(Image Credit: TreeHugger.com)
The average Australian pollutes more than an average citizen in any other country, according to a new study by the risk assessment company, Maplecroft (Bloomberg.com). Claiming the hesitant distinction of “world’s largest per-capita carbon emitter,” the average Australian emits (more…)
Can you beat my 15.22 lbs. of CO2?
What if there was a device that could track your carbon footprint through the number of pages you print from your laptop, the distance you’ve traveled by the wireless networks to which you connect to from your laptop, and the power you consume by the type of laptop you have. Well, there is. Get to know ECOBOT...the free, open-source (more…)
This is the information age. Whether watching a missed “Office” episode on our laptops in a local coffee shop, “yelping” a restaurant on our Blackberry’s as we walk by it, updating our Facebook statuses just before we rappel from a Himalayan cliff, or just checking our e-mail while in the waiting room at the dentist’s office, we are all able to access information from virtually anywhere. The bad news? The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector creates 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The good news is that its services and products could cut the world’s emissions by an estimated 15% when applied in industry, buildings, transport and power sectors (Greenpeace.org).
With our planet on the brink of runaway climate change, Greenpeace created a website, called The Cool IT Challenge, that exposes the gap between what the IT industry could do to fight climate change, and what they’re doing today.
This key sector claimed that it could enable emissions reductions of 7.8 (more…)
It seems like a Catch-22. Ski areas expend large amounts of energy to operate (lifts running 12 hours a day, heating massive lodges, thousands of lights keeping the slopes lit for 5 hours, etc.), and at the same time, these ski areas face dramatic changes over the next century that include shortened ski seasons and higher snow levels during the winter months. That is the best-case scenario. A recent study by the University of Colorado and Stratus Consulting Inc. projects a forecast that indicates that a business-as-usual scenario (future rate of CO2 similar to our current rate) will see average temperatures rise by 4 degrees Fahrenheit at Aspen Mountain and Park City Mountain by 2030 and 8.6 degrees in Aspen and 10.4 degrees for Park City by 2100. These small changes in climate will have significant effects on ski areas, and the even worse news is that the past five years of worldwide CO2 emissions have exceeded the high-emissions scenario in the study. One significant effect is the snow-level. With the business-as-usual scenario, snow-levels are expected to rise 2,400 feet in these areas by 2100.
Mt. Bachelor in Oregon is one of 34 ski areas in the U.S. that offsets 100% of its energy
In order to keep business running, ski areas will have to take new measures that also have a negative impact on the environment, such as snow-making. Increases in man-made snow will require the diversion and storage of large amounts of water, a challenging, expensive and wasteful proposition. In addition, snow-making causes long-term damage to mountain vegetation. The good news is (more…)
The 6 Seat "Air Car"
It’s cheap, it’s fuel-efficient, but just looking at the picture of this car, most of you are probably thinking, no. It’s not exactly the sexiest car on the market and it looks about the size of a go-cart. The car is a compressed air vehicle that Zero Pollution Motors (ZPM) is introducing to North America in 2010, and it achieves a fuel economy of 106 mpg. The vehicle is powered by the Compressed Air Engine developed by Motor Development International. Whether the engine uses solely air or a combination of air and fuel, depends on the speed of the car. It would run purely on compressed air at speeds less than 35 mph. Since the car could only go a short distance when using just air, fuel is needed to get the full range. The “air car” is able to reach speeds over 90 mph, seat six people, and it meets all safety standards in the U.S. All very impressive, but is this the best way to reduce our carbon footprint (via transportation)? (more…)
GreenCrawler.com emphasizes the importance of buying eco-friendly products, offering a wide selection of “green” alternatives to daily purchases. But that’s not all. Buying green products is one thing, but the manner in which you buy “green” is a whole different element. A new study by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory suggests that shopping online lowers carbon dioxide emissions. “Using several assumptions and data from several authoritative sources, we can reasonably estimate that nearly a half-billion kilograms of carbon dioxide are kept out of the atmosphere by shopping online…It would be like asking two-thirds of the country’s working population to stay home for a day,” environmental researcher Jesse Miller said Thursday. If 30 percent of shoppers used online resources to shop, the savings per online shopper would be the same as a 5-pound block of carbon in the air. Each individual trip to the store(s) actually have a large impact on the environment, and using online retailers will reduce these emissions through the use of shipping companies like FedEx and UPS, which are already on route to every neighborhood when delivering packages. GreenCrawler.com is benefiting the environment in a unique way, by being an online “green” product shopping company.
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