Climate Culture

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.

Is Burning Man living up to its Green Man intentions?

The headline refers to a sign that appears as you drive (or as I drove, in a huge white pickup truck) into the Playa at five miles an hour, and it's not a bad summary of the enviro discussion here at Burning Man. How can you really be green at an event you have to drive hundreds of miles to, mostly through desert, with all your heavy crap in the car? Where will all those plastic water bottles end up? Is there such thing as a petroleum-free camp? What about all those Zip Ties, the preferred technology for securing dome coverings and lights on your bike?

Is Burning Man this year anywhere close to carbon-free?

No, says Andie Grace, the woman who ably answers the media here. "We're doing everything we can to lessen the footprint, but we can't make it disappear. After all, to do that we'd all have to sit home, strip naked, and eat grubs."

Which is not to say there isn't good stuff going on here. Says BMan's enviro czar Tom Price, "We are at or slightly ahead of our expectations. We switched 90 percent from red diesel, which comes from places like Saudi Arabia, to biodiesel that comes from Minden, Nevada." (Problems with biodiesel clogging generator filters -- which is does, because it scours out previous petroleum deposits in those gennies -- have been resolved by changing filters.)

The Man, which is currently in the process of being rebuilt, is lighted with neon powered with a 30 kilowatt solar array, which also powers the entire man complex. It's also powering the power tools the powerful construction people are using to rebuild the Man (which burned unexpectedly early Tuesday morning during the lunar eclipse. It was epic and historic, and a good time was had by all).

When that solar array, donated by Renewable Ventures, MMA, comes down on Saturday before the burn, "we're going to build 120 kilowatts in the town of Gerlach," says Price, "and 60 kilowatts in the town of Lovelock. That's two million dollars in free renewable energy."

Plus, once you get here, you ride your bike everywhere. Or your scooter. Or something. But you don't drive your car for a week. As Burning Man founder Larry Harvey said, "that offsets something."

I will take this back after I've been home for a month, but right now, sitting here in my skimpy pink dress, using a solar-powered WiFi connection on my solar-powered laptop looking out that the spectacular Esplanade full of solar-powered art and just digging the ambient laughter and music of strangers, it seems like Burning Man really could change the ... okay, okay. I'll stop now.

Next post: How Albertson's grocery store became a beacon of environmental ethics after its execs visited the Playa last year.

Animal-rights groups point out the climatic effect of meat-eating

With which instrument do you cause more greenhouse-gas emissions: your car key or your fork? It’s a question asked in an advertising campaign by the Humane Society, which, along with other big animal-rights groups, is striving to open consumers’ eyes to an oft-overlooked connection: the climatic impact of eating meat. Bolstered by a recent United […]

Leo’s feel-good press conference is interrupted by a feel-bad question

Leonardo DiCaprio at the premiere of The 11th Hour. Alex Berliner © Berliner Studio/BEImages When celebrities embrace environmental concerns, cranky naysayers pop up like toadstools after a rainstorm. But the mansions and private jets those critics seize upon, while easy targets, might not be the real problem. It might just be that green-leaning celebrities and […]

Survey reveals truth about environmental fibs

A study by (insurance company?) Norwich Union has unearthed the truth about how green Brits really are: The good news: Of the 1,580 people surveyed across Britain, more than half considered unethical living as much of a social taboo as drunk driving — or, as the Brits call it, drink-driving. The bad news: Due to […]

Australian newspaper identifies consumerism as warming culprit

I was just in Australia, spending some love miles (my wife is an Aussie) but also giving some talks, and while there I was interviewed by a journalist named Wendy Frew from the Sydney Morning Herald. She did a nice piece (August 9) on Greenhouse Development Rights called "Rich will have to help poor to save climate," which is perhaps notable for containing the dulcet phrase "coal is the enemy of mankind."

But that's not what I'm writing about.