Tag Archives: green news

Not Quite Ready for a True Cargo Bike? Try a Cycle Truck

Photo via Ahearn. The photos don’t do these new handmade truck bikes justice. Ahearne Cycle Trucks seem to harken back to a perhaps mythical time when carrying a modest amount of cargo was just what a bike was built to do, without a lot of fuss, muss, or hassle. Joseph Ahearne, a bicycle maker based in Portland, Oregon, says these are medium-duty cargo bikes, but he prefers to call them cycle trucks. What’s the difference? Well, cycle trucks have a front rack fixed to the frame for stability, and a slightly smaller front wheel to accomodate the rack’s… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Not Quite Ready for a True Cargo Bike? Try a Cycle Truck

House for Booklovers is an Off-Grid Wood Wonder

All image credits: Gillean Proctor Wood Design and Building shows us a house for booklovers on a remote island in the Juan de Fuca Strait off the coast of British Columbia, designed by Helliwell + Smith, AKA Blue Sky Architecture. It is completely off-grid but on the north side of the island, setting up “a dichotomy between ocean views and sunshine.” It is designed to both harvest sunlight to the south and frame views to the north…. Read the full story on TreeHugger

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House for Booklovers is an Off-Grid Wood Wonder

Popup Pissoir Solves Wee Problem

Urilift What is the perfect thing if you are sitting at your pop-up table and having a beer or three? A pop-up urinal! In a lot of older cities, there is a shortage of toilets and a surplus of beer. The result often is public peeing. But if we are going to have vibrant (and sweet smelling) cities, we have to deal with these kinds of issues. One answer is the UriLift , with three stainless steel urinals that pop up at the push of a button. Springwise tells … Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Popup Pissoir Solves Wee Problem

Fox News: "We Can’t Trust BP" (Video)

Obama has just wrapped up a press conference affirming his administration’s leadership role in the BP Gulf spill response. Calls have been mounting from all over for the federal government to step up its authority, as BP has been called out as untrustworthy by environmentalists, concerned locals, and even Fox News. Yes, you might think that the conservative network would back Tea Party star Rand Paul, who said that Obama was being too harsh on BP — but as this video attests, the anchors at Fox are incensed:… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Fox News: "We Can’t Trust BP" (Video)

No More Baptisms in the Jordan River – Expected to Run Dry by 2011

Photo via Abouid Even the most famous and admired places aren’t immune to the problems of abuse and pollution – the Jordan River being a prime example as it’s expected to run dry by 2011 due to overexploitation, pollution and lack of regional management, according to Friends of the Earth, Middle East . Over 90% of the river’s water has been diverted by Israel, Syria and Jordan, and what’s left is an unappealing mix of sewage, saline water, and run-off from cropland. And by the end of 2011, there won’t even be that left. … Read the full story on TreeHugger

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No More Baptisms in the Jordan River – Expected to Run Dry by 2011

If Your City Were Perfect, What Would It Look Like? Build It with IBM’s CityOne Game (Video)

Screengrab via IBM video If you were given total control of your city and could plan exactly how it was set up from the structures to the water management to the banking industry, how would you lay it out? IBM created a SimCity-like game called CityOne in which you can design the ideal city. The assumption is they want to mine people’s minds for the best ideas that we can implement to improve our real cities, and see what we can salvage from our terrible urban planning efforts. Check out a video of the game after the jump and see if you want to add in your two cents about how bike lanes should be set up, and if we should be running off nuclear or wind energy. … Read the full story on TreeHugger

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If Your City Were Perfect, What Would It Look Like? Build It with IBM’s CityOne Game (Video)

50 Years of Selling America Oil [VIDEO]

Maybe it’s just me. But this whole Gulf of Mexico fiasco sounds a bit like a trailer mash-up between a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie and Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. Unfortunately, this isn’t Hollywood and we’ve have 5,000 barrels of crude oil bubbling into our ocean every single day–though some are reporting it’s closer to 26,000 barrels a day ! And while some are quick to blame BP or even off-shore drilling, I am hesitant to agree: this tragedy begins at the pump. … Read the full story on TreeHugger

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50 Years of Selling America Oil [VIDEO]

This Is Why We’re All Effed: iPad Tops 1 Million Sales, 3G Version Is Identical, and We’re Microwaving Them

Photo via Veronica Belmont There are few things out there that do a better job than the iPad at highlighting just what’s wrong with us when it comes to our gadget mentality. We love our gadgets, and they hold a lot of potential for dematerializing our lives, which means a smaller collective carbon footprint and hope for a sustainable future. But that potential only goes as far as we will take it, and from the looks of things, we aren’t wanting to dematerialize and, what’s worse, we aren’t even valuing the stuff that we put up on a pedestal as revolutionary. The iPad underscores all this with Apple reporting over 1 million sales of the first device, the launch of the 3G version which is exactly the same save for 3G connectivity and a higher price tag, and news of people doing everything from microwaving to blending to beating the device with a baseball bat. … Read the full story on TreeHugger

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This Is Why We’re All Effed: iPad Tops 1 Million Sales, 3G Version Is Identical, and We’re Microwaving Them

The 7 Stupidest Statements Made About the BP Gulf Oil Spill

Photo via the Telegraph The BP oil spill is on par to outpace the Exxon Valdez oil spill in terms of size, impact, and devastation, which is no small feat. The Valdez spill cost billions of dollars to clean up, killed hundreds of thousands of animals, and registered a debilitating effect to the coastal ecosystem. And yet, we see, once again, that there’s no shortage of people who seem to forget easily, or are downright ignorant of the catastrophe an oil spill of this magnitude presents. To illustrate, I bring you the 7 stupidest things said about the BP oil spill so far . . …. Read the full story on TreeHugger

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The 7 Stupidest Statements Made About the BP Gulf Oil Spill

"Fabricating A Stone"- Holiday House Camouflaged as Big Rock

Roland Halbe via Abitare AntAn GarcAa- Abril and Ensamble Studio have built La Trufa, or truffle, on the north Spanish coast. It is what one might call a solid bit of work, made of concrete in a very unusual fashion. The architect writes in Abitare that “what we had created was not yet architecture, we had fabricated a stone.” But what is most extraordinary was how they did the formwork for the concrete…. Read the full story on TreeHugger

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"Fabricating A Stone"- Holiday House Camouflaged as Big Rock