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 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
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 Barbara Kessler
Wonder how the gray wolves are faring since they were “delisted” from protection under the Endangered Species Act? One of the three Rocky Mountain states with a significant gray wolf population, Idaho, is having meetings to determine the rules for the hunting of the wolves this fall.
[Read more →]Tags: Activists & Authors · Briefs · Wildlife
By John DeFore
Are polar bears in danger of extinction? U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken in Oakland wants to know, and has given the Bush administration two more weeks to find out.
Judge Wilken said today that the administration had no legitimate reason for failing to meet a January 9 deadline (one year after the bear was [...]
By John DeFore
The blogosphere overflows with examples of artists who use recycled or reclaimed materials in ways ranging from the whimsical to the architectural. Even given that diversity, though, an effort that came to light last week is something special.
The street-art fans known as the Wooster Collective posted the images above at their site on [...]
Tags: Cut Consumption · Green Enthusiasts & Researchers · Model Projects · Wildlife
By Barbara Kessler
We’ve all been hearing a lot about “change” these days, whether it’s from Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or John McCain. The World Wildlife Fund, that dogged global rescuer of endangered species, would like change too – your change.
[Read more →]Tags: Briefs · Model Projects · Munchkin Projects · Wildlife
By Bill Marvel
We welcome birds and butterflies into our backyards. But what about the little brown snake that slithers out from under the flowerpot? And those weird gummy lizards hanging around the porch light? And — ugh! — toads? Do we really want to share our environment with . . . creeping things?
Photo: Jeff Ettling [...]
[Read more →]Tags: Green Enthusiasts & Researchers · Organics · Trees & Plants · Wildlife
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 →]
