Climate Culture

Brad Pitt wants you — to help with his NOLA green-building project

Brad Pitt — OMG he’s so dreamy! Sorry, reflex. Where were we? Brad Pitt today unveiled designs submitted by architecture firms for his Make It Right campaign to build 150 affordable, sustainable, storm-safe houses in New Orleans. Architects were asked to design a 1,200-square-foot, three-bedroom house for about $150,000. Pitt also unveiled a display of […]

From Booze to Boos

They’ve got the Labatt blues Dear Canada, if you care at all about the earth, you’ll get rid of all your beer fridges. And if you care at all about peaceful international relations, you’ll send your surplus booze our way. Love, America. Photo: iStockphoto Razing Arizona An Arizona real estate developer can’t fathom raising his […]

A plate for vegetarians

Judge it for yourself.

Building an eco-home from a favorite holiday sweet

When my friend Deanna told me that she wanted to make a gingerbread house this year — and, in particular, to do so on Black Friday, aka Buy Nothing Day — I immediately asked if we could make an environmentally sound house. The chances of my ever being able to afford the real-life eco-house of […]

Umbra on living Christmas trees

Hi Umbra, I’m surprised that in your column on Christmas trees, you didn’t mention the option of living trees, although I know they cannot be subjected to our warm indoor temperatures for very long. Can you discuss the option of living trees, how to treat them indoors, and what to do with them after the […]

Cheap, possibly green PC hot item at Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart has always been a place of consumer frenzy at the beginning of the holiday shopping season, and this year is no exception. What's different is that one of the items flying off the shelf faster than they can restock it is the "Everex gPC," a cheap (less than $200) desktop computer.

Umbra on used cooking oil

Dear Umbra, It’s always nice to look through cookbooks and to watch cooking shows that feature yummy deep-fried food, and I have often been tempted to try and cook my own creations. However, no one ever seems to mention what they do with the used cooking oil, especially after deep-frying. What is the best way […]

How do U.K. cities stack up in terms of sustainability?

Peter Madden, chief executive of Forum for the Future, writes a monthly column for Gristmill on sustainability in the U.K. and Europe.

Every year more and more people live in cities. Globally, we became a majority urban world for the first time last year, while here in the U.K., nine out of 10 of us live in towns and cities.

Cities are clearly important for sustainability. Although the romantic green notion of us all living on small holdings with a goat, a vineyard, and a vegetable patch is seductive, the future is much more likely to be dominated by megacities such as Mumbai, Shanghai, and Sao Paulo. We will have to learn to make such cities liveable and sustainable.

Concentrating people in urban centers does make it easier to provide some social and environmental services. But the big cities also have a huge environmental footprint. London, for example, has an ecological footprint 293 times its geographical area.

Cities are also important as centres of dynamism. They are where social, cultural, and economic innovation and change happens. Yet despite the undoubted importance of cities, most of the environment movement in the U.K. is still predominantly rural- and wildlife-oriented. They defend and protect stuff most ordinary people will never see. The greens haven't been very good at doing green cities.

Our big cities, on the other hand, haven't done a very good job of being sustainable either. Lots of our leading cities are making green claims. Manchester is determined to become "the Greenest City in Britain by 2010," Leicester calls itself "the environment city," Bristol wants to become a "Green Capital," and London is aiming for nothing less than the status of "most sustainable city in the world." But behind such claims there is very little objective measurement of what it means to be sustainable. We certainly don't have anywhere that really stands out as an example of overall good practice.

So, we at Forum for the Future decided to get stuck into the debate on sustainable urbanism. We researched and published a table ranking our 20 biggest cities.

A study on gender equality as a prerequisite for sustainable development — debunked!

Lord knows we men are to blame for most things -- but global warming?

Yes -- according to a major new report (PDF) by Gerd Johnsson-Latham for the Environment Advisory Council of the Environment Ministry of ... wait for it ... Sweden. The report's focus:

What we know about the extent to which women globally live in a more sustainable way than men, leave a smaller ecological footprint and cause less climate change.

Ouch! Don't look at me -- I telecommute; my wife takes the car.

If gender equality is in fact a prerequisite for sustainable development, it's definitely be time to buy property on high ground. Fortunately, the theory is debunked by a best-selling nonfiction book: Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.

This is fatal to Gerd's theory. After all, which of those two planets is cold -- and which is "a 900-degree inferno" with a "runaway greenhouse effect," to quote a 2002 NASA study?

The defense rests.

Don’t forget