Climate Culture

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  • Ask Umbra on drafty houses

    Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, I’ve heard that tightening up a leaky house is one of the best energy conservation tactics out there. Energy audits could save an enormous amount of fuel. My wife is very much opposed to this because she places a high value on fresh air exchange. Are there […]

    Ask Umbra® Culture

  • No Impact Man talks about making an impact

    First, Colin Beavan donned a superhero nickname and gave up electricity, fossil fuels, un-local food, and buying stuff. He blogged, he wrote a book, he let filmmakers follow his family around (his wife and daughter were roped in too). The New Yorker criticized the stunt, er, experiment. Grist weighed in. Beavan responded to, um, the […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Culture

  • SurvivaBall: Your individual climate-change adaptation strategy

    Halliburton’s custom-designed SurvivaBall.The world’s most upstanding corporate citizens, like Halliburton, Monsanto, and ExxonMobil, take climate change seriously.  It’s a serious opportunity for profit.  That’s why, in addition to spending millions to perpetuate the energy, environmental, and subsidy policies that sustain their ongoing operations, they’ve created this “gated community for one” — the SurvivaBall. Specially designed […]

    Emily Gertz Culture

  • Climate-news poem: Tck, tck, tck edition

    Clock block.This week saw heated multitudes descend on NYC Their passions were aflame, though some were acting quite icy. A human countdown filled the park with cries of Tck, Tck, Tck And Indy told his corporate pals this problem they could lick. Obama wowed the world by saying nothing much, and how! He met his […]

    Katharine Wroth Culture

  • Highs and lows from the world of green fashion

    What? Take away my Aqua Net?!nyki_m via flickrOK, really just one high and one low. It’s been a busy day. The high, fittingly, is related to hair. When I first saw an email subject line that began “Directional Runway Hair” float into my inbox earlier today, I honest-to-god thought it had something to do with […]

    Katharine Wroth Culture

  • Two new documentaries — ‘Crude’ and ‘Fuel’ — examine two sides of our petroleum problem

    Two new documentaries show the damaging effects of the world’s addiction to oil, each film from its own unique angle. Crude, which opened in New York on Sept. 9, traces the story of a lawsuit brought by 30,000 rural Ecuadorians against Chevron, which denies responsibility for turning their traditional rainforest home into a dumping ground […]

    Claire Thompson Culture

  • Actor Djimon Hounsou wants to show the human costs of climate change

    Djimon Hounsou at the U.N. Climate SummitPhoto: United NationsActor Djimon Hounsou is just as snacky in real life as he was on the big screen in Blood Diamond, The Island, and Gladiator.  Better yet, he’s also a climate activist and humanitarian. As a global ambassador for the aid and development group Oxfam, Hounsou has traveled […]

    Emily Gertz Culture

  • Umbra reports from the Age of Stupid premiere

    What do Stephen Baldwin, the Pope, and the Environment Minister of the Netherlands have in common? They’re all getting hot and bothered about climate change, and they were all at the premiere of Age of Stupid. (OK, the Pope sent a lackey, but he totally would have been there if he could.) Umbra Fisk surveys […]

    Ask Umbra® Culture

  • Ask Umbra on that new-car smell

    Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, I have an old and dying Cash for Clunker-eligible SUV with well over 210,000 miles on it … My problem is I find the VOC offgassing of new cars intolerable. Is there any way to offgas a new car before I drive it so that I am […]

    Ask Umbra® Culture

  • Can plastics make us fat?

    Hmm… That title doesn’t quite seem to capture the urgency of the issue, does it? Yet despite rampant skepticism, the data continue to pour in — chemicals in some of the most common plastics and household products, things that surround us every minute of the day, are major culprits in the obesity epidemic. At least […]

    Tom Laskawy Culture