News & commentary on sustainability, activism, urban planning, politics, and our world.
There’s been plenty of recent talk in the media about “recession gardens.” I’ve kind of thought that urban gardening was just a good, wholesome way of healthy living. Here in St. Louis, Backdoor Harvest seems to agree. And that’s fantastic news for me — and novice gardeners like me — because I’ve got almost no [...]
Though green roofs are reemerging in the most advanced building designs around the world, for centuries, people constructed buildings out of materials immediately available to them in their surrounding environment. It is only a relatively recent luxury, for example, that people have easy access to roofing materials like asphalt shingles made hundreds, perhaps, thousands of [...]
This month, as the results of data analyses come in, climate scientists are getting a more detailed, far clearer picture of the ‘State of the Poles’ and the effects of warming and climate change in these most extreme regions of our planet. Although this project is actually the culmination of two years work (encompassing 160 [...]
Houses built out of hemp instead of traditional building materials leave a ‘better than zero carbon’ footprint, according to new research out of the UK. Aside from helping to combat global warming, building homes from the cannabis plant could also give a boost to struggling rural economies. That’s good news almost everywhere except for within [...]
Florida Power and Light is teaming up with a real estate company to build the first solar-powered city. Not only will Babcock Ranch, the planned community near Fort Myers, run on solar, the 75 Megawatt photovoltaic power facility they’re planning will produce more power than residents will use. The facility will be the world’s largest, [...]
