Ben Engebreth

Latest Stories from Ben Engebreth

  • Wind Energy Gets Cheap!

    Due to the rising price of natural gas as a result of the ever increasing demand and hurricane induced supply shortages, there's an interesting story developing in Colorado. This winter, Xcel Energy's customers in Colorado who purchase Wind Source

  • Investing in Alternative Energy with PBW

    We touched on it briefly here, but I think it's worth highlighting the relatively new Exchange-traded Fund with the ticker PBW that tracks the ^ECO index, also know as The WilderHill Clean Energy Index. As the name implies, the index and it's ETF allow

  • Choosing an Efficient Room-sized Air Conditioner

    New York City has been breaking electricity usage records lately as a result of the extreme heat and humidity that can always be found in that part of the world in the middle of summer. Having just purchased a window air conditioner in the city myself,

  • The Beauty of Straw Bale Homes by Athena Steen & Bill Steen

    Full of sumptuous photography, The Beauty Of Straw Bale Homes could easily be mistaken for just another dust gathering ‘coffee table’ book. But that would belie the power that this very modest little volume can have. In changing the status quo of

  • Choose to Reuse by Nikki Goldbeck & David Goldbeck

    Admittedly this is not the most current of books. Originally published in 1995, it might be lacking in web and email resources, but boy, does it make up for that with just sheer bulk of information. Nikki and David Goldbeck have a story on how just

  • Small Is Beautiful by E. F. Schumacher

    The sub title says it all: A study of economics as if people mattered. Yet this is no desert-dry treatise crammed with numbers and figures, usually beloved of economists. Rather it is imbued with hard nosed, real world compassion. "If ... nothing is

  • Design for Society by Nigel Whiteley

    From the fork with which you eat your meal, to the school building you were educated in, most everything around you was designed. It has passed through a design studio, at some stage. Designers, because they are involved so early in the process of

  • Green Volunteers by Fabio Ausenda

    Wanna do something practical? Get your hands dirty, or your T-shirt sweaty, making a real contribution? Grab a copy of this directory. But be warned, you might just end up in the Galapagos undertaking biodiversity surveys, tracking dolphins in the Med or

  • Collapse by Jared Diamond

    One weekend, in an idle moment, I casually picked up a book with an intriguing cover. It was Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. Big mistake. I devoured it like some whodunnit thriller. My weekend was lost, but a new understanding was found on why

  • The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices by Michael Brower & Warren Leon

    Many readers of TreeHugger have asked for direct actions they can take to reduce their environmental impact. In the early 90s there was a plethora of books addressing such interest. The seminal 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Save The Earth prime among

  • The Total Beauty of Sustainable Products by Edwin Datschefski

    Edwin Datschefski has been tracking the growth of eco-design for over a dozen years now. In this lavishly photographed and designed book, he has elected to show that a better world is already here. Everything that you touch on a given day is replaced

  • Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez & Vicki Robin

    A very TreeHugger-esque philosophy is expounded here. Your Money or Your Life helps you understand your relationship to money. How you get it, where it goes, and how inconsistently you value it. The goal it sets up is to move toward a state of financial

  • The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner

    Treehugger founder, Graham Hill bought this Pulitzer Prize-winner en route to the Galapagos and it opened the immensely enjoyable world of layman science reading to him. "Weiner weaves the tale of Darwin’s discovery of evolution into the story of the

  • Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins & L. Hunter Lovins

    An environmental call to arms for the designer, Greenie, and business person, this book profiles the next industrial revolution and proposes that will be thoroughly green and pro-business. Companies, it claims, should model their business plains based on

  • The Eco-design Handbook by Alastair Fuad-Luke

    This brick of a book played a large part in inspiring TreeHugger. Full of pictures and key info about sexy, green furniture, transportation, materials, clothing, and more, it’s the bible of green design. Each selection in the book has a handy legend that

  • Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough & Michael Braungart

    In this hip-looking tome, McDonough (architect) and Braungart (chemist) propose an industrial revolution, but this time, a green one. Taking cues from biomimicry, they propose that WASTE = FOOD, and suggest that things should be made from one of two

  • Treehugger Welcomes Writer Ben Engebreth!

    Ben Engebreth lives in New York City and draws on the experiences and environments he's witnessed living in Atlanta/Athens, Denver/Boulder, and Los Angeles for TreeHuggin' perspective. His background is in Science & Engineering, but he likes to think of

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