Climate Culture

As corn and soy fields drown in rainwater, the food crisis deepens

A cornucopia of bad circumstances. Here in the United States, we grow 44 percent of the world’s corn crop, and 38 percent of its soy. For the great bulk of that massive harvest, we rely on a single region: the Midwestern farm belt. And over the past couple of weeks, torrential rains have hammered that […]

Radiant City is a mesmerizing documentary on sprawl

Radiant City is as described in the trailer -- oddly disturbing, strangely amusing, and sadly illuminating:

A terrific movie. It features planning guru/God Andres Duany and dyspeptic sprawlhater James Howard Kunstler (in a strange and hilarious tie that looks like he slept in it for a couple days) intoning, in a reasonable tone, some of their most on-target slams on sprawl and the suburban paradigm. It includes lots of "fun facts" about the suburbs, including one or two from Alan Durning's book The Car and the City.

Not quite up to Errol Morris standards, but really, really good documentary.

Eco-celebrity, design, and social justice coalesce in a new Brooklyn green space

Sun, open space, and celebrity — the opening of Brooklyn’s “Garden of Hope” had them all. On an unseasonably warm and sunny afternoon last month, Bette Midler was in high spirits as she celebrated the transformation of a slice of land between two century-old brownstones from a paved walkway with a few trees into a […]

As storms rage on the prairie, strawberries and rhubarb bring comfort

A bright spot in the storm. Gaia has been hard on us prairie-dwellers lately. A dear friend who’s the director of the area’s largest CSA lost her 102-year-old barn to a storm this weekend. Swelled with recent rains, the Iowa River has been raging, sloshing toward levels never seen before. Fortunately, my restaurant sits on […]

Something for everyone in the emerging green market

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Kari Manlove, fellows assistant at the Center for American Progress.

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Good news: Anyone looking for more environmentally responsible options now has choices. Green alternatives are turning up all over these days -- from children's toys to weddings.

Families concerned with all the reports in the last year of toys tainted with lead paint will be happy to hear there's a new market for toys that bypass lead and other potentially harmful chemicals completely.

Branch, a San Francisco-based sustainable design company, makes children's toys out of natural wool and bamboo. Nest and ChildTrek are similar companies offering natural toys made out of wood and other sustainable materials. Sensing the growing consumer demand, even Toys 'R' Us has "gone green," launching a new line of natural wood toys and dolls.

Toyota may have something up its sleeve

The first car I ever owned didn't have power anything. Today you will be hard pressed to find a car without power brakes and steering. But those features also consume energy. This explains how the first wave of economy cars from Japan got such notoriously high mileage (they didn't have power anything either).

One reason I chose a Yaris for my next car is that it has electric power steering and power brakes. In theory, you should be able to turn the engine off without losing power boost. I asked a mechanic at the dealership before I bought the Yaris if the power steering and brakes would continue to function with the engine turned off. "No, no," he said definitively. "It's just like any other car."

Surprise! The mechanic didn't know what he was talking about. I've turned the Yaris engine off several times now while going downhill and the power boost systems continue to function just fine. Don't try this at home.

[update] Seriously, don't try this at home. The mechanic was partially right. I've discovered that, given enough time, the brake boost system will eventually depressurize leaving you with insufficient braking at the bottom of a long hill. The Toyota engineers left power boost running just long enough to get you out of a pickle in the event of inadvertent engine shutdown.

The Great White Way goes green

Photo: Springsun via Flickr Mamma Mia! Broadway is going green. Inspired by An Inconvenient Truth, producer David Stone (who recently greened his hit musical Wicked) met with other Broadway big-wigs and the folks at NRDC in an effort to get the theater industry singing a more sustainable tune. There may be five hundred twenty-five thousand […]

A car-free mom gets her muscles — and mind — in shape for summer

I’ve started running a few times a week. Each morning, I grab the clothes I’ve set out the night before and finish getting dressed in the garage, because I don’t want to wake my family. Then I go into my neighborhood and run, although running is a misnomer. Really, it’s more of a jog — […]

Eco-diaper bag has good cause, lousy price

As an expectant motha, I have to admit my editor’s eye now pauses on headlines I might normally have skipped before. Like, uh, “Collaboration Gives Birth to Innovative Eco-Diaper Bag.” Seems Seventh Generation, Healthy Child Healthy World, William McDonough, and two design and manufacturing firms have built a PVC-free, Cradle to Cradle-certified bag made from […]

Umbra on biking with kids

Umbra, Your columns have opened up a whole new world on transport by bike. I don’t have a question but am considering purchasing our second Xtracycle for our family. I can carry our toddler and all our groceries, or another adult, or a cooler full of beer on one side and camping gear on the […]