Photo by eric lynch.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of our Ask Umbra advice column, and to celebrate, we’re pulling a favorite gem of eco-advice out of the archives each week. With Memorial Day weekend approaching, we thought it was time to revisit how to be properly patriotic. From Seattle reader Anne B.:

"Like any proud American, I want to fly our flag 24 hours a day to show my reverence for this awesome country. I am torn, though, because section 6a of the Flag Code requires the flag to be lit up during hours of darkness and this conflicts with my desire to cut back on my energy use. Can this rule be ignored in the name of the environment?"

Umbra reads Anne's flag its rights, wonders if Seattle's gloomy weather rains on Anne's parade more than the night sky, and ceremoniously suggests a solution that will keep her flag basking in glory as long anyone is looking. Read on for the full Umbra answer.

It's great when celebrities get the green bug and decide they want to use their fame to tell people “hey, this climate change thing? It's a problem.” But guys, GUYS, as much as we appreciate the support, we’re REALLY going to need you not to pull stunts like the one will.i.am just did: showing up to a meeting about climate change in a goddamn gigantic helicopter.

The rapper was paying a visit to climate change expert Myles Allen, who apparently is not as exasperated about this as we are. I do believe that, as Allen put it, will.i.am is "committed to the issues." He's written a whole song about this stuff! But. BUT. Riding in a helicopter and then BIKING to your meeting? Does not make sense. Sure, sure, every little bit counts. But that little bit of carbon you saved by biking was pretty much made irrelevant by the gigantic pile of pollution that helicopter dumped into the air.

Photo by Steve Ryan.

It’s always nice when someone writes an article so you don’t have to. In this case it was New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, who has been doing the thankless job of writing about the health risks of toxic chemicals in our environment, as well as the politicization of the regulatory process that’s supposed to be in place.

From arsenic in chicken feed to cancer-causing chemicals to endocrine disruptors, Kristof has given new visibility to a critical issue: how toxic chemicals affect us, and how reluctant our government has been to protect us.

How the rich live in Aspen.

The exclusive resort town of Aspen, Colo., has an international reputation for high-end service and a stunning landscape of pristine mountains, all configured to welcome wealthy tourists. Like many communities in the U.S., Aspen depends on low-wage immigrant labor to fuel its service economy. Also like many communities in the U.S., Aspen passed a resolution calling on the federal government to restrict both documented and undocumented immigration in order to preserve the economic and cultural integrity of the nation.

But Aspen's resolution, passed unanimously by the city council in 1999, was different from many others around the country in that it played up environmental concerns as well, providing green cover for the demonization of low-income immigrants from Latin America.

Shortly after its passage, city council member Terry Paulson -- a longtime immigration critic and self-avowed environmentalist -- announced that he would be working on a statewide campaign to “promote overpopulation awareness” and declared, “If we address population and do something about it, everything else will fall in line.”

There are all kinds of futuristic-looking energy-efficient light bulbs on the market -- not just the traditional piggy-tail model, but liquid-cooled bulbs that look like glass jellyfish, and bulbs with gills like a mushroom or fins like a Cadillac. But for our money, this wooden bulb by artist Ryosuke Fukusada is the most beautiful energy-efficient light fixture going. (And yes, it really is a light fixture.)

Like other stuff that is good for your health (not smoking, sobriety, living slow, and dying old), bike helmets are uncool. But you can’t really enjoy your coolness with a giant crack in your skull. How do you protect your noggin without sacrificing your mojo? Swedish company Hovding has the answer: airbag bike helmets.

Unless it’s called upon to perform, this helmet stays safely stowed in a futuristic-looking black collar that you can pretend is a scarf. (Hovding also offers printed shells that go around the collar, to make it even more chic.) But if you get hit, presto, it bursts open like a popcorn kernel:

(Fast-forward to 00:36 for the slow-motion version.)

Over the last eight (!) years at Grist, I have written a great deal about what humanity is doing wrong -- in particular, those bits of humanity that live in the United States, and even more particularly, those humanoids who run, fund, or otherwise influence the federal government, known these days as the World Headquarters of Fail. I've covered climate change, resource shortages, air pollutants and other unpriced externalities, political dysfunction, bad policy, media irresponsibility, social alienation, and bad television. It's been a veritable Festival of Fail.

Meanwhile, over the last eight (seriously, eight?) years, I have also frequently mentioned the intense need these days for positive visions of the future -- what is being done right, and could be done right, rather than just what's going wrong. Indeed, a recent post concluded thusly: "In the meantime, the job is to define a new American way of life for young people, so when they take over they won’t view Walmart as akin to church."

A couple of years ago, I started agitating for Grist to start painting that picture of a positive future. I wanted us to move beyond the tales of defilement and degradation that readers have come to expect from "environmental media" and into something more forward-looking, wide-ranging, optimistic, and, well, helpful. I even wrote a rather turgid internal memo on the matter, the theme of which was that Grist should turn its gaze toward "a future that makes sense." OK, we as a society are doing it wrong. What would it mean to do it right, to stay within carbon and other resource limits while enjoying a high quality of life?

A decade ago, British Columbia had 40 full-time park rangers who monitored 1,000 parks. Today, it only has 10. And they don't often make it out to faraway parks like the Carmanah-Walbran Provincial Park, which is on the southern end of Vancouver Island.

With no one around regularly, it must have been easy for poachers to come into the park and hack away at an 800-year-old red cedar tree. Well, “easy” is relative, because we’re talking about a lot of sawing -- this granddaddy cedar was so old, its stump measures almost 10 feet in diameter. But there was so little supervision of the park that the tree thieves could return multiple times to hack at the tree and then haul sections of it away.

Q. Dear Umbra,

I have a large collection of CDs from the ’90s and early ’00s. The CDs are stored in a wallet, but I’m not sure what to do with all my CD cases. I guess recycle the plastic and paper separately?

Justin J.
Elmhurst, Ill.

Photo by Vanessa Lynn.

A. Dearest Justin,

Your conundrum is as vexing and pervasive as a Third Eye Blind hit. I’ve given some suggestions for recycling CD cases before, but this time around I have some new material.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of our Ask Umbra advice column, and to celebrate, we’re pulling one particularly poignant question or tidbit of eco-advice out of the archives each week. Today, May 18, is Bike to Work Day. After we hung up our helmets and checked out the news cycle, we took a trip down memory lane with this Umbra video classic on commuting by bike. 

What's that you say? You're already in your cubicle, miles from your trusty single-speed? We have two more weeks of National Bike Month. Even if you missed the chance to ride with all the cool kids today, there's still plenty of time to get your fixie fix.