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sustainable living

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    Ask Umbra’s Pearls of Wisdom on Independence Day

    Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave to a greener Fourth of July?Photo courtesy of Hryck via flickr It’s 4th of July weekend!  Time to “ooh” and “aah” and eat things on buns with mustard.  This year, dear Readers, make the most of the red, white and blue holiday.  Before and after the sparklers, […]

    Ask Umbra® Culture

  • How to be ‘Fast, Fresh, and Green’ in the kitchen [book review]

    Like recycling, listening to NPR, and caring about the World Cup, everyday cooking has become a de rigeur activity for those with certain class and cultural aspirations. And that’s as it should be. We need more home cooks. If diversified, human-scale, community-directed farms are going to thrive, then a much broader swath of the population […]

    Tom Philpott Culture

  • Cameron Sinclair and Kate Stohr

    Art: Nat Damm Cameron Sinclair and Kate Stohr Founders, Architecture for Humanity Sausalito, Calif. Cameron Sinclair and Kate Stohr, both 36, founded Architecture for Humanity in 1999 to promote architectural and design solutions to social and humanitarian crises. Their motto: “Design like you give a damn.” (That’s also the name of their book.) Since its […]

    Grist staff Culture

  • Without affordable clean alternatives, South Africa turns to coal

    South Africa’s finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, has an op ed in the Washington Post that illustrates the multi-faceted challenges facing developing nations as they struggle to provide the affordable access to modern energy needed to pull citizens out of poverty. The piece highlights the current tension between such objectives and simultaneous concerns about the environmental […]

    Jesse Jenkins Climate & Energy

  • Dispatches from the Phoenix Green Building Conference

    Recently, an interior designer and massage therapist named Becky Anderson helped me certify an Aspen Skiing Company building (Sam’s Restaurant) to LEED Gold. As a reward for her remarkable work, we sent her to the U.S. Green Building Council’s enormous, happening-like, and increasingly burning-man scale annual conference, which took place in Phoenix this fall and […]

    Auden Schendler Cities

  • It takes a community to sustain a small farm

    A local grocery store in Pleasantville, Iowa.Wikimedia Commons These days it seems the most popular person to be in the food system is the “local farmer.” Farmers markets are popping up everywhere, and their size and popularity grow all the time. Local food is trendy–even the First Family is in on it. But as anyone […]

    Steph Larsen Technology

  • Environmental education in Guinea Bissau

    The Presidential Palace. The Presidential Palace in Guinea Bissau lies derelict and burnt out. You can walk amongst the shards of broken crockery, blackened banisters, and singed carpets. Its empty rooms are a fitting metaphor for this failing state. Teachers in the public sector have not been paid in years. Portuguese, the official language, is […]

    Tim Bromfield Climate & Energy

  • Growing up green: How to shop for a green baby

    Photo courtesy Joe Shlabotnik via Flickr I guess I’ve known all along that introducing a baby into the family meant introducing a whole slew of stuff into our lives — much of it bulky, expensive, and — often — plastic. But I’m fighting all the media and social cues to go on a shopping spree […]

    Anna Fahey Culture

  • The 15 most sustainable U.S. cities

    Seattle is the most sustainable big city in the nation, according to a list compiled by Smarter Cities, an NRDC project that looks at the progress American cities are making toward going green. Not surprisingly, San Francisco and Portland are the runners-up. Using data from the EPA and the U.S. Census Bureau, as well as […]

    Claire Thompson Cities