What do a giraffe, an Elephant foot plant and a European Water Vole have in common? What sounds like the beginning of a joke is actually the brainchild of a British PhD student who tried to find innovative ideas for cities facing stormwater.

Due to climate change, such extreme weather events are becoming more frequent. So if nature becomes destructive, why not beat it with its own weapons? That’s what designer Richard MacCowan may have thought  – and looked for solutions in nature. He came up with a design proposal for an industral park in flood-prone areas that can “capture, store and distribute excess volumes of stormwater,” Treehugger writes.

Copying nature is known as biomimicry. The most famous example is the lotus effect for protecting surfaces from dirt. Whether this biomimicry approach is feasible or as costly as the protection plans for NYC has yet to be proven.

Quitting to smoke cigarettes is hard. At least for a few days you won’t be able to think about something else then the lovely features of a cigarette: it makes you calm, it helps you start a conversation (“Got a lighter for me?”), it’s perfect with a good coffee. Wrong. After a while you will enjoy your coffee as well as before, you recognize that you are able to talk to strangers without asking for fire or you will be able to sit and relax without a smoke.

A new study from the George Washington University took that experience and compared it to our use of fossil fuel. And it says that it’s basically the same.

How do you consume fossil fuel? Think about it for a moment. Do you see any analogy? Well, yes, there might be comprehensible parallels. But it’s more like a metaphor.

Of course, we will not be able to stop using fossil fuel, or carbon compounds, right away. They are almost everywhere around us. We use them in our daily routines, sometimes without being aware of it. Think about the plastic in your toothbrushes or salat bowles or about the fuel in your car. It’s bad and you know it, but there’s no way out, right? It’s the same about smokers. Besides that smoking has a lot of socio-cultural reasons, most smokers know about the dangers of cigarettes. But a lot of them won’t stop anyway. They are “unhappy addicts”, both of them, smokers and carbon compound users. And if it’s hard to stop smoking, it’s harder to stop using fossil fuels.

But when smokers have the opportunity to just quit and feel sick for a short period of time, or look for a “healthier alternative,” like … bubble gum or cookies, the alternatives of fussil fuel junkie are still rare or harder to achieve.

The society is addicted entirely to energy, the services and convenience that fossil fuels provide. But maybe it’s possible to learn something from the way to deal with other bad habits. If we really want it, we can make it? Tell us your opinion!

The first World Youth Sustainability concluded in Berlin recently. It brought together over 150 young people from 31 countries who met policymakers and experts to talk about how their dream of a more sustainable, equitable world could be realized. Two young participants, Anne-Sophie Risse and Teresa Thalmaier, describe their experiences at the tightly-packed summit.

Anne-Sophie Risse, youthinkgreen-Team Osnabrück:

Friday, May 17 – Day seven of our first World Youth Sustainability Summit. Off to an early start – my alarm rings at 6 a.m. It’s not so unusual really since I get up at that hour anyway during a normal school week. But yesterday was a long day. We spent the whole day at the Pariser Platz in central Berlin for our Tree of Hope project. It’s made of trash and has pages bearing the wishes, demands, hopes and requests from us and from other people addressed to lawmakers, governments and people around the world.

Now, early Friday morning, it’s our job to hand over the Tree of Hope to German Environment Minister Peter Altmaier. We – that is 160 young people from 31 countries – arrive at the ministry at 8 a.m. We’d come together in Berlin to draft a document expressing what we want to policymakers, business and society. Our meeting with Altmaier lasts just 15 minutes.

In order to get a solid understanding of some of the issues that made it into the document, we’ve been listening to daily talks by various experts on climate change and other topics. Today, it’s the turn of renowned climate researcher Hans Joachim Schellnhuber. We head to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research to hear him speak. He’s very competent and understanding and begins his talk by saying “I’ll wake you up when something important comes up!” In addition to several interesting facts on climate change, I take away this impression from the talk – if there’s an acute, common problem then even nations that are sworn enemies can manage to work together.

I wonder if things have to go that far. With that thought, we head to the next workshop “Climate change – an intergenerational problem.” Carl-Friedrich Schleußner is the expert in this case and says that people need to live in such a way so that life for successive generations is at least just as good. It’s a topic you can discuss forever. So that the day doesn’t end on too  theoretical a note, we’re shown videos by the “ClimateMediaFactory.org” – the world as a user of a network dubbed “Earthbook.” The videos were really well done.

Teresa Thalmaier, youthinkgreen-Team Windhoek:

After absorbing so many new impressions, faces, fascinating lectures and different cultures, we headed to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

“If you thought the last few days were grueling, then you’d better get prepared for something really tough today. But that’s what you’ll take home with you, something you can be proud of.” That’s how Helmut Spiering, the project founder of youthinkgreen, welcomed us.

Another two long hours to go before lunch. Initially, we sat in groups of maximum ten young people and racked our brains – what do we actually want? What needs to change? How can we shape our world in a more sustainable manner? How can you achieve that aim?

It sounds easier than it is. How do you formulate things that are politically correct and still compelling? But we weren’t the only ones struggling with the problem. After another discussion in a smaller circle, further groups were created. Now four larger with 40 members each worked on their wish lists. Exhausted, we dragged ourselves off to lunch to recharge our batteries. We all really needed it!

But the tough part was still to come. We were asked to discuss the four wish lists from all the groups and to combine then. We – 160 young people from 31 countries – sat excitedly in a large conference room. There were so many different cultures and languages represented. But all that wasn’t meant to hinder us.

The most difficult part often was formulating the document. Often, our statements weren’t concrete enough, at times superfluous – though there were really good ideas behind them. We gained a deep insight into how a parliament works, how politics is done on an international stage. At the end, we had our final document. It’s unbelievable what we achieved in the last weeks and I’m happy to be a part of the youthinkgreen family!

Climate change has many impacts on the planet, and researchers recently discovered another striking one: North Pole is moving. It’s not the ice masses in the Arctic, but acually the Northern pole of the earth’s magnetic field.

With help of satellite measurements, scientists figured out that the pole is shifting about 20 centimeters per year towards Greenland. Position of the magnetic field’s poles is determined by mass distribution around the planet. This mass distribution changes due to climate change: Accelerated melting of the poles account for 90 per cent of the movement, the study concludes.

You wonder about the remaining 10 per cent? Well, you might not have known yet (so did we) that the pole is constantly moving as earth’s mass distribution changes anyway seasonally/continuously by snow- or rainfall or continental drift. The movement due to melting ice sheets adds up on this trend. For scientists, this is more than just a “nice-to-know”-fact: the satellite measurements can help climate researchers to tell, where ice is lost and in consequence provide more detail to predict climate change impacts.

Normally, we mostly present you animals threatened by climate change – but this time, we have some good news for you: Researchers recently found out that there is a way corals might actually survive the multiple threats of humanity. We actually give these small creatures a very hard live:  pollution, overfishing and last but not least climate change. The latter influences the reefs by ocean acidification and rising sea temperatures.

For a long time it was thought that those cnidaria folks won’t cope with those impact. But the new study gives a glimpse of hope: If we manage to lower CO2 emission under the current level and stop overfishing, then all reefs with more than 20 per cent coral cover will survive. That’s the only chance, the researchers figured out.

For their work they took into account models for climate change, ecosystem dynamics, and carbonate processes. That way they could show that fish colonies are crucial for corals to survive, as they eat away straggling algae on the reefs resulting in more space for corals to grow.