Set sprinklers to water the lawn or garden only - not the street or sidewalk.
Use the microwave to cook small meals. (It uses less power than an oven.)
Purchase "Green Power" for your home's electricity. (Contact your power supplier to see where and if it is available.)
Scrape, rather than rinse, dishes before loading into the dishwasher; wash only full loads.
Cut back on air conditioning and heating use if you can.
Turn off appliances and lights when you leave the room.
By John DeFore
It must be a bittersweet moment to be Darrell Hammond.
Every talk Al Gore gives, after all, continues to prove the Saturday Night Live veteran’s brilliance at honing in on the speech patterns of public figures; if Gore can’t tweak his style after years of mockery, then clearly Hammond caught something elemental.
But in [...]
Tags: Celebrities & Politicians · Headlines · Nation · PEOPLE
By John DeFore
In what is said to be the “largest conservation commitment in Canadian history,” Ontario has set aside an area of forest that is almost the size of the United Kingdom.
On Monday, the province’s Premier Dalton McGuinty announced that, as part of its Far North Planning initiative, it would “permanently protect” an area [...]
Tags: Briefs · Cities & States · Headlines · Nation
By Nima Kapadia
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Swedish Energy Agency (SEA) have extended their partnership with Volvo another three years to develop commercial trucks with greater fuel efficiency. The partnership is an extension of a one-year agreement signed by the three groups in June 2007, with the overall objective of creating [...]
Tags: Briefs · Nation · Other Transport
By Barbara Kessler
If you’ve been wondering about all the buzz over honeybees, here is some food for thought – or rather some thought about food: Bees play a role in one out of every three bites of food Americans eat.
Pollinators, mainly bees, but also butterflies, songbirds and even bats, perform such a critical function [...]
Tags: Food · Headlines · Model Projects · Nation · Trees & Plants · Wildlife
By Barbara Kessler
Chief Executive Officers concerned about climate change – including the chiefs of Royal Dutch Shell, Alcoa, BP, British Airways, Deutsche Bank, Tokyo Electric Power, Duke Energy, Citi, Airbus SAS, France Electric, DuPont and Nike - have issued a statement to the G-8 national leaders urging them to support a “new international climate [...]
Tags: Briefs · Greener Businesses · Headlines · Nation
By Shermakaye Bass
In light of recent European bans of a pesticide linked to Bee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), at least one key bee expert is calling for a ban of the same pesticide in the United States.
“In the United States, drastic action is needed,” says Canadian geneticist Joe Cummins, explaining that U.S. farmers and [...]
By Barbara Kessler
It’s starting to sound like an Obama Campaign Slogan parsing contest out there in the U.S. Greenscape.
Tags: Briefs · Celebrities & Politicians · Greener Businesses · Headlines · Nation
By John DeFore
When it comes to greening America’s transportation system, most people focus on cars — producing their fuel differently, using different forms of energy, or shifting commutes away from them entirely. But what of the roads we drive on?
Asphalt, which is used to pave over 90 percent of American roads, is processed [...]
Tags: Briefs · Green Enthusiasts & Researchers · Greener Businesses · Nation
By John DeFore
In a mammoth report being issued this month, the U.S. Department of Energy lays out a detailed scenario in which, by the year 2030, one fifth of America’s electricity could come from wind.
The report, which is the work not only of DOE employees but of academics and a wide array of [...]
Tags: Briefs · Energy & Water · Green Enthusiasts & Researchers · Nation
Photo: Susanne Miller / USFWS
By Barbara Kessler
The polar bear will be granted “threatened” status under the Endangered Species Act, the Bush Administration announced today, because the Arctic ice the animal needs to survive is shrinking and scientific projections show it will jeopardize the polar bear’s survival prospects for decades to come. But the decision, [...]
[Read more →] By John DeFore
If and when the subject of overpopulation crosses their minds, most Americans think of places in Africa and Asia that already have enough people to stretch the limits of natural resources. But few seem to worry about it happening in our own back yard.
Tags: Briefs · Cities & States · Green Enthusiasts & Researchers · Headlines · Nation
By John DeFore
It’s widely understood that the overuse and misuse of antibiotics in health care has a daunting long-term cost: Bacteria that aren’t killed by the drugs can adapt, breeding new strains that are immune to current drugs.
But while proper use by patients is critical to antibiotics’ efficacy — if your doctor prescribes them, [...]
Tags: Briefs · Food · Green Enthusiasts & Researchers · Nation
By John DeFore
Over the last few years, moviegoers may have come to expect that any documentary pairing scientists and ice caps will be a scare-fest or a sermon — a big-screen effort to hammer home the urgent need to take action countering climate change.
Not so with Encounters at the End of the World, a film that’s drawing glowing reviews as it expands into theaters across the country. Yes, the movie has things to say about the environment — in at least one instance, it even suggests that humankind’s days here are numbered — but it is far from strident, superficially issue-driven, or even political. [Read more →]
By Nima Kapadia
Jobs in renewable energy are increasing worldwide and causing the coal industry to distribute pink slips, according to a Worldwatch Institute study.
The report, written by Worldwatch senior researcher Michael Renner, estimates that 2.3 million people are working in renewable energy jobs - either directly or indirectly. From that number:
By John DeFore
Proposals to solve the planet’s CO2 woes through sequestering the problematic emissions — pumping them into some hole in the ground where they can’t affect the atmosphere — raise numerous concerns for skeptics. Won’t the stuff leak out, wasting the fortune we spent on sequestering, and leaving us worse off than we would have been by cutting CO2 production in the first place?
Researchers led by Columbia University geophysicist David Goldberg think they’re closer to resolving some of those concerns, with a proposal that would address the possibility of leakage on two fronts. [Read more →]
