Latest Articles

Hayden Hamilton, CEO of GreenPrint, answers questions

Hayden Hamilton. What work do you do? I’m the founder and CEO of GreenPrint. How does it relate to the environment? We recently launched GreenPrint software which analyzes each page of every document sent to the printer and looks for typical waste characteristics (like that last page with just a URL, banner ad, logo, or […]

Umbra on feeding birds

Dearest Umbra, Every winter I take pleasure in putting out birdseed to feed the backyard wildlife. I purchase the easily available, run-of-the-mill, found-at-my-local-hardware-store type of seed. My question is, in the big picture … am I doing more harm than good? If the feed I am using is grown conventionally, am I doing a greater […]

New company says it can make better, cheaper biofuels

Picture a liquid fuel that is derived from the same feedstocks as cellulosic ethanol (switchgrass, sugar cane, corn stover) but contains 50% more energetic content and is made via a process that uses 65% less energy. Unlike cellulosic ethanol, this fuel can be distributed via existing oil pipelines rather than gas-hogging trucks and trains, dispensed […]

Put a whole society on a tightrope without a net and wait

The venerable Tom's Dispatch has a powerful essay from Chip Ward called "How Efficiency Maximizes Catastrophe." It uses honeybee climate collapse disorder to illustrate a hugely important point: where nature overprotects, and uses redundancy with abandon, mankind attempts to engineer everything to the last decimal place, with all redundancy removed in the quest for maximum profit.

A suicidal cultural pattern, probably. Excerpt below the fold.

Sure looks that way

Back in May, I was seduced by GM's seeming sincerity in developing a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, the Chevy Volt. We must always remember, however, that GM is a master greenwasher.

Brit greenhouse-gas factories, now with extra fascism

Nice.

Airliners are shaped the way they are for a reason

We took our Prius over the mountains a few weeks back. I was looking forward to testing it at the extreme end of its design envelope, with a bulky cargo carrier to boot. This gave me an opportunity to see how much highway mileage would be affected by aerodynamic drag. Yes, yes, I should have stuck to the speed limit, but by not doing so I preemptively squashed a bitching point leveled by hybrid hatas -- Prius drivers sticking to the speed limit are always getting in the way.

We nailed 40 mpg on the nose for a 260-mile trip that was 95 percent highway driving. I was pleasantly surprised. Just look at that blob on top of the car. I used the cruise control religiously and pegged the speed 5 mph over the posted limit whenever traffic allowed, which was most of the time.

The Middle East

NYT: The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected to eventually total $20 billion at a time when some United States officials contend that the Saudis are playing a counterproductive role in Iraq. Discuss.

Bloomberg’s law: Environment equals economic growth

This guest essay comes from Steven Cohen and Jacob Victor. Steven Cohen is executive director of Columbia University's Earth Institute and director of its Master of Public Administration Program in Environmental Science and Policy at the School of International and Public Affairs. Jacob Victor is an intern at Columbia's Earth Institute.

After overcoming numerous obstacles in Albany, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's controversial congestion-pricing plan finally appears to be slowly moving forward. Thanks to a last-minute deal between Bloomberg and the leaders of the state Assembly, it is almost certain that New York will receive a $500 million federal grant to fund the equipment and upgrade mass transit in order to begin the program. While New York City has not been given permission to charge tolls to enter Manhattan south of 86th street, the first steps in implementing congestion pricing were authorized by New York state's famously dysfunctional state government.

Friday music blogging: Explosions in the Sky

You thought I forgot! This week’s song is from a fantastic band out of Austin, Texas called Explosions in the Sky. They play in a style that has somewhat unfortunately been dubbed “post rock,” though the band, like most bands stuck with the label, hates it. The prefer plain old “rock.” What sets the genre […]