alo novo

The global food system is complex. Wayne Roberts' new book, The No-Nonsense Guide to World Food, is an accessible overview of how the system works - and how it can be fixed. "The problems we experience can often be linked to an invisible food system that is 'hidden in plain sight'. When we become aware of this food system, new ways of understanding food controversies and smarter ways of solving food problems start to become clear." This pocket sized book is the latest in the series from The New Internationalist's No-Nonsense series. I...

photo dsearls @ flickr It's no secret that TreeHugger isn't fond of single-use bottles of water - there seems no trapping of modern life easier to let go of, when municipalities spend oodles to make most tap water clean, and reusable bottles come in every size and color - there are even some cool ones aimed at getting kids off the one-use bottle! Icebergs become 'high-end' bottled water But we all seem a bit slow to get the picture - growth for the global soft drink and bottled water market is still growing around 4% annually. In fact...

Image courtesy of BBC Green Sustainable Fish Served on Dutch KLM Airline The Dutch airline KLM has invested in algal biofuel development, looks forward to participating in a European carbon bank program, and claims to fly 25 percent more efficiently than its competitors. And now, the unusually green-seeming airline is offering ...

In one of the driest states in the U.S., it's apparently illegal to harvest rainwater (at least on a large scale) as it diverts water from someone else downstream. (Is there a private water-bottling company downstream?) Thankfully, they're not going after your garden-loving grandmother, but it does set a precedent for those who might collect it for commercial use. ::Infowars via

This post is one in a series of video blogs about biking across America with WE ADD UP to raise awareness about how to stop global warming. Check out more posts in this series here. In January 2005, Carson and a few friends climbed Mount Washington in New Hampshire. Day 36 of the bike trip, 2008 brought Carson and Eric to Mount Washington, Or...

Last Sunday morning thousands of San Franciscans converged on a four and a half mile strip of waterfront roadway. No, they weren't protesting. Instead they were celebrating the first ever Sunday Streets, an initiative dreamed up by Mayor Gavin Newsom. The event closed a roadway running from Chinatown to Bayview, both areas of the city with minimal open space. Along the strip people stopped to hop in on a yoga class, learn salsa dancing, and even jump rope. ...

Fossil Fuels Are the Bottled Water of Energy: We already know the numerous reasons why bottled water is bad, including the energy and water it takes to manufacture, ship and discard the product, as well as the fact that tap water must meet more stringent water quality standards. But here's the interesting thing: fossil fuels are essentially bottled energy. And just as the green alternative to bottled water is tap water, the logical alternative to fossil fuels is renewable energy. ::Andy Posner The Next Wonder Drug? Just Ask Mother Nature I ...

If you can believe it, there was a time when colleges and universities didn’t have people looking after eco issues. Energy and water meters went unwatched, pesticides floated freely across quads, organics were laughed out of the cafeteria, and recycle bins were used strictly as gravity bongs. But no more, my mortarboarded friends. Today, schools are grade grubbing on green report cards and The Princeton Review is rating colleges on their green stats. Here is a roundup of the s...

http://view.break.com/565864 - Watch more free videos We're no strangers to liberal thinking, alternative medicine, or off-beat ideas. Hell, it's no accident that the very name "TreeHugger," is a play on the hippie-type folks that stood up and changed the face of environmentalism a few decades ago. Of course, when we started this site in the summer ...

In the early 1990’s, says Gidon Bromberg, everyone was convinced that peace was just around the corner in the Middle East. Bromberg, then a young lawyer working for an environmental NGO in Tel Aviv, was frustrated that environmental issues were not being discussed as part of the peace process. Worse still, massive development plans were being drawn up by investors and developers, with little or no thought given to their impacts on the region’s ecology. However, as Bromberg would later find out, the surge of investor interest in the region in those days also had a flip side – funds suddenly became available to environmental groups as well. In 1...

If you're a longtime reader of this site, then you're no doubt already aware of my -- and my colleague John's -- fixation on James Hansen. While there is no lack of skilled climate scientists in the U.S., few can muster the rhetorical firepower and polit...

Image source: Getty Images The Los Angeles Times report this morning on the state of the oceans sounds like something out of a horror movie - fishermen come in contact with a spongy weed, only to break out into a painful rash that won't go away and literally peels your skin off. Get a drop in your mouth and your tongue swells so much you can't eat for a week. Scientists in labs can't be in the same room with it, the smell is so pungent. Only the problem is that this is for real and happening more and more often in coastal areas around the world. We are putting too much food into the oceans, scientists say, and now the oceans are reverting bac...

Who knew the New York City subway was so green? (Well, greener than I thought it was, anyway.) According to a poster I chanced upon last night at a subway station:

• 63 percent of NYC Transit's refuse was recycled in 2007.
• 8,931 tons—about 50 percent of the refuse collected from the MTA's 468 subway stations—gets recycled
• 49,419 tons of metal, glass, plastic, and paper from train yards, bus depots, and facilities is recycled through other resource-recovery programs.
• 1,497

Last week we had the pleasure of checking out the One Planet--Ours! Sustainability for the 22nd Century installation at the United States Botanic Garden just a stones throw from the Capitol in Washington, DC. Despite the odd name (isn't sustainability for the 21st century hard enough?) the federally-funded exhibit offered a dazzling array of inspiring eco demonstration projects, including the kinds of energy technologies the current administration and government has done so little to support. One of the many cool exhibits was

Looking for an Eco-Friendly Toilet? It seems there's a dire need for eco-friendly toilets: around 36 billion rolls of toilet paper are trashed every year—that’s about 15 million trees’ worth. So whatever the reason for America’s longstanding aversion to bidets may be, it’s high time we got over it and stopped wiping (and wasting) and started scrubbing (and saving). And what better way to alleviate deep seeded aversions than by using high tech gadgetry! (Remember how GPS made finding directions fun?) The concept of a

photo: Gilbert Rodriguez In a practical sense, to make the type of changes in theory and practice which many TreeHugger readers would probably like to see happen to make the world a more ecologically sustainable place, we may have to compartmentalize a bit. Overturning the whole system may prove difficult, but at least according to Yale University’s Gus Speth that is the type of change needed. Orion Magazine currently has an interview with Speth which I think is important to read, but here are some excerpts to give you to s...

:: Avoid these common household products to steer clear of cancer. :: Sooth your tummy--and your taste buds--with Kelly's Carrot Soup with Ginger and Lemon. :: Sign a petition asking the next elected U.S. President to grow a food garden at the White House....

Image source: Fighting Goliath Film Fighting Goliath: Texas Coal Wars, documents how a group of citizens stood up to the proposed development of 19-coal-fired power plants in central and east Texas. Mayors, ranchers, CEOs, community groups, legislators, lawyers and citizens, who might otherwise have had nothing in common, all joined together for different reasons but one purpose: to stop the states' fast-track approval of coal-plant construction. The group eventually came to include over 36 cities and local government offices across the state. Robert Redford narrates the movie and says that he got involved because he...

Boston turns off their lights in an effort to save cash and energy. Citroën plans to unveil their Hypnos, a new diesel-electric hybrid crossover concept car. An ice chunk the size of Manhattan breaks free in Canada's northern Arctic. The Green Routine offers eight easy tips for an eco-friendly garden. A new study reports that one in three public schools are are built within 400 meters of a major highway--causing a spike in respiratory illnesses. Mo...

Treehuggers no doubt remember Knut. He’s the polar bear cub who would likely have died after being rejected by his mother, save that he became a media sensation when his Berlin zookeepers decided not to let Nature take its course. While some animal activists objected, the public at large seems to have responded in unison: “How could anyone let anything this cute die?” You’ve no doubt also seen equally captivating pictures of many of Knut’s’ wild cousins—images that distill all of the scientific complexities of global warming and melting sea ice into a single powerful concept: this magnificent animal is going to drown in front of your eyes—this is global warming, and it’s y...