Climate Culture

Knitters seek out eco-friendly yarn

Photo: iStockphoto Knitting is a hot hobby these days — raise your hand if you received a hand-knit scarf as a holiday gift — and stitch ‘n’ bitch regulars are eager to break out from toxic-dyed, pesticide-sprayed cotton yarn. The next time you’re in the yarn store, keep an eye out for a to-be-sweater of […]

A food writer looks back at 2007, from supermarket monstrosities to organic-garden epiphanies

While I peeled the apples for Apple Brown Betty recently (see recipe below), I had time to think about the food-related highs and lows of the past year. What was my most disconcerting food experience of 2007? Three interactions with the industrial food system vie for first place. We’re holding out for grape-sized apples. Photo: […]

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke on carbon-heavy touring

Wired this month features an interesting conversation between Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke and musician David Byrne. In it, Yorke, a longtime vegan whose 2006 solo effort focused on global warming, mentions his carbon-related guilt about touring. Here’s the relevant clip: Yorke: … [At] the moment we make money principally from touring. Which is hard for […]

British supermarket expands bike-trailer program

Bike to store. Pick up free bike trailer. Fill trailer with groceries. Hitch it up and ride home. Return trailer within three days. That’s the dreamy concept at the Waitrose supermarket chain in Jolly Olde Englande, where the free-trailer scheme is being tried out at a handful of stores. Says a department manager, “There are […]

A review of six hand and body lotions

January, 1993. I am a college freshman returning to school after the holiday break. Rushing upstairs to see my friends, I burst gleefully into a dorm room, only to have one of them greet me with horror. “Dude, what’s wrong with your face?” Love the skin you’re in. Until that moment, I hadn’t known anything […]

EPA launches cell-phone recycling campaign

As many as 150 million cell phones are taken out of service in the U.S. each year, and some 80 percent end up in the landfill, where they leach toxins into the air and water. In an attempt to address the problem, the U.S. EPA today launched a campaign to boost cell-phone reuse and recycling. […]

We can consume less without sacrificing well-being

Something I meant to mention last week: Jared Diamond, author of the much-lauded book Collapse, had an op-ed in The New York Times making some simple and important points about consumption rates (along with some rather silly side arguments). The basic idea is that per-capita consumption in the West is very high; per-capita consumption rates […]

Umbra on Camelbaks

Dear Umbra, Recently, I’ve started to try to avoid plastics (especially plastic water bottles). For Christmas, my brother gave me a Camelbak-type water bottle. How safe is this? I assume it’s as bad as most plastic water bottles. Timothy Kearney Issaquah, Wash. Dearest Timothy, Gifting quandary alert. But does it suck? Photo: iStockphoto Not all […]

What will it take to make 2008 great?

The following guest post is by Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), originally published on Climate Progress. He is the co-author of Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy.

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Now that our New Year's Eve party hats are put away, it's time to look to the next year in the battle against global warming. In the year 2007, some good things did indeed happen on this front. Measures significantly improving car mileage standards and promoting the growth of renewable fuels were signed into law. But if 2007 was a year that could be considered in some ways good, then 2008 needs to be a year that will be great.

Nothing else will do. The cataclysms of one million square miles of ice melting in the Arctic, a several-fold increase in the rate of melting tundra, and the acceleration of melting in Greenland, foretell possible feedback mechanisms that demand a faster and more aggressive clean energy revolution than we even envisioned a year ago. Whatever we thought necessary on New Year's Day 2007 needs to be doubled in 2008.

So what will it take to make '08 great? Three things will do the trick.

Compact fluorescents can cause health problems, say groups

As Australia, Britain, and the good ol’ U.S. of A make plans to phase out traditional energy-sucking light bulbs, health concerns are being raised about compact fluorescents, the most popular alternative. The British Association of Dermatologists says CFLs can cause rashes on folks with photosensitive skin, the U.K. Migraine Action Association suggests that the bulbs […]