High-Speed Rail Travel Is Coming To Florida
Some positive environmental news
The International Space Station is planning to track bird and insect migration.
There is still so much we don’t know about the journeys of birds and insects — 75 percent of birds and mammals, plus all insect species, are too small for scientists to track because the tags they use are too heavy. The International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space, however, has just invented a smaller tag that a medium sized bird could safely carry. The device will communicate with the International Space Station and will hopefully give us a lot of useful new information. [Vice]
China’s fossil fuel consumption has gone down, even while their energy consumption has gone up.
Because China is a massive industrial nation, it’s on the hook for some significant CO2 emissions in our atmosphere. However, some data released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics shows that coal consumption decreased by 4.7 percent in 2016. And since 2015, the capacity for solar has grown by 81.6 percent and the capacity for wind power has grown by 13.2 percent. [Futurism]
Women are building improved, environmentally friendly cookstoves in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Multiple collectives of women are producing these cookstoves all over the DRC — more than 62,000 of them have been built in Goma alone. The stoves are efficient and they cut charcoal consumption by 50 percent. Therefore they’re better for the environment and leave families with more money and time to invest elsewhere. The collectives responsible for producing these stoves have employed more than 1,200 Congolese women. [World Wildlife Fund]
Traveling in the year 2017
Iceland may start protecting its natural tourism spots from tourists.
Because Iceland has become one of the most popular destinations in the world, its citizens are getting a little worried about overcrowding and the damage it could cause to its natural resources. Travelers should expect to see more regulation and possibly a tax that would go toward building better infrastructure and protecting Iceland’s environment. [Lonely Planet]
Florida is getting high-speed rail travel this summer.
The rail is called the Brightline. Traveling at 125 miles per hour, it will bring passengers from Miami to Orlando in three hours. The same trip would take nearly six hours on the existing Amtrak. The Brightline has already made a debut run and should be open to the public by July. [Independent] 
