Latest Articles
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The best sustainable Christmas tree ever
Book lovers can sidestep the eternal question of farmed versus PVC (they both suck) and opt for a holiday display that's a monument to reading … or bibliophilia, anyway, since trying to actually read any of the books in this display would be a holiday Jenga nightmare. You don't even have to celebrate Christmas to […]
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Critical List: Canada out of Kyoto; the Napsack should be on your Christmas list
Canada is officially out of Kyoto, because it has no chance of meeting its targets and doesn't want to pay the fines. A Russian research team has found plumes of methane bubbling out of the Arctic Ocean. But maybe we should chill out about it, because methane's not as horrible as carbon dioxide? The EPA […]
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2011: Sustainable food trends
A good year-end trend list should do two things simultaneously: confirm the conscientious reader’s suspicions while providing a few surprise nuggets. Sustainable food is a vast category with many opportunities for interpretation, so what I offer up here is an entirely subjective list of favorites. In other words: These are just a few of the […]
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Climate change for sale: How climate activists can wake up the American public
Over the last few years, three Columbia University professors learned how important language is when it comes to combating climate change. They queried 275 randomly selected U.S. citizens for their opinions on raising money to fund alternative energy projects and the like by adding fees to earth-warming activities such as driving cars and flying in […]
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Here comes the sun – the chart Paul Krugman left out
This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. Nobel economist Paul Krugman made waves last month when his column “Here Comes the Sun” noted that the rapidly falling cost of solar electricity – “prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year” – […]
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Major coal vctory: LS Power agrees to abandon two coal projects, invest in solar
Today, the Sierra Club is celebrating a landmark victory that was a long time coming. We have reached a settlement with LS Power to cancel their plans to build two new coal plants — the Longleaf plant in Georgia, and the Plum Point 2 plant in Arkansas. These two coal plants are Nos. 160 and […]
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Totally plausible water solution: Collect ice in the desert
Look, it's very simple. All you need to solve the water shortage is a giant metal leaf that you put in the desert and it uses solar power to grow ice. Then you drink the ice. How is this difficult? Okay, this is not completely for real. The leaf's creators don't think it will singlehandedly […]
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Amazing green building looks like it’s made of string
The new design for the Taiwan Tower (which will be built in, where else, Taiwan) is based on the banyan tree, but it looks more like a super-complex cat's cradle. The openwork building, designed by Japanese firm Sou Fujimoto Architects, will house a "semi-outdoor" space, pierced by sunlight and shaded by a green roof. The […]
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Cities: Not quite as awesome as we like to think
Photo: David Graham If you Google the term “a scholar and a gentleman,” the first result to pop up is a picture of Witold Rybczynski — or it would be if there were any justice in the world. Rybczynski is an architect, author, and professor of urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania. He has written […]
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Market forces, not EPA standards, killing new coal plants
Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council. As the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) prepares the first-ever national standards for carbon pollution from new fossil-fuel power plants, the coal industry is embarking, predictably, on its latest disinformation campaign to try to block these desperately needed public health and climate safeguards. New coal plants are dirty, risky, […]
