World Views on Climate Change
In response to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that occurred in March, the Neue Zuercher Zeitung, a newspaper out of Zurich, Switzerland, asked several writers to contribute articles about their experiences with climate change. Now, Signandsight.com has posted English translations of essays by Swiss author Leo Tuor, who writes…
Sevilla Solar Tower
For months, my husband has been raving about a solar tower in Sevilla, Spain, and finally, I’ve seen pictures! Catching the Rays (c) BBC The BBC took a tour of the power plant, one of the first of its kind, and it was exciting to see the theory in action.…
The World is My Playground: The Summit of the G8
G8 Protesters Over the last year, people in Rostock, Germany have been preparing for the coming week as though there’s a hurricane brewing off the coast of the Baltic – boarding up windows and building fences and booking tickets to get out of town. And though hurricanes are a relatively…
Etsy’s handmade goodies
A few weeks ago, while strolling through a farmer’s market in Amsterdam, I came upon a stall selling these purses … I chatted with the seller for a bit and he explained the process his partner went through making these. The idea was simple, really … recycled munitions pouches from…
Why is Europe greener (really)?
In case you missed it, The New York Times Magazine was devoted to green architecture on Sunday. It printed several articles, including a piece by the Times’ chief architecture critic, Nicolai Ourousoff, that I found especially interesting. In it, he asks, not entirely rhetorically, Why Are They (Europe) Greener Than…
How Good is Good Enough?
Cartoon by John Darkow A few years back, in the middle of a cultural studies seminar that sidetracked into a tag-team Wal-Mart bash, the woman sitting next to me rolled her eyes. “This argument is so last year. Can we get over Wal-Mart already?” she said. I’m one of the…
