Latest Articles

Portland, Maine, to save 50,000 gallons of oil a year with geothermal heating and cooling

Portland, Maine's new airport expansion is to be the first in the country to use a dead-simple but often overlooked technology to significantly reduce its heating and cooling bills. They're calling it a geothermal system, but it's not like the kind that produce power in Iceland; it's more properly called a "ground-source heat pump." The […]

Care about the forest? Here’s what you can do

Who cares about the forest? That’s the question author/artist Franke James explores in this creative personal story commissioned by the Forest Stewardship Council of Canada. Check out the visual essay below, or watch it as an animated video.

Meet the world’s most high-tech bike

It's pretty impressive that we're still chugging along on human-powered vehicles only a step more high-tech than a velocipede — olde-tyme bikes look basically like the ones we've got today. Why improve on perfection, right? Well, maybe just for the sheer badassery of it. At least, that seems to be the theory behind the Alpha, […]

Tim Pawlenty doesn’t understand how gas prices work

Presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty doesn't like high gas prices. Unfortunately, he apparently has no idea where they come from. Well, Tim, when a congressional GOP loves an oil industry very much … Pawlenty complained that Obama is "proposing is a tax increase on energy at a time when the gas is $4 a gallon," adding that […]

Coke, BPA, and the limits of ‘green capitalism’

Don’t drink the Coca-Cola Kool-AidPhoto: Oleg Sklyanchuk“Coca-Cola goes green,” announced a 2010 Forbes article. Indeed, the beverages giant maintains partnerships with Big Green groups like Conservation International and World Wildlife Fund. It recently even completed its takeover of Honest Tea, an organic bottled-tea company. It would clearly like to be seen as a paragon of […]

Report: Homebuyers willing to pay premium for solar

Okay, I’m a little slow on the uptake on this but I’ve been pursing a recent report from Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory on the effect of installing a rooftop solar array on the sale price of homes in California. (It makes for dense reading and unless you’re really into “hedonic pricing models” and “difference-in-difference model,” you […]

Top climate scientist on monster tornadoes: ‘It’d be irresponsible not to mention climate change’

“Climate change is present in every single meteorological event,” says scientist Michael Mann.Photo: Tom VanNortwickCross-posted from the Wonk Room. Throughout human history, the climate system has been a source of life and death, the sun and rain capable of feeding our crops and bringing us comfort, or unleashing terrible devastation in wind, fire, drought, storm, […]

On Coachella’s solar stage

It was a sunny year at the 2011 Coachella Music Festival, and the stage is set for the town’s new concentrating photovoltaic farm.Photo: Paige K. ParsonsAn interesting solar development got buried by Thursday’s big news that French fossil fuel conglomerate Total had agreed to acquire a majority stake in SunPower, the Silicon Valley photovoltaic panel […]

What can we learn from the world’s most efficient fake city?

This EXTREMELY METAL VIDEO shows the evolution of what is probably the world's most efficient Sim City: 6 million inhabitants and no congestion. It's got optimal population density, operates by subway alone, and has essentially beat an unbeatable game by lasting for 50,000 in-game years. The innovative gridding system that made all this possible was […]

Osama bin Laden couldn’t destroy the free city of New York

This is not what “victory” looks like. Victory is everyday New York.Photo: Sarah GoodyearFor New Yorkers, the 9-11 attack was personal. For weeks after the towers came down, the public spaces of our city were filled with heart-breaking reminders of the event: Walls covered with the pictures of those who never came home. Firehouses draped […]