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West Coast Green 2007
We are less than one week away until the 2007 West Coast Green Conference the largest green building event this side of the Mississippi and we here are Treehugger are pumped. The keynote speakers includes a long-list of eco-celebs like Ed Begley Jr, Bill Weihl (Google), Steve Wozniak (Apple), Hunter Lovins and Erin Brockovich. But enough with the star-gazing, because the entire speakers list is an amazing compilation of some of the most visionary architects, designers and builders available today. This years convention takes place in San Francisco at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium and runs from Thursday September 20 through Saturday September 22, ...

Global Warming Could Cause World Crop Collapse
With the U.N.-affililated Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) already warning of declining grain harvests due to extreme weather, a U.S. study released last week suggests that global warming could cause world agricultural systems to face possible collapse by 2080, with countries in the south being the hardest hit.India, Pakistan, most of Africa and most of Latin America would be the areas most affected, according to the Washington-based Center for Global Development and the Peterson Institute for International Economics. India, which is fast becoming the worlds most populous nation, could stand to see its agricultural y...

Praise The Lord And Pass The Efficiency Ammo
From now on, we promise to smile each time a respected industry figure states publicly that oil prices are headed up, driven by the combination of rapidly escalating demand from developing nations and by peak oil. That such a statement was just made by Lord Oxburgh, former Shell Chairman (now with a biodiesel firm), can be viewed variously. He's either self serving toward his biodiesel interests and right about petro prices...or he's not. Which politicians think they know better and want to play fuel-cost roulette? That's the very political gamble which has been made constantly by the auto industry and by the US Congress. It's a gamble that reminds this writer o...

Against The Odds: Tigers Resurface In Indian Rainforest
In an astonishing reappearance, at least 20 tigers were spotted last week in Indias western state of Maharashtra, at least three decades after it was believed that illegal poaching and habitat destruction there had devastated the whole population.The discovery occurred in the 800 square kilometre-wide (300 square miles) Sahyadri range of forested mountains, as part of an ongoing nationwide tiger population census. It is estimated that India has half of the worlds remaining tigers. According to the last count in 2001 and 2002, their numbers were pegged at 3,642 a huge decline from 40,000 a century ago....

Water Shortages Hit Long Beach
An already rough couple of months just got worse for the residents of Long Beach, California: prompted by the record drought afflicting the region and a court ruling likely to limit water deliveries from northern parts of the state, the city has imposed the most stringent water restrictions in recent times. Southern Californian authorities believe these restrictions could be just the precursor for what will happen in other cities in the region.The ruling by a federal judge last month - which would cut water deliveries from the vitally important Sacramento-San Joaq...

An Experiment in Subsistence Farming, Brooklyn Style
In this week's New York Magazine, Manny Howard chronicles his experiment to live off his land as his sole source of food for a monthin a 20x40-foot backyard in suburban Brooklynmuch to the wild-eyed glee of his two young children, the increasing consternation and frustration of the first-time farmer, and the chagrin of his wife, who grows increasingly concerned that her husband is turning into Richard Dreyfuss from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.But just as Howard manages to wrest some semblance of sanity in his urban homestead, he miscalculates the due ...

IPATH: A Lifestyle Brand with Skate DNA
At the ASR Trade Show last weekend, I sat down with IPATH Public Relations guru Bill Byrne to talk about the greening of skate shoes and what is Green DNA. IPATH, which means follow your path was founded in principles of high performance and low environmental impact. IPATH shoes, which are currently only made for men (though dont be shy ladies because plenty of these shoes would look fab on you too), are made of eco-materials like hemp and organic cotton. The leather is tanned without chromium. The insoles of the shoes are special and include coconut and natural fibers for odor absorption. The colors and styles for ...

Cyanobacteria that Crap Ethanol
For those of us who toil in marine biology, these are exciting times: we've known now only for a few years that populations of cyanobacteria in the open oceans contribute significantly to nitrogen fixation and total biological productivity. In fact, they are in large part responsible for supplying the nitrogen used by phytoplankton to conduct photosynthesis. Cyanobacteria such as Trichodesmium and Synechocystis have thus become hot research subjects in the field.Given their abilities (and relative abundance), it is perhaps not surprising that some enterprising marine scientists have ...

Peak Oil and Local Resilience: Rob Hopkins Addresses the IFG
Its been a little while since weve heard from Rob Hopkins of the Transition Towns movement, so we checked in on his Transition Culture blog to see what has been going on. It turns out Rob was recently asked to address the International Forum on Globalizatio...

Quote of the Day: Dan Barber on Slow Food "Elitism"
At the checkout aisle, we're not paying the real cost of food. Whether you're an elitist or not, you're a human being and the real costs of your food are being paid in environmental costs and healthcare costs. And who pays when we have an obese nation? We all do. We just pay it under the radar. To call it elitist, I think, is really shortsighted.I think that eventually what we're talking about is really rooted in peasantry, which is the ironic thing. To say that good food is for the elite is preposterous, like saying that Chinese peasants who talk about and revolve their day around food are elitist, or the Peruvian mountain f...

Coffee Lifeline Rwanda: Renewable Energy for Better Coffee
Weve covered the fabulous Freeplay Lifeline Radio before, and weve also written about the plight of coffee farmers who are exploited because they lack information about current market prices. Now, in the kind of story that TreeHugger loves, we are seeing these two topics come together clean, self-powered radios are being used to inform farmers about processing techniques to improve their product, and up-to-date market information to make sure they get fair compensation for their efforts:...