Parking the Beast
Last winter, I was driving back and forth to work in my 1990 Cadillac Deville, a.k.a. "the Beast." One day as the 8 cylinders idled at a stop light, I looked off to the right and noticed two hybrid cars totaling the Beast’s length.
Commentary
Pulling Weeds Down Under
Taking off from the northern end of Sydney’s gigantic bridge, we sped across the famous harbor, watching sailboats gather beneath the steel structure and the city opening up behind us. We headed to a tiny spit of land to pull weeds with Conservation Volunteers Australia.
Fight for the Frogs
An interview about the amphibian crisis with Dr. Jennifer Pramuk, the curator of herpetology at the Bronx Zoo.
Fighting Words
During the school week, Sam Allen will sometimes skip his classes at Connecticut’s Weston High School and walk to the elementary or middle school down the street. One morning in February, he made his way into Weston Elementary School struggling with a green bag and six poster boards all while listening to music on his iPhone and answering calls. When he reached the second floor, he introduced himself to a class of fourth-graders and proceeded to tell them how they can help to save the planet.
The Blue Movement
E Magazine has a conversation with Wallace J. Nichols, who’s dedicated his life to bringing sea turtles back from the brink.
COMMENTARY: Climate Change: The Next Generation
It was with some sense of detachment that I approached the Powershift 2007 conference at the University of Maryland two weeks ago (November 2 to 5). Honestly? I would have expected a lot of students to attend simply to party somewhere new for the weekend; to make friends, escape embarrassing hook-ups, or find new connections for pot. Not, I guessed, to actually learn. But I met student after student who cared passionately about climate change.
COMMENTARY: Leonardo DiCaprio’s Green Gamble
Two editors from website The Daily Green dissect Leonardo DiCaprio’s epic environmental documentary, The 11th Hour. One finds it enlightening, though perhaps a bit dire following the cautionary tale of An Inconvenient Truth. The other decides DiCaprio’s film is geared too much toward ADD-viewers, like pretty much everything produced in Hollywood.
COMMENTARY: Ten Things Wrong With Sprawl
In the next thirty-four years, we 300 million Americans will be joined by another 92 million. Where will all these people live, work, play, worship, buy, sell, and serve? Where will 40 million additional households be located? What sort of built environment will we produce, and what will be the results for the nation’s and the environment’s well-being? The prevailing form of land development is popularly known as sprawl or exurban sprawl. Sprawl is characterized by low density development that rigorously separates residential uses from other land uses, and that relies entirely or almost entirely on automobile transportation. There are strong reasons to prefer that the nation’s future development does not reproduce this pattern—reasons that have nothing to do with the price or availability of gasoline.
We Have Fifty-Three Senses? But I Can Barely Handle Five!
Think of each of your five senses (taste, touch, smell, hearing, sight) as a rock in the foundation that supports your home. Five stones won’t allow an addition off the main house, nor will they support the weight of a second story. A storm might push your home off such a minimal foundation. The more senses you awaken and use the more support you will have in all your endeavors. More is better. The more sensory support you have, the less stress you"ll experience. When stress does sneak up, your sense-ability’s wisdom naturally helps you understand the source of your stress and guides you to what is needed to feel alive and whole again.
COMMENTARY: Indoor Smoking Bans
Cigarette litter has been a problem for as long as people have smoked, and especially since filtered cigarettes became popular in the mid-20th century. Estimates from the World Health Organization suggest that close to 1.1 billion people—or one third of all people above the age of 15—smoke. When each of these smokers consumes an average of several cigarettes a day, one can only begin to picture the number of cigarette butts disposed of in streets, parks and other public places.