Live in one of the U.S.’s 50 largest cities? SustainLane wants to hear from you.
The group that brings you its annual SustainLane U.S. City Rankings wants to jazz up this year’s listings with resident-written reviews and commentaries about how green — or not — the cities they live in are. Submissions that make the cut will earn you $100 … but you’ve got to move fast, because the deadline is tomorrow, Friday, Sept. 12.
San Francisco/New York-based Wikia Inc. this week announced the launch of Wikia Green, its newest Wiki-based community focused on the environment, sustainable living, green science and green activism.
“As the whole notion of ‘going green’ has exploded, so too has the volume of related information floating around out there on the Internet,” said Jimmy Wales, co-founder and chairman of Wikia. “It has come to a point where, for the average person looking for tips on how to lead a more sustainable lifestyle, it can be somewhat difficult to know where to start and Wikia Green is looking to be just that place.”
Not all carbon offset programs are created equal, and many well-intentioned green types can feel cheated when they discover the program they’ve chosen doesn’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions as advertised. But help is now here in the form of a new, scientifically verified list of carbon offset providers.
Developed by the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Defense Fund, the Carbon Offset Project List is being billed as a “first-of-its-kind online resource that will help businesses and consumers identify and purchase carbon offsets that represent real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.”
What can U.S. citizens do to raise awareness about climate change and help inspire positive action? How about helping to author a book about the subject?
That’s what the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and Penguin Classics are asking people to do: write or illustrate their personal thoughts about the impacts of climate change in the U.S. for possible publication in a book to be called, “Thoreau’s Legacy: American Stories about Global Warming.”
“From Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the nineteenth century to Rachel Carson and E.O. Wilson in the twentieth, writers have played a profound role in drawing attention to our natural environment and inspiring people to protect it,” says Kevin Knobloch, UCS president. “We want to hear from you … Is there a place that holds a special meaning to you that you want to protect? What people, animals, or activities that you love are at risk from a changing climate? Are you taking steps in your own life to stem the tide of global warming?
Gas-powered lawn mowers are terrible polluters, but they’ll have to clean up their act in the next few years. So say new regulations announced this week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Under the EPA’s new standards, small spark-ignition engines such as those used in lawn mowers will have to reduce their hydrocarbon emissions by 35 percent starting in 2011. Gas-powered boats and other personal watercraft will also have to cut their pollution levels, with those new restrictions coming into play in 2010.
Barack Obama is the U.S.’s best hope for developing a clean-energy future, according to a new group formed to promote and raise funds for the Democratic presidential nominee.
Cleantech & Green Business Leaders for Obama (Cleantech for Obama, or CT4O) kicked off its campaign in San Francisco this week. The organization plans to hold fund-raising events across the country to collect at least $1 million to support Obama’s campaign.
Some of the group’s coming events include a Sept. 7 “Barbecue for Barack” in Durham, North Carolina, and an Oct. 11 “Baracktoberfest” in San Francisco.
Re-localization is the process through which a community reverts from ever increasing dependence upon the global economic system back to local networks of economic interdependency. Localization brings production closer to consumption obviating the need to rely on long supply chains and distant markets so that communities can largely provision themselves. Local production strengthens the local economy, creates worthwhile jobs, and increases local self reliance. Refocusing the economy locally will necessarily revitalize the community, increasing camaraderie, cooperation, and support for local culture and a sense of place.
The top five reasons we need to localize:
In the wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, regional officials have become increasingly concerned about how the San Francisco Bay Area would fare if another 1906-style earthquake were to occur. The San Francisco city government and CORE - Citizens of Oakland Responding to Emergencies (as well as the national emergency preparedness sector in general) are strongly recommending that people get prepared to live for 3 days without major infrastructural support (i.e., electricity, running water, supermarkets, etc).
Roz Savage is the first to admit she’s not trying to “save the planet.” Despite all the abuses we heap upon it, Earth will be “just fine in several million years,” she says.
We humans, on the other hand, are making it increasingly likely that we’ll “drown in our own filth,” Savage warns. And to draw attention to just how bad we’ve let things get for this Big Blue Marble we call home, she recently rowed — that’s right, rowed — solo from San Francisco to Honolulu.
The 99-day, 2,324-mile trip started near midnight on May 25 and concluded with a pre-dawn arrival on Sept. 1 at the Waikiki Yacht Club.
Amid the distractions of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, Sarah Palin surprises, Hurricane Gustav and beyond sits a vitally important and sadly too-neglected news item: investments in new projects for renewable energy are suffering because Congress hasn’t yet found a way to extend tax credits for such efforts.
The renewable energy tax credits for wind, solar and other clean energies is set to expire on Dec. 31.
The delay in extending those credits is hindering plans for new renewable energy projects. A study by Navigant Consulting, for example, warns that letting the tax credits expire could jeopardize $19 billion in renewables investment, as well as threaten 112,000 jobs in the clean-energy sector.
The sagging U.S. economy apparently causes people to not only tighten their belts, but to throw away less stuff.
A recent ABC news report said solid-waste managers across the country have been seeing noticeable declines in the amount of trash their communities generate … anywhere from 3 to 12 percent over the past few months to year.
Some of the managers attribute most of the decline to the struggling housing market. Fewer homes being built (or torn down to make room for newer, larger houses) mean less construction waste heading toward landfills. Others say increased recycling efforts might also be making a dent in solid waste hauls.
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