live sustainably on the planet which we are currently destroying.

The Solar Impulse Plane. Illustration by Thereza Rowe.
Illustration by Thereza Rowe.

At the moment, Solar Impulse is more of an ambassador for renewable technologies than a useable mode of transport. Much of the technology used was developed solely for, and due to, this project. The wings are covered in photovoltaic cells which convert sunlight to power the propeller. One square metre of cells provides a consistent supply of 28 watts, the equivalent to a lightbulb, over a twenty-four hour period and the planes motor achieves no more than 6kW altogether – similar to the amount the Wright brothers had for their first powered flight of 200 metres. Due to this restriction on power the plans has been stripped of all extraneous weight. The wings are made from a composite carbon-fibre honeycomb around a sandwich shape with carbon ribs placed at intervals to create the aerodynamic shape. The speed is obviously also affected by this and the plane cruises at forty-six miles per hour. The cockpit is also big enough for only one pilot, and is unpressurised, which is fine for test flights which are used to optimise the balance between weight, energy consumption and manoeuvrability, but bigger things are planned for Solar Impulse.

The next steps are more test flights to perfect this balance, and then hopefully a night flight later in the year. This ability to store power and fly over night is what marks Solar Impulse out from the other solar powered plans currently in development. The ultimate goal for the project is to develop a second plane with a pressurised cabin, capable of making a round the world tour, stopping only for pilot changeovers.

The Solar Impulse Plane. Illustration by Thereza Rowe.
Illustration by Thereza Rowe.

The purpose of the Solar Impulse project is to challenge pre-conceived notions of what can be achieved with alternative renewable energies. If a plane can be solar powered, then surely other forms of transport can incorporate this technology into their energy supplies. It has also pushed people to develop more efficient forms of solar technology, advancing this field of research and encouraging new ways of thinking when it comes to uses of alternative energy sources. We know that oil and coal are not only running out, but are derived from the environment at great cost to the planet, and in an age where people are not willing to give up their conveniences no matter how many before and after photos of boreal forests in Alberta are waved in front of them, could solar planes be the saving grace of the aviation industry?

Well, we’re not going to see solar powered jump jets anytime soon, but consider that it was only sixty-six years between a 200 metre flight and two men on the moon. Solar Impulse already has two hours under its belt, who knows where it could progress to from here?

You can read about other similar projects in Amelia’s Anthology of Illustration, available from this very website!

Categories ,Alberta, ,Bertrand Piccard, ,Fight the Flights, ,heathrow, ,London City Airport, ,Plane Stupid, ,Renewable Technologies, ,sipson, ,Solar Impulse, ,solar power, ,Tar Sands, ,Thereza Rowe, ,Transition Heathrow

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Amelia’s Magazine | BP – Beyond Petroleum and head-first into Tar Sands

Dave

I have spent the last 12 years of my life, ask with the exception of 4 years at university, price travelling Europe alongside some of the world’s best freestyle rollerbladers with the sole purpose of meeting new people, helping our sport progress and hurting ourselves.

In addition to writing for Amelia’s, I contribute writing to The List, The Skinny, Huck, Be-mag and Kingdom Magazine. I have also written a fictional novel and a handful of short stories.

Over the past six years I have developed an unhealthy obsession with t-shirts, plaid shirts and limited edition sneakers. You will find me making a nuisance of myself in skate parks, book shops, sweaty nightclubs, festivals and public spaces because that is what I think being young and capricious is all about.

Dave

I have spent the last 12 years of my life, ampoule with the exception of 4 years at university, travelling Europe alongside some of the world’s best freestyle rollerbladers with the sole purpose of meeting new people, helping our sport progress and hurting ourselves.

In addition to writing for Amelia’s, I contribute writing to The List, The Skinny, Huck, Be-mag and Kingdom Magazine. I have also written a fictional novel and a handful of short stories.

Over the past six years I have developed an unhealthy obsession with t-shirts, plaid shirts and limited edition sneakers. You will find me making a nuisance of myself in skate parks, book shops, sweaty nightclubs, festivals and public spaces because that is what I think being young and capricious is all about.

Dave

I have spent the last 12 years of my life, hospital with the exception of 4 years at university, capsule travelling Europe alongside some of the world’s best freestyle rollerbladers with the sole purpose of meeting new people, information pills helping our sport progress and hurting ourselves.

In addition to writing for Amelia’s, I contribute writing to The List, The Skinny, Huck, Be-mag and Kingdom Magazine. I have also written a fictional novel and a handful of short stories.

Over the past six years I have developed an unhealthy obsession with t-shirts, plaid shirts and limited edition sneakers. You will find me making a nuisance of myself in skate parks, book shops, sweaty nightclubs, festivals and public spaces because that is what I think being young and capricious is all about.

Dave

I have spent the last 12 years of my life, order with the exception of 4 years at university, travelling Europe alongside some of the world’s best freestyle rollerbladers with the sole purpose of meeting new people, helping our sport progress and hurting ourselves.

In addition to writing for Amelia’s, I contribute writing to The List, The Skinny, Huck, Be-mag and Kingdom Magazine. I have also written a fictional novel and a handful of short stories.

Over the past six years I have developed an unhealthy obsession with t-shirts, plaid shirts and limited edition sneakers. You will find me making a nuisance of myself in skate parks, book shops, sweaty nightclubs, festivals and public spaces because that is what I think being young and capricious is all about.

Dave

I have spent the last 12 years of my life, buy information pills with the exception of 4 years at university, viagra travelling Europe alongside some of the world’s best freestyle rollerbladers with the sole purpose of meeting new people, helping our sport progress and hurting ourselves.

In addition to writing for Amelia’s, I contribute writing to The List, The Skinny, Huck, Be-mag and Kingdom Magazine. I have also written a fictional novel and a handful of short stories.

Over the past six years I have developed an unhealthy obsession with t-shirts, plaid shirts and limited edition sneakers. You will find me making a nuisance of myself in skate parks, book shops, sweaty nightclubs, festivals and public spaces because that is what I think being young and capricious is all about.

Dave

I have spent the last 12 years of my life, viagra approved with the exception of 4 years at university, travelling Europe alongside some of the world’s best freestyle rollerbladers with the sole purpose of meeting new people, helping our sport progress and hurting ourselves.

In addition to writing for Amelia’s, I contribute writing to The List, The Skinny, Huck, Be-mag and Kingdom Magazine. I have also written a fictional novel and a handful of short stories.

Over the past six years I have developed an unhealthy obsession with t-shirts, plaid shirts and limited edition sneakers. You will find me making a nuisance of myself in skate parks, book shops, sweaty nightclubs, festivals and public spaces because that is what I think being young and capricious is all about.

tarsands2

Illustration by Anieszka Banks

This Saturday sees the launch of a national campaign against BP’s funding of the highly controversial Tar Sands project in Canada, viagra sale which has been called “the biggest environmental crime in history.”  The campaign aims to highlight BP’s potential investment into Tar Sands and raise awareness among the public and shareholders before the BP Annual General Meeting on the 15th of April.  The Guardian and Business Green are among the business pages who have recently written on shareholder revolts over investment into the project.   The Tar Sands Network, clinic and FairPensions (which campaigns for the ethical investment of UK pension funds) are among the campaigning groups, and People and Planet have produced an excellent in-depth report. 

Saturday the 13th is the date of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Canada.  To highlight the Canadian government’s hypocrisy on the issue, campaigners will be gathering outside Canada House in Trafalgar Square for a day of ‘Oil-ympics’.  See our listings for full details  and how you can take part.  The event will aim to increase awareness about the investment of BP, Shell, RBS and the Canadian Government into Tar Sands.

IMG_1193

Tar Sands are petroleum-rich sands and soils found under the forests of Northern Canada.  The methods used to extract this oil are extremely energy intensive and polluting.   They include strip-mining, which will eventually destroy an area of forest bigger than the UK, and steam-drainage, which is ridiculously energy-intensive.   Extraction of Tar Sands, despite the amount of energy required and the high costs involved, is now seen as economically profitable enough due to the increasing cost of ever scarcer conventional oil. 

First Nations communities in Alberta have seen Tar Sands projects poisoning their water, land and food supply, and raising rates of cancer.  Canada’s Boreal Forest is still the world’s largest intact forest and a vital carbon sink, but is progressively being cleared to make way for Tar Sands extraction.  Moreover, investment into Tar Sands is a historically huge step backwards in the need to lessen our dependence on oil. 

During the Copenhagen talks in December representatives from First Nations organisations, environmental groups and NGOs, along with journalists like Naomi Klein, gathered outside the Canadian Embassy.  You can watch the video on Democracy Now. 

There’s also a great intro to the Alberta Tar Sands on VBS TV … “welcome to Alberta..and the future of oil.  It sucks…and it realy f***in’ smells.”

Categories ,Alberta, ,Beyond Petroleum, ,BP, ,Business Green, ,Fair Pensions, ,First Nations, ,Greenpeace, ,Oil Sands, ,people and planet, ,shareholders, ,Tar Sands, ,The Guardian, ,VBS TV, ,vice

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Amelia’s Magazine | BP – Beyond Petroleum and head-first into Tar Sands

tarsands2

Illustration by Anieszka Banks

This Saturday sees the launch of a national campaign against BP’s funding of the highly controversial Tar Sands project in Canada, which has been called “the biggest environmental crime in history.”  The campaign aims to highlight BP’s potential investment into Tar Sands and raise awareness among the public and shareholders before the BP Annual General Meeting on the 15th of April.  The Guardian and Business Green are among the business pages who have recently written on shareholder revolts over investment into the project.   The Tar Sands Network, and FairPensions (which campaigns for the ethical investment of UK pension funds) are among the campaigning groups, and People and Planet have produced an excellent in-depth report. 

Saturday the 13th is the date of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Canada.  To highlight the Canadian government’s hypocrisy on the issue, campaigners will be gathering outside Canada House in Trafalgar Square for a day of ‘Oil-ympics’.  See our listings for full details  and how you can take part.  The event will aim to increase awareness about the investment of BP, Shell, RBS and the Canadian Government into Tar Sands.

IMG_1193

Tar Sands are petroleum-rich sands and soils found under the forests of Northern Canada.  The methods used to extract this oil are extremely energy intensive and polluting.   They include strip-mining, which will eventually destroy an area of forest bigger than the UK, and steam-drainage, which is ridiculously energy-intensive.   Extraction of Tar Sands, despite the amount of energy required and the high costs involved, is now seen as economically profitable enough due to the increasing cost of ever scarcer conventional oil. 

First Nations communities in Alberta have seen Tar Sands projects poisoning their water, land and food supply, and raising rates of cancer.  Canada’s Boreal Forest is still the world’s largest intact forest and a vital carbon sink, but is progressively being cleared to make way for Tar Sands extraction.  Moreover, investment into Tar Sands is a historically huge step backwards in the need to lessen our dependence on oil. 

During the Copenhagen talks in December representatives from First Nations organisations, environmental groups and NGOs, along with journalists like Naomi Klein, gathered outside the Canadian Embassy.  You can watch the video on Democracy Now. 

There’s also a great intro to the Alberta Tar Sands on VBS TV … “welcome to Alberta..and the future of oil.  It sucks…and it realy f***in’ smells.”



Categories ,Alberta, ,Beyond Petroleum, ,BP, ,Business Green, ,Fair Pensions, ,First Nations, ,Greenpeace, ,Oil Sands, ,people and planet, ,shareholders, ,Tar Sands, ,The Guardian, ,VBS TV, ,vice, ,Zofia Walczak

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Amelia’s Magazine | Dirty Oil: Marina Pepper reviews the new film about the horror of the Canadian Tar Sands

Illustration by Daniel Almeroth.
Illustration by Daniel Almeroth.

Back in the days when climate change was a vague notion – something for the 22nd century, order a problematical J curve for academics to ponder over – I thought nothing of hopping on a short haul from LA to Las Vegas, online hiring a chevvy and heading out towards Monument Valley, decease cool desert and home of the Navaho. On the way I  would pass the Grand Canyon, a journey that forced me to redefine my concept of size. For this thing, this hole in the ground was absolutely gi-fucking-normous. It just kept on going.  No matter how long you drove, you came round a bend and there it was. Still. So huge was this new huge I even had to redefine my sense of how big infinite space might actually be. At the time is was as mind blowing as taking acid. It changed me forever.

Now I’m not saying the film Dirty Oil has changed me forever. But it has affected my mood. For now I discover a bigger huge. Tar Sands in Alberta, Canada. It is – or was – the biggest unspoilt forest in the world.  But just underground it’s the second biggest oil reserve in the world after Saudi Arabia. It’s bigger than Florida. Bigger than England. And it is the single biggest emitter of climate change gases in the world. If the oil industry gets the $379 billion investment it’s demanding we’ll get a rise of between 9 and 15 billion parts per million of C02 in the atmosphere. And you know what that means? It means the tipping point of runaway climate change. It can do this all on its own without any help from us leaving lights on or driving short journeys to Tesco.

Illustration by Daniel Almeroth.
Illustration by Daniel Almeroth.

This film though isn’t content to be another film about climate change. It brings you the human story of the Beaver Lake Kree – who are having their ancestral lands torn up, their rivers and lakes polluted and their health destroyed. Thanks to the arsenic in their fishstocks, the Kree are 30 % more likely to get cancer, including rare ones,  than other populations. And why are they subjected to this? So that America gets cheap oil without having to bully – er bother –  the Arabs for a decade. That’s it. A decade of cheapish growth. I could weep – except the film left me emotionally stunned. The problem here is capitalism. An unadulterated free market economy where the bottom line profit – the false prophet indeed – over rides all other considerations, including the survival of life on this planet itself, spews  unchecked in Alberta. It’s not just a local pollution issue, it’s a global one. The Co-op, which hosted this week’s screenings across the UK, wants us all to petition companies like RBS and BP through our pension plans. But is that enough? Is it even worth having a pension when the future is governed by this ginormous scrag-heap of crap? “It’s time to start blowing things up,” says a comrade as we leave the cinema a little stunned. “How big?” I jest.

But there is a minute sliver of hope here. They don’t raise this in the film, but it was the Cree Indians who predicted that a time would come when we discovered that we can’t eat our money. I think we’re getting there. And a Cree woman called Eyes of Fire fortold: “A time when trees fall, the rivers are black, fish die in the rivers and birds fall from the sky…

“And when it does a tribe will gather from all the cultures ?of the World who believe in deed and not words. ?They will work to heal it…  they will be known as the “Warriors of the Rainbow.”
Cree Indian Proverb

I assume that’s us. For anyone calling themselves an activist – if we don’t get together and stop Tar Sands, while forcefully overcoming ignorance to promote alternative ways of running economies and energy supplies, we’re doomed. And doomed is just too huge a deal to imagine.

You can read our preview here and find out where to see the film over the next few weeks here.

Categories ,Alberta, ,BP, ,canada, ,coal, ,Cree Indian Proverb, ,Daniel Almeroth, ,Grand Canyon, ,Indian Proverb, ,Las Vegas, ,Los Angeles, ,Monument Valley, ,oil, ,Oil Sands, ,RBS, ,Tar Sands

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