on 07.10.09
So the G8 leaders agreed for the first time to cut greenhouse gases 80 percent by 2050; TreeHugger Brian was not impressed. Are you?
on 07. 8.09
The best entertainment comes from Minnesota; first Michele Bachmann, then Al Franken, and now State Parks with wireless internet. Evidently "The effort to boost state park use came after a survey confirmed what parks officials had been suspecting for years, that the number of young adults who used state parks was dropping" and they think WiFi by the lake will bring them back. But one writer thinks "state officials are trying too hard to please those who are addicted to their iPhones, laptops and gas-powered generators."
on 07. 6.09
It was a hot topic of discussion last week. April wrote that "An informal survey of the global TreeHugger gang revealed an interesting (and perhaps slightly redolent) tendency to move away from the use of deodorant each and every day. In fact, the majority of responding THers have partially or even wholly given up on deodorant."
But then everyone knows that bloggers are antisocial misfits in pyjamas in their parents' basements. What about the rest of the world?
on 07. 2.09
Mike thinks they should, and I admit that the path through Trinity-Bellwoods Park in Toronto is on my route downtown. But sometimes when walking through, I feel that I am sharing the path with these guys. Mike asked for comments; who do you agree with?
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on 07. 1.09
Conspicuous consumption has been going in and out of fashion since Thorstein Veblen coined the term in 1899. But Sami writes that this time it may be different, that virtual consumption is taking over.
Professional thirtysomethings spend more time polishing their LinkedIn pages than pruning their front lawns. Prospective singles—men and women—focus more on tweaking their Match.com or eHarmony profiles than they do searching for that perfect convertible.
on 06.30.09
It really depends who you speak to; some think the American climate bill does too little, others too much. If nobody is happy then it is usually a good sign that a reasonable compromise has been reached, or it can be a sign that you just blew it. Who do you agree with?
on 06.26.09
Short and to the point, this survey. Jasmin presents three sticks for thirteen bucks and asks: So what do you think, kids? Doggone brilliant or barking mad? Which of our readers do you agree with?
on 06.25.09
Timothy of the Rodale Institute says "There is no such thing as local vs. organic. When it comes to consumer choice, we should be buying local and organic, though for mostly different reasons."
Others make different choices.
Roberta writes that "Yeah, its best to bring your own ceramic mug with a handle to the café to fill your cup with coffee or tea." But suggests an alternative: a reusable coffee cozy. But is it really green?
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The Obamas have done it. The Queen of England has done it. On a train ride across suburban Long Island on Saturday there where countless vacant places in people's yards to do it. Of course the 'it' being, growing your own vegetables. Whether it be in containers, a small plot in the backyard or community garden, or something larger, how many of you have started to take some portion of your fruit & vegetable production into your own hands?
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When TreeHugger was a gleam in Graham Hill's eye five years ago, it was going to be a cheeky "green lifestyle filter" that would make sustainability hip. We have evolved since then, as has the internet and the sustainability movement.
This week we have been doing an experiment, our contribution to the slow movement by sitting back, trying to make our content more original and thoughtful, passing it around before we put it up. We did a series on greener flying, looked at weatherization, deforestation and beehive fences in greater detail than we usually do. But we are also still good at finding things, and are trying different ways of still being a filter with attempts at short, timely posts.
Tell us what you think in comments!
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And what is one of the Two Biggest, Deadliest Kinds of Marine Trash? Cigarette butts. "About 40 percent of the litter in the Mediterranean Sea is smoking-related from butts and wrapping, the UN agency said . . . In Ecuador, smoking-related refuse accounted for more than half of coastal garbage."
When I used to smoke, the occasional unfiltered Camel was a treat. For a while, Gauloises and Gitanes were trendy among designer types who wanted to stand out in a crowd. And filters don't actually do anything. So why not just ban filters and solve the butt problem? (image: bitpicture)
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Matt asks: Would You Pay 1% More on Flights to Fund Climate Change Adaptation? I looked at my last plane ticket purchase and saw that I paid $105 in landing, security, airport upgrade, and other fees as well as sales taxes on a ticket of $282, a whopping 37% on top of the ticket price, and the offsets on an upcoming trip are costing me about 6% of the ticket price. In the face of that, 1% seems picayune.
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It is World Oceans Day today, and we are trying to make a big deal of it. Last Friday was World Environment Day, theoretically the rest of the world's version of Earth Day, but it passed without a peep just about everywhere. Don't get me started about missing Mole Day last week. In this modern age, where we parse seconds but should be doing the right thing every day, not just special days, do they make sense?
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They are at it again, making wild claims for Camels. April writes: "No smoke. No spit. And no waste (except for the non-biodegradable plastic packaging). That's got to be better for the environment than regular cigarettes."
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Warren is so poetic: "Sleeping in a tent allows us to hear the wind blow, the rain pitter patter, and the nocturnal critters go bump in the night. It removes the façade, putting us back on more equal footing with our fellow planetary inhabitants." Yet fewer people are doing it. Are you?
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The usually reliable Piers Fawkes writes at PSFK:
When we stayed at the James Hotel in Chicago recently we enjoyed their strong approach to sustainability including providing soap without the middle bit - because no one uses the middle bit at hotels.I am not so sure; I think it would waste a lot more by breaking up into pieces. ...
Mark notes in his post A Nation of Hitchhikers that hitchhiking "relies on the kindness of strangers and a certain implicit level of decency in the shared social contract between rider and driver." It used to be very common in North America but has fallen out of favour. That's a shame, because what could be greener than putting more people in an almost empty car and helping other people get somewhere.
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Sami notes that "All too often new wind energy developments are opposed because they will "spoil the view" in remote, rural areas". Four years ago we quoted David Suzuki, who welcomed them into his British Columbia cabin's view: "We see beauty through filters shaped by our values and beliefs. Some people think wind turbines are ugly. I think smokestacks, smog, acid rain, coal-fired power plants and climate change are ugly. I think windmills are beautiful.....And if one day I look out from my cabin's porch and see a row of windmills spinning in the distance, I won't curse them. I will praise them. It will mean we are finally getting somewhere."
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TreeHugger loves Product Service Systems like bike sharing, which recognize that we really need to get from A to B rather than own the mode of transport. But as we learn from April and Kimberley's posts, even wildly successful programs like Paris's Vélib are suffering from very high, and very expensive rates of vandalism and theft. Are such systems doomed? Why is this happening? Our commenters had some thoughts:
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Kristen says "I enjoy the loud smash every time you drop a giant, glass wine bottle into the bin." I don't- it is the sound of waste, of embodied energy lost, the sound of a stupid system where something is used once, broken, melted, and downcycled. One might even go so far as to suggest that recycling is bullsh*t. But we are creatures of convenience, and a deposit-and-return system is a pain. Or is it?
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Yum! Rachel Maddow on Canada's Governor General cutting out the heart of a seal and eating it raw, telling her daughter that "it tastes like sushi."
The seal hunt is a controversial issue, dividing Canadians and appalling the rest of the world, but this wasn't a usual seal hunt on the east cost, this was in Rankin Inlet in Nunavut, with the Inuit, where she said in the Star: "These are ancient practices that are part of a way of life," Jean said, framing her gutsy gesture as an act of solidarity with the Inuit. "If you can't understand that, you're completely missing the reality of life here." Brian did a post on this:
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Roberta notes that San Francisco is banning plastic bags, while other cities consider taxing them out of existence. Meanwhile, the industry fights back, claiming bans or taxes will hurt the poor, and even make people sick.
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Matthew recently reported on a Yale poll that found that only 18% of Americans are "Alarmed" enough about climate change to actually consider making personal changes to stop it. But what about our readers? And are Americans different from the rest of the world? We run two polls:
Continue for survey if you don't live in the United States:...
When Eric wrote his post Save a Tree... Use an Unbreakable Golf Tee a commenter responded with Save a forest... stop playing golf. Then Kristen wrote in Stronger, Greener Fishing Lures: Why Didn't We Think of That that 25 million pounds of fishing lures are lost each year, stuck in fishes mouths or possibly picked up by turtles. And I wonder in these times, do these sports belong to another era? Or are these "improvements" a step in the right direction?
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The American government is going to raise the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) standard to an average 35.5 miles per gallon by 2012. (yesterday's report was a bit off). But many question whether this is the right way to get better mileage; the last time it was set, the auto industry literally drove a truck through the regulations. And, when gas was cheap, people wanted big cars. Who in the comments from our post do you agree with?
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It is Bike Day. in the middle of Bike Month, all started to promote the use of bikes as transportation, to reduce fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas production. The weather is just right. So what are you doing?
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Jaymi thinks that there are two types of geeks in the world, the minimalists who try to get by with as little as possible (see How Much Energy Can a Gadget Minimalist Save?) , and what she coined as the gottahavist, who has all the fixings. I think there is at least a third, a whateverist, who just uses the tools at hand for what they need and doesn't worry about whether it is the latest thing. There are probably more.
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