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Top 10 U.S. green buildings

The American Institute of Architects has put together a list of the top ten green buildings in the U.S. Here they are, in alphabetical order: EpiCenter, Artists for Humanity / Boston, MA Arrowstreet Inc. Global Ecology Research Center / Stanford, CA EHDD Architects Government Canyon Visitor Center / Helotes, TX Lake/Flato Architects Hawaii Gateway Energy […]

The Onion

Still funny.

Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon chew the fat on their 100-mile diet

Two years ago, Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon set out to see if it was still possible, in these hyper-globalized times, to live off food grown in your own ‘hood. The pair made a pact to dine on dishes culled from within a 100-mile radius of their Vancouver, B.C., home for an entire year. Their […]

It can be done

ModeShift has an intriguing post on a proposed regional high-speed rail transit system for the Midwest. Here’s the wow bit: In essence, for the same cost as building less than 120 miles of new Interstate freeway, the Midwest could design, construct, and operate a 21st Century passenger rail network that would make the region’s transportation […]

The seductive lure of toys that promise solutions without change

Reading about the sunken tidal turbines -- which seem interesting -- I got an overwhelming feeling of "here we go again."

Why is it that people who know that "eat the foods you love and lose weight without exercise!" is hokum can't resist spending hours and hours hyping and being hyped about technotoys that promise "abundant low-cost clean energy that lets you lose carbon without reducing consumption!"

Hammer Simwinga provides alternatives to African poaching

In the 1970s, one of the densest populations of elephants on the African continent roamed the Luangwa Valley of Zambia. By the end of the next decade, massive poaching for the ivory trade had decimated herds throughout Africa, and the elephant population in North Luangwa National Park had plunged from 17,000 to 1,300. Though international […]

Letter to the editor from Arkansas

This is the text of a letter to the editor printed in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on April 16 of this year:

You may have noticed that March of this year was particularly hot. As a matter of fact, I understand that it was the hottest March since the beginning of the last century. All of the trees were fully leafed out and legions of bugs and snakes were crawling around during a time in Arkansas when, on a normal year, we might see a snowflake or two.

This should come as no surprise to any reasonable person. As you know, Daylight Saving Time started almost a month early this year. You would think that members of Congress would have considered the warming effect that an extra hour of daylight would have on our climate. Or did they?

Perhaps this is another plot by a liberal Congress to make us believe that global warming is a real threat. Perhaps next time there should be serious studies performed before Congress passes laws with such far-reaching effects.

Connie M. Meskimen
Hot Springs

A second dispatch from the sea

Mary Pearl is the president of Wildlife Trust, cofounder of its Consortium for Conservation Medicine, and an adjunct research scientist at Columbia University. This week, she's traveling in the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador with a boat full of scientists, conservationists, and business leaders to forge partnerships and develop solutions to the global freshwater crisis. This is the second of her dispatches from the journey. See her first dispatch here.

Our first afternoon hike was spectacular: an extravaganza of lovesick blue-footed boobies and vermillion-throated magnificent frigate birds displaying to potential mates on North Seymour Island. The sea lions were strewn like boulders on the beach, except for the pups, who either raced around in rough-and-tumble play, or inched up to inspect human beings with their big eyes and little, whiskery snouts.

The next morning, Manu Lall spoke to us about water after we re-boarded the Isabella II fresh from swimming and snorkeling at Gardner Bay at Espanola Island. Manu is a professor of engineering and hydrology at Columbia, and his assignment was to present the current state of the world's water. He started off with this startling statement: If water use continues as it is today, we can expect a catastrophe somewhere between 2026 and 2050.

The action agenda for addressing climate change, a synergy of science and political activism, is to find solutions before a climate crisis overwhelms us and leads to irreversible damage, he told us. The time scale is in decades. But here we are with water crises looming even closer, a subject about which there is relatively little research and even less dialogue.

A belated Earth Day quiz

Can you guess?

1. "In 1971, I participated in the second Earth Day and became the coordinator of an interdisciplinary Environmental Studies program at West Georgia College."

Find out here.

2. On the occasion of the first Earth Day: "[there is an] absolute necessity of waging all-out war against the debauching of the environment."

Find out here.

3. "Our nation has both an obligation and self-interest in facing, head-on, the serious environmental, economic and national security threat posed by global warming."

Find out here.

4. "We simply must do everything we can in our power to slow down global warming before it is too late. The science is clear. The global warming debate is over."

Find out here.

Lesson: Stewardship is a value that should always transcend party politics.

Interviews with the 2007 winners of the Goldman Prize

This year’s Goldman Prize winners fight for justice in the farm fields of Ireland and far beyond. Photo: Willie and Mary Corduff The digital age might allow us to transcend geography, but real places — places far and near, exotic and humble — still matter. Just ask the six winners of the 2007 Goldman Prize, […]