Blogs & Ecology

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The Fun Revolution via flikr

Many of us at TreeHugger may indeed be suffering from an emerging disease called carborexia. It was only a matter of time before someone pegged "too much" concern for the environment as a disease. Word watcher Michael Quinon of World Wide Words explains the origins of the word in the "turns of phrase" section of his latest email dispatch.
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Photo courtesy of RMI

Tropical wetlands store 80 percent more carbon than temperate wetlands, reports a new study that compared ecosystems in Costa Rica and Ohio.

William Mitsch of Ohio State University and colleagues found that the tropical wetland in Costa Rica accumulated around 1 ton of carbon per acre [2.63 t/ha] per year, while the temperate wetland in Ohio accumulated 0.6 tons of carbon per acre [1.4 t/ha] per year.

photo: Ben & Jerry's

Admit it, you’ve been there: curled up on the couch in your pajamas, watching a good movie, and thinking to yourself, "The only thing that would make this better right now is a pint of New York Super Fudge Chunk and a spoon—but then I would have to get dressed and go outside…” Istanbul residents living near the popular shopping street Bağdat Caddesi on the Asian side of the city now have a solution to such dilemmas that is as ecofriendly as it is effortless: Bicycle delivery from Ben & Jerry’s....

photo: caribb

There’s no getting around the fact that despite the best intentions of many of us in the green movement, we live and work in a society which spews out a lot of carbon emissions. It’s part of the structure of our nations and no matter what we do on an individual level, it’s unlikely that we really can reduce our carbon footprint below a certain level. All but the most eco-ascetic of us have a higher carbon footprint than is optimal. The easy answer to addressing that excess carbon is to offset it, using one of the myriad services available.

This week the covers were taken off a new consumer resource -- an independent ranking of Australian carbon offset providers. The Total Environment Centre, the consumer advocacy group Choice, and the Institute for Sustainable Futures combined their talents to offer Carbon Offset Watch.

The issue of carbon offsets is a contentious one: Some people panning them as doing little good or being distracting from the true environmental consequences of our lifestyle choices; other people praise them for providing a method to make a positive difference in the fight against global warming. If you’re in the latter camp there still remains the problem of determining which offset service to use. If that’s the question that’s been bugging you, Environmental Defense Fund has the answer:...

Photograph by Warren McLaren

Last month the City of Sydney declared that it had become Australia’s first carbon neutral government. It is important to note that whilst the total area of this southern metropolis is said to be equal to the size of London and nearly twice that of New York, at 4,000 square kilometres, the claim to carbon neutrality really only applies to the local government area called "Sydney." That spans the central business district and surrounding suburbs, and is about 26 square kilometres. But still, it's not a bad claim to fame.

Photo credit: Getty Images

Sony Bank has become Japan's first carbon-neutral bank, thanks to its purchase of renewable-energy credits. Issued by the Japan Natural Energy Company, the Green Power Certificate equals 1.1 million kilowatt hours—enough to cover the bank's entire annual electricity consumption—and saves the equivalent of 400 tons of greenhouse-gas emissions.

Malmö wants its solar and wind installations to be visible to city residents - Sege City, featured here, is a 166 kW solar rooftop.

Two neighborhoods in Sweden's third-largest city, Malmö, will try out a number of small-scale rooftop wind turbines this fall to see which type of wind-driven device will get the most bang for the buck, while not bothering the neighbors with too much noise.

Vertical turbines quieter