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Ben'S POSTS

How To: Keep A Clean House Without Chemicals

What if I told you that every time you wipe down your counters, scrub your tub, or wash your windows you might actually be making your home less healthy? Seems counterintuitive, but the unfortunate truth is that most typical home cleaning products are chock full of harsh, hazardous chemicals. What, then, to do? We talked to Annie Bond, author of Clean and Green, editor of the Green Chi Cafe blog and expert on chemical-free home care about how to keep your home comfortably clean, without subjecting yourself to a dangerous toxic stew. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Action Sheet 003: Your Hidden Toxic Waste (and What You Can Do About It)

Is your home turning into a temporary e-waste storage facility? You’re not alone. Plenty of us have old computer monitors, cell phones or other electronic components and gadgets cluttering our basements and junk drawers. By now, most folks realize that just tossing these toxin-laden goods into the trash is a big “no-no,” that doing so will likely contaminate air and groundwater near the landfill with harmful chemicals.

Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Do Good for the Gulf

Big news: the Pepsi Refresh Project is coming to the Gulf. Of course, the project has always served all communities across the country, but Pepsi has just announced a special effort to offer a helping hand to Gulf communities affected by the oil spill. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Grantee Spotlight: High School Earth Club Harnesses Iowa Wind

Since it first launched two years ago, the Waukee High School Earth Club have been trying to catch the wind. It blows steadily through this Iowa town, after all, and the students had their minds set on installing a wind turbine on campus to generate power and show their peers the potential of producing clean energy. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Q&A: A Frostbitten Climate Crusading Storyteller

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Despite his claims of being “just a normal guy,” Sebastian Copeland regularly endures some the of the harshest conditions on the planet, traveling throughout the polar regions to bring back stories and spread awareness about climate change. Last year, to commemorate the centennial of Admiral Robert Peary’s first-ever expedition to the North Pole, he dragged a 200-pound sled over 1,000 miles across the thinning ice to reach the top of the planet. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Grantee Story: A Guardian Angel for Houston Dogs

Janet Huey is, in her own words, “very, very passionate” about saving animals. In fact, these are her very first words to me, offered as if by way of warning, when I call her up to talk about her new project to save heartworm-positive dogs. Even without the warning, her passion is obvious and runs deeps. She’s been working on animal rescue in some form for over 23 years, and has truly devoted her life to saving the lives of Houston area’s most vulnerable animals… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

How To: Keep Cool This Summer Without the A.C.

As the temperatures climb throughout the country to the inevitable summertime highs, many of us will be tempted to pull the AC from the closet and crank it. Which is troublesome: air conditioners use a whole lot of electricity, which in turns costs you a bundle, particularly because all the cooling devices turned on around a city create a massive demand that raises electricity rates and strains the grid. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Q&A: Shrinking the Rising Sea Level Story to a Single Island

The Carteret Islanders are some of the world’s first climate refugees. Their homeland, a tiny island in the South Pacific, is fast losing ground to rising sea levels. The families who have lived there for dozens of generations have made the agonizing decision to relocate their entire community. Filmmakers Jennifer Redfearn and Tim Metzger documented the Carteret Islanders’ plight in Sun Come Up. We spoke with Redfearn about the importance of telling these stories of climate displacement… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Grantee Update: The Building on Hope Home Revealed

On May 16th, five boys returned in grand style to their newly remodeled Manchester, New Hampshire home. The sunny Sunday fit the festive mood as the boys piled out of a donated limousine to the gathered community crowd… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "Food & Shelter

Grantee Update: GreenShields Rocks Green Festival

Last weekend, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting up with the GreenShields team for the Green Festival in Chicago. We had a heck of a time taking in all the sites and sounds, and discovering some pretty incredible companies and organizations working in the energy, environment, and sustainability space in the Chicago area… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

How To: Do More for Your Seashore

In most of the country, beach season is fast approaching. (I can practically hear my SoCal colleagues snickering that it never took a break.) So there’s no better time to think about how to make your local shore as clean as nature intended. As Environmental Director of the Save The Waves Coalition, Josh Berry has led his share of beach clean-ups. We caught up with him between sets- well, actually between phone calls and planning meetings for STW’s big annual Life Is a Wave fundraiser on Thursday the 27th in San Francisco- to get advice on how to rally the troops and organize your own beach clean. Turns out, it’s all pretty simple and common sense. “Anyone can do it,” Berry says, and we think everybody with a favorite stretch of sand should… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

How To: Make Fido An Eco-Warrior in 9 Steps

You work hard to make your home, your diet, and your life as “green” as possible. But what about your furry friend? It’s easy enough to raise an eco-friendly pet, if you know where to start. We talked to Paul McRandle of NRDC’s Simple Steps about how to do it. Here are McRandle’s simple tips to get you started… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Grantee Story: Preventing Youth Obesity With a Comprehensive Approach

With three young children of his own, Dan Kass found himself coaching a lot of youth sports. While preaching teamwork and practice and hard work, Kass in turn learned some lessons of his own about the psychology of kids. He discovered that kids’ self-esteem was directly affected by fitness. He found that too many kids were losing confidence and suffering paralyzingly low self-esteem because of obesity. To Kass’s mind, this wasn’t the fault of the children themselves- these weren’t couch potatoes, after all, but kids who’d signed up willingly to play sports. The culprit: the snacks and meals readily available to them… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Grantee Story: A Global Non-Profit Workshop in the Big Apple

Over 300 non-profit organizations send Americans overseas to volunteer in foreign countries. Scott Beale, having worked for the State Department and Ashoka Youth Ventures, had the wild idea to reverse the flow of this Peace Corps model… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

How To: Travel Right

It’s one of the toughest dilemmas for any environmentally-minded, adventurous soul: we all love to travel, but worry about our carbon emissions and the potential impact of tourism on local communities. How, then, can we travel better? We talked to Brian Mullis, President of Sustainable Travel International about exploring with the least environmental impact, and, hopefully, with a net positive impact on the communities you visit… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

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Action Sheet 001: Household Carbon Emissions and What You Can Do

In the spirit of Earth Day, we put together this Action Sheet as a visual representation of household carbon emissions from two perspectives: by region, and by population density. But don’t just sit there and look at our pictures, use our tips to shrink your footprint. You can start right now… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

How To: 13 Steps to Droughtproofing Your Home

The American West is dry and getting drier. In the summer of 2007, over one-third of the continental United States suffered through a drought for the ages, and in much of the country, particularly the Southwest, conditions haven’t much improved. In fact, long term projections by credible climate scientists show the drought turning into lasting desertification. So picture the American West as a permanent Dust Bowl. We think it’s time to start learning how to make do with less water, so we called up Lynn Lipinski… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Grantee Story: Boys Group Home Gets Gussied

Manchester, New Hampshire may be the biggest city in the state, but it’s an awfully tight-knit community. People take care of each other. A couple years back, one Manchester family lost their entire home to some floods, and the entire community stepped up and volunteered time, money, and sweat to help rebuild the house. Some locals worked to get the attention of producers of the television show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, who wound up descending on the town and giving the struggling family more than they ever could’ve imagined… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

How To: Achieve Zero Waste at Home in 6 Steps

Zero Waste is more than just a visionary goal– it’s a practice that’s easier to adopt than you may think. The basic principle is that nothing should be thrown into landfills– that everything is somehow reused or repurposed. There’s no better place to take the practical steps towards zero waste than in your own home. We talked to Steven Mandzik, founder of A Clean Life and Zero Waste expert, about how to cut your household’s trash down to nothing… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Grantee Story: Old T-Shirts Become Reusable Shopping Bags

Nancy Nelson has mastered the craft of turning old t-shirts into reusable shopping bags. She loves the idea of salvaging fabric, heading it off before it reaches the landfill, and turning it into something that renders disposable plastic bags obsolete. Though the construction of these bags is already second nature to Nelson–who is, after all, a professional seamstress–she’s quick to point out that the real force behind the project is her daughter, 8-year old Anna Lee… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Q&A: The Climate Crusading Highest Bidder

In late 2008, a multi-million dollar Bureau of Land Management land auction–one that was set to turn over hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands in southern Utah to oil and gas companies–was disrupted by a quiet, 27-year old economics student who simply walked in and started bidding. Today, Tim DeChristopher, aka Bidder70 is facing two felony charges for this act of civil disobedience. We spoke with DeChristopher about his motivation and whether he thinks it was all worth it… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Grantee Story: Jonny’s Green Shield

Jonny Cohen is just your typical 14-year old high school freshman. Except that when he’s riding the bus to school in the morning, he’s thinking about aerodynamics, fuel efficiency, and drag coefficients.

You see, a couple years ago Jonny, who lives in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, took a physics class at Northwestern University. One project centered on building little CO2 dragsters to learn about aerodynamics and wind resistance. Jonny couldn’t shake the thought of how inefficient most real vehicles on the road actually were– particularly school buses, with their broad, flat windshields. And so the idea of the Green Shield was born… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "Education

LOOK: One West Virginia Coal Town’s Fight for A Clean Energy Future

There’s a mountain in West Virginia that’s pretty soon to be destroyed. A whole mountain–one of the oldest mountains in the world, actually–that won’t be a mountain anymore. It doesn’t have to be this way. There are plenty of reasons–legal, economic, and moral reasons–why Coal River Mountain should stay a mountain. But sound reason doesn’t have much to do with mountaintop removal coal mining. If so , the ridges of Coal River Mountain would be covered with wind turbines and not blasted flat by millions of tons of dynamite… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

The Energy Efficiency Trifecta: Rural Edition

A couple weeks ago I wrote about the HOME STAR–aka, “cash for caulkers”–home energy efficiency program that would offer healthy rebates to homeowners for the costs of anything from insulation to efficient furnaces and water heaters to whole home audits and retrofits. It’s a simple plan that I don’t doubt for a second would be wildly effective, but as Dave Roberts points out, it doesn’t really help the folks that can’t afford to pay even half of those relatively hefty upfront costs… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Ideas for Catching the Wind

I don’t live there, but my friends in Los Angeles tell me that it’s actually rather windy. The folks behind the Watts House Project are eager to tap into that clean, cheap resource, as they’ve got an interesting proposal to put some wind turbines up in yards near the historic Watts Towers. Here’s how they describe it:

The Watts House Project, an artist-driven neighborhood redevelopment, centers on art and creativity as an engine of change – economically, environmentally, and socially. Following our mission, Watts Residents will build 10 windmills for their own neighborhood to maximize wind power’s benefits… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Events: Planet

First things first, we’re going to be at SXSW next week, proud to be a part of WeCanEndThis’s CauseLab, which is kicking off a 30-day online brainstorm on Monday, March 15th. If you can’t be there, but you consider yourself “disrupters or innovators from all disciplines” interested in solving hunger in America, then go to the website and get involved.

There’s generally a bunch of other sustainability related stuff happening at SXSW, and we’ll be sure to keep you posted.

On to other planetary challenges, on March 25th Columbia’s Earth Institute looks to address the “State of the Planet” in their biannual conference... Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Ideas for Making Bad Places Better

In Western Pennsylvania, there’s no shortage of old, abandoned coal mines. One organization has a plan for what to do with some of them. The idea is to build botanic gardens–the Botanic Garden of Western Pennsylvania–where the old mines sit like open sores on the landscape, leaking acid drainage into local waterways. The organization is already in the process of removing the old coal mines, and has big plans for the 452 acre site, which include “beautiful gardens and a lake, many ponds, hiking and biking trails… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

What’s In a Name? Cap-and-Trade, By Any Other Name Would Be As Sweet

President Obama gathered Senators from both sides of the aisle yesterday to talk about how to move forward on a comprehensive climate and energy bill. Details from the closed door meeting with seven Democrats and six Republicans and Independent Joe Lieberman are scant, but parties involved seemed optimistic that it could produce a bill by the end of the year… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

How To: Green Your Workplace In 6 Steps Without Driving Your Co-Workers Nuts

The typical office is a battleground of personal tastes and habits. So what, then, is the environmentally-conscious worker to do? How could you possible work to “green” your workspace without becoming the the office nuisance? We talked to Roberto Rhett, the director of Green Spaces NY, an eco-friendly co-working office share, about how to lower the impact of your workplace without driving all your co-workers nuts. Here are 6 easy tips: Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Q&A: Bringing the Polar Perspective on Climate Change to D.C.

Will Steger has led historic expeditions to both poles, traveled tens of thousands of miles through the arctic and antarctic by kayak and dogsled over the past 45 years, and earned a Lifetime Achievement Award from National Geographic Adventure Magazine. But he insists he’s as much an educator as an adventurer. As one of the world’s leading authorities on the polar regions, Steger has served as eyewitness to the dramatic changes of global. Five years ago, he created the Will Steger Foundation to better engage the public, particularly youth, on climate issues, using his expeditions and experience as a jumping off point for education and action… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Ideas For Young Hands Getting Dirty

So the new submissions are in, and we’ve finally had the chance to give them all a good look-through. Would that they all could be winners!

It’s old news at this point that I get particularly inspired by stories of youth doing good by the planet. So it shouldn’t come as any big surprise that the first projects to jump out at me were all proposed by or for the young folks. At the $5K level alone, there are a bunch. Like Jean Pockrus’s plan to start up a youth-run composting business in Brooklyn. (OK, I might have a bit of borough-bias here as well.) It sounds like an awesome program: kids give out empty buckets to families in their neighborhoods and then ride around in bike-carts to pick up the organic waste from households on a regular schedule. The waste is then composted and donated to local community gardens as rich, locally-produced soil. What’s not to love?

Down in Virginia, the folks at VOLUNTEER Hampton Roads have some big green plans for their local youth as part of Global Youth Service Day… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Q&A: Why Snowtorius B.I.G. and Climate Change Can Coexist

Jeff Masters is a founder of and Director of Meteorology for the internet’s oldest– and my favorite– weather website. But before creating the The Weather Underground with a handful of classmates in University of Michigan’s meteorology Ph.D. program, he was flying through Category 5 storms as a Hurricane Hunter. In the middle of one of the weirdest winters in recent memory, we talked with Masters about his website, the difference between weather and climate, and, of course, about storm chasing. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Events: Planet

Some interesting happenings in the environmental realm in the coming couple of weeks. From March 3-5th in Santa Barbara, the Wall Street Journal is throwing their annual ECO:nomics conference. Expect lots of high-powered execs, investors, and DC- and Wall Street-insiders talking clean energy, cutting carbon, and big business… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Spotlight: Solar Planet Rescue

Alright, I have to admit, I take it a little personally when I find some wonderful, inspiring proposals that should by my incredibly biased opinion reside in the “Planet” category, but I find them living in “Health” or “Food & Shelter” or, gasp, “Neighborhoods.” How dare they! Still, not one to carry a grudge for longer than a paragraph, I’m going to swallow my pride and spotlight a few great solar project ideas, that for whatever reason, aren’t sitting in the comfortable confines of “Planet.” Here goes…

Over in Food & Shelter, the folks at the Austin Community Design and Development Center are looking for a Refresh grant to put solar arrays on the rooftops of affordable housing units in the Texas capital. By assisting with the upfront costs of photovoltaic solar systems, the Refresh grant would help ease energy costs for the low-income families that live in these homes. Remember–after solar is installed, the energy is free… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

LOOK: Getting on the Biofuel Bus with Veterans for Clean Energy

Something’s different about the latest climate action road trip barnstorming the country in a biodiesel bus, holding clean energy rallies in cities and towns along the way. Camouflage has replaced the polar bear costumes. There’s less “Save Gaia” and more “Semper Fi.” Less dreadlocks and more buzzcuts. That’s because the volunteers in Operation Free are all veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and have since deployed on this tour to teach Americans how climate change and our dependence on foreign oil are serious threats to our national security… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

News Roundup: Planet

This week, the UN’s top climate official announced said “so long” to international negotiations, and Virgin’s Richard Branson says “so long” to unlimited oil.

Taking to the woods, California’s redwoods are in trouble as the coastal fog that they depend on thins. And Alaska’s Tongass National Forest gets a bit of a reprieve.

And Bill Gates made some headlines when he used his 20 minutes at TED to talk about the need for “energy miracles.” We promised to give you the video when it surfaced, and it seems like the folks at TED rushed it out as if answering our calls. So here ’tis (after the jump)… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

The Slow Cargo Movement

The Danish shipping company Maersk is slowing down. And they say it’s a good thing for profit and the planet. According to the New York Times, “By halving its top cruising speed over the last two years, Maersk cut fuel consumption on major routes by as much as 30 percent, greatly reducing costs. But the company also achieved an equal cut in the ships’ emissions of greenhouse gases.” A container ship sailing from Germany to China now takes over a month… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

The Incredible Shrinking Frost

Canadian researchers have found that the southern edge of permafrost–or permanently frozen ground–in northern Quebec has receded 80 miles north over the past 50 years… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Finally, Good News for Tongass National Forest!

Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, long under assault by a logging industry enabled by some very lax Bush administration rules, finally catches a break. A federal judge has thrown out an industry lawsuit that would’ve opened up even more of the forest– roughly the size of West Virginia, called the “crown jewel” of the national forest system–to more road construction and cutting… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Top U.N. Climate Official Steps Down

The man with one of the hardest jobs in the world–trying to get 193 nations with wildly divergent interests to agree on a long-term plan to combat runaway climate change–has decided to call it quits. Yvo de Boer announced this morning that he’ll be stepping down after four years as executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the predominant international body working to solve the climate crisis… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Spotlight: Training the Green Collar Workforce

As someone who firmly believes the solutions to our economic and environmental problems are one in the same, I feel it’s essential that we educate and train a new generation of green collar workers for quality, community-based jobs in efficiency and clean energy implementation. That’s why I was so pleased to see the DC Youth Green Jobs project proposal on RefreshEverything.com. 17 year old Jesse Pollak created the project, and his goals are beyond noble… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

What Went Wrong? A Historian Looks Back from the Future at the Climate Fight

Climate activists often wonder what future generations will think about our inability (or unwillingness) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the past few decades. We hear the voices of future generations asking…What were they thinking? Why didn’t they do something? Spencer Weart, a physicist and climate historian, carried out this thought experiment a bit further, imagining what a historian in 2210 would write… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Thinning Fog Threatens California’s Redwoods

If you’ve spent any time at all on the northern California coast in the summer, you know it’s foggy. But apparently it’s a lot less foggy than it was a century ago, and these changing conditions are spelling trouble for the redwood forests and their unique ecosystems that define the region… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Virgin’s Branson Very Worried About Peak Oil

When an airline magnate funds a report that warns of peak oil, it might be worth paying attention. Sir Richard Branson, multi-billionaire founder of Virgin Airlines (and space tourism entrepreneur), has along with a number of British business leaders funded a major new report that predicts oil shortages and price spikes as early as 2015. The report warns of “sharp increases in the cost of… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Mighty Wind: Norway Turbine Plan Tops Them All

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Norway is apparently sick of hearing that they’re behind their Scandanavian peers in wind energy. On Friday they announced plans to build the biggest and most powerful wind turbine known to man. And, oh yeah, it’ll be floating offshore… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Bill Gates Hopes for “Energy Miracles” at TED

During his TED speech on Friday, Bill Gates took on climate change, saying the world needs serious breakthroughs in energy technology. “What we’re going to have to do at a global scale is create a new system… So we need energy miracles,” Gates said, suggesting that we use the next 20 years to develop these breakthrough technologies… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

The Opposite of Gaia: New Book Says Life Threatens Itself

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You’ve probably heard of Gaia, the Greek Supreme Goddess of Earth, the Earth-Mother Goddess, the giver of life. And the Gaia Hypothesis, which describes Gaia as “a complex entity involving the Earth’s biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.” In other words, every living thing… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

News Roundup: The Planet

The Snowpocalypse dominated the news this week, though many seemed to forget the difference between weather and climate. Let’s be clear: extreme winter weather in the middle Atlantic and Northeast does NOT disprove climate change. In fact, it’s exactly what the best climate scientists have been predicting… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

The Warming of Walden Pond

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When Henry David Thoreau was meticulously cataloging the variety of species he observed during his famous Walden Pond retreat, he never would have known how this “Concord data set” would be used 150 years later to study climate change and biodiversity loss. John Platt has a fascinating, if melancholy, piece…

Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me Some Cash: Polluters and Politicans Find Love (or Money) on pHarmony

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Just in time for Valentine’s Day, there’s a new web matchmaking service, Polluter Harmony, that will help politicians, industry lobbyists, and polluters find one another to, well, do what they do when the lights (of transparency) turn off… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Fleet Efficiency: The Power of Scale for Carbon Reductions

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The Environmental Defense Fund has been doing some pretty incredible work on fleet efficiency–basically working with companies to get better gas mileage from their employee vehicles and corporate fleets. As EDF explains, “Fleet vehicles are driven hard, averaging nearly double the mileage, fuel consumption and emissions of personal vehicles. As a result, fleets are not only expensive to operate but…

Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Spotlight: Refresh Planet Category Ideas from Innovative Youth

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As someone who spent his youth with a notebook sketched full of “inventions,” I was particularly charged up to see this GreenShields project submission by 14-year old Jonny (no last name given) and a supporting team of his “sister and her smart friends.”

Jonny describes the project as “retrofitting busses that have already been built with a plexiglass shield that will reduce the drag on the bus and therefore reduce CO2 emissions.” Making school buses more fuel efficient strikes me as an idea that’s…

Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Covering 10 Million Roofs with Solar

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Late last week, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders introduced an awfully ambitious bill, one that aims to put solar panels on the roofs of 10 million American homes and businesses, not to mention 200,000 solar water heaters, all within ten years. Sanders aims with the creatively titled “10 Million Solar Roofs & 10 Million Gallons of Solar Hot Water Act” (PDF) to provide rebates for…

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By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Electric Vehicles 101

Peter Sinclair, who is perhaps most famous for his incredible “Climate Denial Crock of the Week” videos, is turning his video production skills to core climate and energy solutions. (Don’t worry, he promises that this new series “will augment, but not replace, ‘Climate Denial Crock of the Week’.”) The inaugural youtube effort is a wonderful primer on electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. In ten short minutes…

Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Yes, Virginia (and Washington), There Are Snowpocalyptic Blizzards With Climate Change

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Yes, the middle Atlantic is getting socked with snow yet again. And, yes, here in New York City, we’re just about to get wallopped as well. No, that doesn’t mean that global warming is a sham, as plenty of delighted climate deniers have suggested through tweets and blog posts and signs atop of igloos.

I like Juliet Elperin’s take best in the Washington Post: “In this most wintry of Washington winters, those Al Gore jokes were only…

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By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Dr. Seuss Estate: “No, I Am The Lorax”

suess.2910 Just when you think greenwashing couldn’t possibly get any more absurd, some coal company goes and names itself after Dr. Seuss’s beloved character who “speaks for the trees.” That’s right, a Massachusetts coal gasification company had the gall to name itself…wait for it…LoraxAg. Company president Mike Farina confirmed the name was inspired by the Dr. Seuss story…

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By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Black Soot Found Guilty of Melting Himalayan Glaciers

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Black carbon aerosols, more commonly known as soot, may well be responsible for the majority of the melting taking place in the Himalayan glaciers. That these glaciers are melting is not in question (despite some recent hubbub about when they might actually disappear), but glaciologists had long believed that the rapid rate of melting was faster than could be caused by greenhouse effect warming alone. A new study by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs… Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Despite Shrinking Habitat, American Pika Not Endangered

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The American pika, a cousin of the rabbit, is threatened as its alpine habitat shrinks with climate change. Many environmentalists have been pushing for the pika to be legally protected under the Endangered Species Act, a move that could open up a legislative back door to greenhouse gas regulation. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Federal Climate Change Forecasting Agency Launched

national-climate-service.2810 This morning the Obama administration announced the formation of a new “climate service,” an agency “aimed at providing long-term forecasts to assist fisheries managers, farmers, state governments, renewable energy developers, water managers and others,” according to Greenwire. The new agency will fall under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and head Jane Lubchenco, who appeared with Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to make the announcement this morning. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

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News Roundup: The Planet

This week, the stalled climate and energy bill got a shot in the arm from a couple of very helpful voices that nobody would ever mistake for being typical environmentalists: a Republican senator and the Pentagon. First, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called out moderate Democratic senate colleagues who are insisting on passing energy legislation without the carbon reductions. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

The Long, Smoldering Death of Centralia Pennsylvania

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It’s one of the strangest (and saddest) American stories you’ve probably never heard. Below the once-proud coal town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, a fire has burned for nearly 40 years. Back in 1962, an exposed coal vein was ignited, and neglected, the fire spread underground, burning slowly beneath the town, and releasing carbon monoxide and other dangerous pollutants into the local air. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Ocean Water + Solar Power = Drinking Water

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Considering the dueling resource crises of oil and water, it never made a heck of a lot of sense to use one to solve the other. But that’s exactly what the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had been doing for decades in the oil-powered desalination plants that line their Persian Gulf coast. As I wrote for GOOD last March, desalination of ocean water is increasingly becoming a necessity in particularly dry parts of the world, like the Gulf, southwestern Australia, and even Southern California, where a $300 million San Diego plant is in the works. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Q&A: Revolutionizing Solar Power in the Empire State

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When I first met Chris Neidl five years ago, he was well on his way to becoming New York City’s biggest champion for solar power. As the Outreach and Advocacy Coordinator for the non-profit Solar One, a clean energy, arts, and education center, he’s launched a number of initiatives to make solar energy a practical reality for New Yorkers, including the popular I Heart PV campaign. I sat down with Chris to talk about why New York should be a solar leader, how it could be, and his creative ways of getting the public interested in typically-drab policy. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Greenest Gadget of Them All?

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Every year I tune into coverage of the Greener Gadgets conference in New York City (sometimes I’ll attend), but I had no idea that there was a competition running alongside the event until I read Treehugger’s piece about it today. Turns out the Consumer Electronics Association has kicked off an online contest to determine the best–and greenest–new gadget on the market. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Hope Floats on Bottle Boat

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In a few short weeks, after a year of design and construction, eco-adventurer David de Rothschild will set sail on the Plastiki, a 60-foot catamaran made of over 12,000 reclaimed plastic bottles. With the voyage, de Rothschild, founder of Adventure Ecology, hopes to call attention to the global waste problem. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Do Airplane Contrails Heat or Cool the Planet?

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We’re not entirely sure, it turns out. For a long time now, climatologists have believed that the contrails–those white vapor trails left by airplanes you see criss-crossing the sky–had a net warming effect. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Land Conservation as Economic Stimulus

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Should we be looking more at land conservation as a vehicle for economic stimulus? Some think so. The Daily Green’s Ned Sullivan takes a look at why cutting funding for parks during times of budget shortfall might do more economic harm than good. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

I See a Black Roof and I Want to Paint it White

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About a year ago in GOOD, I wrote about painting rooftops white to slow global warming. The basic premise: “if all the rooftops and paved surfaces in the world’s major cities were painted white or replaced by more reflective material (like roads made of concrete rather than asphalt), the global cooling effect would be enormous. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

NASA Turns Focus Back Towards Earth

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Astronauts-in-training are sure to be disappointed by the White House’s budget plans for NASA, but the rest of us terra-bound Earthlings should be relieved. President Obama’s new budget is cutting funding for the Constellation program that was set to return the U.S.A. to the moon by 2020. But, as the Orlando Sentinel reports, “In the meantime, the White House will direct NASA to concentrate on Earth-science projects — principally, researching and monitoring climate change.” Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

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LOOK: A New Lease on Solar

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For decades now, one very high hurdle has blocked the path to upgrading a home to solar: that huge upfront investment. It’s this front end cost that most solar-salivating greens cite when asked why they aren’t yet capturing and converting the sun’s rays.

But that barrier has vanished for some lucky residents in a handful of Western states. Behold the SolarLease. Introduced back in April 2008 by California-based SolarCity, this lease program gives folks the option of rooftop solar without the hefty down payment, not to mention the headaches of installing, owning, and maintaining an array of panels.

”You rent the equipment and get the benefit of the electricity,” says SolarCity’s Jonathan Bass, but the company owns the panels themselves, handles the whole installation process, and takes care of any technical problems. The leases usually run for 15 years. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

News Roundup: Planet

Just this morning, President Obama pledged to reduce all federal government greenhouse gas emissions 28-percent by 2020, his statement explaining that “[as] the largest energy consumer in the United States, we have a responsibility to American citizens to reduce our energy use and become more efficient.” Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Using Football to Light the Developing World

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It’d be hard not to love this story. Some Harvard students have pioneered a way to harvest energy in a soccer ball football while it gets kicked around. The sOccket looks like a normal soccer ball football, but generates and stores energy as the game is played. The inventors have the developing world in mind–where kerosene or diesel-charged batteries often provide the only light, and where it’s always easy to find a pickup game happening in an empty lot. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Hyping Up the High-Speed Rail

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Just last week I was biting my knuckle with envy over China’s plans to build 42 high-speed rail lines by 2012. Well, even with all the hype surrounding President Obama’s “big” domestic HSR announcements, I’m still biting that knuckle. Despite some breathless coverage, the reality is that the $8 billion in stimulus cash being directed to HSR won’t go very far. While the much-hyped Tampa-to-Orlando line and the California high-speed project are getting the lion’s share, the rest is getting spread around rather thin. The Florida route could be done by 2014. Don’t hold your breath on California. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

How the West Was Warmed

htwwwcover.12810 For awhile now I’ve been arguing that to get Americans to care about climate change, we’ve got to make it personal. Former High Country News editor Beth Conover has done just that, compiling a book of essays from local writers to paint the picture of what a warmer world means for folks in the Rockies. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

U.S. Lags in Environmental Performance

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A biannual ranking of the world’s nations by environmental performance has revealed the United States to be lagging far behind most of the developed world. And while this isn’t exactly breaking news to anyone paying any attention to our nation’s environmental and climate policies for the past couple decades, our rank–61st globally–is eye-opening. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Events: Planet

At this very moment, the hordes have descended on Park City for the Sundance Film Festival. Besides founder Robert Redford’s deep commitments to environmental issues (he calls both wildlands preservation in Utah and climate change “obsessions”), the festival itself is renowned for its eco-awareness, both in the operations and the programming itself. This year’s festival features a raft of environmentally-themed films, including Climate Refugees, a documentary of the real human face of climate change. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Save the Great Lakes By Eating Asian Carp?

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If you haven’t heard already, the Great Lakes are under assault by a “missile with fins,” an invasive species otherwise known as the Asian Carp. They’re out-breeding and out-competing pretty much every native species in the Mississippi River and biologists fear that they could decimate the Great Lakes ecosystem.

One solution that’s been suggested: eat ‘em! One problem: this fish has a nasty reputation, and nobody wants to order up Asian Carp in a restaurant. Which lead the Lousiana Department of Natural Resources to suggest–and I’m serious here–rebranding them as “silverfin.” After all, a name change worked for Chilean Sea Bass (formerly the Patagonian toothfish) and the Orange Roughy (which once went by slimehead!). Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

The Diversity of Life in One Cubic Foot

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“How much life could you find in one cubic foot?” That’s the question National Geographic photographer David Liittschwager set out to answer in his “Within One Cubic Foot: Miniature Surveys of Biodiversity.” To do so, he took a green metal frame, a 12 inch by 12 inch by 12 inch hollow cube, and placed it in a handful of different ecosystems–a deciduous forest in New York City’s Central Park, a Coral Reef in French Polynesia, a Costa Rican cloud forest, a mountain fynbos in South Africa, and a freshwater river in Tennessee. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

LOOK: The World’s Most Important Number

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On October 24^th 2009, Joe Galliani and 1,500 others gathered arm-in-arm on the shores of the Pacific Ocean a few miles south of Los Angeles International Airport, to call attention to rising sea levels and global climate change. Galliani called this event The Amazing Waving Human Tide Line.

“We had kids, the PTA, girl scouts and boy scouts, surfers and cyclists, and conservative groups you wouldn’t expect to be involved with something like this,” says Galliani. Also present amongst this motley coalition– scads of local politicians– city council members, mayors, even state representatives, all on hand to get behind a global climate change target: 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

S.O.S.: Save Our Snow

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So it’s come to this: because of unseasonably mild conditions at Vancouver’s Cypress Mountain, which is supposed to host some high-flying Olympic snowboard and ski events in a couple short weeks, the Canadian government is helicoptering in snow.

Let’s be clear: one warm and wet Vancouver winter can’t be specifically attributed to global warming. Just like the frigid spell that stunned much of the nation earlier this month can occur as the “global temperature is breaking records in January,” some unseasonable “anecdata” can’t prove climate change. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

How Much Would You Pay for a Plastic Bag?

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On January 1st, shoppers in the District of Columbia were first asked, “How many bags would you like to buy?” The plastic bag tax is only five-cents, literally one-half of one-percent of a $10 lunch. Doesn’t sound like enough to really induce behavioral change.

Not so, says ThinkProgress’s Matt Yglesias, and he’s actually living through it! “My key observations are that I hear a ton of whining about how terrible this new tax is, and also a lot of people engaging in tax-avoiding behavior—canvass bags, cramming stuff into backpacks, carrying items by hand. In other words, it looks to be a stunning success!” Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Stopping Deforestation by Unchopping a Tree

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Last month in Copenhagen, artist and architect Maya Lin–she of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial–presented a stunning, reflective multimedia video piece called Unchopping a Tree. Haunting tones from Brian Eno play as sharp images of some of the world’s most revered urban parks fade in and out, and the viewer is reminded that 90 acres of rainforests are destroyed every minute. Then we’re asked: “If deforestation were happening in your city, how quickly would you work to stop it?” Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Beacons of Solar Light in Haiti

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In the dark, tragic aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, most of the electricity in Port-au-Prince was cut. The lack of power continues to compound the devastation there, shutting down basic communication systems like cell phones and walkie talkies, and leaving lighting and water purification systems dependent on diesel generators. By all accounts, diesel is in very short supply, but, as MSNBCs Alan Boyle has written, some distributed solar devices are providing some much needed salvation. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

News Round Up: Planet

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This week, NASA confirmed what we’ve known for a while: that 2000-2009 was the warmest decade on record. The Sierra Club anointed a new Executive Director, the former head of the Rainforest Action Network, and a guy who’s known for taking a fierce, confrontational approach to polluters and other malfeasants.

Here at Refresh we looked at a couple of hopes for low-carbon travel: high-speed rail and more fuel efficient airplanes. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Business Leaders Demand Clean Energy Leadership

Over and over again we hear that we can’t afford to take action on climate change, that our economy can’t handle it, that it’ll kill businesses off and strip America of even more jobs. Not so! says, well, big business itself!

This week we saw a couple of pleas from two completely different business coalitions, both calling for immediate and binding energy and climate policy. Earlier this week, over 85 of the nation’s largest business, labor, environmental, energy and faith-based organizations launched an ad in major newspapers to push for climate legislation. The full-page ad (see it here) is packed with an impressive collection of logos representing some of the most recognizable–and essential to our economy–businesses and corporations out there, from Chrysler, Ford, and GM to Dow and Dupont to BP, GE, and HP to John Deere and also, yes, Pepsico. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Riding the Really Fast Rails

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I’ve got a sort of Biden-esque infatuation with trains. So when I read that China is planning on building 42 high-speed rail lines by 2012, I wasn’t sure whether to be excited, ashamed, or just jealous. CNN has an fascinating story (and pulse-quickening–well, for rail dorks like me–slideshow) of the rapid advance of high-speed rail around the world. Well, pretty much everywhere but here. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

Coming Soon: Flying With (A Bit) Less Carbon Guilt

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Some decent news for all those climate and environmental advocates I know who are constantly feeling guilty about the carbon footprint of their travel. (Those trips to Copenhagen aren’t light on the conscience.) Boeing is unveiling a new commercial plane, the Dreamliner 787, that’ll use 20 percent less fuel than its predecessor. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

For Energy (and Revenue), Indian Tribes Turn to the Sacred Sun

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Forget slot machines and bingo halls. Some American Indian tribes are turning a cold shoulder to gambling revenue, looking instead toward some resources that they’ve long held sacred: the sun and the winds. Specifically, the energy that can be generated (and sold) from solar and wind power on their reservation lands. The Associated Press (via the Christian Science Monitor) has a nice story of 3,000 member Jemez Pueblo tribe, who are building the nation’s first utility-sized solar power plant on a reservation. Read & Discuss

By: Ben Jervey of GOOD

Refresh Topics: "The Planet

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