Slipr

Icon

the reporter's notebook of Christopher Mims

In the U.S., Walking Uses More Fossil Fuels Than Driving

It turns out that a Honda Civic expends less than half of the energy a person does to move one pound of itself one mile.
Change.org

Worse: our food system is so dependent on fossil fuels that it’s entirely possible that it takes more oil to make the food that allows a person to walk a mile than would be expended in simply driving that mile.

This isn’t a result I expected when I started playing with the numbers, so it’s an object lesson in why it’s important to do the math.

Filed under: change.org, green technology, , , , ,

Meat is (Climate) Murder. Even the Grass-Fed Kind.

2261031493_69b75a38d0
image cc Paul Stevenson

You may have heard that, raised properly, grass-fed beef doesn’t hurt the climate. That’s a convenient lie: a recent lifecycle analysis of the carbon impact of grass-fed beef revealed that cows who are pastured for their entire lives emit 50% more greenhouse gasses than their less well treated colleagues trapped in Concentrated Animal Feed Operations.
Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: change.org, climate change

“Clean Coal” Technology To Be Used On Just About Anything But Coal

4024864398_f78031c035
image cc James Jordan

It turns out that removing CO2 from the smokestack of a coal fired power plant and then burying it under ground in a process called Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) is the most costly, least efficient way to interdict carbon before it hits the atmosphere.
Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: change.org, climate change, green technology

Think You’re a Good Recycler? Think Again.


image cc Anne Norman

In the U.S., only a fifth of the aluminum we toss each year is recycled, according to the report Stop Trashing the Climate. (pdf) Paper isn’t much better – we’re only recycling about half of all our newspapers, boxes, magazines and paperboard.

If you’re a regular reader of Change.org, however, you’re probably already doing your best to recycle aluminum, paper and glass, all of which require large amount of energy – and therefore greenhouse gasses – to produce. (Together, the production of all three of these materials accounts for a third of annual U.S. CO2 emissions.)

But what you might not realize is that, like most households in America, every day you’re failing to recycle a kind of waste whose trip to the landfill is tremendously damaging to the climate: food.
Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: change.org, climate change

Archive of past articles

Blurbs on Lester Brown, RecycleBank and charity: water for Good magazine
Good

Crocodile-like Reptiles Lived in the Arctic 55 Million Years Ago. Could it Happen Again?
Popular Science

Mining “Ice That Burns”
Technology Review

The World’s 10 Largest Renewable Energy Projects
Scientific American

Wild Boars Menace Germany. Could it Happen Here?
Popular Science

‘Ecological Intelligence’ and The Google of Green Shopping
Green Living

Sending Cell Phones into the Cloud
Technology Review

Hackers Weigh In: 8 Big Things to Do with a Mini Server
Scientific American

Netbook Chips Create a Low-Power Cloud
Technology Review

Hybrid Trucks Are Here for the Long (Medium and Short) Haul
Scientific American

‘Gay Elephant’ Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg
Popular Science

Exoskeletons Give New Life to Legs
Scientific American

Plan Bee: As Honeybees Die Out, Will Other Species Take Their Place?
Scientific American

The $9000 Plug-in Hybrid That Will Beat the Volt to Market
Popular Science

Stingless Bees Mummify Enemies
Scientific American

“The Most Beautiful Moment in Science” – Captured on Film
Popular Science

Can Geothermal Power Compete with Coal on Price?
Scientific American

Are e-books an environmental choice?
Green Living

Electric Shocks to the Face, Then and Now (video)
Popular Science

Can Geothermal Power in Iceland Thaw a Frozen Economy?
Scientific American

5 Not-So-Green Gadgets
Green Living

What Is The Worst Possible Disaster That Could Befall Earth?
Popular Science

Why Artificial Intelligence Threatens Actual Intelligence (video)
Popular Science

Threat Watch, LHC? (video)
Popular Science

One Hot Island: Iceland’s Renewable Geothermal Power
Scientific American

Filed under: biotech, change.org, climate change, Green Living, green technology, information technology, Popular Science, Scientific American, Technology Review, Wired

Twitter

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.