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Would Simply Slowing Down Our Travel & Shipping Help Kick Our Oil Habit?

TreeHugger — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:40:00 +0000

Making a slow boat look fast... photo: Neal McQ via flickr. Having assessed the overall picture of how our patterns of global shipping and global aviation use tons of fuel, leave a high environmental footprint, and how technological changes can help ...

How Can We Reduce Oil Consumption & Still Ship Goods and Ourselves Around the Globe?

TreeHugger — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:27:00 +0000

Container ship photo: Daniel Ramirez; airliner photo: Bob MacInnes Two things which I think are worth keeping front and center when discussing how we wean ourselves off our petroleum addiction: Travel between nations is good; trade between nations is...

Living Off the Grid: the New American Rebellion?

Jeff McIntire-Strasburg — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:26:38 +0000

You may have noticed that we’ve published more content in recent months on off-grid living: my connection to the Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, and introduction to a number of writers living this way, has provided great insight into the day-to-day practices of those who rely on solar panels* or wind turbines* for energy, rain collection and [...]

Oil’s Forgiven

Rhonda Winter — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 03:08:34 +0000

Last week Louisiana Judge Martin Feldman, who recently inexplicably overturned the Obama Administration’s offshore drilling moratorium, issued a statement flatly refusing to recuse himself from this case, even though he is heavily invested in offshore drilling and British Petroleum. Dr. Rachel Maddow highlights this, as well as just how incredibly pervasive the influence of the massive petroleum industry is within our government, academia and society. She clearly explains that we must fundamentally shift how we look at energy and what changes we desperately need to make today:

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“The oil industry is the most profitable industry in the history of human enterprise, and as such it is basically the most influential too. Even if you look at the huge cost BP has incurred so far in cleaning up the disaster in the Gulf, it reached 4 billion dollars this week, that is still less than a third of BP’s profits from last year alone. If you look at all of the oil that has spilled into the Gulf of Mexico so far, as much as 184 million gallons of oil, you should know that all of that oil, everything in total that has spilled into the Gulf so far over this past 100 days, every bit of it represents a quarter of the oil we use in America in one day.”

Data Can Make Us Greener

Jeff Cain — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:19:06 +0000

At the recent Cleantech Open conference, a theme that emerged was the potential for distributed data to help us all be greener. By having relevant data pushed to us on our smartphones or other mobile gadgets, we might make better choices. And, of course, companies providing that data might make some money.

The first area where this theme appeared was in a discussion of transportation. In some cities, public transit systems have put GPS devices on buses and are pushing location information and arrival times out to websites and portable apps. This enables people to leave their home or office at the perfect time

Massive Algae Bloom Spreading Across Baltic Sea

TreeHugger — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 13:30:00 +0000

A labeled satellite image taken July 11 by the European Space Agency. Image via BBC. The 30 bottles of pre-French Revolution champagne recently recovered from the bottom of the Baltic Sea were a pretty awesome find. But the latest thing to show up in...

US Wastes $200 Billion on Environmentally Damaging Subsidies

TreeHugger — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:25:00 +0000

photo: Nick Ares via flickr A new report by the Green Scissors Campaign details some $200 billion worth of yearly US government subsidies that the coalition says are "wasteful to taxpayers, harmful to the environment and bad for consumers." Green Sci...

5 Easy and Affordable Ways to Start Using Solar Power

Kriss Bergethon — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 11:33:47 +0000

There is so much talk of green and clean energy these days, most people have at least thought about how they can use solar in their lives. The problem is that with a tough economy and bleak jobs market, most people just don’t have the money to invest in solar. Here [...]

Setting a Price on Carbon Will Help US End Oil Addiction – Not Just Combat Climate Change

TreeHugger — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:36:00 +0000

photo: Carina via flickr There's lots of overlap between ending our oil addiction in the United States and combatting climate change, with setting a price on carbon (regardless of the mechanism used, be it cap and trade, a carbon tax, or something el...

China in Denial About Becoming World’s Largest Energy Consumer

TreeHugger — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:54:00 +0000

photo: Dieter Weinelt via flickr China passed the United States in terms of national carbon emissions a couple years back, and according to new data from the International Energy Agency also just passed the US in terms of total energy consumption. Th...