Climate Culture

Can smartphones serve as birth control? [VIDEO]

This amusing Indian ad suggests that smartphones can bring down birthrates. If you're having 3G fun, why bother with old-fashioned amorous pursuits?

Got trash? Put a kitten in it.

The Etsy shop Atomic Attic makes upcycled pet beds and feeding trays out of old suitcases and vintage electronics, thus making use of a cat's natural tendency to sit on any damn thing you happen to have lying around. My dog wouldn't fit in a suitcase — maybe a steamer trunk — but I love […]

Critical List: Coal companies lavish cash on Boehner; how to stick it to hungry deer

Boehner's got his hands all sooty with coal money.

Uh, guys? Maybe we should check up on the safety of  nuclear plants? Kthx. XOXO, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

California chose solar PV projects over solar thermal projects because the latter use more water.

The largest outdoor green wall in North America

Why just have a green roof when you can have a green wall? This 3,000-square-foot wall, which fronts a public library in a suburb of Vancouver, Canada, was installed by green wall company Green Over Grey. It consists of over 10,000 plants in over 120 species.

Rick Perry stumbles and mumbles as he tries to defend abstinence education [VIDEO]

"Abstinence works." That's Rick Perry's response to a question about why Texas is sticking with abstinence-only education despite its high teen pregnancy rate.

Looking at nature makes you smarter

Check it out: You're brilliant now.

Do individual green actions matter? Maybe not, says New York Times

The Huffington Post's eco-etiquette column yesterday featured a question from “Kimberly,” who writes "I used to be enthusiastic about going green, but now I feel like what's the point? Like a stupid reusable water bottle is going to make a difference…" She got a comforting answer, but if she’d written to the New York Times, op-ed contributor Gernot Wagner might have told her she might as well pack it in.

HuffPo’s advice columnist Jennifer Grayson identified Kimberly’s problem — "You're having a F**k it moment right now" — and told her to step back, take a breather, and "remember that individual actions do make a difference."

But Wagner, an economist with the Environmental Defense Fund, has a different answer for people like Kimberly:

[S]adly, individual action does not work. It distracts us from the need for collective action, and it doesn’t add up to enough. Self-interest, not self-sacrifice, is what induces noticeable change. ...

Toilet-sharing app CLOO' turns your home into a public bathroom

Hey, we all love sharing, right? It lets you live comfortably while limiting consumption and waste. And you have that bathroom, and you're not using it all the time, right? What are you, selfish? Put your money where your mouth is, toilet-hog, and offer up your bathroom to strangers with a deuce to donate. Otherwise the terrorists win.

If you're seriously willing to hang an "Open to Strange Butts" placard outside your lavatory (what are you, nuts? We were joking), a new app called CLOO' will let you take shit from just about anyone.

Oil rig escape pods turned into real-life Survivaballs

You remember Survivaballs, don't you? They're the ultimate solution to a planet gone crazy with excess thermal energy, marketed directly to the executives most directly responsible for all this climate change.

Well, now someone has turned oil rig escape pods into the ultimate climate-immune hotel. 

Mom could be arrested for letting her kid bike to school

There are a few factors that make it tricky for kids to bike or walk alone: Bad drivers who face insufficient consequences, lack of sidewalks and protected bike lanes, too few crosswalks. We COULD improve biking and walking infrastructure, and have cops actually crack down on illegal driving maneuvers. But that's hard! Instead, let's just arrest everybody who doesn't drive their kids to school. That appears to be the approach in Elizabethton, Tenn., where Teresa Tryon has been threatened with arrest if she keeps letting her daughter bike to school on her own.