Latest Articles
-
Trashtivist: Shameful soup stink
The take-out food is killing me. My trash bag smells like old lentil soup. But when you have kids, you have to feed them.
-
Play chutes and ladders on public transportation
The designers of this "Transit Accelerator" in the Dutch city of Utrecht have the right idea about making public transportation fun: turn it into a board game, or recess. What other inspiration can public transit take from childhood? Personally I'd like to see merry-go-round train cars where you ride on My Little Ponies.
-
Ain’t no mountain high enough: Taking down Massey Coal
An effective combination of civil disobedience and legal reform is actually taking shape in the fight against mountaintop-removal mining and Massey.
-
Building better cities so people can have better lives
Some very smart people got together for a Ford Foundation forum on "The Just City." What did they say?
-
Mom who lost son in hit-and-run could face more jail time than driver
Raquel Nelson of Marietta and her three children were hit by a tipsy two-time hit-and-runner, Jerry L. Guy, in April 2010. Nelson's 4-year-old later died of his injuries. But prosecutors dropped a homicide charge against Guy, and he was sentenced to two years for hit-and-run and served only six months. Nelson, who was convicted this week of vehicular manslaughter for having the chutzpah to cross a street, could get 36 months -- six times longer than the man who killed her child.
-
House votes against energy-saving lightbulbs
The House passed an amendment that prohibits spending to enforce lighting efficiency standards established by 2007's energy law.
-
Koch brothers declare war on offshore wind
The dirty-energy-loving Koch brothers have put out a “cost-benefit analysis†of New Jersey offshore-wind plans that finds lots of costs and not so many benefits.
-
For the first time ever, renters can get solar incentives, too
There's a reason California is the largest solar market in the country -- I mean, aside from its abundance of sun. Namely, its regulators keep coming up with new ways to allow people to DIY-up their own distributed energy systems. Their latest brainstorm is a measure that allows renters to take advantage of the same solar incentives as people who own their own homes.
-
Panasonic capitalizes on earthquake by replacing factories with ‘smart towns’
Panasonic, the largest appliance maker in Japan, has announced plans to shutter 20 percent of its 230 factories in order to cut costs. But rather than lose that land, the company is capitalizing on Japan’s post-earthquake need for housing. It’s replacing the factories with “smart towns,” featuring "solar panels, energy-efficient refrigerators and rechargeable batteries," the company tells Bloomberg.
-
Most of the U.S. could be energy self-sufficient
With a little development elbow grease, we could be in pretty good shape for the day the energy apocalypse comes and states have to split into small self-reliant compounds. The majority of U.S. states -- 31 of the 50 -- could be completely self-sufficient with locally-produced renewable energy, according to a report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. In fact, most states could produce many times more energy than they need. They've got South Dakota down as having the potential to produce 32,431 percent of its energy usage! (There's also a bigger map and an interactive map that is actually not all that interactive as far as I can tell.)
