Daily Archives: December 27, 2008

Some mountaintops removed for mining, photo courtesy of the NY Times

You’ve got to love all these “Midnight Rules” that keep popping up—whether it’s the lifting of poultry farm regulations, or the latest egregious legislation: a repealing of the stream buffer zone rule, which has prevented surface coal mining from taking place a scant 100 feet from flowing streams since 1983. Yes, as we reported earlier, the <a href=”http://www.treehugger.com/fi

Image courtesy of the Sietch

In the first week of its existence, the Facebook group Trees Have Rights Too has apparently attracted some 2,100 new members—all who share the ambition of urging the United Nations to create a Bill of Planetary Rights. We’ve hit on Polly Higgins’s general Trees Have Rights Campaign as a worthy cause and it appears the Facebook component has taken root (ahem) with equ

Photo credit to Macca

Jeff Foxworthy may have top billing when it comes to the You Might be a Redneck jokes, but today we try our hand at our own brand of You Might be a Hypermiler humor. Be gentle, we’re not comedians, just die hard hypermilers with obviously way too much time on our hands

It’s Jackass meets environmental activism! Okay, so maybe it’s a little heavier on the Jackass side. Earlier this week, dinner jacket-clad Greenpeace representatives entered the BP headquarters in London and staged an impromptu award ceremony. They attempted to present the oil company with an “<a href=”http://weblog.greenpeace.org/makingwaves/archives/2008/12/bp_wi

Roasted Cinderella Pumpkin

Using 2008 as a reference point, 2009 promises a blizzard of political debris, lofted by an un-closeting of science. And, if history be any guide, the chatterboxes of US radio and TV will try to bury the ideas of a barely-formed green sub-culture in drifts of insensible talking points.

The prospect of a Green Renaissance is faint indeed, seen through the lens of 2008. No wonder I am reluctant to let go of this fall’s imagery: like the roasted pumpkin on my stove top, pictured here. And others

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Filling the coal-fired stove in Sugarloaf, PA; Laura Pedrick for the NYT

The New York Times covers the return of coal as a heating source in American houses.

Problematic in some ways and difficult to handle, coal is nonetheless a cheap, plentiful, mined-in-America source of heat. And with the cost of heating oil and natural gas increasingly prone to spikes, some homeowners in the Northeast, pockets of the Midwest and even Alaska are deciding coal is worth the trouble.

John Taplin noticed this in the same edi

Image credit:AdventureBlog, Pop Quiz, animation excerpt

I’ll say this about 2008: It was mighty memorable. Some very discouraging stuff went down — decisions affecting endangered species, coal mining, beloved wild landscapes. That said, some great things happened, too. Like the promise of science being welcome in the White House again. Like the decision by the EPA’s Environmental Appeal Board that the EPA has no valid reason to refuse to regulate the CO2 emissions that come from new coal-powered plants (too bad <a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/b

A New York Times Editorial looks at what happens when you mix cheap gas with fuel efficient cars.

The multibillion-dollar aid package for Detroit’s carmakers approved by the White House (with Mr. Obama’s support) fails to address one crucial question: Who will buy all the fuel-efficient cars that Detroit carmakers are supposed to make?

The danger is that too few will, especially if gasoline prices remain low. Therefore, it might be time for the president-elect and Congress to think seriously about imposing a gas tax or similar levy to keep gas prices up after the economy recovers from recession.

Americans did not buy enormous gas guzzlers just because Detroit marketed t

Family in Passivhaus; Rolf Oeser for The New York Times

Elisabeth Rosenthal visits a Passive House in Germany and describes their construction:

Using ultrathick insulation and complex doors and windows, the architect engineers [sic] a home encased in an airtight shell, so that barely any heat escapes and barely any cold seeps in. That means a passive house can be warmed not only by the sun, but also by the heat from appliances and even from occupants’ bodies. And in Germany, passive houses cost only about 5 to 7 percent more to build than conventional houses.

Photo by Agaton Strom

Earlier this year, the American Natural History Museum in New York City unveiled its much anticipated Climate Change exhibition. And soon, they’ll be ringing in the new year with an important talk on global warming that will either get you up to speed on the most recent scientific atti