Refuting the carbon offset guilt myth — again

The Times rehashes old arguments

Adam Stern | November 19, 2009

On a day when President Obama and President Hu announced new U.S.-China climate agreements in Beijing, the editors at the New York Times chose to give front-page visibility to a story that criticizes carbon offsets. Surely history will judge the progress announced by the American and Chinese leaders as more significant than the offset story. But the prominence of the offset article means it will float around for a while and thus it deserves a...

Bike-sharing hits rough spot in Paris

Vandalism and theft affect 80% of bikes

Adam Stein | November 17, 2009

I more or less ignored some of the early reports of trouble with the Velib bike-sharing program in Paris, because they seemed thinly reported. But the recent Times article paints a troubling picture: With 80 percent of the initial 20,600 bicycles stolen or damaged, the program’s organizers have had to hire several hundred people just to fix them. And along with the dent in the city-subsidized budget has been a blow to the Parisian psyche....

Are livestock responsible for 51% of greenhouse gas emissions?

New report makes questionable claim

Adam Stein | November 10, 2009

Conventional wisdom has it that meat production is responsible for about 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions — a shocking enough figure as it is. But lately a much higher number has been circulating, with some claiming that meat is responsible for an astonishing 51% of worldwide emissions. Some skepticism is in order here, so I went looking for the source of the figure. It appears to be this recent report from the Worldwatch Institute....

Comprehending the Pacific Garbage Patch

Some extraordinary — and upsetting — pictures show directly how our waste impacts our environment

Pete Davies | November 10, 2009

Chris Jordan uses his photographs to illustrate the complexities and enormities of the problem with have with our consumption and its impact on the environment. Until recently his work focused on a series called “Running the numbers” which attempts to give some meaning to all the huge statistics we hear about our environmental problem. Such as… Two million plastic bottles are used in the US every five minutes. Chris’ approach is to use photographs to...

Cities: still greener than small villages

Access to supermarkets is more important than access to farms

Adam Stein | November 3, 2009

The review of Green Metropolis kicked off a discussion that illustrates some of the confusion that crops up in discussions of density. Hoisting a representative snippet up from comments: I think people can be extremely green in either rural or urban settings, it’s a matter of intent. Hard to measure the difference in impact - an urban setting allows for a much more communal way of using and reusing resources, but on the other hand,...

Parking done right

San Francisco skips the green garages, focuses on pricing

Adam Stein | November 2, 2009

Let’s talk parking. Recently I suggested that building new parking garages isn’t an environmentally friendly thing to do, even if such garages are nicely landscaped and have energy-efficient lighting systems. The environmental impact of the structures themselves is minuscule in comparison to the impact of the transportation system they are part of, and the green flourishes do nothing to change this basic equation. For making this fairly bland observation, I was accused of, variously: being...

It’s not where you are going, it’s how you get there

Exploring alternative transportation options

Mark Frey | October 21, 2009

Over the past month or so I’ve been rethinking how I get to work. My routine has been shifting as my son sleeps in a bit later at times (thank goodness), and as his activities and naps tend to take place in the early evening more often. My comfortable routine of getting dropped off and picked up at the local BART train station is no more. This is probably for the best, as I have...

The cost of inaction

Clearing up after a flood costs money, wastes energy and reduces productivity. Just like climate change.

Pete Davies | October 13, 2009

We’re in the middle of the first storm of the season on the West Coast. As I write this I’m looking at a pile of industrial hairdryers that are going to be used to deal with our soggy office: a couple of blocked drains on a patio at the top of the building caused a pretty severe flood in the early hours of the morning. I’m not qualified to suggest (and don’t intend to imply)...

Sleeping with your values

Is it possible to buy green and save green when it comes to mattresses, and should you care?

Alicia Seiger | October 7, 2009

Mattress shopping may be the single most unpleasant purchasing experience one can voluntarily undertake. Even Consumer Reports throws up its hands, saying that comparing mattress makes and models is too difficult for sound recommendations. It has been almost 15 years since I last set foot in a mattress store. Back then, my selection was driven by whichever retailer could have a mattress in my apartment by nightfall and within the tiny confines of my budget....

Native woodlands razed; native people left jobless

Economic woes have social and environmental costs

Tim Varga | October 2, 2009

The recent financial collapse of a forestry plantation on an island in Northern Australia moved me for a number of reasons. For starters, the story, beautifully told by Verlyn Klinkenborg in the New York Times, serves as a timely reminder of the long-term loss that follows land cover change. More personally, the topic is close to my heart because my Master’s thesis was on tropical savannas. The Australian project began with positive intentions. Logging the...

Retrofitting suburbia for the elderly

Good places to grow up aren’t always good places to grow old

Adam Stein | September 29, 2009

I do understand the appeal of the suburbs — the privacy, the open space — but one thing has long seemed pretty clear: suburbs are a difficult place to grow old. I’ve certainly seen this with my own aging relatives. Especially after one spouse dies, big houses become empty and difficult to maintain. Yards are an expensive and unused amenity. Simple trips require a car, so seniors often continue driving long after they should stop....

Light rail notches a success in the West

Phoenix system outpaces expectations, proves detractors wrong

Adam Stein | September 28, 2009

Any proposed new mass transit system inevitably touches off a religious war between those who see light rail as the saving grace of car-choked, sprawling metropolitan areas, and those who view it as an expensive boondoggle. Unsurprisingly, my sympathies lie with mass transit advocates, but of course it’s important that expensive public works projects actually serve the taxpayers that foot the bill. So it’s nice to see that Phoenix’s new light rail system has surpassed...

Defusing the population bomb

Study suggests family planning is one of the lowest-cost ways to reduce CO2

Adam Stein | September 10, 2009

People may be the problem, but what’s the solution? Although energy use is driven by demographic trends, we don’t seem to have many tools readily at hand for addressing population as a root cause of climate change. But a new study suggests that a simple investment in family planning services might save an enormous amount of carbon emissions at very low cost. Specifically, the report claims that the world can spare 34 gigatons of CO2...

Cadillac Desert

A century of damming and diverting threatens to leave the West high and dry

Nicole Schuetz | September 10, 2009

I just finished reading the environmental classic Cadillac Desert, by Marc Reisner. The book tells the story of water policy in the Western United States from the mid-1800s (the time of John Wesley Powell’s exploration of the region) to the early 1990s. The strategy of damming and diverting the region’s rivers over the past 150 years to encourage settlement has led to a self-reinforcing cycle: cheap water spurs farming and urban development in areas otherwise...

Paris to launch innovative car-sharing program

And Better Place will provide electric taxis in Tokyo

Adam Stein | September 8, 2009

Paris is preparing to unveil a car-sharing program consisting of a 4,000 electric cars and 1,400 rental stations scattered throughout the city and neighboring suburbs. Dubbed Autolib, after the popular Velib bike-sharing program, the car-sharing service will offer far more flexibility than its U.S. counterparts. For example, drivers won’t have to make a reservation to use a car. Instead, they can simply walk up to an available vehicle and swipe a credit card. And rather...

Crunching numbers on my home energy use

Nine year’s of utility bills tell a story of one family’s energy use over time

Erin Craig | September 4, 2009

During an attempt to bring order to our household files, my husband and I discovered that we saved enough utility bills to reconstruct a nearly complete record of our household energy and water use since we moved in in 2000. Unable to let such a treasure trove sit idle, I ordered the pile and input everything into a spreadsheet. I hoped, indeed expected, the resulting data to show clear if subtle downward trends across all...

Sprawl: a problem without a solution?

New study suggest we need to look elsewhere to curb carbon emissions

Adam Stein | September 3, 2009

Dueling headlines cropped up in my newsreader today: More People, Less Driving: The Imperative of Curbing Sprawl (Smart Growth America) Vs.: Forget Curbing Suburban Sprawl: Building denser cities would do little to reduce CO2 emissions, a new NAS report concludes (MIT Technology Review) Both articles refer to the same study, conducted by a blue-ribbon panel for the U.S. Department of Energy. And both are pretty much right: the study does affirm the link between sprawl...

The greenest city in America

And the lessons it offers for a more sustainable future

Adam Stein | August 31, 2009

I’m not sure what link trail led me to this five-year-old New Yorker piece on the greenest city in America, but it holds up quite well. According to New Yorker magazine, the greenest city in America is: New York. The average Manhattanite consumes gasoline at a rate that the country as a whole hasn’t matched since the mid-nineteen-twenties, when the most widely owned car in the United States was the Ford Model T. Eighty-two per...

Searching for Impact Man

Taking aim at wannabe Thoreaus (including Thoreau)

Adam Stein | August 29, 2009

If you read only one piece of long-form environmental journalism this month, make it Elizabeth Kolbert’s New Yorker piece on the uncertain lessons to be learned from “eco-stunts,” the tradition of self-promotional experiments in green living that winds from Thoreau right on down through No Impact Man. Colin Beavan, the central figure of the piece, has been successful enough in his experiment that by now you’ve probably heard of his family’s effort to live impact-free...

Why did the Reburbia design competition fail?

“Sprawl” is too squishy a target to hit, but the contest’s results are still instructive

Adam Stein | August 25, 2009

I had some fun last week with the Reburbia design competition, a contest seeking to “re-invent the suburbs” via “future-proof spaces and systems” — “the wilder the better!” The judges somehow managed to include a proposal for a perpetual motion machine among the contest’s finalists, suggesting either that suburbia is in need of far more radical reinvention that previously thought, or perhaps that the competition could have used some tighter refereeing. Somewhat more seriously, I...

Couple goes waste-free for a year

Litter box and toothpaste tubes pose environmental conundrums great and small

Hanh Ho | August 24, 2009

Amy and Adam live in a small community in Dallas, Oregon. On July 6, 2009, they began their pledge of living without producing garbage for one year. Like many of us, they believe that collective action is necessary to preserve our environment for future generations. Their chosen focus is waste and recycling. Here’s how they plan to get by without garbage: Avoid non-recyclables Start compost bin in backyard Grow their own produce Make products like...

Bike sharing comes big to Boston

Memories of a great experience in Berlin have me rooting for the system in the U.S.

Peter Freed | August 18, 2009

Boston has just announced what is slated to become the largest bike sharing network in the U.S. and I’m awfully jealous. My first experience with bike sharing was love at first sight. It was the summer of 2006, I was in Berlin, and everything was perfect. Thronged with international visitors for the World Cup, the city was effortlessly navigable by public transportation. But I had a yen to strike out on the streets, and when...

Bits o’ carbon: digital downloads are greener than CDs

Now if someone would just do a similar study for electronic books…

Adam Stein | August 17, 2009

This is hardly a shocking result, but it’s kind of fun nonetheless: a life cycle analysis reveals that downloading music digitally creates less than one sixth the carbon emissions of buying it from a retail store (pdf). The study compares six scenarios: Music purchased from a traditional retail store Music purchased from an online retailer and delivered by truck Music purchased from an online retailer and delivered by plane Digital music purchase (e.g., via iTunes...

Competition dreams up new ways to harass suburbanites

Because real solutions to our energy problems are too dull, designers have cooked up some loopier ones

Adam Stein | August 15, 2009

Dwell magazine and Inhabitat have teamed up to sponsor a “Reburbia” competition in which designers re-envision suburbia in ways that make environmentalists seem as scary and dingbatty as possible. The finalists include a lot of inspiring ideas, but my favorite by far is the proposal to have menacing 3,000-foot-tall robots stomp into suburban villages, rip the homes out of the ground, and install them in bleak, Matrix-like hives. “By radically retrofitting suburbs, the old methodology...

Is population a problem?

And what responsibility do we bear?

Mark Mondik | August 11, 2009

I feel as though I cannot enjoy anything anymore. Every action seems tainted by nagging questions about environmental impact or sustainability. For example, I really like hamburgers but the carbon footprint of cattle production is so high that my beef consumption has dwindled to near-zero. I love sushi, but continually hear reports of how the world’s oceans are overfished. Travel is important (as Saint Augustine of Hippo said, “The World is a book, and those...

The four-day work week works

Utah’s experiment shows happier employees and environmental benefits

Pete Davies | August 4, 2009

17,000 Utah state employees have been working four-day weeks since last August. Non-critical government and agency staff have worked ten-hour days Monday-Thursday and then taken three-day weekends. Some of the first findings from the experiment are in: Nine months in, the state had saved $1.8 million on energy and cleaning bills (the savings are likely to be even higher over the summer as the air conditioning isn’t needed on Fridays). 82% of state employees say...

Potty time

Given the high impact of both cloth and plastic, the best option is ditching diapers as soon as possible

Erik Blachford | August 4, 2009

As our third child approaches his third birthday, my wife and I find ourselves contemplating how best to get him out of diapers. We’ve been through this drill with our two older children, once in the US and once in France, with one big difference: the social norms for “potty training” in the US suggests that it happen by about 3 years old, whereas in France the age is more like 2 years old. No...

Want to reduce your footprint? Take a vacation

Sure, planes are bad, but low-carbon locales might help you work off the debt

Mark Frey | July 28, 2009

I’ve just returned from a long-awaited vacation, a return to two of the many places that I have called home over the past several years. The planes, trains, and automobiles along the way, in addition to the widely varying accommodations and landscapes I encountered, brought me back to a simple question: how does where you spend your time affect your carbon footprint? On a broad scale, this question is pretty easy to answer. Certain countries...

Climate change skeptics: put your money where your mouth is

Think it’s getting colder? There’s a bet for that…

Pete Davies | July 21, 2009

We tend to post sites and articles we’ve read and found interesting on our twitter feed (it also has all of our blog posts if you can’t wait for the newsletter). But every now and again one crops up this is worthy of a full link from the blog. Fed up with comments such as “it’s so cold this spring how can you possibly believe in global warming!?” the stats and politics blogger Nate Silver...

Can Twitter help us to save energy at home?

Does a display of information help us to save energy? Or will it take something more?

Pete Davies | July 21, 2009

There’s a house that tweets all of it’s energy usage. And that’s really just the beginning of the information it dumps onto Twitter every day. Even the mousetraps are wired into the matrix… Residential energy use accounts for a little over 20% of US energy consumption and therefore represents a great opportunity for savings and efficiency. It’s no wonder then that huge companies like Google, Microsoft and GE, together with an ever-growing list of start-ups...

Does America still have the Right Stuff?

We put a man on the moon 40 years ago. But are we up to the challenge of climate change?

Alicia Seiger | July 20, 2009

Forty years ago today astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out of their Apollo spacecraft onto the moon and into what Aldrin described as “magnificent desolation”. On May 25 1961, when President Kennedy challenged America to put a man on the moon, the rocketry and computerization that would be required had not yet been invented, the funds to support the program had not been secured, and those that would manage the coordination of government...

Wal-Mart launches Sustainability Index

Scorecard will rate thousands of suppliers on environmental impact

Adam Stein | July 19, 2009

By dint of its sheer size, pretty much everything Wal-Mart does is important. So the long-anticipated launch of the Wal-Mart Sustainability Index — a company-led project to evaluate all of the suppliers whose products appear on Wal-Mart’s shelves — has met with a huge amount of scrutiny. The first version of the index is a simple 15-question scorecard (available here) broken into four sections: Energy and Climate, Material Efficiency, Natural Resources, and People and Community....

Urban waterways: Seoul peels back the pavement and reveals a river

Other cities take note as expressway yields to stream

Adam Stein | July 17, 2009

About half the world’s population presently lives in cities, and the proportion will increase to two thirds by mid-century. This trend is good for the natural environment, but also highlights the need to maintain the human environment within rapidly expanding urban areas. The New York Times recently highlighted a seemingly unlikely success: the city of Seoul recovered three miles of river that used to bisect the city before being covered over with pavement and elevated...

Greening the neighborhood

Sustainable Jersey is looking for local success stories

Nancy Bsales | July 13, 2009

My neighborhood is home to the last episode of The Sopranos and The Real Housewives of New Jersey (“real” being a matter of interpretation). Anyone who has ever driven the NJ Turnpike probably thinks of it as a hopelessly brown and barren place. But New Jersey is taking on sustainable living and working towards a better future through an exciting new Sustainable Jersey program that offers certification for municipalities that take on a green action...

The magic bus

Bus Rapid Transit has proven itself in Bogotá. When will it catch on in the U.S.?

Adam Stein | July 10, 2009

The New York Times turns its attention to one of my favoritest topics: bus rapid transit, and in particular the astounding system in Bogotá, Colombia that has been so successful in reducing traffic and the associated emissions that it has qualified for hundreds of millions of dollars in carbon credits. Think of bus rapid transit (BRT) as an above-ground subway system on rubber wheels. All of the things that make subways relatively fast and convenient...

Seasonal fruit and veg on your iPhone

No more excuses for eating asparagus in September

Pete Davies | July 7, 2009

Locally produced food isn’t necessarily better for the environment. But seasonal and local fruit or vegetables probably are. And while your grocery store may tell you where the food was grown, it probably doesn’t tell you how much energy went into growing it. As a general rule, something that is in season will take much less energy to produce than something out of season. Artificial light and heat aren’t necessary, and hopefully less water is...

Some cities shrink to survive

As populations shift, bulldozers help towns manage their own decline

Adam Stein | June 30, 2009

I’ve written before about our urban future. The flip side of the increasing concentration of people in growing cities is that other areas have to shrink. And that’s exactly what’s happening. This story about false fire alarms going off in the abandoned sprawl outside Phoenix, AZ has the eerie quality of that Ray Bradbury story about the slow death of an automated house after the end of civilization. It turns out firefighters aren’t allowed to...

Slow and low, that is the tempo

New toilets get the job done, with a minimum of wasted water

Mira Rubin Karp | June 23, 2009

We moved into a new house this past October and from the first week, it was one toilet problem after another. It seemed at least once a week, we were pulling out the plunger, which then became an auger. A few extra squares of toilet paper were enough to put us over the edge…literally. The first plumber we called over verbally cursed politicians for mandating the use of low-flow toilets, on which he blamed all...

Deutsche Bank’s New Carbon Counter

Will fast-moving numbers raise awareness or just frighten people?

Adam Stern | June 22, 2009

Deutsche Bank launched a carbon counter in the heart of Manhattan (Herald Square, 7th Ave @ 33rd St) last week. The counter, which is based on NASA and NOAA data and projections by MIT scientists, displays a running total of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Today’s count: 3.64 trillion metric tons. The numbers grow quickly in real time (800 metric tons per second) and leave viewers jarred by the fast growing total. You can watch...

Like New Year’s Eve every day

New York shuts Times Square to cars, Montreal launches ambitious bike-sharing program

Adam Stein | June 12, 2009

I’m not sure whether this made the news outside of New York City, but it’s a pretty fascinating case study in pedestrian-oriented urbanism: recently the city government closed large stretches of Broadway to cars, including the bit that passes through Times Square. The results has been a somewhat surreal, giddy and altogether fantastic pedestrian circus in what was once one of the most traffic-choked and collision-prone intersections in New York. Part of what makes the...

Vegetarianism — or flexitarianism — is cheaper

Low-meat diets finding new adherents in lean times

Adam Stein | June 12, 2009

Tim recently took a tongue-in-cheek look at the strange economics of fast food menus, but broader trends show how tightly our consumption habits are tied to the economy: Meat is the single most expensive thing Americans eat, and in tough times it’s one of the first things to go. Fifty-one percent of shoppers surveyed by the American Meat Institute say they have changed their meat purchasing relative to the economy. Despite the recent increase in...

I’d be vegetarian if it were cheaper

Flesh still deliciously under-priced

Tim Varga | June 11, 2009

As a firm believer in economic incentives to improve the health of the environment and stave off climate change, signs like the one above always exasperate me. I would find this funny if it weren’t so prevalent. It just seems odd that the vegetarian option is only ten cents less than the chicken, and forty cents less than the beef/pork option. Yes, you get guacamole with the veggie burrito. But the difference between avocados and...

Acting locally, in the local manner

From Japan to Australia, regionally appropriate tricks for conserving energy

Erin Craig | June 8, 2009

I was chatting with a friend in Sydney, Australia not long ago and came away with an enhanced appreciation of what it means to act locally. My Bay Area was suffering an unseasonable heat wave while hers was unusually rainy, so we talked about how the weather affected our households. “At least I get my water heated for free,” I noted, explaining that we installed a solar-heated hot water system. While she was duly impressed,...

If they green it, will fans come?

Major league baseball’s green initiatives

Hanh Ho | May 31, 2009

Baseball has always been my favorite sport. As winter subsides and spring marks the beginning of the baseball season, I took a moment to reflect on our nation’s favorite pastime. Of all sports, baseball is the most dependent on fair (if not warm) weather. With more games getting rained out or called off because of extreme weather in the month of April, I wondered whether Major League Baseball was getting concerned about climate change. It...

Our urban future

Slicing the data on cities reveals fascinating patterns

Adam Stein | May 26, 2009

Trend watch! Supercities will be all the rage in the 21st century, as fully 2/3 of the world’s population concentrates in urban regions. This centuries-long migration represents the culmination of a process of industrialization stretching back to the early 1800s, with all of its attendant social and environmental consequences. I’ve got a handful of links that take a data-driven driven look at cities. First up, what do large cities and elephants have in common? Both...

Ditching my wheels

Car sharing has taken us from a two-car household to no car at all

Peter Freed | May 26, 2009

I’ve recently been wondering just how green the car sharing service I use actually is. The service is certainly convenient, but am I actually reducing my carbon footprint? It appears the answer may well be yes. A new study in England suggests that each shared car replaces on average 23 privately owned cars. Further, car share participants take significantly fewer trips than car owners, opting instead to walk, bike, or use public transport. Finally, the...

Copenhagen wasn’t built in a day

You can vent your frustration about lack of cycling facilities, but don’t expect change overnight

Pete Davies | May 19, 2009

Last week’s post on the small things that can frustrate a bike commute provoked a lot of responses from Footprint readers. Hills, distance, reckless drivers, lack of bike lanes, no showers at work… it’s a long list. For my part, I got over the hump (literally) and took the bike route around the huge hill, giving me a longer, shallower hill, but at least it’s possible. And as Michael and others observed, I’m going to...

Roadblocks for bike commuters: show me the route!

What’s the one thing that would get you biking to work?

Pete Davies | May 12, 2009

It’s Bike to Work Week. Did you notice? Perhaps not yet: most of the major events in the US are taking place this Friday (or Thursday for Californians). Last year Adam posted some simple tips for newcomers to bike commuting. The central theme being, don’t take this too seriously and make it as easy as possible for yourself. I’m a big fan of bikes, have all the gear I could possibly need (I’m especially proud...

Stop talking about lifestyle

Change will happen whether we moralize about it or not

Adam Stein | May 9, 2009

Today’s episode of “Sacrifice is for Suckers” is dedicated to Oregon governor Ted Kulongoski, who recently warned that climate change is going to force some difficult choices on Americans who are used to having their cake and burgers and ice cream and SUVs too: “Other than taxes,” he added, “the hardest thing I find to talk with my constituents and my citizens about is about changing lifestyles.” David Roberts brings the good news to Governor...

Why Mom loved the green card

Unlike paper cards, e-cards have a negative carbon footprint

Mark Mondik | May 6, 2009

I have to be honest: I have never understood my mother’s infatuation with cards. Every year on or around my birthday they appear without fail through the mail slot. I say “they” because there are usually two — the one from the serious and dignified mother, with gilt cursive lettering and pictures of a budding tree, and the other “jokey” card, usually mocking or crass, which is my mother’s way of having a good time....

Keeping count in New York and Copenhagen

Some clever social marketing to sell urban bicycling

Adam Stein | May 3, 2009

Despite already having absurdly high numbers of bicycle commuters, the city of Copenhagen is always looking for ways to increase the share of trips taken by bike. The latest bit of social marketing struck me as pretty clever: a digital counter displays a running tally of the number of cyclists who pass through one of the city’s major thoroughfares. Lucky cyclist #500,000 gets a fancy new bike. This being Copenhagen, it will only take about...

Health advisory: eat less than 10 servings of raw beef per day

Bad for you, bad for the planet…and also really boring

Adam Stein | May 3, 2009

A huge decade-long study of 500,000 Americans has come to the conclusion that red meat is bad for you (cancer, heart disease, scabies, etc.). The news prompted Dr. Barry Popkin to offer the following advice: People should eat a hamburger only once or twice a week instead of every day, a small steak once a week instead of every other day, and a hot dog every month and a half instead of once a week....

The problem with Earth Day

What can we do to give Earth Day greater relevance?

Erik Blachford | April 28, 2009

I’m in a bit of a funk. I’ve been mulling over why Earth Day isn’t a bigger deal. After streaming Earth Day tweets including resolutions for a couple days, and reading them through, I think I’ve come to a conclusion: Earth Day doesn’t work, because it stands for too much. We need to simplify. There’s nothing wrong with being inclusive. When I read that a billion people are going to celebrate Earth Day, I’m encouraged...

Oil prices and the recession

$4 gas might be more expensive than we realized

Adam Stein | April 28, 2009

Economist James Hamilton crunched some numbers and found that the current recession can largely be explained by sub-prime mortgages financial derivatives imploding credit markets insolvent banks winged monkeys the surge in oil prices in 2007 and 2008. It’s a result so unexpected that even Hamilton claims not to believe it entirely, but perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised. Previous oil shocks in 1973, 1979, and 2000 were all followed by recessions. The Wall Street Journal...

Speak up, over the applause, please

Citizens must make their voices heard as climate legislation takes shape

Alicia Seiger | April 20, 2009

The annual Ceres conference always fills me with a combination of worry and hope. Last week’s event marked the 20th anniversary gathering for this group of environmentalists and investors to call for the integration of sustainability into capital markets. This is, in part, a cause for concern: two decades and still no cap on emissions or mandates for improved social and environmental governance. Still, with a new administration in Washington, there is a sense of...

Urban herb gardening season begins

Living proof that even brown-thumbed city dwellers can grow their own food

Adam Stein | April 6, 2009

I’ve been led to understand that gardening is a popular pastime in the United States, one to which people devote considerable time, care, labor, and craft. If you are such a person, then this post is not for you. This post is for people like me: lazy, brown-thumbed, a serial murderer of plant life, with no special talent or aptitude for gardening, and — perhaps most importantly — no plot of land to call my...

Fantastic Earth Hour pics

Interactive feature lets you flip the switch in Vegas, Paris, LA, Hong Kong and elsewhere

Adam Stein | March 30, 2009

On Saturday, over 1,000 cities participated in Earth Hour, a mass movement in which people turn off their lights for an hour to call attention to climate change. Get thee to the The Big Picture straightaway, and play with their before-and-after interactive pictures of Earth Hour events around the globe. I’ve reproduced a few of the images below, but we can’t do them justice here. Over at The Big Picture, the images are not only...

Friday video fun

Mighty green musical efforts, plus bonus Spike Jonze

Adam Stein | March 27, 2009

Some folks have written a song about home energy efficiency to the tune of M.I.A.’s Paper Planes. It takes a little while to get started — my favorite bit is at the 2:30 mark — but it’s hard not to like a song that incorporates Kill-A-Watt energy monitors, caulking guns, and negawatts. Well, hard if you’re me: David Roberts says it’s the greatest thing he’s ever seen, but for my money, it’s not even the...

Join Earth Hour next Saturday, March 28 at 8:30pm local time

A global movement asks people to unplug for just one hour

Erik Blachford | March 23, 2009

Update: headline typo has been fixed. Earth Hour falls on Saturday, March 28 at 8:30 PM local time. For the past few years, World Wildlife Fund has sponsored a worldwide effort to raise awareness of energy use by asking us to stop using energy for an hour. Earth Hour started in Sydney, Australia but has spread quickly to the United States and the rest of the world. This year over 1,750 towns and cities in...

Washington Post publishes rebuttal of George Will’s lies

But planet still comes out the loser

Adam Stein | March 23, 2009

The Washington Post gave over their op-ed page to science journalist Chris Mooney, who took apart George Will’s recent lie-filled column on climate change. The Post also published a letter from the World Meteorological Organization, rebutting Will’s distortion of their own data. Will claimed that the WMO’s temperature record shows “there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade.” According to the WMO itself, data collected over the past 150 years points...

High of 50? Dust off your bike

Pump the tires and grease the chain. Spring is here!

Adam Stein | March 17, 2009

Today marked the first day of my roughly seven-month biking season here in New York. The thermometer registered about 38° F when I left my house, which is a fine temperature for biking. A hat and some thin gloves keep the chill off, and the cool air keeps the tourist hordes away from the Brooklyn Bridge. Later in the summer the path pictured above will be thick with cyclists and pedestrians — which is great,...

Mother Earth takes on a whole new meaning

A new baby brings new questions about environmental impact

Mira Rubin Karp | March 17, 2009

As I get ready to welcome our first child this summer, I started to wonder about her carbon footprint. There are plenty of overwhelming statistics out there about how many diapers I’ll be going through (2,800 in the first year!) and how much it will cost to raise this child for the next 18 years ($250,000+), but less apparent is the environmental impact of a newborn. The widely used statistic is that the average American...

Top 10 sustainability myths

Questioning some conventional environmental wisdom

Adam Stein | March 16, 2009

I winced when I saw the headline “Top 10 Myths about Sustainability.” These articles are almost always an excuse for lame contrarianism. Did you know that a Prius is worse than a Hummer!?!?!! Did you know that farmer’s markets kill panda bears!?!? But hey, guess what, the article is really good, providing food for thought on a number of contentious issues. For example: Myth 2: Sustainability is all about the environment. Is climate change an...

Less carbon = more jobs

An interactive map locates companies that will be helped by climate legislation

Adam Stern | March 12, 2009

A common criticism of proposals to fight global warming is that the U.S. (and the rest of the world) can’t afford it right now because we’re in the middle of a deep recession. Critics also argue that any federal action on climate will cause job losses at a time of high unemployment. The Environmental Defense Fund paints a very different picture with its new web site, LessCarbonMoreJobs.com. In one of the better examples of a...

Your daily dose of environmental self-defeat

The NYT asks: are we shaming our politicians about their lifestyles enough?

Adam Stein | March 3, 2009

Hey, it’s media criticism week here at TerraPass! The Washington Post lies while the New York Times fiddles: eager to find new ways to trivialize the warming of the planet, the Green Inc. blog reports on the carbon footprint of individual politicians and legislatures. They are abetted in this effort by Terra Eco, a French environmental magazine that has calculated British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s footprint to be — quelle horreur! — 8,400 tons of...

Create your own bike lane, redux

Blaze a collective trail with colorful chalk bikeprints

Adam Stein | March 2, 2009

I love this: “Contrail” is a design concept that enables cyclists to increase their visibility to cars, pedestrians, and each other. Conceived by Pepin Gelardi and Teresa Herrmann, this frame-mounted device would allow cyclists to make their mark on the street with faint lines of chalk. The rear wheel spins a smooth trail of color onto the pavement as the bike whizzes along. Contrail leaves an impression based on the cumulative movements of many cyclists...

Survey says: green surveys are improbably optimistic

Despite a crumbling economy, surveys would have us believe that consumers are still willing to pay more for green.

Pete Davies | February 24, 2009

Some numbers to begin: 53% of consumers would be willing to pay a premium for televisions with green attributes. 34% and 44% of Americans are respectively more likely to buy and just as likely to buy environmentally responsible products. More than half of all consumers say they have made a green purchase in the last six months. No, these aren’t the results of the latest TerraPass customer survey. And, believe it or not, this...

Aussie firefighters connect the dots

Why can’t Americans? Blame the press.

Adam Stein | February 24, 2009

The recent series of bushfires in Australia are being called the continent’s worst natural disaster in over 100 years. The death toll is expected to rise above 200. Over 1,000 houses have been destroyed. 5,000 are homeless. In response, the firefighter’s union has issued a stern demand to the government: take global warming more seriously. Every part of this story is basically incomprehensible in an American context. The firefighters union has now joined Green politicians...

Hybrid car sales rebound

2009 sees the highest-ever percentage of hybrid sales

Erik Blachford | February 17, 2009

With the help of Green Car Congress, I’ve been tracking the percent share of U.S. auto sales attributable to hybrids. Back in November I predicted that hybrids would represent more than 2% of December sales, and missed the mark. But despite the dismal overall trends in the auto industry, I’m pleased to see that for January 2009, hybrids accounted for 2.35% of U.S. new vehicle market share. That’s the highest January percentage ever, and something...

More room for bikes on trains

Train seats make way for bikes and lycra in Northern California

Adam Stern | February 10, 2009

Bay Area bike commuters are popping a few celebratory wheelies at the news that Caltrain, the rail service that runs between San Jose and San Francisco, is adding more bike racks to its train cars. Overall bicycle capacity will rise 27 percent — resulting in some carriages having as many as 40 slots for bikes. To get the job done, Caltrain will remove some seats and reconfigure interior layouts to accommodate both cyclists and regular...

The limits of localism

Brewery brouhaha highlights complexities of carbon management

Adam Stein | February 10, 2009

This isn’t the biggest deal in the world, but it’s an instructive example of the limits of focusing too narrowly on highly specific or prescriptive solutions to climate change. The New Belgium Brewery, maker of the tasty Fat Tire beer, is run by a bunch of nice hippies who manage their company toward an impressive list of environmental and social goals. Recently the company endured some minor controversy arising from accusations that their claim to...

Today’s climate forecast: grim

As the political outlook brightens, the science grows darker

Adam Stein | February 10, 2009

A story that I’ve been sort of ignoring because it isn’t really so much a “story” as a “depressing reality” is that the science of climate change has recently taken a turn for the deeply grim. Rising seas are increasing the salinity of groundwater in India, wiping out farmland. Warming is significantly altering and degrading the character of American forests. Oceans are becoming more acidic. Drought threatens California. Sea ice is in rapid retreat....

Art from the waste stream

Sculptures from the landfill that charm adults and children alike

Erik Blachford | February 3, 2009

There’s nothing like spending Friday afternoon at San Francisco’s Norcal Recycling Station with a gang of pre-schoolers. There’s their obvious excitement at seeing where the construction trash goes, and their stern looks when the tour guide discusses the evils of disposable chopsticks. It’s enough to lift anyone’s spirits to see these five-year-olds easily identify which materials should go into the recycling, compost, and garbage bins, and to cheer one another on for getting it all...

Beautiful vandalism

Guerrilla gardening turns brown public spaces to green

Hanh Ho | January 28, 2009

Guerrilla gardening is the act of cultivating someone’s land without permission. I remember the first time I saw the words guerrilla gardening paired together. My immediate thought — random acts of beautification? While seeing our personal project of beautifying our San Francisco office come into fruition, I grew inspired to take a closer look. Historically, class struggles have set the stage for organized takeover of private land for farming. Gerrard Winstanley of the Diggers started...

The four-day week revisited

Should schools be allowed to move to a four-day week to save on energy costs?

Pete Davies | January 27, 2009

It’s already been proposed by numerous different cities, and a test is well underway in Utah (of which more in a moment), but the four-day week is now receiving serious consideration for schools as well. From Arizona to Maine to Washington, proposals are cropping up that are designed to save money, not least on energy bills. “More productive student schedules” are also supposed to be a benefit. I wrote about the idea of the four-day...

Trams that run on grass

“Something quite magical” in Barcelona and elsewhere

Adam Stein | January 27, 2009

This isn’t what you think. Monocle Magazine recently offered up 25 examples of good urban design, many of which have a green-ish tinge. Example #5 is the humble tram: There’s something quite magical about watching trams in Barcelona, Strasbourg or Frankfurt glide silently along beds of grass as they do their city circuit. Where possible, this attractive combination of efficient public transport and inspired landscaping should be standard as part of the urban fabric. Gliding...

Do you care about a product’s carbon footprint?

Carbon labels are beginning to appear in the U.S.

Pete Davies | January 22, 2009

I was very interested to read on NYT’s Green Inc. blog about consumer reactions to seeing carbon labels on products. Over a year ago I wrote here about carbon labeling of Walker’s Crisps (PepsiCo’s UK brand of Lay’s) and wondered what kind of reaction there would be from shoppers. Well here’s the answer from the man in charge of Walkers at the time: They didn’t necessarily understand the number, but what they respected was...

Wind-up radio triumphs over modern technology

TerraPass staff still managed to hear the inauguration even when the internet stream failed.

Pete Davies | January 20, 2009

There’s no television in the TerraPass office. So this morning we crowded around MSNBC’s live stream of the inauguration. Alas, along with most other news sites the stream couldn’t stand up to the pressure. Just as Chief Justice Roberts stepped forward, the image froze again. Anybody got a radio? But of course, we keep wind-up radios in the green store. After a minute of winding, we found our local NPR station to hear the end...

Financial crisis: still bad for the environment

Credit dries up for clean energy; industry experiences layoffs

Adam Stein | January 19, 2009

Has it really been only four months since our financial system caved in? Back then, I made a few predictions about how the crisis would affect clean tech. It’s time for a periodic check-in. The credit crunch remains flatly terrible for clean energy development. Energy developers have curtailed plans for new plants so dramatically that the industry seems to be in virtual lockdown. The Freakonomics blog provided a good round-up recently. John Whitehead predicts that...

Google searches emit carbon, but not very much

A storm in a teacup over the carbon emissions of Google searches

Pete Davies | January 13, 2009

Suddenly the carbon footprint of a Google search is big news. The exact facts and precisely who said what remain a little murky, but the following things do seem clear: A couple of Google searches emit significantly less CO2 (about one-hundredth of an ounce) than boiling the kettle for a cup of tea, despite some wishful thinking on the part of a Times of London journo. Computer servers use quite a lot of energy...

Hybrids not immune, after all

Hybrid car sales continue to fall in the weak economy

Erik Blachford | January 8, 2009

Well, so much for my gas-electric crystal ball. Last month, I confidently predicted that hybrid sales in December 2008 would reach the same 2.2% of total car sales that they had reached in December of the previous year. But this chart from Green Car Congress tells it differently: Hybrid sales share (the purple line in the chart) continued to fall, easing below 2% to 1.97% of all new cars sold in December. I suppose it’s...

Cheap green homes

“100K House” developer aims to develop house for 100K

Adam Stein | January 4, 2009

The recent post on passive houses sparked an interesting discussion about the costs of ultra-efficient homes. Passive houses are meant to be affordable — that is, the incremental construction costs pay back in energy savings in a fairly short time period — but those relative cost calculations really only apply in a European context. Germany, the birthplace of the passive house, has much stricter building codes than in the U.S., so all houses tend to...

Got resolutions?

Some ideas for green resolutions that are achievable, meaningful, and maybe a little bit novel

Adam Stein | January 3, 2009

New Year’s resolutions, as we all know, are for the most part entirely pointless — made in one breath, forgotten in the next. So in that spirit of general futility, I offer a few ideas for green resolutions that, either through novelty or just ease of use, may inspire more than a passing commitment. Please leave your own ideas below. Idea #1: help make “livable streets” a reality in your community All politics is local,...

Looking back, looking forward: 2008 edition

Progress is still in fits and starts, but the pace will only accelerate.

Adam Stein | December 30, 2008

Frequently these days I’m reminded of Bill Gates’ maxim: “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.” We tend to extrapolate fairly linearly from where we are today. In our near-term predictions, we discount the inherent lag built into human institutions. In our long-term predictions, we entirely overlook the seismic shifts that are barely foreshadowed today. Two years ago,...

The Christmas tree fairy

Where does your tree go when it’s no longer needed?

Alicia Seiger | December 21, 2008

This time of year we spin tales of a jolly man with a big white beard, a bright red suit, and a team of reindeer delivering gifts to children everywhere. And when Christmas is over, we tell ourselves stories of another magical helper — the Christmas tree fairy. Throughout December evergreens are adorned with lights and ornaments, and prominently displayed in the window most seen by passersby. But then the new year rolls around and...

U.P.S. adds bikes to the fleet

Big Brown handles the holiday crush by swapping four wheels for two

Adam Stein | December 20, 2008

U.P.S. seems like a smart company. Fuel costs money, so they’re constantly looking for ways to use less fuel. Every holiday season brings a huge surge in deliveries, which this year they’re handling in part by adding bicycles to their fleet: Of course, each U.P.S. bike delivery system (typically a $350 mountain bike pulling a custom trailer) can haul only 15 to 20 packages per trip — a mere fraction of what a truck can...

Peak hybrid?

November hybrid sales lagging broader market

Erik Blachford | December 9, 2008

A couple of months ago I wrote that hybrid car sales were holding up relatively well in the face of the economic downturn. My theory was that though saving money on gas was great, it couldn’t account for the whole disparity in sales decline — there had to be a core of hybrid buyers whose primary motivation continued to be lowering their carbon footprints. However, the latest data are challenging that theory. It turns...

Pollan on food and Obama

Author offers advice on food, energy, health, and education.

Adam Stein | December 8, 2008

I am frustrated to learn that Michael Pollan is as charming and cogent on television as he is on the written page. He sat down with Bill Moyers recently to offer some advice to president-elect Obama (part 1, part 2, transcript): What Obama needs to do, if he indeed wants to make change in this area — and that isn’t clear yet that he does at least in his first term — I think we...

Population go boom now?

So far we haven’t run out of natural resources…so far

Tim Varga | December 8, 2008

So when is that population bomb going to happen, exactly? In theory, exponential increases in human population should eventually be constrained by limited, non-renewable resources. One way to track an impending resource crunch — when high demand hits low supply — is by watching for a surge in the price of various goods. In 1980, biologist and author of The Population Bomb Paul Ehrlich wagered economist Julian Simon that demand for five different precious metals,...

Airport taxi lines

A new front in the fight to cut carbon.

Adam Stern | December 3, 2008

I landed at Washington Dulles airport last month en route to a climate policy conference. As I waited at the taxi stand for a cab to take me into the city, a giant Ford Expedition SUV with seats for eight passengers pulled up. I asked the dispatcher, “Do I have to get in this thing? Can’t I go in a smaller vehicle?” In a frustrated voice (I had delayed the flow of the taxi line),...

Use more energy to use less energy?

Irony watch: Chevron puts up a massive LED billboard touting energy efficiency.

Erik Blachford | December 2, 2008

We’ve all seen Chevron’s attempt to convince the country that it is on the side of energy efficiency. Ads in every medium declare sincerely that the company is willing, ready and able to join consumers in using less energy in all forms. Usually I just dismiss the cognitive dissonance and carry on with my day. But this weekend I came across this giant LED billboard touting, yes, Chevron’s energy efficiency message. Hm. That doesn’t seem...

Save energy! Work outside!

Japanese firm relocates its office to the garden. Did you say ‘brrr’? Get a blanket!

Pete Davies | November 25, 2008

So we know about turning off the computer and the savings from car-pooling, we’ve debated the four-day week and every good TerraPasser must by now know the benefits of the smart strip. Is there any stone left unturned in the world of office energy efficiency? Well I was wondering… until I came across this Japanese newspaper article via Environmental Leader. Office supplies company Kokuyo will banish 140 employees to the garden for 90 days each...

Paradise on wheels

Europe proves that if you build it, they just might come.

Adam Stein | November 18, 2008

The recent Times article on the bike-sharing boom in Europe offers up lots of good stuff. For mayors looking to ease congestion and prove their environmental bona fides, bike-sharing has provided a simple solution: for the price of a bus, they invest in a fleet of bicycles, avoiding years of construction and approvals required for a subway. For riders, joining means cut-rate transportation and a chance to contribute to the planet’s well-being. The new...

Save the reindeer

As Christmas gets less green, is there hope for Santa’s workshop?

Nancy Bsales | November 18, 2008

As I was putting my children’s letter to Santa Claus into the freezer (because we all know that ensures express delivery to the North Pole), a thought came to mind: Forget save the polar bears, let’s save Santa and his reindeer. The North Pole receives over 6 million letters to Santa every year. Recently the National Snow and Ice Data Center said that there is a 50-50 chance that the already thin ice on...

A greener free market

Sometimes the free market works for the forces of good.

Mark Mondik | November 18, 2008

With the recent financial market meltdown and related bailout, the term “free market” is not particularly in vogue at the moment. Instead, everyone seems to be looking for government intervention to force companies to do not only what’s right, but what in many cases is in the best interest of those companies. Much of such regulation is probably necessary. Corporate managers are notorious for focusing on short-term profits, even if it comes at the expense...

A triple-win: Amazon’s “frustration-free” packaging

Smarter boxes eliminate waste, cut costs, and reduce wrap rage.

Adam Stein | November 11, 2008

A few weeks ago, we kicked around the question of whether online shopping is better or worse for the environment than the traditional method. Recently Amazon unveiled a new program that demonstrates another of the efficiency advantages available to large retailers: The Frustration-Free Package (on the left) is recyclable and comes without excess packaging materials such as hard plastic clamshell casings, plastic bindings, and wire ties. It’s designed to be opened without the use...

Steady as she goes

Float like a butterfly, take the sting out of your mpg.

Erin Craig | October 30, 2008

A couple weeks ago, Aussies John and Helen Taylor smashed the World Record for “lowest fuel consumption on a U.S. nationwide drive,” completing their 48-state, 9,419-mile tour in 22 days. Their overall fuel efficiency came in at 58.82 miles per gallon, well above the earlier record of 51.58 mpg. Their vehicle: a 2009 VW Jetta TDI Diesel. Meanwhile, the Willie Run attempted to send a 2006 Jetta Diesel from New York to Los Angeles on...

Gas prices go down, driving goes up

Temporary climb in oil prices once again fails to magically fix everything.

Adam Stein | October 30, 2008

Well, duh. The reports are anecdotal at this point, but it would be odd if the large decline in gas prices didn’t have some effect on people’s behavior. People like to go places. When going places gets cheaper, I’d expect them to do more of it. Lawrence J. Goldstein, a director of the Energy Policy Research Foundation, puts it in more poetic terms: higher gas prices over the summer created “not demand destruction but demand...

Starry, Starry Night (Not)

What we miss without a real night sky.

Adam Stern | October 28, 2008

National Geographic (Nov. 2008 issue) has a compelling cover story on “The End of Night,” which explains how excessive artificial lighting is damaging our planet. The article describes the enormous harm to wildlife caused by lights that disturb normal nocturnal cycles. In tragic terms, we learn about migrating birds crashing into lit-up skyscrapers, sea turtles struggling to find dark beaches on which to nest, and hatchlings that are suddenly vulnerable to predators. Casualties to wildlife...

Colleges offer free bikes for everyone

As long as you don’t bring your car to campus.

Adam Stein | October 21, 2008

College campuses that want to rein in student driving have hit on a novel solution: give all incoming students free bikes if they agree to leave their cars at home. College campuses are really the perfect environment for this sort of transportation experiment: small, geographically constrained populations of relatively fit individuals who need to make numerous short trips every day. College campuses, I imagine, also have more discretion over their built infrastructure — roads, bike...

Fear, greed, and carbon emissions

Our climate debt threatens a far worse crisis — unless we act.

Erik Blachford | October 21, 2008

I shouldn’t be feeling so grumpy, not now that climate change and carbon emissions are part of the political conversation at the highest level. But surveying the wreckage of the global financial system, I can’t help feeling that some of our most basic human impulses are being laid bare, and that the financial crisis bears directly on the climate crisis. After all, how many times over the past several weeks have we been reminded that...

Tracing the carbon in your beer, jacket, shoes, and soap

For household products, carbon hides in some unexpected places.

Adam Stein | October 14, 2008

Here’s a pop quiz, based on a recent Wall Street Journal article on the carbon footprint of various household goods. For each of the following products, guess their single biggest contribution to global warming. Consider all aspects of the product: raw materials, manufacturing, transportation, and end use. For example, one of the products examined is the Toyota Prius. Raw materials like steel, energy used in manufacturing, and transportation to dealerships are all responsible for a...

Blog Action Day: Climate change, economic growth, and poverty

Claims that a slowing economy will be good news for the climate are misguided.

Adam Stein | October 13, 2008

“It’s a cruel thing to say…but if we are looking at a slowdown in the economy, there will be less fossil fuels burning, so for the climate it could be an advantage.” — Paul J. Crutzen, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the depletion of the ozone layer Some see a silver lining in the financial crisis. An economic contraction may not save the climate, they argue, but...

Boosts for bike commuting

Feds, Caltrain trying to make it easier to get to work.

Adam Stern | October 7, 2008

Buried in the financial rescue bill passed by Congress last week is a provision to encourage bike commuting. The idea is to level the playing field for cyclists, who currently can’t get benefits like those available for participants in car or van pools or other programs designed to reduce traffic congestion. Starting in January, employers can reimburse bike commuters up to $20/month for the “purchase of a bicycle, bicycle improvements, repair, and storage, if such...

More iron than carbon

Professional green athlete Chris Lieto offsets his globetrotting with TerraPass.

Erik Blachford | September 24, 2008

As a former middle of the pack Ironman triathlete, I have to say I’m somewhat in awe of the professionals who hammer through the race in a little over 8 hours. When they race the world championship in Kona, Hawaii, these folks dive in for 2.4 miles of ocean swimming, ride for 112 miles in brutal headwinds and volcanic heat, then cap it off with a standard 26.2 marathon through lava fields (the race this...

Will financial crisis take the shine off efficiency?

Maybe not the best time for GM to be launching the Volt.

Adam Stein | September 23, 2008

I previously noted that the financial crisis is likely to be very bad news for renewable energy developers dependent upon access to credit for their cash-hungry projects. Geoffrey Styles points out that a credit crunch will also affect consumer-driven efficiency improvements (of the sort the my colleague Erin recently undertook): If consumers can’t obtain attractive financing for more efficient appliances, heating systems, or rooftop solar power installations, the markets for those products will languish, and...

Are we running dry?

A new documentary warns we’re running out of water.

Pete Davies | September 23, 2008

A new documentary on water shortages in the U.S. will be screened on PBS early next month. The American Southwest: are we running dry? highlights the shortages in fresh water supplies to over 30 million Americans and investigates possible solutions to the problem. Watch the trailer here. High among the solutions is that old standby, conservation. Transport, storage and heating of water are all major energy suckers. We have noted on this blog before now...

How to decipher the recycling numbers on plastic stuff

Like so many other things, all recycling is local.

Erik Blachford | September 16, 2008

You know those little numbers inside the recycling symbol on the bottom of plastic bottles and containers? Well, the other day when I read that those numbered with a 7 might contain BPA, and therefore not be suitable for my kids to use, I realized that I hadn’t a clue how to decipher the numbers. Which made me think that perhaps I should learn, and share. Most plastics in the US are labeled with the...

Pictures of Ike

Hurricanes demonstrate our vulnerability to extreme weather.

Adam Stein | September 16, 2008

Ike was apparently not as bad as it could have been, but these pictures of the devastation are nevertheless astounding. AP Photo/Pool, Smiley N. Pool There’s a debate going around on whether environmentalists have gone too far in linking extreme weather events to global warming, or whether they haven’t gone far enough. AP Photo/David J. Phillip I’ll keep my opinion to myself, and instead make the high-minded point that we surely do need to get...

Why not in America?

A lack of infrastructure — not sprawl — hinders the adoption of bicycles.

Adam Stein | September 7, 2008

The recent surge in gas prices and growing concern over carbon emissions have goosed efforts to increase bicycle ridership in metropolitan areas, but the U.S. still lags far behind Europe and Asia. A recent survey of worldwide trends in the Washington Post suggests that the reason is not, as is often assumed, some uniquely American pattern of land use. Although no single policy is a magic bullet, the overall prescription is clear: when bicycling becomes...

Practice? Preach? Both?

Psychological research suggests greens may need to modulate their message to reach the mainstream.

Erin Craig | September 2, 2008

A few of our recent blog posts have ignited micro-firestorms among our readers. We are thrilled to have readers with such diversity of opinion and even more gratified that they choose to spend time making comments. We have pretty thick skins here at TerraPass and we take sharp criticisms as heartfelt expressions rather than personal attacks, so keep ‘em coming. The firestorms make me wonder, though, about the effectiveness of strident advocacy as a tool...

Car-free adventuring

A bike and a bus schedule make for a great day of hooky.

Tom Arnold | September 2, 2008

I’ve recently been inspired by the new blog Post-Car Adventuring, which details great trips you can take in the Bay Area with just a bike, some patience and an accurate watch. I’ve been itching for the chance to do a mini bike tour. A friend’s visit led to an impromptu day off work and a car-free adventure to Santa Cruz, CA and back. Our plan was to bike the 65 miles there, taking our time,...

Don’t judge a wine by its box

Even the most tradition-bound industries can innovate for the environment.

Adam Stein | August 26, 2008

Tyler Colman, aka Dr. Vino, takes to the pages of the New York Times to report on the latest developments in green wine, one of our favorite topics here at TerraPass. Boxed wine, you might recall, is more environmentally friendly than wine shipped in heavy glass bottles. And, contrary to popular impression, not all boxed wine is terrible. The Italian government just announced that some wines that receive the government’s quality assurance label may now...

Bike beautiful?

Bikes are good for a lot of things — but not for beautifying the home or office. Any storage tips?

Erin Craig | August 26, 2008

I like bikes. Great for transportation, great for exercise, fun for the kids, what’s not to like? Unfortunately, I’ve found a fault with bikes in the past week which I can’t seem to shake. It started a few months ago when I cleaned out my garage so well I could fit a car into it…as long as the bikes were vacated. No problem, we hung hooks on the ceiling and hoisted the “spare” bikes up...

Greenwashing: innocent or guilty?

UK company gets unfairly slapped around by green activists.

Pete Davies | August 12, 2008

For those days when the weather’s warm back in London (and yes, there are quite a few of them) I do enjoy a smoothie. If it can’t be made fresh, then there’s a good alternative in the drinks made by Innocent Smoothies. Innocent has a great story. It was founded by three twenty-something guys who spent a weekend selling fruit smoothies from a stall at a music festival. They put up a sign asking their...

Cities are for people: The limits of localism

Mass transit and energy-efficient buildings are needed more than exotic schemes for green cities.

Adam Stein | August 11, 2008

I reworked my vertical farm piece for Worldchanging, and by the time I was done, it was an entirely different article. So if you can stand one last entry about vertical farms, this one offers a somewhat more thoughtful look at some of the principles behind sustainable development. Columbia Professor Dickson Despommier has generated a fair amount of attention with his concept for “vertical farms,” stacked, self-contained urban biosystems that would — theoretically — supply...

Even better than vertical farms

As energy costs rise, supply chains go local.

Adam Stein | August 4, 2008

Two articles you should read if you’re interested in eating local, growing local, building local, buying local, or any of the other ways that geography, economy, and environment intersect: The first is an article from a few weeks ago, detailing the destruction of the domestic catfish industry due to rising prices for oil, corn, soybeans, and other commodities. All meat is getting more expensive, but catfish doesn’t have the advantage of being a dietary staple....

Climate action in the Arctic

A personal account of a trip to a threatened wilderness.

TerraPass | July 25, 2008

Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, recently returned from a trip to the Arctic with a group of environmental, political, and business leaders concerned about global climate change. The Arctic Expedition for Climate Action was sponsored by the Aspen Institute, the National Geographic Society, and Lindblad Expeditions. In this guest post, Fred reflects on the trip. Perhaps the most inspiring moment occurred when a bearded seal swam right up to my kayak. When...

How walkable is your neighborhood?

Web site ranks the most (and least) walkable cities in America.

Adam Stein | July 20, 2008

Unbelievably, I’ve somehow managed not to blog about Walkscore, the site that scores any neighborhood in the U.S. according to its walkability. So, for example, plug in my home address in Brooklyn and watch the little slider march to the right as the system calculates my proximity to shops, schools, and other amenities. Walkscore grades my neighborhood as a 95 out of 100: “Walkers’ paradise.” And it’s true! I live within an easy walk of...

Crunching some numbers on Paris bike-sharing program

Bike-sharing offers modest emissions reductions, and no reason to complain.

Adam Stein | July 15, 2008

On the first anniversary of Vélib, the Times dishes up some stats on Paris’ popular bike-sharing program: Riders took 27.5 million trips in the first year. The current pace is about 120,000 trips per day. The program includes 20,600 bikes. The 1,450 self-service rental stations are available every 300 yards. The bikes are heavy and expensive — $3,460 and 50 lbs — built to withstand theft, mistreatment, and heavy riding. Nevertheless, 3,000 bikes have gone...

NYC government plans 30% carbon cuts by 2017

Energy efficiency is cornerstone of ambitious plan.

Adam Stein | July 15, 2008

Everyone’s favorite McKinsey report states that America can reduce a huge percentage of its carbon emissions through measures that pay for themselves, primarily in the realm of energy efficiency. But it’s never entirely clear how well an analyst’s report is going to translate into reality. For New York City, the answer appears to be: really well. Mayor Bloomberg’s office recently released a plan to drop the carbon emissions of the municipal government 30% from 2006...

Daily shopping: an unexpected reversal

Green shoppers love warehouse stores…maybe a little too much.

Erin Craig | July 8, 2008

A recent study concluded that lots of green consumers shop at warehouse stores. I believe it. About a year ago, my husband bought a bottle of shampoo so large that it’s still half full in the shower, its plastic degraded and cracking. Last week, he came home with a 3-year supply of Q-tips. This has got me thinking, can we improve both our quality of life and our footprint by changing our shopping habits? I...

Wanted: one grass eating animal

Could an animal be an environmentally responsible substitute for your lawn mower?

Pete Davies | July 8, 2008

What uses 800 million pounds of gas every year and produces up to 5% of US air pollution? According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the answer is 54 million Americans and their lawn mowers. In terms of CO2 the number isn’t so high (around 87 lbs per year for the average mower), but this is more than made up for by all the other pollutants (hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and others) that come out...

Summer studies for the class of 2020

Two new kits teach your kids about sustainable living and wind energy.

Tom Arnold | July 8, 2008

With both the energy and climate crisis looming, it’s clear that the type of engineering work done by the time today’s 10-year-old graduates college in 2020 will be different. Hopefully, talented young minds can solve both problems, especially if they’re encouraged from an early age. That’s the motivation of two new kits from Thames & Kosmos (see our previous review of their two hydrogen kits). The Power House (ages 12 and up) is a beefy...

Milk jug gets a makeover for carbon savings

Another example of how carbon constraints may benefit big box retailers.

Adam Stein | July 1, 2008

Wal-Mart and Costco have adopted a version of the one-gallon milk jug designed with efficiency in mind. The boxier containers stack better, eliminating the need for milk crates and conserving space in trucks and on refrigerated store shelves: The company estimates this kind of shipping has cut labor by half and water use by 60 to 70 percent. More gallons fit on a truck and in Sam’s Club coolers, and no empty crates need to...

Dairy industry rallies for sustainability

Conference takes a hard look at ways to cut milk’s carbon emissions.

Tom Arnold | June 24, 2008

Got sustainability? Four years ago, when we started TerraPass, I never would have predicted that I’d someday be participating in a three-day sustainability initiative organized by the dairy industry. Especially one attended by Wal-Mart execs. But I’m please to report that the conference was a big success, sparking lots of interesting conversations about ways to green the supply chain of this carbon-intensive industry. I had some big takeaways that I wanted to share with the...

The four-day week

Can a four-day week be good for business and the environment?

Pete Davies | June 17, 2008

2,400 city employees in Birmingham, AL will be working four-day weeks this summer. The city believes this may save employees up to $1 million in gas expenses alone, or about five million pounds of CO2. The motivation of the change was cited as fuel costs for both the city and its workers, but the move also highlights how we can reduce emissions and save money at the same time. In addition to the fuel savings...

Non-financial barriers: a personal confession

What keeps us from moving forward with personal conservation?

Erin Craig | June 15, 2008

This is a personal confession. I have a New Year’s Resolution and an Earth Day Pledge, both oriented toward greater sustainability, and I haven’t taken any concrete steps to implement either one. I want to. I intend to. I will. Soon, really soon. What’s holding me up? My New Year’s resolution is to install a solar hot water system on top of my house. I have a gas water heater and I live in temperate...

Bike vs. car vs. transit: the commuter smackdown

Biking to work is cost-effective, good for you, and good for the environment. But how fast is it?

Adam Stein | June 10, 2008

This is fun. Streetfilms has produced a movie covering the 7th Annual Great NYC Commuter Race, a competition that pits car against bike against mass transit: Update: It looks like Streetfilms has chosen this exact moment to take their site down for an upgrade. Sigh. Hopefully the video will be back up soon. In case the suspense is killing you: the cyclist wins. Update 2: The movie’s back up! Thanks, Clarence! This is almost exactly...

Squeezed at the pump

High gas prices encourage conservation, but also punish the poor. Climate change legislation needs to assist vulnerable communities.

Adam Stein | June 10, 2008

Last week we noted — OK, gloated over — the demise of the Hummer and other environmentally unfriendly car models. This week, let’s acknowledge the very real human costs of high gas prices, particularly among the rural and poor: Anthony Clark, a farm worker from Tchula, says he prays every night for lower gasoline prices. He recently decided not to fix his broken 1992 Chevrolet Astro van because he could not afford the fuel. Now...

The death of the Hummer?

GM shutters plant. Light truck sales plummet.

Adam Stein | June 3, 2008

Damn, these gas prices have some bite. American automakers, who depend disproportionately on sales of SUVs and light trucks, are getting hammered. GM saw a 28% drop in light-vehicle sales in May. Ford’s sales fell 16%. The Ford F-150, the most popular vehicle in the United States almost every year for the past three decades, was knocked off its perch by both the Toyota Camry and Toyota Corolla. Hummer sales fell by 60%! GM has...

Off-grid living

Survivalist chic: self-sufficiency gains adherents.

Peter Freed | June 3, 2008

We’ve all heard of the ‘oldest profession’ but how about the ‘oldest energy emissions reduction’? That’s right, off-grid living is going mainstream: The cost of building such a home is little different from that of building any other home, and with a range of energy sipping appliances such as refrigerators, hi-fis and even hairdryers now available, the forced austerity associated with off-grid living is also changing. “You can have hot showers and a cold beer,”...

Power of wind

Funny ad wins award. You watch and laugh.

Adam Stein | May 27, 2008

This ad isn’t new, but it is funny, and it just won a fancy prize at Cannes, which is all the excuse I need to link to it here. Watch below, or check out the high-res version....

The march of progress?

Targeting energy efficiency in the home isn’t always so easy.

Erin Craig | May 27, 2008

[Meet Erin, one of the geniuses on our carbon team, and a devoted, if occasionally frustrated conservationist. This post is the first in an occasional series highlighting her triumphs and trials as a green consumer and homeowner.] I don’t buy new things very often. I’m cheap to a fault and a serial procrastinator. However, I replace things that break with uncommon speed, using the purchase as an excuse to modernize my possessions. I try to...

Bike commuting: slackers welcome

We really mean it — wear whatever you want.

Adam Stein | May 25, 2008

The slacker’s guide to bike commuting provoked an interesting response. A lot of old hands offered up a lot of good advice, but the tone of the advice was a bit…prescriptive for a blog post whose central point was that new bike commuters can come as they are. In particular, the photo of a Dutch cyclist provoked a lot of snickers. People seemed to think the image is a stock photo or model shot. Or...

Juneau heeds the call for sacrifice

Avalanche and power cut in Alaska lead to remarkable experiment in energy efficiency.

Adam Stein | May 20, 2008

The residents of Juneau, Alaska have achieved an astounding 38% drop in electricity usage in a matter of weeks through simple conservation measures: Schoolchildren sacrifice Nintendo time and boast at show-and-tell of kilowatts saved. Hotels consult safety regulations to be sure they have not unscrewed too many light bulbs in the hallways. On a recent weekday, all but one of the dozens of television screens on display at the big Fred Meyer store were black...

Pedal-powered camaraderie

Celebrate National Bike to Work Day. That’s how we roll at TerraPass.

Adam Stern | May 13, 2008

“Nice rig you got there,” said a cyclist as I lifted my bike into the Caltrain headed to San Francisco. I looked around thinking the guy was talking about somebody else, or perhaps referring to a big truck parked at the Palo Alto station. Then I realized he was talking to me. My “rig” was my year old, less than $500, hybrid commuter with cushy seat and disc brakes. Thus began a familiar ritual in...

Three easy ways to lower gas prices

Conservation and efficiency are our only energy quick fixes.

Adam Stein | May 6, 2008

We’re all about practical solutions here at TerraPass. While politicians pander, consumers complain and gas prices soar, you — yes, you! — can personally play a role in getting those fuel costs under control real quick. How? Glad you asked… Drive less This tip is shamelessly ripped off from the Environmental Economics blog, so I’ll just quote in full: Drive Less! - The env-econ grass roots solution to high gas prices. Drive Less is an...

A further note on sacrifice

Those pushing sacrifice the hardest are the ones who care least about climate change.

Adam Stein | May 1, 2008

The discussion thread on sacrifice is interesting, and makes me realize that I glossed two fairly important points that need to be made more explicit. Point 1: the people arguing that climate change will require sacrifice are generally the same ones arguing that we shouldn’t do anything about climate change. I am not, of course, referring to the readers of this blog. But please be aware that the rhetoric of the debate over global warming...

Sacrifice is for suckers (an occasional series)

Dr. Carbon Cap says: this will only hurt a little.

Adam Stein | April 29, 2008

I see the pundits are still lobbing up chinstrokers about how addressing climate change is going to require huge, painful sacrifice from all Americans. This all sounds very serious, and the only quibble I have is that it’s probably not true. “Going green” in a carbon-constrained economy won’t feel like sacrifice to most people. It will feel like shopping. Meaning, it will feel like all the consumption decisions we make every day, but tilted imperceptibly...

Bike valet at the Ritz

Four star service adds to the appeal of low-carbon commuting.

Adam Stern | April 29, 2008

As I biked towards the front driveway of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in San Francisco last week, I saw a line of fancy cars (BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, etc.) waiting for valet parking. I zipped past the queue and handed my bicycle to one of the valets. He gave me a claim check. Assured that my bike would be safe in a locked room, I walked to my business meeting at the hotel. And when I returned...

Tasting notes: How to select the best green wine

Holidays often mean indulgence. Here are some tips for low-carbon merrymaking.

Adam Stein | December 2, 2007

See that green line on the map? Study it closely, boozehounds. Those of you to the right of it can enjoy a nice Bordeaux. Those to the left should be getting your grapes from California. So concludes Dr. Vino in his excellent — and topical! — study, “Red, White and ‘Green’: The Cost of Carbon in the Global Wine Trade.” The paper is nicely readable in addition to being thorough. Few details go unconsidered....

Green building: a long way from India to Europe

Adam Stein | May 22, 2007

About one third of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions comes from energy used in buildings, and two recent articles portray India and Europe as opposing poles in the struggle to rein in these environmental costs. The situation in India defies not just environmental sanity but seemingly all economic logic. The nation faces an ongoing electricity crisis, as booming development stresses an already rickety power system. In the suburb of Gurgaon, supply lags demand by 20%. The...

What is a mission-driven business?

Tom Arnold | March 6, 2007

The recent USA Today article on carbon offsets reminded me how many people are still unfamiliar with the concept of a mission-driven business. We’re proud of our business model at TerraPass, and it occurs to me that our audience has grown so much recently that it’s a good time to reintroduce ourselves and let people know what we stand for. First some background and definitions. A mission-driven business is an organization for which the pursuit...

British supermarket chain to “carbon label” all products

Adam Stein | January 23, 2007

Now this is intriguing. At the same time that Sam’s Club is putting carbon on the shelf for the first time in the U.S., Tesco, the largest supermarket chain in Britain, has announced that it will begin labeling all 70,000 products on its shelves with the amount of carbon generated from the production, transport, and consumption of those items. I’ve been fascinated with exactly this idea for a long time (ever since I read Omnivore’s...

When passions collide: my love affair with low-carbon beer

Adam Stein | October 26, 2006

I love low-carbon beer. I’m not talking about a beer that’s light in calories. Nor am I looking for a beer with less fizz, although I do enjoy a nice hand-pulled ale. I’m certainly not looking for anything alcohol-free. Low-carbon beer is a product with a smaller carbon footprint than its mass-produced brethren, which simply means that less non-renewable energy was used to manufacture and transport the product to customers. Of course, above all else...