Green From The Inside Out at Tel Aviv’s Houses From Within
by Karin Kloosterman, Jerusalem, Israel on 05. 9.08
(Bauhaus building in Tel Aviv)
How exciting is it to look inside other people’s homes to see the way they live. City events couldn’t get more sustainable than weekends out at Open House, where city-dwellers open their doors to let the public marvel at architecture and design normally shut behind doors.
Last year Tel Aviv created its own Open House event. Called Houses from Within, the event which took place in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv was dubbed by Condenast Traveller as the hottest new Israeli trend. We wrote a story about it on ISRAEL21c here.
When Israelis catch onto something hot they can move from zero to 90 in seconds. That seems to be the case in this year’s (green) Houses from Within – now incorporating a green, sustainable element, reports our friend Karen Chernick at Green Prophet.
“This year there’s a twist,” she writes. “This year environmentally friendly architecture and urban environmental issues are being made open to the public as well. The Houses From Within weekend of events, which will take place on May 16-17, will include nine environmentally-focused activities ranging from open houses to bicycle tours to mud brick workshops."
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If you listened to 
Leader in Net Wind-Power Usage, if Not in Ratio
The University of Pennsylvania is leading the way among U.S. universities for wind-power. It committed to buying more electricity coming from wind in the next two years, purchasing an additional 80,000-megawatt hours per year, bringing its total to about 200,000 megawatt hours per year, or nearly half of Penn's electricity use.
"Up until this announcement, Penn trailed New York University's wind power consumption - NYU buys 100 percent of its power from wind sources." But while NYU has a higher ratio of power coming from wind, Penn can brag about getting more total power from wind: 200,000-megawatt hours per year vs. about 118,000-megawatt hours per year (that's the 
From May 1 to 31, the city of Lima is hosting the photo exhibit Climate changes, so does my life, which shows the impact climate change is starting to have in different Peruvian communities.
The images were taken by photographer Thomas Mueller, who travelled through 13 regions in the Peruvian coast, mountains and forest, speaking with countrymen, fishermen, artisans and community leaders in 29 cities. Every picture is accompanied by a testimony, in which the person says what's changing in their everyday life thanks to the shift in seasons, water availability, and alike.
"This journey has allowed me to observe that climate change is a reality in Peru. However, it's important that we learn how natives are learning and starting to adapt their lives to the effects of this phenomenon," said Mueller, according to a press release.
See some of the pics and testimonies after the jump.
Our apologies to Ian Marshall of Wend magazine. Aeons ago Ian wrote to us telling us about the sustainable attributes of his mag. Unfortunately his correspondence went missing in the torrent of email we get. Better late than never.
Wend provides “bold tales to fuel the passion of adventure, born from the love of climbing, cycling, surfing, and kayaking.” It is written for “people with a lust for adventure and a sense of duty to preserve the far out places that give us meaning, hope and identity. Their current issue is available online, as will be future issues, at roughly half the price of the paper editions. And while this is great for the forests it might save from being munched for print pulp, Ian also points out that Wend have never done a specifically "green" issue, because “we have our greenery gear section in every issue, and we promote and discuss green ideas."...
Michael Kelly is an Irishman looking for what really matters. 
TreeHugger: You actually were not yet mayor when the tornado struck, so what were the first things that went through your mind as an ordinary citizen after the disaster?
Bob Dixson: Well just get stuff cleaned up. Concentrate on your own property and helping your neighbors and just get cleaned up and go from there. We didn’t really get an idea of what we had until we got stuff moved away, with just piles of debris all over.
TH: And what did you believe were the most pressing issues facing Greensburg the day before the tornado?
BD: I think over the years our most valuable resource that we’ve exported is our youth. They’ve been heading elsewhere to find employment. So the question has been, “How do we encourage and get businesses to come and offer employment to our younger generation and keep them in the county and town?”
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Here is a good test for whether green has really gone mainstream: just how green is Germany's famous May Day party? If you know anything about the international worker's holiday in Germany, the first color that pops into your head won't be green, but red. Green will sooner bring to mind the color of the police cars fleeing from the onslaught of rioting citizens than environmental causes. But sights like the band 12V arriving to perform in their three-man-bike-band rig, which operates on the eponymous voltage, leave hope that green is creeping in everywhere, even to a party better known for dancing in the streets until the riots start. Some reflections of green during the red holiday in Berlin, and more on 12V, can be seen overleaf....
Few speakers are as well-suited to tackling the challenges and potential risks posed by global climate change than IPCC Chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri. The 
If you're a great, green middle school teacher with an idea to help inspire students to live a greener life there just may be a grant with your name on it coming from GM and Discovery Education.
In fact, they'll be handing out 40 of the $1K grants along with a healthy dose of online professional development and a free digital camera to to the teachers who come up with the best ideas so they can implement and document their projects and share the magic with the rest of us.
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When I called Principal Randy Fulton and asked for an interview he was as busy as any Principal might be on any given school day; particularly if they were in the process of planning the new high school to be built to LEED platinum standards and the President was scheduled to visit in just a few short days to give the commencement address at graduation not so long after the entire town had been swept away by a huge tornado.
But he closed the door and sat down for a few moments to give me his insights into the process of rebuilding Greensburg High School, the effect it’s had on his students, and the simple truth about how he copes with the enormous task of rebuilding not only his own life but that of the school as well.
TreeHugger: Where did the desire to rebuild Greensburg High School in a green fashion come from?
Randy Fulton: Well, once the disaster happened one of the things the governor of Kansas has really stressed is building back in an environmentally sustainable manner, and I think that’s where that came from. And the leaders and commissioners and administrators, all of us got together and said “Let’s do this right. Let’s build back a town that is green and takes care of the environment.”
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“Go easy on me,” Tommy Lee said in a whisper. “You know I’m a green virgin.”
“Sorry Tommy,” I said with a smile. “I like to go deep.”
Earth Day celebration in San Francisco is probably the perfect place to give Tommy Lee and Ludacris the Green 101. The artists, (both who are participants in Planet Green’s 
Thursday night at Town Hall, the 
If you haven’t had the chance to vote yet for the school that you think solved The Great Copy Machine Epidemic of 2008 there’s simply no time left to wait. With just a few days left to cast your ballot and help determine which disease it is that’s been causing school photocopy machines everywhere to chew up trees and contributing to global warming in the process.
For while we all know that the paper industry uses tremendous amounts of energy and causes deforestation as well, few realized until recently that there just may be a strange, contagious disease to blame for the tremendous amount of paper used by school copy machines.
You know those giant, devilish, tree-eating machines that lurk in the bowels of virtually every main office or back room in schools across America?
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Congrats 
Photos courtesy of: 
He’s a high school student from the town of Greensburg Kansas, and his enthusiasm for the green movement and the amazing things it’s doing for his town after the devastation caused by the tornado that leveled it are an inspiring look at the future of green in America.
After spending close to an hour speaking with him by phone I realized precisely why the rebuilding of Greensburg can become an uplifting model for us all. I trust you’ll enjoy his insight and enthusiasm as much as I did.
TreeHugger: What do you believe made the people of Greensburg decide to rebuild the town in a green fashion?
Taylor Schmitt: Well after at least 96% of the town was destroyed there has obviously been a massive need for rebuilding, and the town has come together as a big family, really, and it’s been one joint effort to rebuild the town better than it was and more sustainable and green than it was. So we’ve really been learning a lot about what we need to do to keep our town from dying again. And we’ve been learning about building and going green and implementing a lot of green into our rebuilding efforts.
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Over the last year there has been a relative rush of books on eco and ethical fashion published in the UK. We think this is an excellent indicator of the public’s awareness of how, what, where and whom produced the clothes in our closets. First was Tamsin Blanchard’s 
