Blogs & Ecology

ecoflationary transport source

That is the term that Deborah Zabarenko, environmental correspondent for Reuters, uses to describe "the rising cost of doing business in a world with a changing climate.". According to a study by the World Resources Institute and A.T. Kearney, regulation of carbon dioxide will change the way people do business.

That is what Trendwatching, "an independent and opinionated trend firm" with a penchant for inventing words that really grate on the tongue, calls the new services that help households go green. They note that while these firms started up to help people reduce their carbon footprints, their current focus is helping consumers save, or even make, money by going green. As an example, they cite a London firm, Green Concierge:

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happy meat via Green as a Thistle

The Guardian's Ethical Living columnist Lucy Siegle writes:

Ecotarianism has a winningly common-sense approach. The concept is simple: eat the foods with the lowest environmental burden, those with the lowest global-warming potential (GWP) and the least chance of messing up the planet via their acidification and pollution potential.

cyclist and driver interaction in Toronto a few years ago. Photos Adam Krawesky via Spacingwire

We have seen it many times in the comments in TreeHugger: Drivers complaining that cyclists are generally irresponsible "lycra lizards" who ignore traffic signals and are rude to drivers. Tom Vanderbilt quotes an Australian writer who calls it Bikeism -

Great word. It appears to have been coined by Peter Asmus, who wrote in his blog:

"The “locavore” movement is big, especially in California. With the bounty of food found locally in the Bay Area, living off the land – and sea – is not only possible, but a delicious exercise.

When I previously wrote a post on Jargon Watch: Geothermal vs Ground Source Heat Pump, suggesting that the use of the word geothermal to describe ground source heat pumps was inappropriate, it caused some controversy in comments, including my favourite, (later recanted) "This strikes me as uninformed drive-by "journalism".

Burton Street Tabernacle, Sydney, Australia: A good example of Locatecture

It is an idea we have toyed with on TreeHugger: Collin wrote about the 100 mile bathroom and we have looked at slow design. Now Elizabeth Farrely coins Locatect in the Sydney Morning Herald.

CRAGs -- or Carbon Rationing Action Groups, are support groups dedicated to taking action to stop global warming through careful tracking of personal carbon emissions. Mostly in the UK, the groups set ambitious goals to cut back on carbon emissions, and then hold each other accountable -- with peer pressure and fines as motivation -- for reducing their carbon footprints.