quikboy said:
"Great! Just in time for the Summer Olympics! They should do this in Houston too!..." [read]
Mackenzie said:
"Larry:
I recall the Gondola tour guide saying they have boats going up and down the river treating it in-place.
The Gondola tour guid..." [read]
MGB said:
"Keep dreaming. The power from sound is much-much smaller (several orders of magnitude) than is needed for any normal electronic device, especially..." [read]
Bonnie said:
"I really like egreenplace.com for baby furniture.
They offer some of the best green products which go through a lot of scrutiny and testin..." [read]
VanDammer said:
"GM's Malibu has been rolled out to rental car & corporate fleets across the country. Take fleet sales out of the equation and you'll see the true..." [read]
Richard said:
"Is this serious?
Looks like people have just a little bit too much time on their hands. I also expect that a lot of equipment and processe..." [read]
When TreeHugger featured Robert "Chip" Beaman's Wood Powered Pickup Truck, readers commented, aghast at the potential for humanity to destroy woodland resources if transportation infrastructure were to switch to wood gasification. Therefore, for your further consideration, may we introduce you to Victory Gasworks. Victory Gasworks' Ben Peterson has built his own gasifier, specializing in biomass such as wood scraps, yard waste, and corn cobs. ...
How Biden's Foreign Policy Experience Supplements Obama's Climate Policy While the traditional media has largely focused on touting Biden's long tenure in the Senate and foreign policy expertise as key assets that will add gravitas to the Democratic campaign, it has spent little time examining how the Delaware senator's experience could supplement Obama's policies in other areas (the obvious ones being national security and foreign affairs, of course). Though it may not seem obvious at first blush, Biden may end up proving most valuable to Obama in lending his foreign policy chops to tackle climate change. ::Jeremy JaquotWrapping Up Our Plastic Habit...In More Plastic Not surprisingly, our world is awash in disposable plastic cutlery. Google Answers' best estimates put annual production at about 40 billion pieces in the USA alone. Seem outrageous? Just tally your own consumption, or that of your office, in a two-week span and then calculate your personal annual consumption. ::Graham Hill
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Image from vm2827
Every year, over 70 million Indians and Bangladeshi are exposed to arsenic when they consume rice, the region's primary food staple, and water. Often portrayed as the world's worst case of mass poisoning, this chronic exposure has been linked to increasing cancer rates and is believed to impact 6 out of every 100 people in the Bengal Delta -- at least one of which will suffer from near-death symptoms. The situation is so critical that the WHO has described it as being "beyond the accidents of Bhopal, India, in 1984 and Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986," in scope. ...
This post is one in a series of video blogs about biking across America with WE ADD UP to raise awareness about how to stop global warming. Check out more posts in this series here.
A parking lot in Casper, Wyoming, isn't the most intuitive place to be thinking about recycling -- but it's here that we encountered an impressive array of municipal recycling bins, one for every kind of recyclable material. You can't see it on the video because we waited for a moment of quiet to let the camera roll, but while we were there, people were driving up and making use of all of these bins. It all adds up!...
As a native of Iran who grew up in Boston, Mona Miri's life has always been defined by a constant state of change and development. No wonder, then, that "Modified Landscapes," Miri's first solo exhibition, sets out to explore this theme as it relates to the built environment. Focusing her lense on a fast-changing neighborhood in San Francisco, the young environmental photographer's work comments on "environmental stress and the constant progression of city life."
This week, TreeHugger sat down with her to talk about "Modified Landscapes," the urban environment and the philosophy behind her work.
Mona Miri: "All of the photographs in "Modified Landscapes" were taken in an area called Bayview-Hunters Point on the San Francisco waterfront, which contains a third of the city's toxic waste sites and is currently undergoing a massive process of redevelopment and gentrification. The photo exhibition actually took place a few blocks away from the site.
The place itself interested me as a hot spot - a toxic place, environmentally hazardous. There are signs up saying this place could be hazardous to your health. It has a history going back to WWII of shipyards, landfills, industry, and even power plants and nuclear research - but there is also a community that lives there. These days it is a prime location for developers, and there are big plans to redevelop the site."...
While their brethren, the dreaded chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), may be on the wane, fluorocarbons -- a class of equally dangerous industrial gases -- are still wreaking havoc. As the name implies, the main distinguishing characteristic between CFCs and fluorocarbons is that the latter lacks chlorine; that is, unfortunately, one of the few meaningful differences, as both are extremely destructive in their own respects.
Unlike CFCs, which were banned from use because of their harmful impact on the ozone layer, fluorocarbons remain widely in use: found in everything from clothing, blood substitutes and lubricants to refrigerants. The strength and lack of reactivity of their C-F bonds, which renders them water repellent, has made them an ideal chemical for many industries. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/321/5893/1168...
Image source: Planet Green
Focus Earth with Bob Woodruff looks at US environmental challenges of the past and what we can hope for in the future. With tropical storm Gustav on a collision course for the Gulf of Mexico, is New Orleans ready for another Katrina? On the third anniversary of Katrina, and after watching Gustav rip through Haiti, leaving casualties in its wake and head for Cuba and ultimately the Gulf Coast, Bob Woodruff takes a closer look at how far New Orleans has come in the last three years. Also, lots of promises were made this week in Denver as the Democrats nominated their candidate for President, but just what exactly is this ticket offering for America's environmental future?
Bob Woodruff takes a helicopter tour with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal through the 9th Ward, which suffered some of the greatest devastation from Katrina. The city is working on rebuilding, strengthening levees and even going green, but how much is left to do before they can feel safe again. Over 15% of Southern Louisiana has washed away over the last century, making it the fastest disappearing shoreline in the world. Another 600,000 acres, roughly the size of Rhode Island are expected to disappear in the next 50 years. How is Louisiana planning on dealing with this?...
The ubiquitous green and white Volkswagen bugs that serve as cheap taxis for millions of Mexico City residents while damaging their lungs by spewing ultra fine particulate matter and other pollutants will be phased out by 2012, according to the Spanish news agency Efe. The cars, known fondly as "vochos," proliferated in Mexico decades after Volkswagen began manufacturing them in the city of Puebla.
The municipal transport and road ministry, known as Setravi, issued a ruling Friday saying the Beetles are less safe and are responsible for more pollution than any modern vehicle. The ministry provided few details on how the phase out would occur, but the idea is to replace the vochos with modern, fuel-efficient and clean-vehicles.
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Photo: Lisa Gregoire via Canadian Geographic
As we reported over a year ago global warming will cause agriculture to migrate towards the poles. While it remains to be seen how, and which, crops will survive and thrive as they creep north, residents of Inuvik, NWT are already growing food in a town 120 miles north of the arctic circle sitting on top of permafrost at least 300 feet deep. ...
Not that the principle of this is new, but in an effort to push forward a new global treaty on greenhouse gas emission reduction, the Stockholm Environment Institute has said that the United States, China, and other wealthy nations should be responsible for the majority of the costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Bloomberg reports.
Wealthy Would Have to Pay For Poor Nations' Reductions
Under the proposal both national income and overall emissions would be considered when determining the level of carbon emission cuts a country would be required to make. Furthermore, wealthy nations would be obliged to do more than simply cut their own emissions, but would also be required to pay for emissions reduction projects in poorer nations. ...
Michael Braungart is co-author with William McDonough of Cradle to Cradle. He writes a very strange article in Abitare that includes a few gems, including this one about the population problem.
"But I can tell you, sustainability is boring. It is just the minimum. Like when you were asked: ”How is your relationship with your girlfriend?” What do you say? Sustainable? I’d say: “I am so sorry for you.” Design is the complete opposite of sustainability. We would still live on trees if we were sustainable. Sustainability just keeps the same things over and over again. Instead we should celebrate being human beings and our creativity, which is far more important than sustainability.
So believe me, we are not too many people on this planet. If you take the total weight of the planet’s ants on one hand and the total weight of human beings on the other, you’ll see that the ants’ weight is four times higher. It is not only the number, but ants weigh out human beings. Further they have a much shorter life span than we have. And because they work much harder physically than we do, the calorie consumption of ants equals about 30 billion people. It is clearly not about the fact that we are too many. Ants don’t produce waste. They don’t need to minimize waste. They produce nutrients. Again it is a design question."...
Image source: Rishi Tea
Its no surprise that Rishi Tea was the winner of seven First Place Awards at the 2008 Tea Championships for best tea, and to top it off was the first company to win the award making organic teas. Beating out 300 other brands, Rishi "rose to the top"
I drink a lot of tea though I'd hardly say I'm an expert or connoseur, but this was good tea. You crack open the lid and a strong, sweet smell of peppermint hits you. It doesn't smell like old, dead packaged tea, but smells like tea leaves that have been freshly picked. Brew a pot and you're equally rewarded. ...
From tiny apartment to big front porch
Buffalo has everything going for it; green hydropower, water, railways, canals, a temperate climate; it should be a hot spot. Instead it has a smaller population than it did in 1907 and acres of empty houses. Adam Sternbergh writes in New York magazine about how New Yorkers are taking notice and moving there- mostly the creative types that can work anywhere (and don't have a lot of money)
It is "a story about choices. It’s a story about reaching that pivotal moment when the dream life you imagined for yourself in New York no longer seems attainable or attractive, or simply no longer seems worth the wearying chase."
I hope it is the first of many stories about the revival of the American rust belt, where there is so much infrastructure already in place, so much opportunity to rebuild green, sustainable, walkable towns and cities....
Many of you have probably seen, heard or read about Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver last night. For those who haven’t seen it and who have 45 minutes to spare, a video of the entire speech is embedded above. However for those with less time on their hands, here are the relevant portions in regards to what Mr Obama has said in regards to energy policy.
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"The Winner" photo by roboppy via flickr
While we usually visit Grist to check in on the latest news on topics like GMOs or federal farm policy analysis we couldn't resist reading Tom Philpott's unscientific taste test of 10 "health-food-store" potato chips. (Actually eight chips made from potatoes, one from plantain, and one from cassava, but why quibble?)
Even the most hardened locavore has their snack-food vice and we salute Philpott for taking this challenge and sharing his weakness for the mighty chip. He even manages to fit in a bit of food system education with his observation that organic potato chips are rare due to a lack of large scale organic potato farms to meet the demands of the potato chip processor.
On to the results:...
:: Use up your old nail polish with these three ideas.
:: Give your simple tomato soup a twist by trying this Tomato Potato Soup recipe instead!
:: Find a friend to go biking with you to make cycling more fun--and safe....
Competition for the Volt
British car site Autocar claims that some "senior sources" at Mazda revealed that the company is working on a rival to GM's Volt. The series hybrid would use a gas engine to generate electricity to charge batteries, but it would always be electric motors turning the wheels (unlike the Prius). This could mean that Ford, who owns a significant portion of Mazda, will also use this technology.
Prototype
Apparently, it's not just a paper concept. "Trials are currently underway in Japan, with a prototype that uses a rotary engine [like the Mazda RX-8] to charge the battery pack. The tests are sufficiently advanced that Mazda has a working prototype in a Mazda 5 MPV bodyshell. Company bosses are said to be keen to put this system into production but no firm decisions will be made until the cost of batteries is reduced." ...
A lovely looking straw bale cabin in the Dutch countryside by Jurgen Bey and Rianne Makkink, built as part of an exhibition of 13 art projects. Can't tell you much about it as the designer gets the incomprehensible website design of the month award at ::Jurgenbey.nl More pictures at Designboom...
Toyota iQ: Coming to Japan and Europe
The Toyota iQ, which was unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show, will go on sale in Japan in October and in Europe a few months later. Lets have a closer look.
Big Space in Small Package
Unlike the Smart Car which can only seat two people, the Toyota iQ has 4 seats, though only 3 of those can accommodate adults. The last one is better used for a small child, a baby seat or a grocery bag. Still, not bad for a car that fits somewhere between the Smart and Yaris in lenght (117 inches).
Update:57 MPG Toyota iQ Goes on Sale in Europe, No U.S. Release Date Yet
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photo: Maki_C30D via flickr
With the recent sobering news that not only is the trend in the Arctic indicating that climate change is happening more quickly than models have indicated, but also that permafrost in the region contains significantly more greenhouse gases just waiting to be released as the region warms, it’s good to hear that at least one nation is increasing its efforts to get its own carbon emissions under a semblance of control.
27% Budgetary Increase For Climate Change Mitigation
Earlier this week, Japan announced that it will spend $4 billion in the next fiscal year on efforts to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. This would be a 27% increase in monies spend to combat climate change, Blooomberg reports. In June, Japan’s prime minister pledged that the nation would reduce its carbon emissions by 60-80% from current levels by 2050.
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:: Eco Child's Play features green gear for dads.
:: EcoMedia creates advertising where half of the proceeds goes to local communities.
:: We learn that common household items can come in handy when healing wasp and bee stings.
:: RoofRat helps simplify your solar panel shopping.
:: Catalog Choice helps cancel unwanted catalogs.
Most Huggable is a regular roundup of some of Hugg's top green news stories. Why not submit your own green news?...
This is a short clip, but I love it. It combines so many of the things dear to my heart: Community-based solutions, renewable energy, and (of course) tofu. Yes, I’m a self-confessed tofu lover. Many may call me crazy but there it is.
On a more serious note, as we saw in another video clip from China which I posted a few weeks back, the move to turn food and agricultural waste products into useful and renewable energy sources continues to gain steam. And what’s not to like about it? Reduce waste producing renewable energy, save money, clean up pollution in local waterways.
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What Actions Really Do Cut Carbon?
Is a vegan diet the greenest, or does eating a little meat make more ecological sense? Should you keep your old car or buy a hybrid? These are the types of questions that we TreeHuggers concern ourselves with every day – and sometimes the answers are not clear cut. It's great then to see a new climate-related site from the BBC called ‘Bloom’ that offers sound scientific advice on specific actions, and how much carbon they can really save.
I have yet to explore the whole site in detail (it is a little irritatingly Flash heavy), but so far there are a number of interesting topics explored – from solar phone chargers (the jury is still out on that one), to sharing a house with friends or lodgers (a sure fire winner on the carbon front), Bloom lays out the impact of each action, along with any debate or controversy that may still exist. Encouragingly, while the site does try to point out what actions may not cut as many emissions as you might think, it’s not all reduced down to a simple CO2 ratio – Bloom also discusses whether gadgets like solar chargers, while offering minimal to negligible emissions reductions in themselves, may serve to promote renewable energy among the general population. Good solid stuff from the BBC.
::BBC Bloom::via site visit::
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It's becoming an annual thing and growing every year. Suhla, which means reconciliation in Arabic, is a three day meeting between Israelis and Palestinians. Although they live next door to each other, Israelis and Palestinians have little day to day contact. Sulha intends to break the cycle of regional hate and violence by getting these people to meet, dance, talk and party together.
This year the event took on a green spin, with organizers asking people to bring their own plates and utensils. But there were many more green elements, my friend from Green Prophet reports.
Other green ways of supporting the event included car-sharing and facebook invitations. Experiential lectures and workshops on making and using bio-fuel, and input from the good people at the NGO Bustan on bedouin and ecology complemented the programme, with many sharing & listening circles, voice & dance sessions, etc. Late night performances from Berry Sakhorov, Yair Dalal, and chilling out around a bonfire to the sounds of the friars chanting in the monastery ‘up the track’ rounded out the event.
Guest blogger Jesse McDougall delivers the eco-scoop, straight from the Democratic National Convention in Denver.The Democratic National Convention Goes Green
One of the very best aspects of the frenzy going on in Denver this week during the Democratic National Convention is the focus on green living. There are a good number of organizations out here promoting their "green" image. Coca-Cola has recycling trucks at strategic points around the hullabaloo. Pepsi is pushing a new "zero calorie, earth friendly" fizzy drink called Tava. And even the convention itself has placed volunteers around Denver helping people sort their waste into boxes labeled Landfill, Recycling, and, surprisingly, Compost.
Forgive me for my cynical eye, but when I see large corporations touting new green products, I am suspicious of greenwashing. Therefore, when I see an ACTUALLY green company promoting an ACTUALLY green service, I get excited... ...
image: CAES Development Co.
While I’m not convinced that the issue of renewable energy’s intermittency is as great a problem as it is often made out to be—in the sense that it's not a valid argument against deploying as much renewable energy as we can, as is sometimes claimed—storage solutions for renewable energy sources do need to be developed. In New Jersey, utility PSEG is turning to an often overlooked technology to address the problem.
Two Compressed Air Storage Systems Currently Developed
PSEG announced earlier this week that it would be investing $20 million over the next three years into developing underground compressed-air storage systems for wind turbines. Currently there are two Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) systems operating in the world, one in Alabama and the other in Huntorf, Germany.
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In my last blog, I confessed my antipathy for camping. Today, I've got something a little hotter: two weeks ago, two Earthwatch colleagues and I took off our pants together behind the catering tent at a swanky cocktail party on the Charles River in Boston.
(Let me take this opportunity to issue our deepest apologies to the wait staff and to those unfortunate families touring the river on the famed Duck Boat tour that evening.)
What made the scene truly hot, I confess, wasn't our suite of Adonis-like attributes, but rather that we were doffing our trousers as part of Earthwatch's Beat the Heat Climate Change Campaign. We kicked off this two-month campaign (August 14-October 14) that night with a fundraiser at Boston's Museum of Science....
Mike tells us that Ford is retooling it's plants to produce small cars instead of trucks. In WWII it switched from cars to planes pretty fast, so if they put their mind to it they can do remarkable things. But I suspect that many of our readers gave up on North American cars long ago and it might take a lot to bring them back. Will it be enough?
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According the the WorldWatch Institute (and an old post of our own) livestock contribute 18% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, even higher than the GHG emissions from transportation. As part of this figure they produce 37% of methane, which has more than 20 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. And if that weren’t enough to be concerned about, their manure emits nitrous oxide, 65% of world totals. WorldWatch also point out that in the United States, 70% of all anti-microbial drugs are now given to livestock.
Yet for all the welcoming news regarding decreased SUV sales, increased bicycle purchases and servicing, increased green home building, and so on, meat production, is on WorldWatch’s figures not declining. And in fact they see signs it is on the rise, with poultry, pig and beef production increasing between 2% and 4%. They dig out figures which indicate that globally about 56 billion animals are raised and slaughtered for food each year, the bulk of whom are ‘produced’ in factory farms....
All three have caught the attention of The Children & Nature Network (C&NN), who supports those working to reconnect children with nature. Recently it had a link to the above video of a commercial TV advert produced by Persil, a British laundry detergent brand. (Kids playing outdoors sure know how to get dirty - hence the connection.)
The advert cleverly addresses some of the issues we’ve been covering regarding the No Child Left Inside (aka Nature Deficit Disorder) movement. It shows what happens when a robot is exposed to the great outdoors. ...
After writing about the benefits of tap water over bottled water, we received some info from the folks at Back to the Tap™. They have a serious movement going on to get people, as their name indicates, "back to the tap." Citing the benefits of kicking the bottle, like reducing plastic waste, and shrinking your carbon footprint, this organization encourages people to stay away from bottled water and use the EPA-regulated clear liquid that flows from your faucets.
In light of this important step in greening your drinking water, the Back to the Tap people created a water bottle with a carbon composite filtering mechanism that will last approximately 3 months before it needs to be changed (or the equivalent of approximately 80 gallons). They estimate that it will effectively eliminate an average of 300 water bottles from going to landfills and as many as 1000 bottles per person per year. The end goal – reducing global plastic waste.
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Fascinating the way the same idea can pop up at the same time in different locations. Take community fruit harvesting--when local volunteers harvest the fruit from trees for owners who can't (or can't be bothered) and share the bounty. First sighted in Toronto, Ontario, where a local group, called "not far from the tree" sends out a team of volunteers to pick the fruit. One third of the collection goes to the fruit tree owners, another third goes to the volunteers for their labour, and the final third is distributed (by bicycle or cart) to community organizations in the neighbourhood who can make good use of it. Next noted in Portland, Oregon and called the Portland Fruit Tree Project. The project has a database of 140 privately-owned fruit trees, and volunteers are gathered when it's time to pick ripe fruit. They keep what they can eat, and deliver the rest to food banks.
And now in Walthamstow, NE London, England, a group called OrganicLea and fruit picking is called scrumping. They reckon that even in urban areas, one in four detached or semi-detached houses have fruit trees in their garden and much of it goes to waste. Their group of dedicated volunteers has picked (scrumped) 12 tons of local fruit. Householders keep 25% of the fruit collected, while the rest is sold at a market stall or turned into (apple) juice. Over 30 trees were picked from this year. OrganicLea has its own allotment gardens and a weekly stall at a local market where it sells the surplus produce from its allotments; the stall takes 25% and the allotment holder gets 75% of whatever is made. :: GuardianMore on Community Harvesting
:: Backyard Fruit Trees
:: Community Fruit Harvesting
:: National Allotment Gardens Week...
(Photo: Giuseppe Moretti from BeatScene Online)
Few people may have seen as much of this beautiful planet and also looked as deeply within for inspiration as poet Gary Snyder. When he won the 2008 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize earlier this summer I was deeply moved. Gary is known here in Japan for having practiced Zen with Isshu Miura at a temple in Kyoto (back when almost noone travelled to this side of The Pacific). He first arrived in 1956, and spent a decade studying, researching and translating Zen texts. He also spent six months travelling throughout Asia, where he had the honour of a meeting with the Dalai Lama, and travelled through India with other poets including Alan Ginsberg.
In his Pulitzer Prize winning Turtle Island (1974) he is a very global treehugger:
The poems speak of place, and the energy pathways that sustain life. Each living being is a swirl in the flow, a formal turbulence, a 'song.' The land, the planet itself, is also a living being - at another pace. Anglos, Black people, Chicanos, and others beached up on these shores all share such views at the deepest levels of their old cultural traditions - African, Asian or European. Hark again to those roots, to see our ancient solidarity, and then to the work of being together on Turtle Island.
Good public art stops you in your tracks, while the best public art also opens up a new thought channel in your head. Which, in terms of the evolution of the environmental ethos, may be what we all really need right now.
Moss greens up public space
Anna Garforth's green graffiti on display at London's Clissold Park, is called the Mossberger Project and is part of YCN, a two-week global art initiative - in Stockholm, Tallin, New York, Amsterdam, etc. as well as London. The moss, which Garforth uses for letters to display words, is just so much more friendly than spray paint as a way of leaving a semi-permanent message. And green...and biodegradable!
Garforth used a mixture of natural yogurt and sugar to get the moss to cling to the bricks. Eventually the moss in Garforth's messages will colonize and take over on the wall. Hit the jump to see the entire phrase, from a poem by Eleanor Stevens, as well as more examples of moss art. Via ::TrendHunter.com...
Organic. Regional. Seasonal. Fast. Fine. Nat.
Yep, Nat.. We really don't understand the period, but we get the concept. "Nat." is the name of an organic fast food restaurant which has opened in Hamburg as the first of a planned chain of fast-food locales to be run by both the parent company and under franchise. The menu starts with soups and salads, for a strong vegetarian or vegan basis. Entree offers include burgers -- either beef, lamb or vegetarian; grilled chicken, steak or fish plates; and a selection of seasonal hot casserole or pasta dishes. Your conscience will wince at turning down the fruit salad in favor of the chili-chocolate cake. Could it compromise on a sweet waffle with berries? A kids' menu suits the younger pallet and keeps the family pocketbook in order....
Image source: WashingtonPost.com
After reports last year of "raccoon dog" fur being used and labeled as faux fur, the Humane Society came out with a few quick tests you can use to test whether any animals were hurt in production. First, look at the base of the fur - fake fur will have a threaded backing while real fur will just have dyed skin. Second, animal fur tapers into a point - like a cat's whisker or a sewing needle. This one is harder to tell.
The third option is only for fur owners who want to check on a purchase they have already made - snip off a tiny portion of hair and light it on fire. Animal hair will smell like human hair when ignited - synthetic fur won't. If you do find that you have a fur coat and don't feel like you can wear it in good conscience, then the Humane Society has a tip for you (see below). There are other tests commonly used, such as "push-pin test, blow test, finger roll test, color of the fur, length of the fur and relative softeness of the fur" but none of these are very reliable. ...
:: Go backpacking this weekend--and take along these four eco-friendly tips.
:: Savor the last tastes of summer with Emeril's cool and refreshing Cucumber Salad.
:: Get your whites white without having to use a toxic bleach.
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Anyone see a long-term trend here? Besides the fact that the annual variation in underground natural gas storage volume is large, and seems correlated with temperate zone solar input. Who'd have thought that there'd be less stored this August than last?
Last winter was pretty cold in the northern US states. Could happen again.
Hurricane Gus is barreling across the US Gulf as we write; and natural gas is extracted offshore just as is oil. That could cut production/storage for a period. Just thinking. Bet those future marketeers are too.
The reduced storage might have to do with power generation moving away from coal and toward gas??? Via::EIA, Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report...
Christine wrote earlier about American Express' competition where cardholders and anyone else can vote to choose worthy projects, where the winner gets $ 1.5 million to "make the world a better place". Now TreeHugger hero Cameron Sinclair is asking for a little love for an Architecture for Humanity submission. Soon- time is running out.
It is "a locally driven social venture that creates an alliance of textile designers and gifted artisans in Southeast Asia to produce luxurious hand-woven fabrics. By providing economic opportunity, we help preserve hand-weaving in Asia while creating environmentally sustainable fabrics"- which are sold through Lulan, covered on Treehugger at ICFF here....
Image source: Pie Footwear
Can your footwear be socially conscious and fashionable? Yes, according to Pie Footwear (the shoes are not edible), which just opened their doors in Portland, Oregon. JC and Stacey Matney own the store and began with the idea to have a comfortable shoe store, but realized they wanted their store to match their values and went vegan and sustainable instead.
Pie even holds in-store shoe recycling, including their upcoming event September 13, where for every shoe donated, Teva will donate $1 to the Waterkeeper Alliance. Shoes collected will be donated internationally through Souls4Soles. Pie also works with Nike'sReuse A Shoe program. ...
Image source: GradProfiles.com
Thanks to a grant from Dominion Power, the University of Richmond (Virginia) will get $100,000 to improve their energy efficiency. The money will go towards purchasing and installing a monitoring system in all 14 of its residence dorms. Over 1,000 students signed a petition in support of the project.
The system will be used no only to quantify just how much electricity students are using, but also to promote sustainability throughout campus as students can see how much they are saving and whether their efforts are working. Three large screens installed across campus will display energy savings for each dorm....
Sumatran tiger photo (not in wild, I might add): Silvain de Munck
Most of the time when the subject of Indonesia and wildlife comes across my desk it tends to be about the dire plight of the Orangutan. Today brings better news: The Southeast Asian nation’s dwindling populations of elephants and tigers have been granted a bit of a reprieve.
The government of Indonesia has committed to doubling the size of the Tesso Nilo National Park, one of the last places where the endangered Sumatran elephant and critically endangered Sumatran tigers are known to live.
With this commitment, the size of the Tesso Nilo National Park, created in 2004 in Riau Province, will increase in size from 94,000 acres to a total of 250,000 acres (213,000 in the park itself and an additional 47,000 of area managed by the park).
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Our friends at Eat Well Guide have just published their first book, Cultivating the Web: High Tech Tools for the Sustainable Food Movement. Weighing in at an efficient 39 pages the book highlights the power of the internet to spread the word on food and agriculture issues people care about, but traditional media ignores.
“Although it may seem the most unlikely of catalysts, digital technology is jogging our memories of real food and agrarian culture. We may be going back to the land, but lots of us are bringing our smart phones and laptops along., ” says Eat Well Guide director Destin Layne. Along with highlighting Eat Well Guide’s own successful web tools (including web favorites The Meatrix, the Eat Well Guide itself, and Eat Well Everywhere) the authors show how various other web tools have furthered the cause of a more localized and transparent food system.
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Image source: Getty Images
Okay so they're not necessarily plastic (though they could be), and they probably won't "solve" climate change, but according to Klaus Lackner, a geophysicist at Columbia University, the concept would give us time to develop alternative energies and slow the damaging effects of CO2 in our atmosphere. The San Diego Union Tribune reported today that both real and fake trees are being explored as options to fight climate change. Researchers are looking at both options to suck up CO2 out of our atmosphere and it looks like the fake trees might be winning.
The idea would be to make tall, fake "trees" that collect CO2; not in the way a normal tree would gather CO2, but rather, by using filters that stick to CO2 as it passes by. The current prototypes are 1,000 times better than real trees at sucking up CO2 and they are not using energy to photosynthesize anything....
Greenest Way to Travel Long Distances
Justin Lemire-Elmore loves electric bikes. He doesn't just sell them at his Vancouver store, he's also trying to show that he can cross Canada on one... on just $10 of electricity. So far, he has already crossed two provinces on his 6500+ km trip (4,000+ miles), using only $2 of his electricity budget. The bicycle he's using is a Xtracycle conversion. It's a pretty clever bike mod:
"It rides in a semi-recumbent position with a very comfortable posture and still has most of the storage capability of an Xtracycle. In place of the regular seat tube I've stuck another set of handlebars that links up to the front handlebars." More below....
Slow Food Movement Moves Into San Francisco
This weekend, the slow food gospel will wind its way through San Francisco’s streets mixing two city favorites, social justice and local eats. An event expected to draw 50,000 people, Slow Food Nation will speak to more than just those seeking a taste of great local cheese or a nugget of mind blowing chocolate. The Slow Food movement is about connecting us to our plates. It asks us to think about where our food is grown, who picks it, what resources it uses and what food system structures it is subject to.
Slow Food Nation will bring local, eco-friendly, mindfully made and fairly picked foods to engage San Francisco in the politics of eating.. Berkeley-based Slow Food Nation founder Alice Waters said at a recent talk at the city’s Commonwealth Club: ...
Photo: Søren Krohn via windpower.org
It was good news for eco-conscious New Yorkers (and a joke to others) when Mayor Bloomberg suggested the installation of wind turbines atop city buildings and bridges or wind farms a ways offshore. The question is: which would be more effective? And which is more feasible? Let’s break down some of the pros and cons of the Big Apple’s wind power options....
If Swift Enterprises' bio-aviation fuel takes off, sorghum will one day power planes. Photo: Cobalt via flickr.
The race to find an alternative to petroleum-based aviation fuel just got a new contestant: Swift Enterprises. Though not yet ready for commercial production, the Indiana-based company says that it has developed a bio-aviation fuel made from landfill waste, sorghum, algae and wood chips which it says will be cheaper to produce and perform better than current aviation fuels.
Half the Cost of Petroleum-Based Fuel, Eventually
Currently it costs $60/gallon to produce the company’s so-called ‘Swift Fuel’ but Swift Enterprises expects that once it is ready to be produced in commercial quantities the cost will drop to about $1.80/gallon, or about half that of petroleum-based aviation fuel.
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photo: Con Edison
TreeHugger is all about green roofs on buildings—even taking part in building one—and can't say enough good things about the virtues of energy efficiency and energy conservation. So when Con Edison announced that it installed its first green roof, in an effort to conserve energy and improve air quality, it immediately elicited a big thumbs up from me. Here’s the details:
Cooling Costs, Stormwater Runoff Reduced
Installed on the quarter-acre rooftop of ConEd’s Learning Center in Long Island City, the project’s 21,000 plants are expected to allow the Learning Center to save up to 30% on the cost of cooling the facility at peak hours.
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Ben Vander Heiden, a sixth-grade teacher at Woodbridge Elementary School in California, likes to include lessons about solar power and renewable energies into his science lessons. His most recent pet project: A solar-powered tricycle he assembled for less than $500 out of bike scraps and two solar panels donated by the Bay Area's Solar Institute.
Powered by a 600-watt motor, the three-wheeler can reach speeds of up to 17mph. And if the batteries short out, well, the pedals are always there for backup. With the rise in gas prices, Vander Heiden's wife, Renee, is the one who rides her husband's invention every day from their south Lodi home to her office about two miles away. "I get a lot of thumbs up on the road," The Record quotes her as saying.
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Aw, Cute!
Things move fast on the Internet. Just yesterday, they were still glancing at each other from across the digital room. Tentatively sharing their feelings for one another, trying to find out if it was mutual...
Today, they are holding hands with a few little baby logos in tow.
Can't imagine what it will be like tomorrow! One thing we're sure of, the baby aliens will grow up to be green. ::Reddit Environment
Trivia: It's actually the first time that the roots of our Tree logo have been shown in public....
The Epic Battle to Power the World
Competition is good. Right now there are dozens of solar power firms fighting to bring inexpensive and clean energy to the world. Some are betting on solar thermal, like Ausra, while others like Day4 Energy are putting their chips on silicon-based solar panels, and a third group thinks that thin-film solar is the way to go. One thing is certain, there's a lot of innovation in the solar power world.
Nanosolar to Accelerate Production
One of the companies at the forefront of the fight to make thin-film solar viable is Nanosolar, and they just announced some good news on their blog. They were always well capitalized, but they raised $300 million more to accelerate the expansion of their production capability, bringing their total funding to about half a billion. This new money will help them upgrade their 430 megawatt San Jose factory and 620 megawatt Berlin factory....
photo: Wally Gobetz
If the wide-ranging renewable energy vision that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg articulated last week at the National Clean Energy Summit are to be truly able to have a significant effect on fossil fuel usage, energy efficiency programs and demand reduction efforts will have to be increased. The problem doing that, from the perspective of the bottom line of utilities is that, in general, they make more money when they sell more energy. There isn’t great financial incentive for utilities to overly encourage reduction in energy use.
Utilities Rewarded for Reducing Demand
The state of New York is addressing this problem with a new energy efficiency reward program which targets utilities. Under the program the New York State Public Service Commission has set aside $27 million to be awarded to utilities to develop programs which would assist electric consumers to improve their energy efficiency.
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i MiEV Electric Car: What We Know So Far
The saga continues. First, we learned about some improvements to Mitsubishi's i MiEV prototype. Then the company announced that its electric car would go global. We had a peek at the New York Auto Show, learned that it would be sold 1 year ahead of schedule in Japan (2009 instead of 2010), and that a small fleet was already being tested in the USA. So the i MiEV might not be as fast as those, but at least its development is moving along briskly.
New Details on First i MiEV Production Run
Now we learn that Mitsubishi plans to make 2,000 i-MiEV electric vehicles in 2009, and 4,000 units in 2010 before acceleration mass-production to a higher volume. "Most of the vehicles will be sold in Japan for some ¥3 million (US$27,530) each." We can speculate that prices might be lower by the time they get to the US. More photos below....
Nine million cars, seven U.S. states combined, or the emissions generated by heating nearly 13 million homes for the winter: That's junk mail's carbon contribution toward climate change, according to a report (pdf) by ForestEthics, which was released as part of their campaign and petition for a Do Not Mail Registry to give Americans the choice to stop receiving junk mail.
Signing the petition is a good first step toward putting a stop to the 100 billion pieces of junk mail that we collectively receive each year. But since the registry has yet to become legislation -- despite the support of big names like Leonardo DiCaprio, Adrian Grenier, David Crosby and Daryl Hannah -- here are (at least) seven ways to opt out of receiving junk mail for good....
Think of skin as your body’s atmosphere, a protective layer that helps regulate your internal environment, and like Earth’s atmosphere, is vulnerable to pollutants. According to Evan Healy, aesthetician and creator of the evanhealy skin care line, when we bombard our skin with chemicals that dissolve the epidermal layer we damage the skin’s ability to defend itself. Instead of thoughtlessly applying hyped-up synthetic ointments, serums and formulas, we must be conscious of the skin’s need for pure, natural sustenance that maintains skin’s integrity.
In a day when skin care has become so complicated one might need a PhD to understand what various salves and sprays are supposed to do (let alone decipher the ingredients list), Ms. Healy’s simple yet elegant approach is refreshing. Using organic ingredients whenever feasible and natural ingredients always, her products are health food for your skin....
Photo credit: Getty ImagesMore bikes take to the streets
Skyrocketing gas prices have resulted in a sudden glut of bicycle commuters on the road, reports the Christian Science Monitor, not just in metropolitan areas, but also in places like Louisville, Ky., and Charlotte, N.C.
The sudden surge of two-wheelers is also causing rising tensions among drivers who are unaccustomed to sharing their streets—and herding cyclists to traffic safety classes.
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Quick Look at Tesla's InsidesNumber 1 on the photo above is the AC electric motor. It might look a bit like a vacuum cleaner, but this beast can generate 248 hp (185 kW), spin up to 13,000 RPM, and its max torque of 200 ft-lb is produced from 0-6,000 RPM.
Number 2 is the transmission. After some problems and a temporary two-speed transmission, the Roadster now will have a one-speed transmission with a drive ratio of 8.27:1 that allows it to do 0 to 60 mph in around 4 seconds....
When TreeHugger featured Robert "Chip" Beaman's Wood Powered Pickup Truck, readers commented, aghast at the potential for humanity to destroy woodland resources if transportation infrastructure were to switch to wood gasification. Therefore, for your further consideration, may we introduce you to Victory Gasworks. Victory Gasworks' Ben Peterson has built his own gasifier, specializing in biomass such as wood scraps, yard waste, and corn cobs. ...
How Biden's Foreign Policy Experience Supplements Obama's Climate Policy While the traditional media has largely focused on touting Biden's long tenure in the Senate and foreign policy expertise as key assets that will add gravitas to the Democratic campaign, it has spent little time examining how the Delaware senator's experience could supplement Obama's policies in other areas (the obvious ones being national security and foreign affairs, of course). Though it may not seem obvious at first blush, Biden may end up proving most valuable to Obama in lending his foreign policy chops to tackle climate change. ::Jeremy Jaquot
Wrapping Up Our Plastic Habit...In More Plastic Not surprisingly, our world is awash in disposable plastic cutlery. Google Answers' best estimates put annual production at about 40 billion pieces in the USA alone. Seem outrageous? Just tally your own consumption, or that of your office, in a two-week span and then calculate your personal annual consumption. ::Graham Hill
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Image from vm2827
Every year, over 70 million Indians and Bangladeshi are exposed to arsenic when they consume rice, the region's primary food staple, and water. Often portrayed as the world's worst case of mass poisoning, this chronic exposure has been linked to increasing cancer rates and is believed to impact 6 out of every 100 people in the Bengal Delta -- at least one of which will suffer from near-death symptoms. The situation is so critical that the WHO has described it as being "beyond the accidents of Bhopal, India, in 1984 and Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986," in scope. ...
As a native of Iran who grew up in Boston, Mona Miri's life has always been defined by a constant state of change and development. No wonder, then, that "Modified Landscapes," Miri's first solo exhibition, sets out to explore this theme as it relates to the built environment. Focusing her lense on a fast-changing neighborhood in San Francisco, the young environmental photographer's work comments on "environmental stress and the constant progression of city life."
This week, TreeHugger sat down with her to talk about "Modified Landscapes," the urban environment and the philosophy behind her work.
Mona Miri: "All of the photographs in "Modified Landscapes" were taken in an area called Bayview-Hunters Point on the San Francisco waterfront, which contains a third of the city's toxic waste sites and is currently undergoing a massive process of redevelopment and gentrification. The photo exhibition actually took place a few blocks away from the site.
The place itself interested me as a hot spot - a toxic place, environmentally hazardous. There are signs up saying this place could be hazardous to your health. It has a history going back to WWII of shipyards, landfills, industry, and even power plants and nuclear research - but there is also a community that lives there. These days it is a prime location for developers, and there are big plans to redevelop the site."...
Photo credit: Getty Images
Sony Bank has become Japan's first carbon-neutral bank, thanks to its purchase of renewable-energy credits. Issued by the Japan Natural Energy Company, the Green Power Certificate equals 1.1 million kilowatt hours—enough to cover the bank's entire annual electricity consumption—and saves the equivalent of 400 tons of greenhouse-gas emissions.
In addition, for clients who own funds that exceed a certain amount, Sony Bank will use part of their service charges to purchase emissions credits, which it will then donate to the Japanese government. Sony isn't alone in its carbon neutrality, however. In April, Canada's Vancouver City Savings Credit Union announced that it succeeded in its goal to become the first North American financial institution with a zero-carbon footprint, two years ahead of schedule. ::Japan for Sustainability
[Via ::LOHAS]
More on banks fighting global warming
Bank of America Offering Hybrid Reimbursement
Wells Fargo Bank on Renewable Energy
Dutch Bank to Offer Carbon Credits to Brazilian Farmers
Triodos Bank Explores 'Ethical Consumption'
Ulster Bank Offers UK's First Solar Mortgage...
While their brethren, the dreaded chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), may be on the wane, fluorocarbons -- a class of equally dangerous industrial gases -- are still wreaking havoc. As the name implies, the main distinguishing characteristic between CFCs and fluorocarbons is that the latter lacks chlorine; that is, unfortunately, one of the few meaningful differences, as both are extremely destructive in their own respects.
Unlike CFCs, which were banned from use because of their harmful impact on the ozone layer, fluorocarbons remain widely in use: found in everything from clothing, blood substitutes and lubricants to refrigerants. The strength and lack of reactivity of their C-F bonds, which renders them water repellent, has made them an ideal chemical for many industries. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/321/5893/1168...
Image source: Planet Green
Focus Earth with Bob Woodruff looks at US environmental challenges of the past and what we can hope for in the future. With tropical storm Gustav on a collision course for the Gulf of Mexico, is New Orleans ready for another Katrina? On the third anniversary of Katrina, and after watching Gustav rip through Haiti, leaving casualties in its wake and head for Cuba and ultimately the Gulf Coast, Bob Woodruff takes a closer look at how far New Orleans has come in the last three years. Also, lots of promises were made this week in Denver as the Democrats nominated their candidate for President, but just what exactly is this ticket offering for America's environmental future?
Bob Woodruff takes a helicopter tour with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal through the 9th Ward, which suffered some of the greatest devastation from Katrina. The city is working on rebuilding, strengthening levees and even going green, but how much is left to do before they can feel safe again. Over 15% of Southern Louisiana has washed away over the last century, making it the fastest disappearing shoreline in the world. Another 600,000 acres, roughly the size of Rhode Island are expected to disappear in the next 50 years. How is Louisiana planning on dealing with this?...
The ubiquitous green and white Volkswagen bugs that serve as cheap taxis for millions of Mexico City residents while damaging their lungs by spewing ultra fine particulate matter and other pollutants will be phased out by 2012, according to the Spanish news agency Efe. The cars, known fondly as "vochos," proliferated in Mexico decades after Volkswagen began manufacturing them in the city of Puebla.
The municipal transport and road ministry, known as Setravi, issued a ruling Friday saying the Beetles are less safe and are responsible for more pollution than any modern vehicle. The ministry provided few details on how the phase out would occur, but the idea is to replace the vochos with modern, fuel-efficient and clean-vehicles.
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Photo: Lisa Gregoire via Canadian Geographic
As we reported over a year ago global warming will cause agriculture to migrate towards the poles. While it remains to be seen how, and which, crops will survive and thrive as they creep north, residents of Inuvik, NWT are already growing food in a town 120 miles north of the arctic circle sitting on top of permafrost at least 300 feet deep. ...
Not that the principle of this is new, but in an effort to push forward a new global treaty on greenhouse gas emission reduction, the Stockholm Environment Institute has said that the United States, China, and other wealthy nations should be responsible for the majority of the costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Bloomberg reports.
Wealthy Would Have to Pay For Poor Nations' Reductions
Under the proposal both national income and overall emissions would be considered when determining the level of carbon emission cuts a country would be required to make. Furthermore, wealthy nations would be obliged to do more than simply cut their own emissions, but would also be required to pay for emissions reduction projects in poorer nations. ...
Michael Braungart is co-author with William McDonough of Cradle to Cradle. He writes a very strange article in Abitare that includes a few gems, including this one about the population problem.
"But I can tell you, sustainability is boring. It is just the minimum. Like when you were asked: ”How is your relationship with your girlfriend?” What do you say? Sustainable? I’d say: “I am so sorry for you.” Design is the complete opposite of sustainability. We would still live on trees if we were sustainable. Sustainability just keeps the same things over and over again. Instead we should celebrate being human beings and our creativity, which is far more important than sustainability.
So believe me, we are not too many people on this planet. If you take the total weight of the planet’s ants on one hand and the total weight of human beings on the other, you’ll see that the ants’ weight is four times higher. It is not only the number, but ants weigh out human beings. Further they have a much shorter life span than we have. And because they work much harder physically than we do, the calorie consumption of ants equals about 30 billion people. It is clearly not about the fact that we are too many. Ants don’t produce waste. They don’t need to minimize waste. They produce nutrients. Again it is a design question."...
Image source: Rishi Tea
Its no surprise that Rishi Tea was the winner of seven First Place Awards at the 2008 Tea Championships for best tea, and to top it off was the first company to win the award making organic teas. Beating out 300 other brands, Rishi "rose to the top"
I drink a lot of tea though I'd hardly say I'm an expert or connoseur, but this was good tea. You crack open the lid and a strong, sweet smell of peppermint hits you. It doesn't smell like old, dead packaged tea, but smells like tea leaves that have been freshly picked. Brew a pot and you're equally rewarded. ...
From tiny apartment to big front porch
Buffalo has everything going for it; green hydropower, water, railways, canals, a temperate climate; it should be a hot spot. Instead it has a smaller population than it did in 1907 and acres of empty houses. Adam Sternbergh writes in New York magazine about how New Yorkers are taking notice and moving there- mostly the creative types that can work anywhere (and don't have a lot of money)
It is "a story about choices. It’s a story about reaching that pivotal moment when the dream life you imagined for yourself in New York no longer seems attainable or attractive, or simply no longer seems worth the wearying chase."
I hope it is the first of many stories about the revival of the American rust belt, where there is so much infrastructure already in place, so much opportunity to rebuild green, sustainable, walkable towns and cities....
"The Winner" photo by roboppy via flickr
While we usually visit Grist to check in on the latest news on topics like GMOs or federal farm policy analysis we couldn't resist reading Tom Philpott's unscientific taste test of 10 "health-food-store" potato chips. (Actually eight chips made from potatoes, one from plantain, and one from cassava, but why quibble?)
Even the most hardened locavore has their snack-food vice and we salute Philpott for taking this challenge and sharing his weakness for the mighty chip. He even manages to fit in a bit of food system education with his observation that organic potato chips are rare due to a lack of large scale organic potato farms to meet the demands of the potato chip processor.
On to the results:...
:: Use up your old nail polish with these three ideas.
:: Give your simple tomato soup a twist by trying this Tomato Potato Soup recipe instead!
:: Find a friend to go biking with you to make cycling more fun--and safe....
Competition for the Volt
British car site Autocar claims that some "senior sources" at Mazda revealed that the company is working on a rival to GM's Volt. The series hybrid would use a gas engine to generate electricity to charge batteries, but it would always be electric motors turning the wheels (unlike the Prius). This could mean that Ford, who owns a significant portion of Mazda, will also use this technology.
Prototype
Apparently, it's not just a paper concept. "Trials are currently underway in Japan, with a prototype that uses a rotary engine [like the Mazda RX-8] to charge the battery pack. The tests are sufficiently advanced that Mazda has a working prototype in a Mazda 5 MPV bodyshell. Company bosses are said to be keen to put this system into production but no firm decisions will be made until the cost of batteries is reduced." ...
A lovely looking straw bale cabin in the Dutch countryside by Jurgen Bey and Rianne Makkink, built as part of an exhibition of 13 art projects. Can't tell you much about it as the designer gets the incomprehensible website design of the month award at ::Jurgenbey.nl More pictures at Designboom...
Toyota iQ: Coming to Japan and Europe
The Toyota iQ, which was unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show, will go on sale in Japan in October and in Europe a few months later. Lets have a closer look.
Big Space in Small Package
Unlike the Smart Car which can only seat two people, the Toyota iQ has 4 seats, though only 3 of those can accommodate adults. The last one is better used for a small child, a baby seat or a grocery bag. Still, not bad for a car that fits somewhere between the Smart and Yaris in lenght (117 inches).
Update: 57 MPG Toyota iQ Goes on Sale in Europe, No U.S. Release Date Yet
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photo: Maki_C30D via flickr
With the recent sobering news that not only is the trend in the Arctic indicating that climate change is happening more quickly than models have indicated, but also that permafrost in the region contains significantly more greenhouse gases just waiting to be released as the region warms, it’s good to hear that at least one nation is increasing its efforts to get its own carbon emissions under a semblance of control.
27% Budgetary Increase For Climate Change Mitigation
Earlier this week, Japan announced that it will spend $4 billion in the next fiscal year on efforts to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. This would be a 27% increase in monies spend to combat climate change, Blooomberg reports. In June, Japan’s prime minister pledged that the nation would reduce its carbon emissions by 60-80% from current levels by 2050.
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:: Eco Child's Play features green gear for dads.
:: EcoMedia creates advertising where half of the proceeds goes to local communities.
:: We learn that common household items can come in handy when healing wasp and bee stings.
:: RoofRat helps simplify your solar panel shopping.
:: Catalog Choice helps cancel unwanted catalogs.
Most Huggable is a regular roundup of some of Hugg's top green news stories. Why not submit your own green news?...
What Actions Really Do Cut Carbon?
Is a vegan diet the greenest, or does eating a little meat make more ecological sense? Should you keep your old car or buy a hybrid? These are the types of questions that we TreeHuggers concern ourselves with every day – and sometimes the answers are not clear cut. It's great then to see a new climate-related site from the BBC called ‘Bloom’ that offers sound scientific advice on specific actions, and how much carbon they can really save.
I have yet to explore the whole site in detail (it is a little irritatingly Flash heavy), but so far there are a number of interesting topics explored – from solar phone chargers (the jury is still out on that one), to sharing a house with friends or lodgers (a sure fire winner on the carbon front), Bloom lays out the impact of each action, along with any debate or controversy that may still exist. Encouragingly, while the site does try to point out what actions may not cut as many emissions as you might think, it’s not all reduced down to a simple CO2 ratio – Bloom also discusses whether gadgets like solar chargers, while offering minimal to negligible emissions reductions in themselves, may serve to promote renewable energy among the general population. Good solid stuff from the BBC.
::BBC Bloom::via site visit::
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It's becoming an annual thing and growing every year. Suhla, which means reconciliation in Arabic, is a three day meeting between Israelis and Palestinians. Although they live next door to each other, Israelis and Palestinians have little day to day contact. Sulha intends to break the cycle of regional hate and violence by getting these people to meet, dance, talk and party together.
This year the event took on a green spin, with organizers asking people to bring their own plates and utensils. But there were many more green elements, my friend from Green Prophet reports.
image: CAES Development Co.
While I’m not convinced that the issue of renewable energy’s intermittency is as great a problem as it is often made out to be—in the sense that it's not a valid argument against deploying as much renewable energy as we can, as is sometimes claimed—storage solutions for renewable energy sources do need to be developed. In New Jersey, utility PSEG is turning to an often overlooked technology to address the problem.
Two Compressed Air Storage Systems Currently Developed
PSEG announced earlier this week that it would be investing $20 million over the next three years into developing underground compressed-air storage systems for wind turbines. Currently there are two Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) systems operating in the world, one in Alabama and the other in Huntorf, Germany.
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In my last blog, I confessed my antipathy for camping. Today, I've got something a little hotter: two weeks ago, two Earthwatch colleagues and I took off our pants together behind the catering tent at a swanky cocktail party on the Charles River in Boston.
(Let me take this opportunity to issue our deepest apologies to the wait staff and to those unfortunate families touring the river on the famed Duck Boat tour that evening.)
What made the scene truly hot, I confess, wasn't our suite of Adonis-like attributes, but rather that we were doffing our trousers as part of Earthwatch's Beat the Heat Climate Change Campaign. We kicked off this two-month campaign (August 14-October 14) that night with a fundraiser at Boston's Museum of Science....
Mike tells us that Ford is retooling it's plants to produce small cars instead of trucks. In WWII it switched from cars to planes pretty fast, so if they put their mind to it they can do remarkable things. But I suspect that many of our readers gave up on North American cars long ago and it might take a lot to bring them back. Will it be enough?
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According the the WorldWatch Institute (and an old post of our own) livestock contribute 18% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, even higher than the GHG emissions from transportation. As part of this figure they produce 37% of methane, which has more than 20 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. And if that weren’t enough to be concerned about, their manure emits nitrous oxide, 65% of world totals. WorldWatch also point out that in the United States, 70% of all anti-microbial drugs are now given to livestock.
Yet for all the welcoming news regarding decreased SUV sales, increased bicycle purchases and servicing, increased green home building, and so on, meat production, is on WorldWatch’s figures not declining. And in fact they see signs it is on the rise, with poultry, pig and beef production increasing between 2% and 4%. They dig out figures which indicate that globally about 56 billion animals are raised and slaughtered for food each year, the bulk of whom are ‘produced’ in factory farms....
After writing about the benefits of tap water over bottled water, we received some info from the folks at Back to the Tap™. They have a serious movement going on to get people, as their name indicates, "back to the tap." Citing the benefits of kicking the bottle, like reducing plastic waste, and shrinking your carbon footprint, this organization encourages people to stay away from bottled water and use the EPA-regulated clear liquid that flows from your faucets.
In light of this important step in greening your drinking water, the Back to the Tap people created a water bottle with a carbon composite filtering mechanism that will last approximately 3 months before it needs to be changed (or the equivalent of approximately 80 gallons). They estimate that it will effectively eliminate an average of 300 water bottles from going to landfills and as many as 1000 bottles per person per year. The end goal – reducing global plastic waste.
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Fascinating the way the same idea can pop up at the same time in different locations. Take community fruit harvesting--when local volunteers harvest the fruit from trees for owners who can't (or can't be bothered) and share the bounty. First sighted in Toronto, Ontario, where a local group, called "not far from the tree" sends out a team of volunteers to pick the fruit. One third of the collection goes to the fruit tree owners, another third goes to the volunteers for their labour, and the final third is distributed (by bicycle or cart) to community organizations in the neighbourhood who can make good use of it. Next noted in Portland, Oregon and called the Portland Fruit Tree Project. The project has a database of 140 privately-owned fruit trees, and volunteers are gathered when it's time to pick ripe fruit. They keep what they can eat, and deliver the rest to food banks.
And now in Walthamstow, NE London, England, a group called OrganicLea and fruit picking is called scrumping. They reckon that even in urban areas, one in four detached or semi-detached houses have fruit trees in their garden and much of it goes to waste. Their group of dedicated volunteers has picked (scrumped) 12 tons of local fruit. Householders keep 25% of the fruit collected, while the rest is sold at a market stall or turned into (apple) juice. Over 30 trees were picked from this year. OrganicLea has its own allotment gardens and a weekly stall at a local market where it sells the surplus produce from its allotments; the stall takes 25% and the allotment holder gets 75% of whatever is made. :: Guardian
More on Community Harvesting
:: Backyard Fruit Trees
:: Community Fruit Harvesting
:: National Allotment Gardens Week...
(Photo: Giuseppe Moretti from BeatScene Online)
Few people may have seen as much of this beautiful planet and also looked as deeply within for inspiration as poet Gary Snyder. When he won the 2008 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize earlier this summer I was deeply moved. Gary is known here in Japan for having practiced Zen with Isshu Miura at a temple in Kyoto (back when almost noone travelled to this side of The Pacific). He first arrived in 1956, and spent a decade studying, researching and translating Zen texts. He also spent six months travelling throughout Asia, where he had the honour of a meeting with the Dalai Lama, and travelled through India with other poets including Alan Ginsberg.
In his Pulitzer Prize winning Turtle Island (1974) he is a very global treehugger:
Good public art stops you in your tracks, while the best public art also opens up a new thought channel in your head. Which, in terms of the evolution of the environmental ethos, may be what we all really need right now.
Moss greens up public space
Anna Garforth's green graffiti on display at London's Clissold Park, is called the Mossberger Project and is part of YCN, a two-week global art initiative - in Stockholm, Tallin, New York, Amsterdam, etc. as well as London. The moss, which Garforth uses for letters to display words, is just so much more friendly than spray paint as a way of leaving a semi-permanent message. And green...and biodegradable!
Garforth used a mixture of natural yogurt and sugar to get the moss to cling to the bricks. Eventually the moss in Garforth's messages will colonize and take over on the wall. Hit the jump to see the entire phrase, from a poem by Eleanor Stevens, as well as more examples of moss art. Via ::TrendHunter.com...
Organic. Regional. Seasonal. Fast. Fine. Nat.
Yep, Nat.. We really don't understand the period, but we get the concept. "Nat." is the name of an organic fast food restaurant which has opened in Hamburg as the first of a planned chain of fast-food locales to be run by both the parent company and under franchise. The menu starts with soups and salads, for a strong vegetarian or vegan basis. Entree offers include burgers -- either beef, lamb or vegetarian; grilled chicken, steak or fish plates; and a selection of seasonal hot casserole or pasta dishes. Your conscience will wince at turning down the fruit salad in favor of the chili-chocolate cake. Could it compromise on a sweet waffle with berries? A kids' menu suits the younger pallet and keeps the family pocketbook in order....
Image source: WashingtonPost.com
After reports last year of "raccoon dog" fur being used and labeled as faux fur, the Humane Society came out with a few quick tests you can use to test whether any animals were hurt in production. First, look at the base of the fur - fake fur will have a threaded backing while real fur will just have dyed skin. Second, animal fur tapers into a point - like a cat's whisker or a sewing needle. This one is harder to tell.
The third option is only for fur owners who want to check on a purchase they have already made - snip off a tiny portion of hair and light it on fire. Animal hair will smell like human hair when ignited - synthetic fur won't. If you do find that you have a fur coat and don't feel like you can wear it in good conscience, then the Humane Society has a tip for you (see below). There are other tests commonly used, such as "push-pin test, blow test, finger roll test, color of the fur, length of the fur and relative softeness of the fur" but none of these are very reliable. ...
:: Go backpacking this weekend--and take along these four eco-friendly tips.
:: Savor the last tastes of summer with Emeril's cool and refreshing Cucumber Salad.
:: Get your whites white without having to use a toxic bleach.
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Anyone see a long-term trend here? Besides the fact that the annual variation in underground natural gas storage volume is large, and seems correlated with temperate zone solar input. Who'd have thought that there'd be less stored this August than last?
Last winter was pretty cold in the northern US states. Could happen again.
Hurricane Gus is barreling across the US Gulf as we write; and natural gas is extracted offshore just as is oil. That could cut production/storage for a period. Just thinking. Bet those future marketeers are too.
The reduced storage might have to do with power generation moving away from coal and toward gas??? Via::EIA, Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report...
Christine wrote earlier about American Express' competition where cardholders and anyone else can vote to choose worthy projects, where the winner gets $ 1.5 million to "make the world a better place". Now TreeHugger hero Cameron Sinclair is asking for a little love for an Architecture for Humanity submission. Soon- time is running out.
It is "a locally driven social venture that creates an alliance of textile designers and gifted artisans in Southeast Asia to produce luxurious hand-woven fabrics. By providing economic opportunity, we help preserve hand-weaving in Asia while creating environmentally sustainable fabrics"- which are sold through Lulan, covered on Treehugger at ICFF here....
Image source: Pie Footwear
Can your footwear be socially conscious and fashionable? Yes, according to Pie Footwear (the shoes are not edible), which just opened their doors in Portland, Oregon. JC and Stacey Matney own the store and began with the idea to have a comfortable shoe store, but realized they wanted their store to match their values and went vegan and sustainable instead.
Pie even holds in-store shoe recycling, including their upcoming event September 13, where for every shoe donated, Teva will donate $1 to the Waterkeeper Alliance. Shoes collected will be donated internationally through Souls4Soles. Pie also works with Nike's Reuse A Shoe program. ...
Image source: GradProfiles.com
Thanks to a grant from Dominion Power, the University of Richmond (Virginia) will get $100,000 to improve their energy efficiency. The money will go towards purchasing and installing a monitoring system in all 14 of its residence dorms. Over 1,000 students signed a petition in support of the project.
The system will be used no only to quantify just how much electricity students are using, but also to promote sustainability throughout campus as students can see how much they are saving and whether their efforts are working. Three large screens installed across campus will display energy savings for each dorm....
Sumatran tiger photo (not in wild, I might add): Silvain de Munck
Most of the time when the subject of Indonesia and wildlife comes across my desk it tends to be about the dire plight of the Orangutan. Today brings better news: The Southeast Asian nation’s dwindling populations of elephants and tigers have been granted a bit of a reprieve.
The government of Indonesia has committed to doubling the size of the Tesso Nilo National Park, one of the last places where the endangered Sumatran elephant and critically endangered Sumatran tigers are known to live.
With this commitment, the size of the Tesso Nilo National Park, created in 2004 in Riau Province, will increase in size from 94,000 acres to a total of 250,000 acres (213,000 in the park itself and an additional 47,000 of area managed by the park).
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Our friends at Eat Well Guide have just published their first book, Cultivating the Web: High Tech Tools for the Sustainable Food Movement. Weighing in at an efficient 39 pages the book highlights the power of the internet to spread the word on food and agriculture issues people care about, but traditional media ignores.
“Although it may seem the most unlikely of catalysts, digital technology is jogging our memories of real food and agrarian culture. We may be going back to the land, but lots of us are bringing our smart phones and laptops along., ” says Eat Well Guide director Destin Layne. Along with highlighting Eat Well Guide’s own successful web tools (including web favorites The Meatrix, the Eat Well Guide itself, and Eat Well Everywhere) the authors show how various other web tools have furthered the cause of a more localized and transparent food system.
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Image source: Getty Images
Okay so they're not necessarily plastic (though they could be), and they probably won't "solve" climate change, but according to Klaus Lackner, a geophysicist at Columbia University, the concept would give us time to develop alternative energies and slow the damaging effects of CO2 in our atmosphere. The San Diego Union Tribune reported today that both real and fake trees are being explored as options to fight climate change. Researchers are looking at both options to suck up CO2 out of our atmosphere and it looks like the fake trees might be winning.
The idea would be to make tall, fake "trees" that collect CO2; not in the way a normal tree would gather CO2, but rather, by using filters that stick to CO2 as it passes by. The current prototypes are 1,000 times better than real trees at sucking up CO2 and they are not using energy to photosynthesize anything....
Greenest Way to Travel Long Distances
Justin Lemire-Elmore loves electric bikes. He doesn't just sell them at his Vancouver store, he's also trying to show that he can cross Canada on one... on just $10 of electricity. So far, he has already crossed two provinces on his 6500+ km trip (4,000+ miles), using only $2 of his electricity budget. The bicycle he's using is a Xtracycle conversion. It's a pretty clever bike mod:
"It rides in a semi-recumbent position with a very comfortable posture and still has most of the storage capability of an Xtracycle. In place of the regular seat tube I've stuck another set of handlebars that links up to the front handlebars." More below....
Slow Food Movement Moves Into San Francisco
This weekend, the slow food gospel will wind its way through San Francisco’s streets mixing two city favorites, social justice and local eats. An event expected to draw 50,000 people, Slow Food Nation will speak to more than just those seeking a taste of great local cheese or a nugget of mind blowing chocolate. The Slow Food movement is about connecting us to our plates. It asks us to think about where our food is grown, who picks it, what resources it uses and what food system structures it is subject to.
Slow Food Nation will bring local, eco-friendly, mindfully made and fairly picked foods to engage San Francisco in the politics of eating.. Berkeley-based Slow Food Nation founder Alice Waters said at a recent talk at the city’s Commonwealth Club: ...
Photo: Søren Krohn via windpower.org
It was good news for eco-conscious New Yorkers (and a joke to others) when Mayor Bloomberg suggested the installation of wind turbines atop city buildings and bridges or wind farms a ways offshore. The question is: which would be more effective? And which is more feasible? Let’s break down some of the pros and cons of the Big Apple’s wind power options....
If Swift Enterprises' bio-aviation fuel takes off, sorghum will one day power planes. Photo: Cobalt via flickr.
The race to find an alternative to petroleum-based aviation fuel just got a new contestant: Swift Enterprises. Though not yet ready for commercial production, the Indiana-based company says that it has developed a bio-aviation fuel made from landfill waste, sorghum, algae and wood chips which it says will be cheaper to produce and perform better than current aviation fuels.
Half the Cost of Petroleum-Based Fuel, Eventually
Currently it costs $60/gallon to produce the company’s so-called ‘Swift Fuel’ but Swift Enterprises expects that once it is ready to be produced in commercial quantities the cost will drop to about $1.80/gallon, or about half that of petroleum-based aviation fuel.
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photo: Con Edison
TreeHugger is all about green roofs on buildings—even taking part in building one—and can't say enough good things about the virtues of energy efficiency and energy conservation. So when Con Edison announced that it installed its first green roof, in an effort to conserve energy and improve air quality, it immediately elicited a big thumbs up from me. Here’s the details:
Cooling Costs, Stormwater Runoff Reduced
Installed on the quarter-acre rooftop of ConEd’s Learning Center in Long Island City, the project’s 21,000 plants are expected to allow the Learning Center to save up to 30% on the cost of cooling the facility at peak hours.
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Ben Vander Heiden, a sixth-grade teacher at Woodbridge Elementary School in California, likes to include lessons about solar power and renewable energies into his science lessons. His most recent pet project: A solar-powered tricycle he assembled for less than $500 out of bike scraps and two solar panels donated by the Bay Area's Solar Institute.
Powered by a 600-watt motor, the three-wheeler can reach speeds of up to 17mph. And if the batteries short out, well, the pedals are always there for backup. With the rise in gas prices, Vander Heiden's wife, Renee, is the one who rides her husband's invention every day from their south Lodi home to her office about two miles away. "I get a lot of thumbs up on the road," The Record quotes her as saying.
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Aw, Cute!
Things move fast on the Internet. Just yesterday, they were still glancing at each other from across the digital room. Tentatively sharing their feelings for one another, trying to find out if it was mutual...
Today, they are holding hands with a few little baby logos in tow.
Can't imagine what it will be like tomorrow! One thing we're sure of, the baby aliens will grow up to be green. ::Reddit Environment
Trivia: It's actually the first time that the roots of our Tree logo have been shown in public....
The Epic Battle to Power the World
Competition is good. Right now there are dozens of solar power firms fighting to bring inexpensive and clean energy to the world. Some are betting on solar thermal, like Ausra, while others like Day4 Energy are putting their chips on silicon-based solar panels, and a third group thinks that thin-film solar is the way to go. One thing is certain, there's a lot of innovation in the solar power world.
Nanosolar to Accelerate Production
One of the companies at the forefront of the fight to make thin-film solar viable is Nanosolar, and they just announced some good news on their blog. They were always well capitalized, but they raised $300 million more to accelerate the expansion of their production capability, bringing their total funding to about half a billion. This new money will help them upgrade their 430 megawatt San Jose factory and 620 megawatt Berlin factory....
photo: Wally Gobetz
If the wide-ranging renewable energy vision that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg articulated last week at the National Clean Energy Summit are to be truly able to have a significant effect on fossil fuel usage, energy efficiency programs and demand reduction efforts will have to be increased. The problem doing that, from the perspective of the bottom line of utilities is that, in general, they make more money when they sell more energy. There isn’t great financial incentive for utilities to overly encourage reduction in energy use.
Utilities Rewarded for Reducing Demand
The state of New York is addressing this problem with a new energy efficiency reward program which targets utilities. Under the program the New York State Public Service Commission has set aside $27 million to be awarded to utilities to develop programs which would assist electric consumers to improve their energy efficiency.
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i MiEV Electric Car: What We Know So Far
The saga continues. First, we learned about some improvements to Mitsubishi's i MiEV prototype. Then the company announced that its electric car would go global. We had a peek at the New York Auto Show, learned that it would be sold 1 year ahead of schedule in Japan (2009 instead of 2010), and that a small fleet was already being tested in the USA. So the i MiEV might not be as fast as those, but at least its development is moving along briskly.
New Details on First i MiEV Production Run
Now we learn that Mitsubishi plans to make 2,000 i-MiEV electric vehicles in 2009, and 4,000 units in 2010 before acceleration mass-production to a higher volume. "Most of the vehicles will be sold in Japan for some ¥3 million (US$27,530) each." We can speculate that prices might be lower by the time they get to the US. More photos below....
Nine million cars, seven U.S. states combined, or the emissions generated by heating nearly 13 million homes for the winter: That's junk mail's carbon contribution toward climate change, according to a report (pdf) by ForestEthics, which was released as part of their campaign and petition for a Do Not Mail Registry to give Americans the choice to stop receiving junk mail.
Signing the petition is a good first step toward putting a stop to the 100 billion pieces of junk mail that we collectively receive each year. But since the registry has yet to become legislation -- despite the support of big names like Leonardo DiCaprio, Adrian Grenier, David Crosby and Daryl Hannah -- here are (at least) seven ways to opt out of receiving junk mail for good....
Think of skin as your body’s atmosphere, a protective layer that helps regulate your internal environment, and like Earth’s atmosphere, is vulnerable to pollutants. According to Evan Healy, aesthetician and creator of the evanhealy skin care line, when we bombard our skin with chemicals that dissolve the epidermal layer we damage the skin’s ability to defend itself. Instead of thoughtlessly applying hyped-up synthetic ointments, serums and formulas, we must be conscious of the skin’s need for pure, natural sustenance that maintains skin’s integrity.
In a day when skin care has become so complicated one might need a PhD to understand what various salves and sprays are supposed to do (let alone decipher the ingredients list), Ms. Healy’s simple yet elegant approach is refreshing. Using organic ingredients whenever feasible and natural ingredients always, her products are health food for your skin....
Photo credit: Getty Images
More bikes take to the streets
Skyrocketing gas prices have resulted in a sudden glut of bicycle commuters on the road, reports the Christian Science Monitor, not just in metropolitan areas, but also in places like Louisville, Ky., and Charlotte, N.C.
The sudden surge of two-wheelers is also causing rising tensions among drivers who are unaccustomed to sharing their streets—and herding cyclists to traffic safety classes.
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Quick Look at Tesla's Insides
Number 1 on the photo above is the AC electric motor. It might look a bit like a vacuum cleaner, but this beast can generate 248 hp (185 kW), spin up to 13,000 RPM, and its max torque of 200 ft-lb is produced from 0-6,000 RPM.
Number 2 is the transmission. After some problems and a temporary two-speed transmission, the Roadster now will have a one-speed transmission with a drive ratio of 8.27:1 that allows it to do 0 to 60 mph in around 4 seconds....