Brave Green World

Imagine watching the sun go down on October 24, and living in complete darkness straight through to when it finally rises again on the 8th of March. Imagine 40 below temperatures on a regular basis. Imagine subsisting almost entirely on the fatty flesh of sea mammals like seal, walrus, and narwhal – ... Read More

It’s been over four decades since Greenland lost an ice chunk like the one “born” last week. The ice island – four times the size of Manhattan – calved off of northern Greenland’s Petermann glacier on August 5th. At its thickest parts, the ice island is half the height (excuse all the NYC-centric ... Read More

Bzzz. Bzzzzzzzz. Bz. Is that the sound of your caffeine buzz, or is it the hum of the millions of happy native bees you’re helping to house when you choose shade-grown coffee beans over conventional? Actually, it may be both. No secret that choosing shade-grown coffee (planted under rainforest ... Read More

Pertinent news for anyone who uses soap, shampoo, perfume, sunscreen, lip balm, moisturizer, etc etc etc: last Wednesday, Congress introduced a bill that would give the FDA the power to protect your hide from companies that use toxic chemicals in your personal care products. It’s called the Safe ... Read More

A friend of mine, who works in the sustainable food industry, was alarmed by my recent post on overfishing. Not alarmed to learn about the demise of marine ecosystems (she already knows all that), but alarmed by my lugubrious tone. What I’d intended to accomplish with the post was to add my voice to ... Read More

Is there a coastal area close to your heart? Imagine the water there 23 feet higher than it is now. Sea levels are rising, and it can be painful to try to wrap the mind around that fact (picture New York City with a massive sea wall built up around it, if you like). The implications of the predicted ... Read More

Did you know that clothes dryers – generally speaking – use about nine times as much energy as do clothes washers? An energy-and-the-home graphic spread in Dwell Magazine’s July/August issue (they brought design-savvy GOOD Magazine on board to collaborate on the project) brought this helpful factoid ... Read More

We've all had well-meaning friends remind us that there are "plenty of other fish in the sea," but the phrase may not be the most fitting fortune-cookie counsel for breakup-ees anymore. The fact is that there aren’t plenty of fish in the sea these days; the oceans are, actually, 90% depleted. Most ... Read More

Last week, in a history book moment, an airplane was flown straight through a day-night cycle running on nothing – nothing – but the sun’s rays. Imagine the quiet, up there, as Solar Impulse CEO and co-founder Andres Borschberg soared through the skies in his one-man cockpit, collecting and storing ... Read More

Opening my daily Treehugger news email just now, I noticed that headline: ‘Dinner in the Dumpster’. Oh, I thought, how fun! An article about freeganism! In fact, the article at hand wasn’t one about the people who dive headfirst into dumpsters to live on our nation’s (tasty, fresh, and free) grocery ... Read More

Grist’s Umbra Fisk (the website’s point person for green living questions) recently revisited the toilet issue and doled out some very important water-saving tips: sink a half-gallon of water in the tank of your old toilet to stop it from using three gallons per flush, use the food coloring trick to ... Read More

Two days ago, San Francisco mandated that all cell phones bear a new label: amount of radiation emitted. A sort of calorie-labeling for health-conscious tech consumers. The science is arguably not set in stone, but the watchdog organization Environmental Working Group (EWG) released a study earlier ... Read More

Solar Impulse, a Swiss venture launched by explorer/innovator/engineer/psychologist/businessmen Betrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg, is shooting beyond the moon and aiming for the sun. Their mission: build a solar aircraft that can fly all day and all night, feeding on nothing but the sun’s energy ... Read More

Lead paint has been banned in the states since 1978, but if you’re like me, you still wonder about the paint debris you inhale in your home, in your office, in general. You wonder if there’s actually some of the old toxic stuff lurking about beneath the newer coats, and if you’ve already incurred ... Read More

Speaking of green prefab houses, how many square feet, exactly, do you require before you’ll call it home? What about 220? I realize that, as a recently apartment-searching New Yorker wrung through the NYC rental market – where brokers use the term “bedroom” to describe a closet into which a bed can ... Read More