Climate Culture

Voluntary actions didn’t get us civil rights, and they won’t fix the climate

Strange but true: Energy-efficient light bulbs and hybrid cars are hurting our nation’s budding efforts to fight global warming. More precisely, every time an activist or politician hectors the public to voluntarily reach for a new bulb or spend extra on a Prius, ExxonMobil heaves a big sigh of relief. Scientists now scream the news […]

Toilet running? Better go catch it!

You know, this is probably more effective than about 99% of the PSAs you see on TV.

Lessons from Burning Man 2007

A man in a hardhat just dropped off his chicken for me to mind -- a Japanese Silkie who watched me with one surprisingly smart eye as I typed this post. I reassured her I was a vegetarian, and she seemed to relax. After a few minutes, the man in the hardhat returned, thanked me, and said he was off to find a blowdryer so he could give the little hen a bath. Playa dust has coated her feathers.

If it had been Monday, I might have thought this strange. But it's Sunday, and along with nearly 48,000 other people at Burning Man I've weathered two battering whiteouts of several hours each, and ingested some things I probably shouldn't have, and it was only after he'd walked away that I reflected back on the incident as unusual. That's what's great about this place: The Playa cracks your mind wide open. The spectrum of reasonable behavior widens. You question old prejudices and drop useless restrictions. Your mind frees up to learn.

So what better place to learn new tricks for reducing our dependence on fossil fuels? For coming to understand -- in a visceral, tactile, immediate way -- what it means to produce and expend energy?

This, I assume, is what the exhibits under the Man, in the Green Pavilion, were supposed to accomplish. There was a game you could play, in which you threw hacky-sacks at little boards painted with images of oil rigs and smoke stacks, hoping to knock them over. There was the "Single-Cell Solution," an exhibit by the Chlorophyll Collective, which takes up exhaust from biodiesel generators in fluid-filled tubes, feeds those nitrogen-rich emissions into a pond where it feeds algae. The algae can be used to make more biodiesel: A closed fuel cycle. A marvel. Why aren't we doing this on a large scale? What would it take?

Smeg me

Pardon me a little gadget porn as I ogle these Smeg refrigerators, which have made it to the states at last. Despite the unfortunate name, it’s on my Christmas list: They’re extremely efficient, too: 305 kWh / year. I know, I know. If I was a real enviro I wouldn’t refrigerate food.

From DIY to Dirty

The perfect dorm Attention back-to-school shoppers: nothing impresses a sexy coed more than a DIY chair made of recycled six-pack rings. So get to … studying. Photo: Adam Johnson Stick ’em up People who live on the sticks follow strict rules. Lollipops, corn dogs, and kebabs in the morning; pick-up sticks and pogo-ing in the […]

Travel site sends out eco-themed newsletter

You know when you’re searching for airline tickets and you get that feeling that there might be a cheaper flight somewhere if you just check one more discount-airfare website? Yeah, I hate that. Which is why I like using Kayak.com, an aggregator that finds the prices at a number of different discount sites as well […]

Are you trying to buy more American-made products?

Are any of you green-leaning types trying to buy more or all U.S.-made products these days, perhaps inspired by the toxic-toy scandals, fair-trade concerns, buy-local movements, exuberant patriotism, or anything else? Let us know.

A mysterious World Cup goes green

The sporting! It continues to go green! Solar panels on stadium roofs, recycled pitch-watering systems and fair trade snacks for half time should make the World Cup a model for environmentally friendly sporting events, French officials said on Tuesday. It’s the rugby World Cup that they speak of, by the by. You’d have to search […]

College residence halls trending toward green … and not-so-green

I’m excited about this new trend toward green dorm design and decor, such as the Green Campus Program in California wherein new students can tour a dorm room pimped out with, for example, "hemp towels, organic cotton sheets, a reusable elephant grass shopping basket, and bed frames made of recycled train tracks." But I’m bummed […]

Bloggy backslapping

Adam Stein is never wiser or more perspicacious than when he’s, uh, agreeing with me.