John Laumer said:
"Editor's remark:
Sierra Club spokesperson has supplied the following in response to a comment...
--------------------
In answer..." [read]
Cybercat said:
"@Joe
I think they're going off the flat gas price, rather than before or after government and state taxes. I wouldn't mind seeing another ..." [read]
Cybercat said:
"There isn't a percentage for how much is generated from feeding animals other animal by-products so all the assumptions made below are part on that..." [read]
BenSchiendelman said:
"Live in cities, use the public transportation, buy fruits, vegetables and grain at the farmer's markets. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
Gre..." [read]
Scott Johnson said:
"Nice house! I'm wondering just how much floor area it has. That's a lot of floors + a lot of stair climbing, but it's a very unique home...." [read]
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."
After numerous music bands, such as Radiohead, took on the fight against climate change and decided to go green(er), more and more festival organisers are also keen on the idea to contribute towards sustainability with their events. A great example is the SOS 4.8 festival held in Murcia, Spain, last weekend for the first time. None other than the Chemical Brothers, Rufus Wainwright, Jeff Mills, James, Digitalism and Fangoria (!) performed at the 24-hour event.
We all know and love Cameron for her commitment to green. So her support of TED’s Pangea Day doesn’t come as a surprise. This Saturday, May 10, four full hours of free user-generated films and TED-style short talks from scientists, filmmakers, and global visionaries will air internationally on TV and online. Because the day is about celebrating our common humanity and opening up a global dialogue, citizens of the world are encouraged to host or find a screening to watch with family, friends and neighbors.
If ever you needed an excuse to spend a Saturday guiltlessly chilled out in front of the ‘tube, this is it. But be prepared to think. The programming will cover issues ranging from war and terrorism to human rights and climate change. You may even be inspired to take action afterwards. Like the Pangea website says, “Films can’t change the world. But the people who watch them can.” Find out how to take part here.
Whenever we put our Wayback Machine header over a post we are paying homage to Mr. Peabody and Sherman, created by cartoonist Ted Key as last-minute fillers for the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. It was properly spelled WABAC, a play on the big Univac and Eniac computers of the day. Ted Key, dead at 95. ::New York Times
Thanks Linda for your comment: "you have him dying in 1008. Or did he use his WABAC machine to get there and die in a Viking invasion?"
Isabella Rossellini knows her bug sex. The Italian model and film star wrote, directed, and starred in "Green Porno," a series of films detailing the sex lives of various bugs, arachnids, and molluscs. They originally debuted at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year (and showed at the Berlin Film Festival, among others) and are now available, for your viewing pleasure, on Sundance's website.
If you've ever wondered how bees have sex (not as romantic as you might think), or wondered about the sadomasochistic habits of snails, these are for you (though, just as fair warning: the videos make mention of the organs and acts required to accomplish reproduction).
They're all pretty fascinating, but the snail and praying mantis might be the best. After the jump: more video screenshots and a look behind the scenes of ::Green Porno.
With close to 1500 people casting ballots for the schools they felt solved The Great Copy Machine Epidemic of 2008; it’s amazing that not much more than a handful of votes separated the top contenders.
But it turns out the students at Grace Hill Elementary in Rogers, Arkansas came out on top; solving the crisis by diagnosing their school’s photocopy machine with a severe case of “Carbon Footprint Swollenitis”.
Apparently, symptoms include a severe swelling of the feet; leaving a larger than life impact on the planet and contributing to global warming long after the school day is done.
If you listened to Jacob'sinterview with Doug Fine--and, if you haven't yet, what are you waiting for?--then you'll already be familiar with the premise of his book, Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living: World-weary journalist decides to live sustainably, settles down in a New Mexican ranch with two goats and a dog, and all hell breaks loose (just kidding). Now keep in mind that Fine isn't exactly Mr. Green--as he readily admits, he's never grown so much as a single tree or, for that matter, used any farming or ranching utensils (as you soon come to learn). And, in the end, that's perhaps what makes his story so appealing--and, more importantly, believable: After all, if a guy like this can milk his own goats and grow his own peas, shouldn't we all?
Fine's rollicking narrative takes the reader from his very first encounter with the Funky Butte Ranch to his first successful effort to plant his own crops--with all his short-lived triumphs, mishaps and discoveries in between. Whether you're learning the finer points of assembling rooftop solar panels or scratching your head in disbelief over the Kung Pao "smokescreen" (what's a ROAT anyway?), Fine's easy-going writing style and humor will keep you engaged through the end.
In case you’re wondering what one school can do in just the span of a few short months, take a good look at the Go Green Initiative’s school of the week, Milltown Middle School in Milltown, NJ. They’ve actually earned the first year award from the Go Green Initiative for their efforts, and they’ve been making a difference by holding recycling assemblies and working to increase their efficiency at recycling plastics, batteries, ink cartridges, paper, plastic, glass and aluminum while working to start an Elmer’s Glue recycling program as well.
If you listened to Jacob'sinterview with Doug Fine--and, if you haven't yet, what are you waiting for?--then you'll already be familiar with the premise of his book, Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living: World-weary journalist decides to live sustainably, settles down in a New Mexican ranch with two goats and a dog, and all hell breaks loose (just kidding). Now keep in mind that Fine isn't exactly Mr. Green--as he readily admits, he's never grown so much as a single tree or, for that matter, used any farming or ranching utensils (as you soon come to learn). And, in the end, that's perhaps what makes his story so appealing--and, more importantly, believable: After all, if a guy like this can milk his own goats and grow his own peas, shouldn't we all?
Fine's rollicking narrative takes the reader from his very first encounter with the Funky Butte Ranch to his first successful effort to plant his own crops--with all his short-lived triumphs, mishaps and discoveries in between. Whether you're learning the finer points of assembling rooftop solar panels or scratching your head in disbelief over the Kung Pao "smokescreen" (what's a ROAT anyway?), Fine's easy-going writing style and humor will keep you engaged through the end....
Mothers Day is next Sunday (hint, hint). To get you in the mood, TreeHugger gives you our top picks for viral videos of Moms in the wild. This is nature at its most raw, most violent, most competitive. Inspirational. Awesome. Watch it with your mother, you will need a hug when it is over.
The Battle at Kruger, above, rates first place. If evolution is about the survival of the fittest, what does "The Battle at Kruger" say to us? The pride of lions beats out the giant crocodile, but in the end the baby buffalo wins, thanks to cooperation. Just think what we could accomplish if we humans could pull together against the threats to our survival. Certainly not by coincidence, Caught on Safari: The Battle at Kruger, will premiere on the National Geographic Channel on Mother's Day, May 11, 2008, at 9pm EST. ...
In case you’re wondering what one school can do in just the span of a few short months, take a good look at the Go Green Initiative’s school of the week, Milltown Middle School in Milltown, NJ. They’ve actually earned the first year award from the Go Green Initiative for their efforts, and they’ve been making a difference by holding recycling assemblies and working to increase their efficiency at recycling plastics, batteries, ink cartridges, paper, plastic, glass and aluminum while working to start an Elmer’s Glue recycling program as well....
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 NYU wind-power number for 2006)....
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.
::Via Orbita agency...
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. Trading Paces follows his path from a high paid job in IT sales, to a low paid job in freelance writing. Along the way, he finds himself falling in love with a life filled with vegetables, hens, pigs, and a leaky roof cottage out in the country. Realizing you don't need to be a voracious consumer to be happy, Kelly artfully recounts his ongoing adventure in making the transition to a more sustainable, thoughtful way of living.
Kelly's style is conversational, thoughtful, and always lighthearted. If you enjoy Animal, Vegetable, Miracle or Omnivore's Dillema, Trading Paces offers a refreshing everyman perspective, Homer Simpson quotes included....
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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Appearing on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report to promote his latest book, "World Made by Hand," James H. Kunstler outlined his vision for the future of suburbia and peak oil, criticizing our approach to energy consumption and systems management. He went on to dismiss renewable energy technologies as mere stopgaps, arguing that only a fundamental redress in our way of life could save us now -- a possibility he considers unlikely. A gloomy prognostication by most estimates (as befits most of Kunstler's past work), but, nonetheless, a substantive, worthwhile discussion of our current predicament by an influential writer....
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 recent talk he gave at MIT is well worth your time if you've never heard him speak before -- or are just curious about his perspective on the impact of climate change on 21st century society. Here's a short snippet about the key themes he addressed:
Here’s Rajendra K. Pachauri’s panic-inducing assertion: We have a window of seven years to stabilize CO2 at today’s levels if we are to limit our global mean temperature increase to around 2.40C. A world this hot would be a very unpleasant place to be. Pachauri lays out unequivocal” evidence of climate change, and describes how extreme precipitation events, heat waves and other natural catastrophes will become more frequent, endangering vast swaths of humanity. We stand to lose 20-30% of species if warming exceeds 1.5 to 2.5 0C. Pachauri also notes this “scary prospect”: the rapid loss of ice sheets on polar land, leading to sea level rises of several meters, and the flight of large populations in response.
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 Battleground Earth), paid a visit to the Bay Area during the Green Apple Festival. They may have well been on another planet though, because you know how freaky cool San Francisco can get around Earth Day *wink, wink*.
Thursday night at Town Hall, the Natural Resources Defense Council presented E.O. Wilson interviewed by the author and New Yorker staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert. Father of biodiversity, "Darwin's Natural Heir", Pulitzer Prize winner, author of 25 books, ecologist, and humanist, E.O. Wilson is also the subject of the film Lord of the Ants, which will be presented on Nova May 20th. Wilson joked that the only time he tried to publish in the New Yorker, they rejected him, so that, by dialoguing with Kolbert, he was working his way up. While he shares the dismay many of us in the environmental movement feel about the direction in which the planet is going, Wilson is an optimist on human nature, and, by extension, on people's ability to fix environmental problems once they are aware of the issues at stake....
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 Portland! The city just became the first major U.S. city to be designated as a Platinum-level Bicycle Friendly Community by the League of American Bicyclists. The only other city to reach that level in the U.S. is Davis, California, but it only has a population of 63,000, so the challenge wasn't quite the same (not to take anything away from their accomplishment - kudos to them!).
"Portland earned the Gold designation back in 2003 and has been working to achieve Platinum for well over two years. Back in February of 2006, Commissioner Sam Adams launched a nine-part strategy and called together advocates and community leaders to work toward achieving the goal."
Even the Gold level was pretty exclusive: Only six other cities have reached it. 15 have attained Silver, and 49 got Bronze. Five main factors have been evaluated (they call them the 5Es, though there's a 'P' at the end): engineering, education, encouragement, enforcement, and evaluation and planning. Once again, congrats Portland! ::Portland earns Platinum; becomes first major U.S. city to win the award, ::Portland earns a Platinum rating from the League of American Bicyclists...
Photos courtesy of: Ecorazzi
Recently on Vanity Fair’s blog “VF Daily”, we learned that they’ve added a new member to their Green Beat team - Cindy Crawford. Although she’s known as a super-model icon, she’ll actually be writing about a lifestyle change she’s made or, an “eco-awakening” as she calls it. While she admits to being no Al Gore, Crawford credits her children for her environmental interests and initiatives, which she’ll be sharing with her readers. In her first post, she writes about the small changes she’s made, like unplugging appliances, switching to recycled paper towels and napkins, and drinking tap water. And speaking of water, Crawford also announced that she’s working with PUR (as in, the water filtration company) in designing her own reusable aluminum bottle to encourage others to cut back on plastic waste....
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 Green is the New Black and Mathilda Lee’s Eco-Chic. Then most recently Kate Fletcher’s Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys and Sandy Black’s Eco-Chic: The Fashion Paradox (review coming soon).
For all students of new subjects it’s often sensible to start with the general overview and then, as knowledge and interest increase, start digging into the more complex layers. Fortunately the order in which these books have arrived on the shelves has enabled us to do just that. The clear and simple journalistic approach of Blanchard and Lee’s books got us off to a good start and now Kate Fletcher takes the reader into deeper waters with her wealth of experience and knowledge built up over the last 15 years working within the textiles and fashion industries....
We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the weekly archive if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.
TreeHugger breaks it down for you in a series of in depth how-to articles that will help you green your life. No time like the present!