Car-free living
Car-free living is unbelievably easy here in Germany; the country has one of the most extensive train networks in the world. Every major city has a subway or tram line to get you in and out of the city quickly. And bike paths are laid through cities and farm fields,…
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…
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…
A Green Tax for 'Binge' Flyers
By guest-blogger C. Tenz When the publisher of a guidebook series says people fly too much, we know we’re in deep CO2 trouble. But that’s exactly what Mark Ellingham, the founder of the Rough Guides, said in an interview recently in The Observer. In an article celebrating the guidebook series’…
Solar to power the world
The amount of energy hitting the earth from the sun every minute is great than the amount of energy the would burns up in fossil fuels in one year. That’s a whole lot of energy just sitting around waiting to be used while we continue to use oil and crap…
Ladies Love Lube!
Guestblogger Wendy Strgar, is the owner and founder of Good Clean Love (they make the above lube) a manufacturer of all-natural love and intimacy products. Married for over 23 years with four children, Wendy teaches about Making Love Sustainable, a green philosophy of relationships which recognizes the importance of valueing the renewable…
Three Gorges Dam in Action
Within the last 24 hours, the final temporary retaining wall that held water intended for the Three Gorges Dam project was destroyed in order that the water may enter and discharge through the dam. Three Gorges Dam is on. This is the largest dam ever constructed in the world and is…
A Story No Less Important
All this talk about global warming and the current backlash from “anti-environmentalists” reminds me of something I experienced only months ago. Photo of Dr. Jim Hanson courtesy of the New York Times I attended conference at the New School in January 2006 entitled “Politics & Science” and the place was…
Move Over McMansion
Here’s a home that is built with no non-recyclable residue or plastics, utilizes solar energy (not only to heat the water but to produce energy as well) and looks incredibly fabulous. Sound like a fantasy of the eco-chick’s distant future? Not so – it exists today thanks to Germany’s…
