Climate Culture
All Stories
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The medium chill
Step off the aspirational treadmill and forego some material opportunities in exchange for more time to spend enjoying the things that make for a good life.
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Replace your lawnmower with goats
Anyone still caring for a clipped green lawn can lessen their enviro guilt by trading in weed-killing chemicals for a herd of goats. If you’ve got invasive plants, never fear: Your milkweed brings all the goats to the yard. They could eat it, but they have to charge ($725/day plus tax for a 60-goat herd at Rent-a-Ruminant).
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Dirty blonde: Ask Umbra on composting dyed hair
Is dyed hair toxic for compost bins? Ask Umbra breaks down the question.
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Vegan condoms keep your junk cruelty-free
If you won't put animal products in your mouth, shouldn't it stand to reason you wouldn't put them on your wang? Or maybe you're courting a vegan, and you want to seal the deal. Lucky for you there are vegan lubes and condoms available, to replace the raw-meat-and-gelatin lube and condoms you were using before.
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Build this beautiful shipping container house for only $40K
There's been a small vogue for houses and buildings made of shipping containers, which are cheap, plentiful, and often end up tossed in the sea (either on purpose or otherwise). This airy two-container dwelling is one of the prettiest we've seen, and it only cost $40,000 to build.
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Five provocative ways to think about cities and neighborhoods
Want to be more mindful of your city? Here are some great suggestions on how to make that happen.
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Great places: how livable streets make us happier humans
My dense, walkable, transit-rich neighborhood does a lot of great things for my carbon footprint. But what it does for my soul might, in the end, be more important.
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Right-wingers bash Gore for wanting women to have access to birth control
The right-wing media is all aflutter over Al Gore saying that we should educate girls, keep kids from dying, and make birth control available to women.
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One day, we’ll water plants with our pee in public restrooms
Everyone remembers that deathless scene from Waterworld where Kevin Costner pees in a jug, filters it, drinks some, then spits the rest into a plant. (EVERYONE REMEMBERS IT, I SAID. But if you’ve been living under a rock, you can watch here -- start around 1:30.) Well, that may soon become a reality. For now, at least, we’re still not drinking processed urine -- on a societal level, anyway; what you do on your time is your own business. But one ingenious conservation junkie has come up with a urinal design that filters pee in order to water plants.
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Do environmentalists need shrinks?
Is the sorry state of the planet dragging you into the dumps? Psychologist John Fraser thinks a lot of enviros are suffering from traumatic distress.
