Lungs of the City: Urban Trees Help Filter Out Air Pollution
Urban trees function as the lungs of the city, filtering out air pollution and carbon dioxide while also countering the urban heat island effect with shade.
Love Chocolate But Hate Rainforest Destruction?
While I love chocolate, I’ve heard that cocoa bean agriculture is environmentally destructive and exploits workers in tropical rainforests around the world. Is this true?
SUVs: No Sport, No Utility—And No Safety
The singer-actress Eartha Kitt (TV"s Catwoman) was thankful for the solid construction of her Range Rover after it flipped over in Westport, Connecticut in early August. "Thank God for that car," she said. "I don’t think I’ll ever drive another."
Asian Industrial Pollution Reaching New England Skies
An international group comprised of the world’s leading atmospheric scientists has found that airborne industrial pollution from Asia is lingering high over New England and the Atlantic Ocean this summer, raising concerns that improved American air quality in recent years may be jeopardized by the effects of increasing industrialization and weak regulation abroad.
Kerry Eyes Energy Independence with 10-Year Plan
In a nod to conservation-minded voters, Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry has proposed a 10-year, $30 billion plan to move the U.S. closer to energy independence. The linchpin of Kerry’s ambitious plan would be providing financial incentives to manufacturers and consumers to increase the energy efficiency of the nation’s automotive fleet. The plan also calls for the nation to derive 20 percent of its power from renewable sources—including solar, wind, ethanol and biodiesel—by 2020.
How Can I Attract Wildlife To My Backyard?
Any ideas for how to make my backyard more attractive to wildlife? I would like to be part of the solution to our wildlife extinction problem…
Green Partying
In 1989, at a pub called the Slug and Lettuce in Northern London, Edwin Datschefski was sitting with several of his green design colleagues when he noticed an enviro-minded acquaintance at a nearby table. As it turned out, the friend was sitting with a few of his eco-conscious mates, so they pulled some tables together. And so a movement was born.
Getting There
As a nation, we love our cars. America invented the drive-in restaurant and drive-in bank. NASCAR racing is one of the fastest growing spectator sports, and car magazines have millions of subscribers. We love our cars so much, we have more of them than we do drivers. We also love big cars, and are buying as many light trucks as passenger automobiles. The result is that the U.S. is the largest per-capita consumer of oil and the largest per-capita producer of global warming gases.
A Blizzard of Paper
A recent University of California-Berkeley study found that information stored electronically grew by a whopping 80 percent between 1999 and 2002. And even though less than one tenth of one percent of that data was printed, the amount of printed matter still grew by 36 percent during that same period. Not surprisingly, the U.S. is the biggest paper muncher, accounting for 33 percent of all printed material.
Operation Prairie Storm
As with the highly questionable intelligence alleging Iraqi weapons of mass-destruction that led us into war, hunting continues on the strength of some long-debunked myths, thanks to leaders who kowtow to the gun industry, the National Rifle Association and others.