Climate Culture

Umbra on fireworks

Dear Umbra, Our family has always lit a fair amount of fireworks for our 4th of July celebration. I would like to encourage my family and friends to find other ways to celebrate due to the CO2 emissions that will result. However, I don’t really know how much carbon is emitted. I already have to […]

After All, She Knows The Secret

Poll respondents pick Al, Oprah, and Kofi as climate messengers Recent polls have shown that people all over the world … join hands, start a love train, love train! Oh sorry, we get distracted. People all over the world are worried about the environment — and the latest poll says that Oprah could help save […]

Another rad bike

The coolest, greenest bike ever.

Tubular, dude!

Nature is still the best engineer -- though good human ones take advantage whenever possible.

Here's a terrific, hopeful story about a bike designer who got a dog-gone good idea about making bike frames out of a widely grown, cheap, strong, environmentally sound material: bamboo.

Now we just need to get BioD and this guy hooked up:

What next? Socialized medicine?

A new report (PDF) claims that more Americans are likely to opt for diesel vehicles over hybrids in the near future in the quest for fuel economy: total sales of hybrids and diesels will hit 2.7 million annually by 2012, and diesels will account for more than half (1.5 million) of those sales.

"A new diesel's cost burden is lower than hybrid's for similar fuel economy -- even with the 'clean' technologies needed to meet tough U.S. emissions regulations (including California)," the report claims.

Good or bad, there's little doubt that more diesel vehicles are on the horizon.

15 Green Movies

And … action! We’ve reeled in a cast of green-themed flicks; pop some popcorn, see what made the cut, then play critic in the comments section at the bottom of the page. An Inconvenient Truth Mr. Gore went to Washington, and we all know how that turned out. But when Al hit Hollywood, it was […]

From Die Hard to Diet

Welcome to the party, pal Is Bruce Willis saying he’d live green or die hard? On David Letterman this week, the fourquel star wore a wind turban and recycled-rubber boxers, joked about “global humidity,” and plugged a new film project, An Unappealing Hunch. Uh, what you talkin’ ’bout, Willis? Photo: Harold Cunningham / WireImage.com Pipe […]

So much good stuff, so little time to blather about it

Dear readers, as of tomorrow, I’m on vacation, visiting my ancestral homeland (the American South), not to return until July 9. My plan is to test physiological limits: just how much sleeping can one person do in nine days? There were about a gazillion things I wanted to write about before leaving, but obviously coal […]

A guide to grilling without red meat

As July 4th approaches, it’s time to prepare for picnics and BBQs — and, if you’re eating less and less red meat these days, you’re probably devising alternative strategies for these occasions. There are two main approaches to dealing with this situation: substituting other foods in place of red meat, or bumping dishes that used […]

My farm hits the newstands

It’s startling to see an article in Gourmet — the “magazine of good living” — end with a man groping for a bag of potato chips. It’s even more startling when that man is you. That’s the precise position I found myself in a few days ago, when the July issue of Gourmet (unavailable online) […]