Daily Archives: January 4, 2009

Image courtesy of Wired

The smallest possible regional nuclear war would unleash around 700 million tons of carbon dioxide—about as much as a country like England emits every year. The stat comes from a new paper called “Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security” by Marc Z. Jacobson, a professor of environmental engineering at Stanford. The piece led the British newspaper the Gua

Burj Dubai Tower, still under construction Via:TagPuan

TreeHugger has posted many times on Dubai’s sometimes “green,” sometimes wretchedly-excessive building boom (please pardon one last requiem use of the now much out-of-favor “green”). The boom is over; and a crash looms for Dubai landlords and credit holders. Falling oil prices have a lot to do with it. See more from a CBS report, below the fold

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Photo courtesy of CSS Play

When 8 year-old Judson King decided he wanted his favorite video game character for a pet three years ago, it wasn’t just some fleeting phase based on fantastical whims like it would be for most youngsters. No, the boy’s infatuation with Sonic the Hedgehog set a chain of events in motion that would end up actually changing Kansas law

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image via georgetown university

Coffee is the 2nd most traded commodity after oil. Some claim that coffee has health benefits while others claim that it is an addictive substance that taxes the body’s adrenal glands, depositing adrenalin (a poison) daily into our bodies, stressing out our digestive tracts at the same time. Whatever you believe, coffee is not essential to our lives and thus it is one commodity worth considering giving up entirely in order to benefit the planet and our pocketbooks in a time of economic and ecologic peril

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Image courtesy of Blue Summit Invest

Now that both a massive recession and the New Year are underway, it’s time to start thinking about staying afloat financially. And now might be the best time ever to invest in green—there are a slew of factors that make green look good for 2009: among them, a new administration bent on unfurling a green jobs plan is taking office in a matter of weeks, and the fact that shares in most green companies are way down at the moment (read: cheap).

According to <a href=”http://w

Photo courtesy of the LA Times

The devastating, 2.6 million cubic yards of toxic coal ash slurry released in a Tennessee dike burst could perhaps have been avoided if TVA officials hadn’t rejected costly fixes, a new report in the Tennessean reveals.

Apparently, a review of state records shows that there was a minor blowout five years ago that spurred officials to look for a way to ens

Image source: Sterling College

Sterling College – University of Vermont students give new meaning to the idea of college students getting baked. ahem. This time, they are actually baking pies to save the planet. Well, or at least feed their local neighbors. Combining a need in area food banks, with a surplus of organic butternut squash and willing labor, one local community is taking its motto outside of their campus walls and acting locally

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Image: JRC GEM

How close do you live to a city of 50,000 or more? How long does it take you to reach the “wilderness”? A fascinating map created for the World Bank World Development Report 2009 explores the question of accessibility of markets, hospitals, schools or water to populations across the world. In attempting to more consistently define “urbanization”, the map leads to several amazing conclusions

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photo: Focus Organic

With cold season in full swing it would be nice to be able to squirt some sanitizer on your hands and avoid a cold for the whole year. Well, that’s just not possible. But in a pinch, parents love to use this stuff to prevent the spread of germs on the go. Now a greener hand sanitizer is claiming to be as effective as the conventional ones, but without the scary ingredients

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