Remember when we talked about the Cape Wind project off the cost of Cape Cod? The idea has spread south a little, so don’t be surprised if a portion of New York City’s energy is supplied by wind before too long.

Within three years, there should be five wind towers standing in the west side of New York Harbor. The nearby city of Bayonne, New Jersey, also plans to install a turbine to power its sewage-pumping station, and a few more may spring up near several hospitals in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Read more…

Today’s post is by guest Greenist Deborah Adams.

The oil spill in the Gulf has been the lead story on every major news broadcast for weeks now. Like most people, I was horrified and sickened by the images on the screen and in my head. The devastation of wetlands and beaches, the death of wildlife, the extinction of a way of life for hundreds of thousands of people in the region, is too overwhelming to consider for more than a few seconds. The worldwide impact of this tragedy is impossible to know at this point. We may as well try to grasp the size of the universe.

At first I was angry at BP, the company that didn’t bother to develop an effective prevention or a workable clean-up plan for such a contingency. It’s easy to make a faceless corporation the bad guy in such a situation. However, honesty compels me to admit, to myself and to you, that I am the heart of the problem. The truth is that BP and other oil companies are only supplying what we consumers demand. Like almost every other human on Earth, I am addicted to petroleum-based products.

I had to ask myself – if we, the self-proclaimed environmentally-friendly activists, had known six months ago that this oil spill would occur, would we have given up our destructive behavior? Would we have sworn off buying petroleum-based products for the rest of our lives? Is it even possible to survive in this world without oil? Read more…

There are a lot of different angles to this whole “environmentalist” thing, probably because the “environment” is basically made up of “everything.” That makes for a lot of angles. So we have the energy angle and the transportation angle and the food angle and the multi-purpose undergarments angle and on and on and all the rest, most of them overlapping and cross-pollinating ad infinitum. But just as with biological vs. adopted children or guys surnamed Jonas, we inevitably choose favorites: I like the wilderness angle (also, Nick; he’s the real talent.) Or maybe we should call it the land conservation angle. Whatever. It was my first love (for the record, we’re no longer talking about Nick Jonas.) Through all the recycling and hypermiling and organic strawberries and “if it’s yellow, let it mellow,” I have one image in my head- a place worth saving, and to me it’s the kind of place where none of those other angles even apply because they haven’t made it there yet. They aren’t willing to walk that far.

Read more…

I firmly believe that not buying things we don’t need is one of the best ways to make greener choices in our lives.

I also firmly believe that there are so many appliances out there that are not necessary.  A toaster that also heats hotdogs?  Fine, if you need a new toaster and prefer to have one with hot dog slots, but not fine when it inspires casting off a perfectly good toaster for the wiener upgrade.  I already have a quesadilla maker – it’s called a cast iron pan.  And I have a smoothie/margarita/frappe maker – it’s called a blender, and it’s okay that it doesn’t have a little spout at the bottom, I can pour from the top just fine.  But two months ago, I broke down and bought an iced tea maker, something I’d always considered to be an unnecessary appliance.  And I’m so glad that I did. Read more…

This winter, there was a meme amongst the talk radio/climate change denier community that the unusually high levels of snowfall in the eastern United States ‘proved’ that climate change was a hoax perpetrated on innocent capitalists by scientists and their Marxist agenda. Hopefully, most people realized that this was a bogus argument. But if there’s any doubt the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has come up with a couple of pretty pictures to illustrate just what’s happening to temperatures at a global level. Read more…

I’ve seen a few petitions and Facebook groups and the like encouraging me to boycott BP gas stations until the oil leak in the Gulf is plugged. I understand the thinking behind this — I’m pretty outraged about the spill too, and I’m certainly not happy with the BP executives and the fact that the company was not prepared to handle this kind of emergency.

But if you drive a car, you have to get gas from somewhere. While no oil company has a perfect record when it comes to caring for the environment, there are some companies that are better than others. It pains me to say it right now, but according to several sources, you could do a lot worse than BP at the gas pump.

The Sierra Club, Greenopia, and Better World Handbook each have compiled “pick your poison” lists that compare several chains of gas stations and their pros and cons from an environmental perspective. All three list BP as one of the least offending oil companies, citing its support of the Kyoto Protocol to cap greenhouse gas emissions, its pledge to invest $8 billion over 10 years to develop alternative energy sources, and its successful reduction of its own CO2 emissions. The only other company that received higher marks was Sunoco.

No one’s denying that this oil spill puts a huge black mark on BP’s report card. Of course it does. But when I go to fill up my car, I still feel better about giving my money to BP or Sunoco than, say, ExxonMobil, which has the worst scores on every list.

And of course, the best way to be green is to conserve gas as much as possible. Keep your windows closed when you’re driving on the highway, and bundle your errands whenever possible instead of making multiple trips. If you’re in the market for a new car, consider a hybrid. Voting with your dollars is often the best course of action.

Carbon offsets have been touted for a while now as ways to counter our environmentally unfriendly actions. Need to fly across the country? Buy some carbon offsets to neutralize your flight’s impact on the environment. Worried about what your daily commute means for the Earth? Buy some carbon offsets.

As one media organization discovered through an investigative series, the $700 million carbon offset industry may be doing less — a lot less — to help the environment than we’re led to believe. The Christian Science Monitor’s articles on carbon offsets are well worth your time, but I’ll boil down some of their findings for you.
Read more…

Image credit: Herbert Proepper/AP

The Obama administration has given the green light for an offshore wind farm to be built off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Once built, 130 wind turbines will stand in the water and harness the power generated by the stiff winds coming into the coast, tapping a clean, reliable, renewable energy source.

But is this a good idea or a bad idea, environmentally speaking? Let’s take a look at the pros and cons. Read more…

I don’t know much about a lot of things, which is one of the reasons that I’m slightly agnostic, in the literal sense, about global climate change. I don’t know enough about climate science to have a truly informed opinion. I try to live green because I try to be a good citizen and I want my children to grow up in a clean and healthy environment. I don’t know if man-made global warming is a reality or not, but I have more important reasons to live an environmentally responsible lifestyle.

I do, however, know a lot about bad science and Big Media’s infatuation with it. And I’m guessing that when a story out of South Asia broke late last week there were some editors cursing the journalistic ethics that prevented them leading with the banner headline:

Global warming leads to peace in Asia*

Didn’t stop them from insinuating their way all around it in the body of the story, though.

Here’s the story – back in the late 70’s, a small pile of mud was belched up by the Bay of Bengal between India and Bangladesh. Both nations named it – India calling in New Moore Island and Banglades calling it South Talpatti – and both nations claimed it. In 1981, the Indians went do far as to send gunships to ‘protect’ the uninhabited island and planted an Indian flag, which most likely sunk into the mud. It was just a spit of sand and mud – 3km by 3.5 km – nonetheless, the island has been a bone of contention between the two nations for the last 30 years.

Until it disappeared. Read more…