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Solar-powered tanning salon. Really.

This is real. Comedian Kyle Kinane spotted it while driving through the wasteland of unconquerable vacuity known as Southern California. The place is called Sunlounge, and it has a website and a Yelp page full of catty reviews from people who love to tan. Sunlounge says it gets 15 to 30 percent of the power […]

Poor nations demand stringent emissions deal, unicorns

At the ongoing climate talks in Durban, South Africa, 48 of the world's "Least Developed Countries" demanded that world governments sign an ambitious climate deal. By “ambitious” we mean it commits them to a level of atmospheric greenhouse gases lower than what's currently in the atmosphere. There’s a rider requiring free Pegasuses (Pegasi?) for all […]

Amazon deforestation decreasing … but not for long

Despite reports of localized deforestation and violence against rainforest activists, a study on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon found that the number of square kilometers disappearing each year has hit a record low. But politics has a way of screwing up progress like this, and Brazilian politicians are voting today to weaken the forest code […]

Critical List: Scientists find Earth 2.0; rootworms defeat Monsanto corn

Scientists found a planet that looks an awful lot like Earth. One U.N. leader says that even an international treaty won't ensure the world avoids dangerous climate change. And we don't even have that! Rootworms are developing a resistance to Monsanto's Bt corn, and scientists get to say "I told you so." The Carbon War […]

Small farmers crave horse power

Photo: Donn HewesAsk any 5-year-old: Few tools symbolize the farm like a trundling tractor. In fact, you’d have to reach further back in time to find an equally enduring symbol: the horse. And while there’s little doubt that tractors have revolutionized farm labor and made farms much more efficient than they were in past centuries, […]

A visual representation of renewable energy growth in the U.S.

The folks over at Black & Veatch sent me a couple of interesting graphics today. Here is a U.S. map showing installations of non-hydro renewable energy in 1970: Click for larger version.Black & Veatch A few things jump out. One, there weren’t very many! Two, they weren’t very big. And three, they were all biomass. […]

Durban dispatch: Climate-talks failure is ‘moral apartheid’

The march on Saturday. Photo: Oxfam InternationalCross-posted from ThinkProgress Green. As the first week of climate negotiations drew to a close, Saturday saw people from across Africa and beyond march through the streets of Durban to demand progress on a fair, ambitious, and legally binding global climate deal. Caritas Internationalis President Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga […]

Curbing Power Plant Carbon Pollution

This item cross-posted from NRDC’s Switchboard. Willie Sutton is famously supposed to have said that he robbed banks because that’s where the money is (apparently this quote is apocryphal but it’s just too good to not keep using it). I have focused a number of recent posts on power plants because that’s where the carbon […]

Principled plate: Diners’ Guide helps make eating out ethical

Photo: Bravo123Restaurants know their customers worry over the source of an heirloom tomato, or the care with which their pork was raised and handled. But when it comes to the treatment of the person who prepared it, few establishments make it a point to be transparent.  Now, there’s a guide for that. For the first […]

The age of thirst in the American West

This essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission. Consider it a taste of the future: the fire, smoke, drought, dust, and heat that have made life unpleasant, if not dangerous, from Louisiana to Los Angeles. New records tell the tale: biggest wildfire ever recorded in Arizona (538,049 acres); […]