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Tender Is the Nitrogen

Lower summer ozone levels give Eastern lungs a break Summer air quality has improved in 19 Eastern states, thanks to a federally mandated cap-and-trade system for nitrogen oxides*. According to a report released yesterday by the U.S. EPA, nitrogen-oxide emissions from power plants and other sources in the region were about 50 percent lower in […]

Ranch Dressing-Down

Rancher wins defamation claim against conservation nonprofit An Arizona rancher has employed activist tactics to win a lawsuit against a conservation group, and his success may inspire other ranchers to fight back against greens. Jim Chilton took the Center for Biological Diversity to court last year for defamation, after the group posted photos to its […]

CWRU goes green

About 740 students who attend Case Western Reserve University in Ohio will be returning to new living quarters this fall: "The Village at 115," a brand new dormitory that expects to become LEED certified after its opening (as heard on WCPN this morning).

The cluster of buildings is expected to reduce annual energy consumption by 40 percent, and features a mechanism for groundwater recharge that separates stormwater from sewage. One of the more intriguing aspects is a set of monitoring systems -- kiosks in each house will display realtime electricity, water, and steam use, and data will be posted online for researchers (aka parents) to access. The monitoring is intended to function as a "teaching instrument" so the students learn what habits save them energy.

It will be interesting to see what kind of social norms develop among a small community like this when energy use is monitored and made public. Unless CWRU is different from most other universities, it doesn't charge its students piecemeal for heat, AC, water, electricity, etc. Those are common goods that no individual student has a direct financial incentive to conserve. But something tells me the social norms that develop will play a big role in the dorm's decreased energy use.

Jamais Cascio has conveniently just posted more on LEED over at WorldChanging.

The wages of Kelo

We talked about Kelo v. New London quite a bit when it was first decided. Here's a little follow-up (via Tapped):

The U.S. Supreme Court recently found that the city's original seizure of private property was constitutional under the principal of eminent domain, and now New London is claiming that the affected homeowners were living on city land for the duration of the lawsuit and owe back rent. It's a new definition of chutzpah: Confiscate land and charge back rent for the years the owners fought confiscation.

Gas, oil, and electricity

NPR's Marketplace has on their homepage right now three stories that might be of interest, on gas prices, oil shock simulations, and zero-energy homes.

Timber industry turns to underwater crop

As the traditional logging industry deals with unsteady prices and the challenges of globalization, the value of a new crop is coming to light: trees hidden under reservoirs, long given up for lost. Sawn, but not forgotten. Photo: Triton Logging Inc. While no exact count of these “rediscovered” forests — which are being logged primarily […]

Royale With Breeze

Northwest burger chain switches to pure wind power Fans of Pacific Northwest fast-food purveyor Burgerville will soon be noshing on burgers and onion rings cooked up with clean energy. The Holland Inc. — parent company of both the Burgerville and Noodlin’ regional chains — has announced that all of its restaurants will use regionally produced […]

Always Low Standards

Wal-Mart settles with Connecticut over environmental misdeeds Wal-Mart has agreed to pay Connecticut a $1.15 million fine for a host of environmental violations. State regulators first filed suit against the retail giant in 2001, after discovering that the company had improperly stored pesticides, fertilizers, and other hazardous materials outside, where they washed down storm drains […]

Miser Permanente

Americans get creative at saving gas as price per gallon soars Ever since dinosaurs walked the earth, died, and decayed under high subterranean pressures to become the fossil fuels we so depend upon today, Americans have carried on a brontosauric love affair with gasoline. But with prices climbing toward $3 a gallon, that may change. […]

I Fjord Your Pain

McCain, Clinton, other senators take global-warming tour in Alaska Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), and two other Lower-48 colleagues are touring Alaska this week to see for themselves the destructive impacts of climate change. They’ve flown over Yukon forests devastated by spruce bark beetles — believed to be thriving thanks to unusually high […]