May 2010
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February 2010
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You think you're so clever, huh?
Climate change couldn’t possibly be real! How do I know? Look outside, asshat! We’ve had a metric fuckload of snow this year. And … game. Set. Match.
Not so fast!
Here are the facts.
Fact: Climate change causes more frequent and severe snowstorms
Record snowstorms need two things: temperatures below freezing, and very high humidity. On a planet warmer by a few degrees on...
January 2010
4 posts
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Bin Laden blasts US for climate change →
Fuuuuuck. The man’s got a point. Well played, asshole.
He blamed Western industrialized nations for hunger, desertification and floods across the globe, and called for “drastic solutions” to global warming, and “not solutions that partially reduce the effect of climate change.”
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Finding a Way to Pay for Green Makeovers →
This is exactly the stuff I work on and it’s so encouraging to see it in The New York Times. In fact, the subject of the article, Sean Neill, is a colleague whom I’ve worked with for a few years. Last March, I helped organize a conference on green leasing; he was a speaker.
Building legislation and green leases aren’t sexy. They don’t make headlines on sites like...
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“Detroit is particularly well suited to become a pioneer in urban agriculture at...”
– What Should We Do With a Semi-Abandoned U.S. City? » INFRASTRUCTURIST
Hantz Farms will use a trellised system that’s compact, highly efficient, and tourist-friendly. It won’t be like apple picking in Massachusetts, and that’s the point. Score wants visitors to Hantz Farms to see that...
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December 2009
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Letter to the Editor: In New York City, a Bill to... →
Rohit Aggarwala, Director of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, explains how proposed legislation will reduce energy consumption in buildings and significantly curtail the city’s carbon footprint, while creating jobs and maintaining economic competitiveness. He spoke on these matters at a conference I helped organize last week.
Consider it a much-needed...
November 2009
3 posts
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Obama to Go to Copenhagen With Pledge of Emissions... →
Mr. Obama will tell the delegates to the climate conference that the United States intends to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions “in the range of” 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050, officials said.
Yeah, we’re fucked. Awesome gesture but not enough. And this is contingent on Congress making strict news laws against carbon pollution … not likely.
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Watchlauraemily:
Last week I had the pleasure of seeing Nobel Prize winner Al Gore speak at the American Museum of Natural History on his new book Our Choice.
I sat 3rd row center, right behind Tipper, entranced as our former vice-president gave the most inspiring, informative, entertaining talks I have ever attended. The man speaks with such experience and authority, such compassion that I cannot...
October 2009
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September 2009
5 posts
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When the solution creates another problem...
NPR reports:
More than twenty years ago, an international treaty known as the Montreal Protocol phased out a group of chemicals that were destroying the earth’s ozone layer.
But since then, scientists have discovered that that some of the chemicals developed to replace those destructive compounds might be contributing to another problem: global warming.
These new chemicals are known as...
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Cleaning some of the Fox off of Van Jones →
If you want to know what Jones thinks now, instead of what he thought in his early 20s, read his book: The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems. He’s out to save America’s free-market economy and get its people working. If the conservative movement were smart it would take yes for an answer and claim him as one if its own. But then, it’s not smart. It’s Beck.
...
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August 2009
7 posts
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“That’s more or less the premise of the “Eco Assist” dashboard features on the...”
– Upcoming Honda Insight Turns Eco-Friendly Driving Into Game (via @arainert, dpstyles & mattlehrer).
The coming electric cars might just be cool enough to make this NYC girl want to drive again.
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Plastics in Ocean Decompose After All →
And that’s not good news. Islands of plastic waste floating in the oceans are filled with supposedly “indestructible” plastics that are decomposing quickly and releasing toxic substances into the water.
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Planting the garden is just the beginning
Last week, I had dinner with a woman who works for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden doing outreach to the borough’s growing number of home gardeners and community gardens (plots of land managed by a dedicated cadre of neighbors). She said that a lot of the education she does is about the potential dangers of Brooklyn soil. In many areas, there are high levels of certain toxins that can seep into...
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Climate Change Measure Should Be Set Aside, U.S.... →
Close your eyes. Imagine for a moment that some how, some way, the White House and Congress cobble together a civilized public health care system. Within a decade, Americans are healthier than they’ve been in a generation. Preventative care available to everyone has led to fewer ER visits and fewer instances of chronic, avoidable diseases, like diabetes, heart disease, and some forms of...
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Things are about to get real, fast.
Forget the threat of another Katrina, or Lower Manhattan under water, or drought and famine in Sub-Saharan Africa, or even the effin’ polar bears — French wine is in danger:
Leading figures from the French wine and food industries are urging their government to push for a strong global agreement at a United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen in December, warning that failure to cut...
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July 2009
10 posts
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Here's the Meat of the Problem →
Join us.
According to a 2006 United Nations report, livestock accounts for 18 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Some of meat’s contribution to climate change is intuitive. It’s more energy efficient to grow grain and feed it to people than it is to grow grain and turn it into feed that we give to calves until they become adults that we then slaughter to feed to people. Some of...
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Teen Decomposes Plastic Bag in Three Months →
Plastic takes thousands of years to decompose — but 16-year-old science fair contestant Daniel Burd made it happen in just three months.
The Waterloo, Ontario high school junior figured that something must make plastic degrade, even if it does take millennia, and that something was probably bacteria.
(Via Arif Mamdani.)
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William Shatner continues his reign of comedic... →
You’ve seen him do a dramatic interpretation of Governor Palin’s incoherent resignation speech, now hear his voicemail chiding Hewlett-Packard employees for breaking the company’s 2007 promise to stop using toxic chemicals in its computers. On the same day the message turned up in their voicemail boxes, Greenpeace activists wrote “HAZARDOUS PRODUCTS” on the roof of...
Climate Change
squashed’s response to this idiotic exchange is awesome.
sds writes:
[A] new study published online today in the journal Nature Geoscience … found that only about half of the warming that occurred during a natural climate change 55 million years ago can be explained by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. What caused the remainder of the warming is a mystery.
~ USA Today “Science...
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“When it comes to eliminating actual pollutants such as mercury, particulate...”
– Bill Frezza: Clean Coal: An Unsustainable Political Myth
This whole, short article is worth a look.
(via mattlehrer)
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Tucker Carlson has a question for Jeb Bush
From “Jeb Bush: The Future of the Republican Party”:
Do you believe global warming is primarily man-made?
I’m a skeptic. I’m not a scientist. I think the science has been politicized. I would be very wary of hollowing out our industrial base even further… It may be only partially man-made. It may not be warming by the way. The last six years we’ve actually...
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“When it comes to saving money and growing our economy, energy efficiency...”
– Energy Secretary Steven Chu, in a statement yesterday announcing new standards for lighting that will boost the efficiency of fluorescent tubes (yep, the very things casting the unattractive glow as you read this in your office cube).
The standards will come into effect in 2012 and by 2042, they...
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If you eat food in America, see "Food, Inc."
The 90-minute documentary will disgust, infuriate, and inspire you. Multinational food conglomerates, with the help of their cronies in government, have spent millions of dollars to make sure the average consumer never learns the things you learn in this film.* As we watched pigs being roughly herded to their deaths in the nation’s largest slaughterhouse, I turned to Andrea. “So,...
June 2009
15 posts
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A Guide to Sustainable Food Blogs →
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Sears Tower to Be Revamped to Produce Most of Its... →
You go, Chi-town!
By the way, I wrote about the Empire State Building retrofit here and about NYC’s proposed package of green building legislation here. On Friday, I attended City Council hearings about the legislation. It was standing room only, and the mood was decidedly jubilant (though not everyone is in favor — namely, those who represent the real estate industry). However, it...
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Science and the planet sold out for a bowl of... →
This legislation might be our last hope of tackling climate change before it’s too late.
It looks like that hope is lost.
From The Reality-Based Community:
[Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry] Waxman appears to have sold out the indirect land use issue in a deal with [Agriculture Chairman Collin] Petersonon the climate change bill.
Waxman also consented to block EPA from calculating...
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Putting A Financial Spin On Global Warming →
Interesting segment on NPR this morning on an Oakland think tank, The Breakthrough Institute, that is aiming to make clean energy as cheap as possible through government-supported innovation, rather than making carbon expensive through regulation.
Michael Shellenberger, one of the Institute’s founders, explains his position to a group of new summer interns:
“When was the last time...
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You'll have to pry my car out of my cold, dead,...
But seriously … meet you in Kalawao?
Air Toxins Raise Cancer Risk In U.S. Neighborhoods:
Millions of people living in nearly 600 neighborhoods across the country are breathing concentrations of toxic air pollutants that put them at a much greater risk of contracting cancer, according to new data from the Environmental Protection Agency.
The levels of 80 cancer-causing substances...
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Extreme green: the nudist vacation →
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Sunlight Foundation blasts climate-bill secrecy →
1,200 pages of … what?
250 pages were stuffed into the already behemoth climate energy bill (which focuses on cap-and-trade legislation) and members of the House’s Energy and Commerce committee have just 24 hours to absorb and make changes.
And that’s how Washington sausage gets made.
(Via jake_brewer.)
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Gotham Greens: NYC's first hydroponic rooftop farm →
I’m the staff adviser for the CUNY Urban Agriculture Study Group, and we have a blog. If you’re interested in this topic, follow urbanagriculture.
Via urbanagriculture:
“We are trying to demonstrate that sustainable, urban agriculture can be economically viable in the city,” said the company’s greenhouse director, Jennifer Nelkin, 30.
Nevin Cohen, an assistant professor of Urban...
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Spam Emails: the SUVs of the Internet
The Economist reports:
“According to a report from an environmental consultancy… some 62 trillion unsolicited e-mails were sent in 2008, using 33 terawatt hours of electricity. That is equivalent to the energy consumed by 1.5m American homes or 3.1m cars over a year. If generated by coal-fired power stations it would release 17m tonnes of carbon dioxide, some 0.2% of global emissions of this...
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Shell to Pay Out $15.5 Million to Settle Landmark... →
Amy Goodman reports:
The oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has agreed to pay a $15.5 million settlement to avoid a trial over its alleged involvement in human rights violations in the Niger Delta. The case was brought on behalf of ten plaintiffs who accused Shell of complicity in the 1995 executions of Nigerian writer and environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others. Ken Saro-Wiwa was the founding...
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“Sheikh Maktoum built his showcase city in a place with no useable water. None....”
– The dark side of Dubai - Johann Hari, Commentators - The Independent (via wiesen)
Dubai scares the beejesus out of me.
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What One Stimulus Buck Could Do →
Sounds like a fantasy, but Santa Fe-based architect Edward Mazria has done the math, and his “14x” plan, which he calculates will generate $14 in private spending for every stimulus buck spent, is creating major buzz in city halls and statehouses across the country.
Mazria was in Washington, D.C., last week pitching his plan to senators, administration officials, and perhaps more importantly,...
May 2009
8 posts
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