Climate Culture

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  • Umbra on countertops

    With the home remodeling boom, we keep wondering: what is the best countertop choice? We’ve gone through a couple homes since getting married, and are now considering building our own. Laminate, Formica, butcher block, concrete, granite, plastic, composite, tile … they all have their own durability merits and drawbacks, but from creation to home health, […]

    Ask Umbra® Culture

  • From Hot to Hott

    AC dicey Americans know what to do when it’s hotter than firecrotch out there: crank the AC and use more juice than ever before! We salute thee, supreme energy-suckers. Conservation be damned. Photo: iStockphoto. Drink. Lick. Stir. Repeat. Beat the heat with a chill “Lollipoptail” — so named when Cynthia Nixon dipped an organic Pomegranate […]

    Katharine Wroth & Sarah van Schagen Culture

  • Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard chats about the band’s environmental ethos

    Pearl Jam. Photo: Danny Clinch.  Stone Gossard, hard-rock guitarist and founding member of Pearl Jam, has a soft spot for the environment. Maybe it’s the water-meets-mountains scenery surrounding his Pacific Northwest home. Or that name of his. But the guy knows green. He’s even got his own pimped-out 1982 Mercedes Benz, which runs on used […]

    Sarah van Schagen Culture

  • Sundance Channel Green

    This just in:

    Sundance founder, Robert Redford announced today that Sundance Channel will launch SUNDANCE CHANNEL GREEN, a weekly primetime destination block focusing on environmental topics, in early 2007. Consisting of three hours of hosted programming, SUNDANCE CHANNEL GREEN will present original series and documentary premieres about the earth's ecology and concepts of "green" living that balance human needs with responsible environmental stewardship. With SUNDANCE CHANNEL GREEN, Sundance Channel becomes the first television network in the United States to establish a significant, regularly-scheduled programming destination dedicated entirely to the environment.

    Cool! More below the fold:

    Chris Schults Culture

  • Umbra on CDs and MP3s

    Dear Umbra, As I was carrying a stack of CDs from the car into my home, my sister laughed and showed me the size of her MP3 player, which contains well over 100 times the music at a fraction of the size. Environmentally, which causes less of an impact? I hear that all these (non-recyclable) […]

    Ask Umbra® Culture

  • Funny

    (from SFGate via Groovy Green)

    Chris Schults Culture

  • Umbra on recycling tapes and videos

    Dear Umbra, What to do? I’m a child of the late ’70s, and one of the last to remember what it was like to exchange a mix tape at age 15. Now I’m hitting my 30s, and realize I still have that Color Me Badd tape. I really want to chuck it, but don’t have […]

    Ask Umbra® Culture

  • From Wine to Wood

    Nice jugs When winemaker Carlo Rossi looks at a pair of jugs, he sees art. His new furniture collection — or “functional pieces of pure jug leisure” — includes a Chardonnay Chandelier, a Cabernet Couch, and a Sangria Sound System. For this oenophile, it’s all about “jug shui.” Photo: carlorossi.com The “Greatest Generation” thing was […]

    David Roberts & Sarah van Schagen Culture

  • Lawn Gone

    Homeowners rethink their water-sucking lawns A “delawning” movement is sprouting up around the U.S., as a handful of homeowners switch from resource-intensive grassy green expanses to drought-tolerant, native, and/or edible gardens. “It’s about shifting ideas of what’s beautiful,” says Fritz Haeg, an L.A. architect whose Edible Estates project transforms front yards into fruit and vegetable […]

    Grist staff Culture

  • Talking Points

    Climate and energy have entered mainstream dialog. They're being discussed on op-ed pages and cable news, by ordinary people around the water cooler (do they still have those?), outside of environmental and policy-wonk circles. Hell, Rory's grandparents bought her a Prius on Gilmore Girls. Or so I hear.

    This is all to the good: these are extraordinarily important issues, and every concerned citizen should be at least minimally educated about them.

    Problem is, there are lots of folks out there with a vested interest in confusing people and derailing these discussions. They are armed with misleading factoids and bogus rhetorical tricks, and seek to kick up enough dust to convince the public that it's all just too complex and they should leave it up to politicians -- politicians bought by the very vested interests in question. There are massive misinformation campaigns afoot, and your average Joe or Jane is outgunned.

    So, I'm starting a series of posts called Talking Points. The idea is to provide short bits of ammunition for y'all to take out into the public square. I want to collect arguments or ideas or notions or turns of phrase that might be useful when talking to people about climate- and energy-related matters. I'll try to avoid wonkiness and scientific jargon.

    And of course I'd love it if you left your own talking points in comments, or emailed them to me.

    Stay tuned.

    David Roberts Culture