Japanese Website Releases uses Interactive Globe To Illustrate “Global Warming Divide”

FOE Japan Global Warming Divide photo

Friends of the Earth (FoE) Japan, a member of FoE international, has released a 3D interactive globe on their web site to increase awareness of the “Global Warming Divide”, as part of FoE’s campaign for climate and energy justice.

FoE Japan is using the term “Global Warming Divide” (it works especially well in Japanese, similar to “digital divide”) to represent the campaign, which works to encourage leading nations to take responsibility for the climate crisis and particularly the effect it is having on developing nations less able to cope with the consequences.

Visitors to the site can rotate the globe in 3D, and hot spots for attention are highlighted with icons representing the flag of the country in question. Clicking on the flag provides a short description with photos of the local conditions of injustice related to global warming, and a link to a blog entry on the FoE site for more information.

The globe is written in Adobe Flash, so most visitors to the site will not need to install anything to view it in their browser. It is also easy to use, and the zoom level is limited so that the visitor can maintain a global viewpoint. Heard of something similar? That's right: Google Earth. In the near future, we'd like to see Google Earth and FoE Japan work together to combine their knowledge to achieve climate justice.

Brought to you by Chris of greenz.jp