Latest Articles

PhillyTreeMap: Crowdsourcing the urban forest

PhillyTreeMap, an open-source mapping system, helps Philadelphia keep track of an urban treasure -- its trees.

How do you solve a problem like conservative white men?

Conservative white men are loathe to accept the threat of climate change. What should we do about it? Kick their asses.

Barbie Dream House has solar panels, low-flow toilets, four stories, giraffe

The American Institute of Architects has picked a winning design in its Barbie Dream House contest, and it's green as well as pink. The four-story edifice, presumably built with input from Architect Barbie, features solar panels, low-flow toilets, EnergyStar appliances, a greenhouse, eco-friendly bamboo flooring, and "decidedly NO parking garages and driveways." It also has a meditation space, a home gym, and a 1,500 square foot entertainment area. It's hard to reconcile green design with a client so into overconsuming that she's actually a plastic toy.

Tar-sands pipeline gets support from fake Twitter accounts

What do Astroturf and the Canadian tar sands have in common? They're both made of petroleum, and now they've both got fake grassroots. An employee of the American Petroleum Institute, which supports the Keystone XL tar-sands pipeline, has apparently been setting up multiple fake Twitter accounts to give the illusion of public support.

Michele Bachmann seriously believes in a lightbulb conspiracy

So what is it with Michele Bachmann and hating on energy-efficient lightbulbs? She's like a lightbulb crusader. Mother Jones has done some digging, and it turns out this is because she basically believes that a science fiction parody of environmentalism is going to ruin America.

New tool maps how badly climate change affects you

A new web tool from the Natural Resources Defense Council lets you map climate change threats — excessive heat, disease risk, pollution, drought, and flooding — anywhere in the United States. Above is the full U.S. map showing the average number of extreme heat days in 2000-2009, but you can also zoom in on your […]

A pop-up urban experiment: The BMW Guggenheim Lab

On Houston Street in New York, the BMW Guggenheim Lab hopes to incubate ideas and solutions for the modern urban world. What will come of it?

Solar-powered oil field runs on sunshine, irony

Put on your coal-fired vegan anti-irony helmets, because Oman is building a solar-powered oil field. Not because it will make them feel good or help them tamp down their emissions (I mean, this is oil they're digging up) but because it makes economic sense.

Want to save energy? Stop wasting water

Turns out one of the single biggest sources of energy use in your home doesn't even show up in the electricity section of your utility bill. 

Western Pacific nations create the world's largest shark sanctuary

If you never quite believed your parents when they told you big, scary animals have more to fear from us than we do from them, consider this, via The New York Times' Joanna Foster: Sharks kill two or three people every year. People kill 73 million sharks in the same time period.

To protect these sharp-toothed scapegoats, Micronesian chief executives have decided to create a shark preserve of 2 million square miles in the western Pacific -- the largest shark sanctuary in the world.