Home / treehugger.com rss archive / September-22-2007


Is This Possible Today?
Unthinkable. 56,200 square meters of consumer indulgence. And not a single bike rack.According to German law, there must be 1 bicycle parking place for every 150 square meters of shopping area, which would imply 188 bike bars for 376 bikes. The Berlin bicycle club did a count at the widely advertised grand opening of the new shopping center and found more than 500 bikes in various states of insecurity.It is reported that the 1600 auto parking places, which were opened in sync with the grand opening, were largely empty. Small consolation....

Farm with Alice Greenfingers
Get a taste of the farming life, without actually getting your hands mucky, with Alice Greenfingers, a PC game you can download from Yahoo Games. In this entertaining (and deceptively challenging) simulation, you get to sow, water, and harvest a wide variety of cropsplus, raise your own mini-barnyardand then bring your produce to the town market, where you have to adjust prices according to the vagaries of a fickle customer base.The full version costs $19.99, but you can play an extensive trial version for free.

Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival: On Tour Now + Deadline for Entries 9/29
The South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL, pronounced circle) started the Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival as a fund-raiser in 2003. The festivals namesake is in honor of SYRCLs successful lobbying to gain Wild & Scenic status for the Yuba River in 1999. Going into its sixth year, the home festival features over 110 films, 60 guest speakers and over 3000 attendees. You've still got until September 29th to enter your film. Also the the festival tour going on right now brings tog...

Mexico's New Generation of Female Forest Defenders
Women are at the forefront of the movement to defend and restore the forests of Guerrero state in southern Mexico. Founded in 2001, the Women's Environmentalist Organization of the Sierra of Petatlan (OMESP) promotes sustainable and organic agriculture, forest fire prevention, reforestation, water and soil conservation, and recycling. The group has grown from 12 to 90 members, and in 2003 and 2004, members planted more than 175,000 red cedar trees in the hills from seeds provided by a nursery run by the Mexican army. Some members of the group have found that they can earn a decent side income of as much as US$3,000 annually from selling tree seeds.OMESP was founded by Celsa ...

Eco-Friendly Yoga Mats for Kids
Pint-size (or petite-adult) yogis and yoginis can now tote around yoga mats scaled down to their vertically challenged measurements. The thick and foamyand, more important, PVC-free and non-toxicmats from Lotuspad are made from a new patented material known as thermoplastic elastomer, which has "no toxic off-gassing and does not release heavy metals and other dangerous pollutants into the environment during the manufacturing and disposal phases," according to the Lotuspad Web site....

Caught on Camera: An Urban Wind Turbine
A remodeled corner house in San Francisco's Mission District sports a Skystream 3.7, built by Altira-backed Southwest Wind Power. According to the green construction company that was tasked with its installation, it's the "the first residential wind turbine in an urban environment in the country." The home also features an integrated rainwater-and-greywater catchment system, plus solar-water heating and an energy-monitoring system that will soon be available for viewing online at

Strange but True: Drought Helped Green Amazon Rainforest
In a new study that seemingly flies in the face of most previous research (not to mention common sense), a team of scientists from the University of Arizona has discovered that the Amazon rainforest responded to a drought in 2005 by becoming "greener", rather than brown. Scott Saleska, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and the study's lead author, and his colleagues used images obtained from NASA's Terra Satellite ...

Quote of the Day: Peter Singer on Speciesism
The argument, in essence, is that we have, over centuries of history, expanded the circle of beings whom we regard as morally significant. If you go back in time you'll find tribes that were essentially only concerned with their own tribal members. If you were a member of another tribe, you could be killed with impunity. When we got beyond that there were still boundaries to our moral sphere, but these were based on nationality, or race, or religious belief. Anyone outside those boundaries didn't count. Slavery is the best example here. If you were not a member of the European race, if you were African, specifically, you ...

But what about Laughing Gas Emissions?
When it comes to biofuel production, nitrous oxide emissions are no laughing matter. So says Nobel prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen, who just wrapped up a new study showing that the overall effect of growing and burning most biofuel crops may be to raise, rather than lower, greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, several of the most commonly used biofuel crops may release as much as twice the amount of nitrous oxide (i.e. laughing gas) gas - a GHG several hundred times more potent than carbon dioxide - as previously thought.Therefore, Crutzen and his colleagues conclude, using biofuel could wipe out any benefits gained from not consum...

Al Gore Tells Australians To Stand Against Outlaw Politics
"The former US vice-president Al Gore says a change of policy by Australia to support the Kyoto Protocol would be the final nail in the coffin of the Bush Administration's opposition to the climate change treaty.""Addressing a $1000-a-head business lunch at Darling Harbour, Mr Gore used one of his favourite lines - describing Australia and the US as "Bonnie and Clyde" environmental outlaws - as he launched a passionate attack on the climate policies of John Howard and George Bush.""He called on Australia to change course, saying if it did, "it would be impossible for the United States to withstand the pressure" to join the rest of the wo...

Ever Vail: LEED-Certified Multi-Use Development
Vail Resorts, Inc. has announced more detailed plans for making the $1 billion Ever Vail the largest LEED-certified, multi-use resort development project in the nation."...This past June, Ever Vail was accepted into the pilot program for LEED's new "Neighborhood Development" certification program, putting it on the path to becoming the largest LEED-certified project for resort use in the U.S...." "Ever Vail is located on a true "Brownfield" site at the base of Vail Mountain, currently known as West LionsHead, and will consist of over one million square feet of mixed-use space including residences, a hotel, offices, retail shops and res...

Learning the Language: Eco-lingo Goes Mainstream
Environmental buzz words are everywhere from carbon neutral, to gas guzzler, to peak oil, a number of terms that were the preserve of us tofu eating classes for many years are now heading firmly into the mainstream. Weve written about biodiesels entry into the dictionary here, and weve celebrated carbon neutrals status as word of the year here. Now Alison Benjamin, over at the Guardian, has an interesting blog entry on how the rise in environmen...

Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline
Lyle Estills ever-engaging Energy Blog seems to be the place that this author goes to learn about books he should read, and quite possibly never will. Way back in May we wrote about the The Citizen Powered Energy Handbook after reading Lyles review, and needless to say we have yet to find time to get our hands on a copy. Now Lyle brings us his thoughts on Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline by Lisa Margonelli, a book that sounds a little like the car driver'...

Composting toilets: Ready for Prime Time?
TreeHugger has floated the idea of composting toilets for houses before; the consensus among commenters was "Composting toilets are NEVER going to make it into the main stream market. Debating it is silly." Or is it? Ontario Green Party candidate Shane Jolley says it's time to allow builders to take toilets in new subdivisions off the pipe."People have an aversion to dealing with our own waste, but this type of toilet uses far less water and makes far fewer demands on our resources. There's work to be done educating people about how compost toilets...

The Nail And Staple Extractor
"When removing exposed headless fasteners, the two most important factors required in being successful are to not slip off and to not cut the object that is being pulled. The extracting pliers have overcome both of these problems in a simple but effective design. If it is mechanically possible for one object to be extracted from another, this innovative tool can do it.""The extracting pliers were invented in Charleston, SC to aid in the restoration and renovation of historic homes in the area. The importance of reuse and recycling of the old lumber and moldings in this business cannot be understated, preserving the architecture and value of these ant...

Survey: What are You Doing on Car Free Day?
So it is Car Free Day, which should be important to TreeHuggers since cars are such a big part of our environmental problems. It seems almost intractable; for most of North America our society is built around the car. Could we live without them? Even for a day? (thanks, Matt)View MicroPoll| Survey Software|...

Riding the Green Wave
The Star discusses the "green wave" in Canadian residential development, which I think is rather an overstatement, more like a green ripple, but nonetheless there is a visible shift among the big players in the industry. Designer Andrea Kantelberg (who did the Tridel eco-suite) says:"(Green priorities) will absolutely soon be the norm because we can't carry on as a world without making some serious changes. That's not preachy, that's reality."But buyers are not yet convinced, do not yet really understand, and are going to have to accept change....

No Car in Berlin
Berlin celebrates World Car Free Day by taking to the streets. The 2007 Kreisfahrt (Circle Ride) departs from the famous Brandenburger Tor at 14:00 Saturday 22 September. Bicycles own the streets. Car owners: stay home, or at least turn your engines off as you watch the endless parade of bikes make their merry way hooting and hollering around Berlin.It may not change the world, but it will make bicyclists feel good for the day just to imagine how lovely life would be if a police escort ensured your absolute safety and freedom from smoggy emissions every day. The goal is to mobilize more people to work towa...