Climate Culture
All Stories
-
Ask Umbra on turning plastic garbage into gasoline at home
Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, Not long ago, I saw a video of a Japanese scientist who had created a small machine that converted discarded plastics back into fuel. He was demonstrating it to schoolchildren. Is something happening with this technology? If it is true it could certainly help to save us […]
-
Check out Helsinki’s underground shadow city
Itakeskus underground swimming complexPhoto: Lewis Martin From the country that brought you the world’s spookiest children’s series, please meet the underground city. Helsinki, Finland’s capital, has decided to defeat sprawl by building down instead of out. Incised into the city’s bedrock are a swimming pool, a shopping area, a church, a hockey rink, and a […]
-
They just don’t build virtual cities like they used to
In the NYC Panorama, the Empire State building is only 13cm tallPhoto: John Pavlus The Panorama of the City of New York is one of a kind: Built under Robert Moses himself for the 1964 World’s Fair, its 9,335 square feet encompass “every single building constructed before 1992 in all five boroughs,” or 895,000 individual […]
-
Charts explain our current situation and how to improve it
The hundreds of data sets that accompany Lester Brown’s latest book, World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse, illustrate the world’s current predicament and give a sense of where we might go from here. Here are some highlights from the collection. Veering toward the edge: As the world economy has expanded […]
-
New tool calculates your nitrogen footprint and explains why you should be ashamed of it
Are you looking for something to flagellate yourself over? Carbon footprints are last week’s news: The new hot subject for self-recrimination is your nitrogen footprint. According to the International Nitrogen Initiative, your nitrogen consumption is contributing to a host of environmental ills: Today, reactive nitrogen has dramatically increased in our air and water. It comes […]
-
You’ll want to be BFFs with the Bicycle Film Festival
Do you have sick tricks, some kind of awesome human-powered art vehicle, or just a great story to tell about a bike? Then you should submit a short film to the 2011 Bicycle Film Festival, an international, multi-city push to showcase the cultural significance of biking. To get inspired, watch BFF’s compilation video of films […]
-
Philips wants to reward some innovative urban ideas
A rendering showing how rooftops in Sana’a, Yemen, could be used to collect water.The ideal of smart cities — technologically advanced, forward-thinking, and green — is big in corporate circles these days. IBM has its “Smarter Cities” program, Cisco has its “Smart+Connected Communities,” and the giant electronics corporation Philips has been promoting the concept of […]
-
An exclusive with the artist behind Detroit’s new Robocop statue
An iron pour from Westbrook’s performance at the University of West Georgia’s Art Incend event in October 2008.Photo: Casey WestbrookImagine a 10-foot-high steel bong filled with industrial grade coke that spews fire like Mordor and reaches temperatures hot enough to turn your radiator into a pool of molten slag. In the background, dimly illuminated by […]
-
Yo, Congress, you need to pony up $1B for global family planning
We’re surging toward a world population of 7 billion this year — and we still haven’t even made contraception available to everyone who wants it. The new “Million for a Billion” campaign aims to bridge that gap. Here’s a video to set the scene: Right now, 215 million women who want to avoid getting pregnant […]
-
Family values for population hawks: adopting a foster child
Photo: jrodmanjrLast month, Lisa Hymas posted a list of eight things all of us can do about population. It was a great roundup (my favorite was No. 4), but I’d like to add an item: If you really want to be a parent — that is, if you’d like to help guide and shape and […]
