Taking a Sharpie marker to the map
Do you have a globe in your home? Well, it’s time to break it out. Spin it over to Asia, and try to find the Aral Sea. I’ll give you a hint: it’s on the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, east of the Caspian Sea. What color is it on your globe? It’s probably blue, [...]
Green designers do graphics, too
Behold, the new Seattle Department of Transportation Bike Map. Made by my friend Erin, who is awesome. Erin did her first iteration of this bike map as part of her graduate thesis at the University of Washington. Go see more of Erin’s awesomeness at her Web site and blog. And then ring your bike bell [...]
Green buildings = higher rent
It’s been a while since I posted, a fact that I may have missed because I was busy enjoying my favorite holiday of the year, St. Patrick’s Day. I wore a green t-shirt that said “The Future is Green”, which I hope everyone appreciated, especially since it glows in the dark! But I digress. I [...]
Possibly the world’s most excellent water bottle
Behold: the Water Bobble. Who among us doesn’t now feel a little tinge of guilt when we are confronted with the prospect of drinking from a disposable water bottle? At the conference I attended a few weeks ago, I went through three in three days, which made me feel awful and basically doubled my total [...]
Bundling up your house
I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about insulation lately. Part of that is because of HOME STAR, which provides incentives for homeowners if they choose to upgrade the insulation in their house, among other things. My explanation of HOME STAR inevitably leads to explaining some of the measures available for incentives, and insulation [...]
Living on a giant crusty earthen raft
So, there’s been a lot of earthquakes lately. Haiti back in January; Chile, last weekend; Japan, back in February; California, constantly for about the past month; and Taiwan yesterday. I know many scientists will say “these events are not related”, but, as I reminded my friends yesterday, people act like we don’t live on a [...]
HOME STAR: This is kind of a big deal
There are several energy and climate bills floating around in the Congress right now, including the Kerry/Boxer (or Kerry/Graham/Lieberman) Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (which has been in the works since – but not because – I thanked them here) ; the Bingaman/Murkowski American Clean Energy Leadership Act, or ACELA; the Cantwell/Collins CLEAR [...]
Want to get a home energy rating?
…Well if so, let me know, because I’m at a conference with several hundred home energy raters this week! First of all, you may want to know what a “home energy rating” consists of. The funny thing is, there’s actually LOTS of home energy ratings. There’s the HERS, which is given by ResNet, which is [...]
Living in Los Angeles Without a Car
It seems like a very far away experience for me, now that I’ve been living in Portland for nearly 9 months (aka the sky has been Pantone Warm Grey since October), but before my current situation I was living in Los Angeles for grad school. And, as you might have picked up from the title [...]
Unplug, or the Polar Bear Gets it
AKA, the Greenlite at Dartmouth University energy saving program. First, go to Greenlite’s home page here. What do you see? Do you see a happy polar bear, playing with a butterfly? Perhaps he’s taking a nap next to his “friends”, the baby seal and the baby polar bear… Or, maybe you see a polar bear [...]
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