On June 10, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved what may be the toughest recycling law in the nation, adding mandatory composting of food scraps and biodegradables to its already acclaimed recycling program.
Beginning this fall, residences and businesses will be required to sort their refuse into three, color-coded containers: blue for recycled items, green [...]
Last week, the US Supreme Court reversed the decision of a federal appeals court and gave Alaska’s Kensington gold mine the go ahead to dump up to 4.5 million tons of mining waste into nearby Lower Slate Lake. The waste, known as tailings, is a slurry of crushed rock and water laced with copper, aluminum, [...]
The Political Reality of U.S. Carbon Geography
A map of per-capita carbon by state shows how emissions are more concentrated in poorer, more conservative regions, suggesting the political difficulties of limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
Earth Policy Institute: Needed — A Copernican Shift
Just as Copernicus transformed our understanding by re-examining the relationship of Sun and Earth, Lester Brown [...]
Earth’s “ozone hole,” October, 2004.
Image courtesy of NASA.
One of the greatest impediments to tackling far-reaching issues such as global climate change is our tendency to focus on the near-term costs of corrective action rather than the long-term costs of doing nothing.
At the root of the matter may be simple human nature. Nothing in our [...]
10 Natural Sunscreens for Safe Summer Fun
The Daily Green highlights 10 natural suncreens identified as effective by the Environmental Working Group (EWG).
Full listings of 134 EWG recommended products — and 589 products to avoid — are also available.
Europe Poised to Meet Kyoto Target
The European Environment Agency reports that 2007 marked the third consecutive year in [...]
The Flawed Logic of the Cap-and-Trade Debate
Two prominent — and iconoclastic — environmentalists argue that current efforts to tax or cap carbon emissions are doomed to failure and that the answer lies not in making dirty energy expensive but in making clean energy cheap.
Nation’s First Feed-In Policy Fuels Solar Boom in Florida
While the renewable energy [...]
The World’s Most Efficient Windmill?
A teenager from rural Malawi uses scraps and bicycle parts to build a wind turbine that powers his family’s farm — and captures the attention of the TED Global Conference.
Green, Prefab “i-house” Hits the Market
The prefabricated “i-house” combines energy efficiency, style, customizable layout and a modest price for the ecologically-conscious home [...]
Clean Water Out of Thin Air
The EcoloBlue Atmospheric Water Generator (AWG) does just that, producing up to 7 gallons per day.
Military Embraces Green Energy
Solar panels, wind turbines, plug-in vehicles, energy-efficient tents and more are being tested at Ft. Irvin, California in an effort to reduce the military’s voracious appetite for energy — as well as [...]
Judging by the sheer volume of news reporting, the worldwide story of the week has to be the emergence of the new H1N1 strain of influenza.
While health officials attempt to monitor the extent of the outbreak, governments struggle to prepare for a potential pandemic without causing unnecessary panic. Average citizens, exposed to a constant barrage [...]
Once confined to the laboratory, nanotechnology has quietly entered the lives of ordinary people through hundreds of innovative products such as liquid-wicking clothing, antibacterial stuffed toys, tennis rackets, sunscreens, toothpaste and more. By some estimates, the market for nano-manufactured goods could exceed $2 trillion by 2014.
Such rapid rise in the development and use of nanomaterials [...]
In a nationally televised address to the American public last month, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal ridiculed a $140 million line item in the US economic stimulus package for “something called ‘volcano monitoring.’ Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.,” said Jindal.
One could argue whether the [...]
From time to time, we browse recently released reports from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and highlight those with potential interest to our readers. Once again, we’ve attempted to loosely categorize the list for your convenience.
If you’re unfamiliar with the CRS, they not only answer Congressional inquiries, they produce outstanding resource documents that are well-researched, [...]
