By John DeFore

The world is scrutinizing every shred of news from the Obama camp these days, trying to guess who’ll have an office in the West Wing. But a group of gardeners based in Maine are more focused on what’s going to happen just outside the White House — on the lawn, in fact.

Eat the View is the name of a petition encouraging the Obamas to plant an organic garden on the White House lawn, using the produce both for the residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and to feed the hungry at area food pantries.

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By John DeFore

East of Las Vegas, Times Square is surely the king of flashy, attention-grabbing and power-hungry signage. Soon, though, one of the intersection’s most novel advertisements will be one that doesn’t draw a single watt from the grid.

Construction is set to begin this month on a massive billboard for copying giant Ricoh, to be mounted at the corner of 7th Avenue and 42nd Street, that will run solely on wind and solar power generated at the site.

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By Julie Bonnin
Green Right Now

With unpredictable winter weather wreaking havoc on traditional Currier & Ives skating scenes, synthetic ice may be the only thing that can salvage one of winter’s favorite pastimes.

So when skaters flock to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City Saturday for the Nov. 22 opening of a 150-foot rink that features a 17-foot tall stainless steel polar bear at its center, they will be gliding across a surface that feels like ice, but won’t consume huge amounts of water and refrigeration. The faux ice rink will operate through Feb. 28, and for holiday seasons to come.

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By Clint Williams

With highway fuel economy of 30 mpg, the Suzuki SX4 certainly conserves gasoline. And, more importantly these days, this compact sedan conserves cash. A comfortably well-equipped SX4 - complete with standard touch-screen navigation system - rolls off the dealer lot for less than $16,000. That makes it financially competitive in its class, and as economical as most cars featured in our “30(cars) Over 30(mpg)” gallery.

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By John DeFore

Everyone knows that shade from the sun keeps you cooler, but a new study has quantified the benefit in a way homeowners might want to note. The right kind of shade, it turns out, can easily shave ten percent off your summertime electric bill.

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By John DeFore

For everyone puzzled at recent energy-independence speeches that seem to focus as much on building new electric lines as on solar research or wind power, a new report helps make one inconvenient truth clear: Without new infrastructure, switching to non-carbon power could make our electric system far less reliable than it is today.

The report was compiled by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a self-regulatory organization focused in part on ensuring that power transmission stays blackout-free from coast to coast.

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By Barbara Kessler

BPA or Bisphenol A, the plastic additive that has been found to leach from hard plastic water and baby bottles when they are heated, also is released when certain disposable containers labeled as “microwave safe” are heated, according to an analysis by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The newspaper tested 10 disposable food containers, heating them and then testing the contents for BPA. It found that BPA leached from all of the containers, including some labeled as plastics numbers 1, 2 and 5, and not just those labeled as number 7, the identifier for polycarbonate plastic known to contain BPA.
The tests included frozen dinners, microwavable soups, baby and toddler foods - all packed in plastics that could presumably be heated.

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By Harriet Blake

New York City taxi cab owners and drivers are finally closer to being on the same page in the debate over hybrid vehicles.

At a press conference Friday [Nov. 14], New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced an incentive program designed to create an entirely green fleet of cabs by 2012.

Financial incentives will be awarded to taxi fleet owners who buy hybrid vehicles, and financial disincentives for those who continue to use non-hybrids. Hybrid cars work on a mixture of gasoline and electricity from batteries.

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By Harriet Blake

By now, most people are familiar with the ubiquitous bright green (and blue and pink) totes that supermarkets are touting to replace hard-to-recycle plastic bags.
Many customers dutifully carry them to and from grocery shopping each week, often receiving 3 to 4 cents in return. But what about those folks who are less conscientious?

Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City has a solution: charge shoppers six cents for each plastic bag they use. The mayor’s proposal is a work in progress, but environmental groups are pleased.

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By John DeFore

The latest edition of an annual report by the International Energy Agency was released this week, and while the news may not be unexpected, it’s unsettling nonetheless.

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By John DeFore

James Bond has often fought men who sought to bend the Earth to their whims. But this time around, the evil scheme is a tad more realistic than a planet-sized death ray.

In the new Quantum of Solace, which opens tomorrow, the super spy’s personal vendetta (he’s hunting the folks who killed his girlfriend in the last movie) leads him into the world of a big-time operator named Dominic Greene, whose name lends itself to a glitzy organization, Greene Planet, that is ostensibly trying to help the environment and the world’s poor.

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By John DeFore

As disheartening as it is to hear, you may not be doing anybody any good by taking broken electronics to a firm promising to recycle it. In fact, your good-faith act could be leading to disease and hellish pollution in some of the world’s most impoverished villages.

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