Green Building: LEEDing Us Where?
What good does green building do when our cities are, by design, ecological train wrecks?
What good does green building do when our cities are, by design, ecological train wrecks?
Foreign Policy explores the history of “cap and trade” – the phrase and the concept.
Food packaging seems like a straightforward problem with a straightforward solution: there’s too much of it; it piles up in landfill; we should reduce it. These opinions are standard among environmentalists, many of whom have undertaken impassioned campaigns to shroud consumer goods-including food-in less and less plastic, cardboard, and aluminum.
As the SuperFreakonomics chapter on global warming suggests, solutions that are initially viewed as repugnant sometimes gain acceptance over time. Consider, for example, that environmental groups have supported a “last-ditch effort” by Illinois environmental officials to dump a toxic chemical into a canal. The purpose?
Every newly purchased mobile phone comes with a new charger. Even if you’ve already got a working charger from your last phone, chances are it won’t work with the new one. It’s redundant.
One of the hottest topics among business people is how to increase profits by being environmentally friendly. There are many ways to achieve this. At hotels, for instance, by not washing towels during a guest’s stay unless the guest asks, the hotel saves both money and the environment. Green innovations can be featured in advertising campaigns to attract customers. Another potential benefit of “going green” is that it makes environmentally-minded employees happy, increasing their loyalty to the firm.
A Berlin brothel has hit on another way to use environmental arguments to its benefit.
With almost every major automaker working on one, electric propulsion may finally be poised to break out. Or is it?
According to the Brazilian environmental organization SOS Mata Atlantica, a household that flushes its toilet one less time per day saves more than 1,100 gallons of water per year. So the organization has launched a TV ad campaign encouraging Brazilians to avoid a flush by peeing in the shower.
We’ve blogged before about the efforts of the international aid community to increase fertilizer use among small farmers in Africa. Many economists, however, believe that the subsidies often used to deliver the input are “distortionary, regressive, environmentally unsound, and … result in politicized, inefficient distribution of fertilizer supply.” A new working paper by Esther Duflo, Michael Kremer, and Jonathan Robinson examines the fertilizer-buying patterns of farmers in Western Kenya.
Mason d’Envie, a brothel in Berlin, offers discounts to customers who arrive by bike or public transportation.
Can industrialized nations save the world with a plan to offset their carbon emissions by paying developing nations to stop cutting down their forests? Can eco-conscious photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand offset his carbon emissions by killing a Frenchman? Do carbon offsets even work at all?
Feeling a little guilty about that flight to London last month? No problem — you can offset that trip with credits from a reforestation project in Nicaragua, available at carbonfund.org. The thriving carbon-offset market in the U.S. allows individuals and companies to voluntarily offset their carbon footprints relatively painlessly — just point, click, and pay. If the United States implements . . .
It is always interesting to watch what happens when the media latches onto a given issue and then, as the reality on the ground evolves — sometimes radically — the media fails to catch up to, or even monitor, the changes. This means the public is stuck with an outdated version of conventional wisdom which, even if it were true . . .
Beware moral self-regulation. Doing good works, it turns out, may make people feel justified in doing ill. A new study from psychologists at Northwestern University suggests that “affirming a moral identity leads people to feel licensed to act immorally.” In other words, as Ryan Sager points out, acting green one day might leave you more willing to indulge your planet-destroying . . .
Readers of this blog may recall Dubner’s crusade against the penny due to opportunity cost as well as the high actual cost of producing pennies. Now Slate takes a look at another currency question: is cash or credit more environmentally friendly? The article doesn’t manage to answer the question, but it does point out the heavy environmental toll of producing . . .
| Greenpeace Canada believes Toronto’s Pickering Nuclear power plant is putting the city’s residents in mortal danger. So last week, the group distributed leaflets around town warning of impending radiological disaster, each leaflet carrying a pill made of seaweed that was supposed to represent an anti-radiation iodine pill. Alarmed and bewildered, residents alerted the police, who intervened, ending the campaign. . . .
I fell for a stupid article and turned off my home PC last night. The article says that Americans who leave computers on overnight are wasting $2.8 billion on energy costs per year. It ignores the cost of turning computers off — and having to turn them on again the next morning. Let’s say that process takes five minutes per . . .
Courtesy of Greg Mankiw‘s blog, here is a link to Ed Glaeser‘s interesting critique of the Dr. Seuss story The Lorax on the New York Times‘s Economix blog.
I was drinking Tropicana orange juice this morning. They’ve got a clever marketing campaign. If you go to their website and type in the code on the Tropicana carton, they will set aside 100 square feet of Rain Forest to preserve on your behalf.
Apparently not. Consider this interesting passage from The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity, by James Lovelock:
As you may have read, the Obama administration is moving toward giving California approval to cut greenhouse gas emissions by mandating better fuel economy. The California regulations should mean 40 percent more miles per gallon for new cars starting in 2016. The good thing is that the innovations that can make this happen are not in the realm of science . . .
Blog reader Paul Gorbould emailed us this photo from a parking lot at the Joggins Fossil Cliffs on the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, Canada: Photo: Paul Gorbould Gorbould understands the good intent of the spots: The site was recently declared a Unesco World Heritage Site, and it appears to have taken the designation to heart. I’ve never seen . . .
I was stirring the syrup for a pecan pie when the phone rang. My friend Brenda Boozer called to tell me there had been a massive environmental disaster close to home, and could I possibly get away to take photographs?
Way back when in 2006, here’s what venture-capital legend John Doerr had to say about clean technology: “This field of greentech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century.” As recently as early 2008, plenty of investors and technology companies were still predicting a clean-tech boom. But now? With a recession that has scrambled nearly everyone’s spending and . . .
Very, it would seem. This isn’t exactly a surprise. Obama campaigned hard on the subject. But a couple of personnel moves in recent days suggest that, despite the cratering economy, the administration is also eager to tackle the energy/global warming issues. The first move is the ouster of John Dingell as chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, . . .
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is increasing the space between rows of seats on its planes. I’m not surprised — the Dutch are the tallest people on earth these days, as I discovered when I had to crane my neck around the Brobdingnagians in front of me in an Amsterdam movie theater. Like many Europeans, the Dutch are also very concerned . . .
Whenever the subject of global warming comes up on this blog, readers have plenty to say. There are a lot of things to think about, of course, including the effectiveness (or lack thereof?) of carbon taxes; the environmental impact of a global food market; even whether it’s greener to drive than walk. For the average person, the issue probably seems . . .
Starbucks prides itself on how green it is. No negative externalities here — and it proudly advertises on its website its commitment to “Environmental Stewardship.” I wonder, though, about its total effect on the environment. On most mornings I stop by my own local coffee shop on the way to the office, park my car (Honda Civic or my wife’s . . .
Reader Leonardo Piccioli sent this photo of one employee’s adaptation to smoke in Buenos Aires caused by natural fires nearby. In a similar fashion, Americans should begin adapting to man-made pollution instead of trying to reverse the inevitable, writes Spencer Reiss in Wired. “Climate change is inevitable,” he writes, and we should “get used to it” by focusing our energies . . .
In today’s Times, Andy Revkin reports on a new study by the Lenfest Ocean Program that will surely inspire a rush to the barricades for certain environmentalists: Some shark populations in the Mediterranean Sea have completely collapsed, according to a new study, with numbers of five species declining by more than 96 percent over the past two centuries. “This loss . . .