This week’s facts come from an interesting piece in the NY Times Magazine section that talks about researchers and ecologists catching sound in Alaska’s Denali Park. Worry that the constant hum of modern human life is negatively affecting natural habitats has led to several efforts to gather recordings of what nature sounds like without humans [...]
Archive for the ‘Behavior’ Category
Five Friday Facts: Is Silence In Nature Possible Anymore?
March 23rd, 2012 
2nd Green Revolution 
Posted in Behavior, Conservation, Five Friday Facts, Justin Manger, Sustainability, Transportation 
Tags: Environment 
No Comments »Approve the Keystone Pipeline
March 18th, 2012 Justin Manger Though perhaps a minority voice among the environmental set, I agree whole-heartedly with Joe Nocera’s column about how U.S. politics is interfering with U.S. national interests. Along with the incredible boom in natural gas production over the last several years in the United States, North America has been the place for booming oil sands production, with [...]
Posted in Behavior, Business, Economics, Justin Manger, News, Op-Ed, Polls, President Obama No Comments »Number of Visitors to the Antarctic Over 70,000 Per Year (And That Is Just The Seeds)
March 12th, 2012 Justin Manger With nearly every nook and cranny of the earth now accessible to humans, the world’s largest desert, Antarctica, is no exception. Statistics from the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO) show that over 50,000 people visited the frigid but warming area over the 2010-2011 time period. Of the many impacts that increasing numbers of [...]
Taking Urban Gardens to the Next Level
March 8th, 2012 Eric Wilson In his 2006 book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Michael Pollan looks at the idea of foraging as one of the four meals he considers in his book (McDonald’s, Whole Foods, and a local farm represent the other three). He starts with the highly industrialized fast food meal and works his [...]
Posted in Agriculture, Behavior, Eric Wilson, Featured Posts, Local Energy/Food, News, Sustainability Tags: Food, Michael Pollan No Comments »Army Not Messing Around with $7 Billion in Energy Projects
March 5th, 2012 Justin Manger Over the next 30 years, the U.S. army is aiming to buy solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and other alternative fuels to the tune of $7 billion dollars. Here is the draft proposal in which they are looking for 99 large-scale renewable projects. This is all part of a plan to have renewable energy at or [...]
Environmental Groups Back Away from Natural Gas Companies’ Donations
February 24th, 2012 Chris DeArmond If at any point it seemed like natural gas companies and environmental groups would team up against the coal industry, it doesn’t anymore. As the Washington Post reported Monday, those “new friendships grew old, then cold.” In a matter of just a few years, environmental leaders have cut ties with natural gas companies as they [...]
Posted in Behavior, Business, News Tags: Chris DeArmond, Coal, Congress, Environment, Fracking, Natural Gas, NRDC, Shale Gas No Comments »Five Friday Facts: Washington, D.C. Bikeshare Success
February 24th, 2012 Justin Manger Now a standard sight around the nation’s capital, the sturdy, bright red bikes first appeared in 2010. After two years, the popular Capital Bikeshare program has done much better than expected. Future expansion may include the suburbs of Bethesda, Silver Spring, Takoma Park, Friendship Heights and Forest Glen. Here are a few facts about the rapidly [...]
Poll: Reclaimed Water
February 23rd, 2012 Eric Wilson As a follow up to the recent post on water reclamation and last week’s Five Friday Facts about “NEWater”, what is your take on reclaimed water?
Posted in Behavior, Clean Technology, Conservation, Eric Wilson, Polls Tags: Wastewater, Water No Comments »Japan Shifting to LED Lighting
February 21st, 2012 Justin Manger Coca-cola and train networks. Two seemingly disparate items, one a U.S. invention and the other a technology whose management has been perfected by the Japanese, have at least one thing now in common: LEDs. The energy savings are huge. For Coca-cola, the change is related to its vending machines. Back in September of 2011, [...]
Resourcefulness: A Lost Art
February 19th, 2012 Eric Wilson One could argue that I’ve overused the phrase “key to sustainability” by this point. An accurate accounting yields the following keys to sustainability: durability, resilience; one non-key; and a missing link. In that vein, I offer my latest addition to the seemingly ever expanding keychain: resourcefulness. In what seems like a trait that holds little [...]
