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1. Compacta All-in-One Kitchen Island: It's All There
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2. This Way to Treasure Island, Ecocity
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3. Mongolia on the Verge of Ecological Collapse: Warming Twice as Fast as Global Average
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4. Green Blogger Does Winter Bike Move. Sort Of.
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5. It Slices, It Dices: Form Creates Function in New Arne Jacobsen Chair
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6. Wayback Machine 1947: Electric Bike
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7. Are you green? Or red?
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8. Solar Tracking Skylights
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9. The Grass is Always Greener with Mindscape's "Peddy" Furniture
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10. The Importance of Environmental Justice
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11. Moving Down Parallel Tracks From Bali
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12. (de)moralizing climate change
Compacta All-in-One Kitchen Island: It's All There
2008-02-02 00:00
Design & Architecture
Debuting at Casadecor Barcelona 2007, Spanish company Artificio's Compacta kitchen squeezes a sink, refrigerator, freezer and pantry into this compact, compelling structure. The smart, modular design allows for maximum functionality in a minimal space, similar to the Dy-rection Line concept and the Orgasmatron-esque Clever Kitchen we've seen before. Smart; more pics of C... 
This Way to Treasure Island, Ecocity
2008-02-01 22:50
Design & Architecture
A map of the Golden Gate International Exposition (sponsored by Shell), held on Treasure Island in the 1930's. Most of our readers are probably familiar by now with the latest worldwide trend in city building - the ecocity. Lately it almost seems as if plans for new ecocities (and eco-neighborhoods) are popping up like mushrooms after the rain - which we must admit makes us happy. The latest proposal (drawn up by the Arup firm) aims to breathe new life into tiny and neglected Treasure Island, located between San Francisco and Oakland, by rebuilding it as a ... 
Mongolia on the Verge of Ecological Collapse: Warming Twice as Fast...
2008-02-01 22:45
Science & Technology
Image courtesy of tiarescott via flickr It is a testament to the disproportionate impact of global warming on certain ecosystems to see just how far Mongolia has managed to slide towards ecological collapse. John Bohannon's sobering account (sub. required) of the Lake Hovsgol project, which appears in the latest edition of the journal Science, offers little hope that Mongolia will be able to avoid a climate-induced catastrophe. Clyde Goulden, a researcher from Philadelphia's Academy of Natura... 
Green Blogger Does Winter Bike Move. Sort Of.
2008-02-01 22:28
bikes
I am a fan of Vanessa of Green as a Thistle, who is making one change a day to green her life and documenting it on her blog. She has sold her car, unplugged her fridge, and made 338 changes in her lifestyle so far. When she announced that she was moving with a mover, I sent her Sami's post on bike moves and told her "bicycle moves are all the rage! put out the word and I volunteer to join." She took up the challenge and put out the call in the National Post where she is a writer, and 
It Slices, It Dices: Form Creates Function in New Arne Jacobsen Chair
2008-02-01 20:40
Design & Architecture
Dutch design team Huting & De Hoop have launched a new site to showcase their new work. Their collection includes this awesome Arne Jacobsen update, which they call "Added Values and Forms," which takes the classic chair up a notch or two with an integrated lamp and little table. We love how this one piece can create a little reading nook, all by itself. Another piece that caught our eye is "Quarter," a modular shelving system that puzzle-pieces itself together to create a utilitarian, modern shelf/room divider (it's pictured after the jump). It's made from oriented strand boa... 
Wayback Machine 1947: Electric Bike
2008-02-01 20:23
bikes
The perpetual motion bike! Perfect for San Francisco! Love the streamlining, though. ::Modern Mechanix ... 
Are you green? Or red?
2008-02-01 19:33
TerraPass news
Our road emissions calculator is pretty old by internet standards. This week we gave it a minor upgrade with a great new feature: you can now see your carbon emissions relative to the average U.S. car.
Check it out, and give us some feedback -- what else would you like to see in our carbon footprint calculators?
Solar Tracking Skylights
2008-02-01 19:24
lighting
Here is a clever way to get more light, more consistently, out of your skylight: use mirrors to track the sun. The lightweight mirrors appear to be hanging from the control box on the top, and controlled by a photocell. It needs no external power. "Solar Tracking Skylights consist of highly reflective mirror panels within a clear plastic enclosure, which move continuously to follow the sun's position in the sky." ... 
The Grass is Always Greener with Mindscape's "Peddy" Furniture
2008-02-01 19:24
Design & Architecture
Have a green thumb? Need something to sit on outside? Japanese company Mindscape has just the solution for you: their line of "Peddy" furniture creates a truly green place to sit in the garden. In true Chia Pet-style, the couches, benches and seats fro out and grow with a little water and light; like the various chairs and loungers we've seen before, they help prove that green is the new grass. If you like the idea of growing stuff yourself, and need some outdoor furniture,... 
The Importance of Environmental Justice
2008-02-01 18:29
news
This week we learned that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was fully aware of the formaldehyde problems in the trailers it provided for victims of Hurricane Katrina. It knew these trailers were dangerous; it knew they could poison those who lived in them; and yet it did nothing. The majority of those unfortunate enough to live in these FEMA trailers are low-income families and people of color with no place else to go and few ways to fight back. Everyone deserves clean air and water and a healthy place to live. But too often, low-income neighborhoods and communities of color get picked as sites for polluting factories, while wealthier, predomi... 
Moving Down Parallel Tracks From Bali
2008-02-01 18:28
Business & Politics
The significance of the 13th Conference of the Parties in Bali and its implications for moving forward on climate change cannot be stressed enough. Last Thursday, January 24 the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations summoned a full committee hearing,"International Climate Change Negotiations: Bali and the Path Toward a Post-2012 Climate Treaty" to discuss such matters.
We all followed the anticipation and media analysis of the United Nations climate change conference in ...
(de)moralizing climate change
2008-01-30 00:04
Long time readers will recall we have an affinity for Steven Pinker, although we no longer hire him as a copywriter (the Canadian exchange rate was just burning us).
What you may not know is Pinker is quite the polymath, and proves his mettle in a brilliant essay on morality in last week's New York Times Magazine. Among his theses: our moral instincts are chemical, cultural, hard to change, and interfere with progress on substantive issues. Among his examples, climate change:
And nowhere is moralization more of a hazard than in our greatest global challenge. The threat of human-induced climate change has become the occasion for a moralistic revival meeting. In many discussions, the cause of climate change is overindulgence (too many S.U.V.'s) and defilement (sullying the atmosphere), and the solution is temperance (conservation) and expiation (buying carbon offset coupons). Yet the experts agree that these numbers don't add up: even if every last American became conscientious about his or her carbon emissions, the effects on climate change would be trifling, if for no other reason than that two billion Indians and Chinese are unlikely to copy our born-again abstemiousness. Though voluntary conservation may be one wedge in an effective carbon-reduction pie, the other wedges will have to be morally boring, like a carbon tax and new energy technologies, or even taboo, like nuclear power and deliberate manipulation of the ocean and atmosphere. Our habit of moralizing problems, merging them with intuitions of purity and contamination, and resting content when we feel the right feelings, can get in the way of doing the right thing.
Or to twist our favorite folks around: when Al Gore says climate change is a moral issue, he's right, fighting climate change is a moral issue. But when it comes to how we fight it, we'd be better off letting logic drive our plans.
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