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Feed aggregatorMinus Oil: The 50 Year Toaster vs the Five Dollar Toaster
When I was a kid, we had a Toastmaster toaster. It was, as the ad says, "Lovely to look at, delightful to use, sure to endure." I think my mom still has it and still works. But being "a combination of classic beauty, perfect product performance and remarkable time-defying endurance" (yes, the ad says that too) is no longer what drives product design; now it is to be sold in Walmart for five bucks, in itself a remarkable story of manufacturing and retailing efficiency.
The five dollar toaster and the 50 year toaster are both laudable goals, but when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions and getting off oi...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Ted Danson's Surprising New Role, Edward Norton's Big Goal, and More
Photo via Oceana
Actor Ted Danson, who recently joined Morgan Freeman and Oceana to support the organization's study of oil plumes in the Gulf of Mexico, has signed on for another project: playing against type as an unsympathetic oil baron in "Everybody Loves Whales." ...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Recent African Civil War Not Linked to Climate Change
photo: Humanitarian and Development Partnership Team in the Central African Republic via flickr
About ten months ago a report came out claiming to link recent upsurges in African civil war to changes in climate change, and predicting that there would be 50% more conflict in the coming decades. Well, a new article in Proc...Read the full story on TreeHugger
1/3 of Freshwater Turtle Species Now Face Extinction
Photo via Pandiyan, Flickr
Conservation International has released a new report that spells out a bleak future for the world's freshwater turtles: A full 1/3 of the 280 known species currently face extinction. Evidently, a lucrative pet trade, hunting of turtles for food, and habitat loss are the key contributors to turtles' "catastrophic decline". The good news --what little there is, anyway -- is that the rapi...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Fussy Old Books Pressed Into Glamorous Jewels: Littlefly Jewelry
Images: Littlefly Jewelry
Forget what the glossy magazines say -- even bookworms have their own sense of irrepressible style. That's what British designer Jeremy May seems to be saying with his lovely, handcrafted jewelry pieces made from the laminated pages of recycled books. Each holds a trace of their unique literary pedigree, which is impossible to replicate.
According to May, "Paper is many things: a carrier of text, illustration, history and emotion," but it's the sensitive crafting process and presentation that makes this collection of "literary jewels" so special: ...Read the full story on TreeHugger
UK Biofuels Target Should Be Reduced to Protect Tropical Forests: Government Climate Advisors
There's a growing body of evidence that land-use conversion in the tropics, driven in part by biofuels, negates many of their benefits. Photo: Craig Morey via flickr.
The UK government's own climate advisors have recommended that current biofuel targets for transport of 10% by 2020 are too high, given concerns about their impact on tropical forests. Currently the nation gets about 2.5% of its transpor...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Peugeot to Lease iOn Electric Car for €499/Month in France
Photo: Peugeot
Aimed Mostly at Fleet Buyers at First
Peugeot has released some details on its iOn electric car, which is based on the Mitsubishi i MiEV. In France, the leasing price will be of €499 (about $643) for five years, and this includes: the vehicle and its battery, a 5-year warranty covering the battery and electric power train, servicing and maintenance for five years or 50,000 km (31,000 miles), specific electric assistance, and Peugeot Connect, Electric Driving (smart...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Armoire Dressed In Fallen Birch Skin: Sawkille Co.
Photo: Chris Kendall via The New York Times
Gleaming like arboreal wayfinders on a dark night, birches are trees that definitely stand out from the forest crowd. Birch bark was traditionally used for paper, clothing and construction; it also has medicinal properties, so it's not too far a stretch to see them utilized in a decorative sense too, like in this gorgeous birch-skinned armoire by Rhinebeck, NY-based furniture designers Sawkille Co....Read the full story on TreeHugger
Green Fashion at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York: Ancient Uzbek Fabrics, Bark Belts, and More (Slideshow)
GULI Collection, Spring 2011 at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. Credit: Emma Grady
New York Fashion's Week's GreenShows have yet to begin and I have already been pounding the pavement attending runway shows and presentations in search of up-and-coming green designers and for hints that more sustainable processes have begun to permeate mainstream fashion. Like de...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Fight for Your Right to Drink Bottled Water (Video)
Photo via Life Dynamix
There's (thankfully) been a lot of attention focused lately on the behind-the-scenes influence of corporations on public policy and opinion -- see Jane Mayer's great expose of the extremely powerful billionaire Koch brothers for a good example. Over the last year we've seen corporations sponsor "grassroots" movements fighting health care reform, the oil industry back anti-climate legislation Read the full story on TreeHugger
Could Subway Trains Generate Power with Regenerative Braking?
Photo: Flickr, CC
Could Save Millions of Dollars Per Year
Vehicles without regenerative braking are throwing away a lot of energy every time they brake (movement is converted into heat via friction on the brake pads). Hybrid and electric car address that problem by capturing as much of that energy as possible and converting it into electricity, and the same might be about to happen to subway trains with the added twist that it would be tied to the (smart) power grid. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPT...Read the full story on TreeHugger
US Objects to Its Airlines Having to Pay For Their Pollution in EU Emission Trading Scheme
photo: Josh Beasley via flickr
This one's been inbound for a couple of years now, the United States objecting to the European Union's plans to make foreign airlines start paying for the carbon emissionsM from landing and taking off there from 2012, but as the New York Times reports, the US is upping the pres...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Weird Solar Device of the Day: Solight Concept for Indoor Plants
Image via Yanko Design
A new concept design by Lee Ju Won is the ultimate middle man. It sticks to a window to harness the power of the sun to run LEDs that provide light to potted plants that sit under it. Um, what's wrong with this picture?
...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Push Begins for 60 MPG Fuel Economy Standard by 2025
Photo via the Telegraph
It's time to get creative. Climate legislation, as we all know, is kaput. Hope is dim for any kind of greenhouse gas limiting policy to emerge over the next year -- or years, more likely. So climate activists and green groups are starting to think outside the box for how to cut carbon in large scale, meaningful ways. One promising option that has arisen is to push for more stringent fuel economy standards -- a coalition of environmental groups has just launched a campaign urging the Obama ad...Read the full story on TreeHugger
National Conservation Lands Face Threat from Vandals and Looters
Canyons of the Ancients. Image Credit: Bureau of Land Management
Southwest Colorado's Canyons of the Ancients is home to the greatest known concentration of archaeological sites in the United States. However, though it is protected as part of the National Conservation Lands, this ancient home of the Anasazi people is in trouble, and it's not alone. Overseen by the Conservation Lands Foundation, the Na...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Was Obama's Choice to Pass on Climate a "Blunder of Historic Proportions"?
Photo via NY Mag
Earlier in the week, I looked at a hypothetical scenario laid out by columnist David Brooks in which he imagined Obama and the Democrats had gone forward with an energy bill instead of doing health care reform. Joe Romm of Climate Progress had looked at the same scenario, and commented in the end that ""Future ge...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Why Recalculating Health Care Costs For Our Aging Populations is a Green Issue
The age where this sign applies is older than it used to be... photo: Ethan Prater via flickr.
While it might not seem at first that a new study, being highlighted by BBC News, on the overestimation of how much health care costs for our aging populations are likely to increase has an immediate connection to environmentalism, in fact realizing that we may have to spend considerably less money here, as people are productive at much older ages than they used to, has big ...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Why "Gandhi of Water" Rajendra Singh Is Traveling the Length of the Ganges River
Image of Rajendra Singh in the documentary Flow via Mongrel Media
Considered the Gandhi of water issues, Rajendra Singh is an activist about to begin an incredible walk in order to bring attention to India's water problems. Starting on October 1st at the threatened Goumouk glacier in the Himalayas, the head of the Ganges River, he will travel along the river's length to its mouth at the Bay of Bengal. Singh is embarking on this 37-day journey for a singular purpose -- to illustrate how the health of our fresh water systems determines the health of human popula...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Main Climate Threat Comes From Stuff We Haven't Yet Built... There's Still Time to Turn It Around
We have to stop building polluting infrastructure, now. Photo: eutorphication & hypoxia via flickr.
If you think all the carbon-spewing stuff we've built to date, from power plants to cars to airplanes, will just drag us over the climate change tipping point, think again. A new study, published in the journal Science, by scientists at the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Global Ecology shows that there is still suffic...Read the full story on TreeHugger
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