Film: Gasland: this week at UCT. Don't miss the chance to see this documentary.

Dates: Tuesday 12th and Wednesday 13th April
Time: 5pm
Venue: Studio 5, EGS (Environmental and Geographical Science) building, UCT upper campus

Demonstration: Unplug Nuclear! No Nukes in Africa

Date: Monday 18 April 2011
Time: 12am – 2pm
Venue: Pier Place, Heerengracht Street, Cape Town

Join Earthlife Africa. 25 years since Chernobyl. Action near the Japanese Embasssy in Cape Town. In support of the 'Fukushima 50' – 4 teams of 50 workers who are almost certain to die from their work in helping stem the ongoing radiation. We also aim to express our condolences regarding the impact on people in Japan by the tsunami and the ongoing nuclear disasster.

pic: bristol.indymedia.org

A new study reported in The Lancet last month found that with a restricted diet alone, many children experienced a significant reduction in symptoms.

I recently found myself on the couch. In an educational psychologist's office. I won't bore you with the details of how I found myself in such a position, but suffice to say the debate turned to ADHD or ADD and medication very quickly.

Earth Hour has come around again – the largest voluntary action in the world, entailing over 1.3 billion people switching off their lights for an hour in support of the environment.

When: Saturday evening, 26 March between 8.30 and 9.30pm.

Table Mountain in Cape Town will join other world icons like the CN Tower in Toronto, the Golden Gate Bridge and Empire State Building, and even London's Eye by switching off all lights for the hour.

Find out what's happening in...

I love stories like this one. Just last week, on a couple of walls in Woodstock, Cape Town, a small group of selected young artists with names like Pavement Special, Black Koki and Fuzzy Slippers (well, some of them, the others have more normal sounding names like Xanelle, Jonx Pillemer and Dathina Mzayiya) were busy painting a series of mural art.

It's a way of celebrating local artists, mural art and the original culture within the communities in which the art is shaped.

Street art is funky. It flies in the face of the idea of a gallery as the place in which art can function. And it acts as a 'bridge'; a connection between the community in which the art functions and the rest of the world that sees the art as a reflection of the community.

And in SA that's important, as the majority of people never see the inside of a gallery, nevermind local art.

What has fracking (hydraulic fracturing for natural gas) got to do with water? The answer is 'everything'.

This came as something of a surprise to me, sitting virtually in the front row of the independent movie house, the Labia, in Cape Town last night, craning my neck at a rather delicate angle (the lesson here is, get to the movie house early if you want a good seat) to watch the movie Gasland, screened by the ngo While you were Sleeping.

Love this pic. It's one of a series of such pictures on Inhabitat.com - well worth a look-see. It appears that Norwegians, at any rate, have been planting greenery on their roofs for years...

It appears all is not as it seems with the cows down at Fair Cape Free Range (the 'happy, healthy' ones that 'live in super comfort in spacious surroundings').

Muriel Gravenor, a concerned consumer of said milk, emailed us last week with a different take on Fair Cape Free Range's trademarked milk. It seems that these cows are grateful simply to be in a shed all day long and the area in which they are free to range is little more than a glorified feedlot.

It's a pity we can't all visit the farms from which our food comes; get a first-hand take on just how what we eat is treated, before we ingest it. It might help us get a handle on all the marketing speak through which we have to wade on a daily basis, whilst we try to make a decision about just what is good for us.

I am a fan of the Earth Fair Market. It's location in Tokai makes it a really easy 'pop in and grab' place to stock up on fresh, organic and local food on a Wednesday evening and Saturday morning.

And now, the indoor market is getting an outdoor equivalent in the city bowl, St George's Mall, just opposite the cathedral (what a setting).

when
Every Thursday from 12.30 pm to 6.30 pm

where
Upper St Georges Mall, off Wale Street

Jacci Simpson, the market's organiser is very excited. As she says, it's been eight months of getting approval and permits and it is the closest we will have in this country to a European style street market.

It isn't news that Shell is targeting potential untapped shale gas reserves, in South Africa - Shell applied in December to explore 90,000 square kilometres -- twice the size of Denmark -- for gas deposits in the clay-like shale rock of the arid central Karoo.

However, what might be news, is the effect this could have on this beautiful inland region. 'Fracking', a term used to describe hudraulic fracturing where gas is extracted by creating fractures in rocks, blasts water, sand and chemicals deep underground to force rock cracks and free trapped gas...

In the middle of the informal settlement of Du Noon, close to Blaauberg in Cape Town, a branch of Nedbank, now derives all its energy from wind turbines – the first in the country.

Nedbank are also behind the billboard that combines solar panels and a wind turbine in Athlone (you can see it rather prominently from the N2), bringing electricity to a youth and family development centre there.

Whilst my reaction to the impetus for the branch in Du Noon is a little sceptical (we are to admire their efforts to bring banking to the formerly disadvantaged, where they charge them royally for it), what it does do is place the possibility in the minds of many who will read about (and see) the use of wind power as reliable and sustainable renewable energy. If a bank branch can make it happen, then so can the average home, eventually...