News & commentary on sustainability, activism, urban planning, politics, and our world.
People love to travel. Travelling is not the greenest thing to do, generally speaking, since both driving and flying are major contributors to global warming, air pollution, and water pollution. But if you are determined to travel, the least you can do is stay in environmentally friendly accommodation (and offset your travel emissions). One very [...]
You have probably heard of the all-around good effort known as “Food Not Bombs,” but have you heard of “Burrito Project”? Food Not Bombs groups share “free vegan and vegetarian meals with the hungry in over 1,000 cities around the world to protest war, poverty and the destruction of the environment.” Burrito Project groups do [...]
Hurricane Katrina is off most people’s minds these days, but a recent story on Green Building Elements brought my attention to the ongoing work there and one great success story. A couple years after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Brad Pitt started the “Make It Right Foundation” to build a neighborhood of safe and healthy [...]
President Barack Obama is asking congress to approve over fifty billion dollars in long term infrastructure investment to repair our nation’s roads, trains and navigation systems. The initial support is just the beginning of a six-year program of transportation improvements, which will have a long-range focus to reconstruct airport runways, highways, sidewalks, mass transit systems, as well as building many new high speed rail projects. This is a very smart move, and most welcome news on Labor Day, as unemployment numbers hover in the double digits.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has now stated that there will be no more oil drilling in the Arctic until much more is know about the many potential environmental problems that petroleum exploration may cause. Salazar has just completed a two day tour of Alaska, visited petroleum reserves sites and small towns. He discussed how much more complicated a massive oil spill response would be in the remote Arctic regions, as compared to the present clean up efforts for the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
