Sustainability Links for Writing Instructors and Students
Possible Articles for Students
"A Climate of Corporate Control: How Corporations Have Influenced the U.S. Dialogue on Climate Science and Policy" -Union of Concerned Scientists
Our analysis reveals that while some American companies have taken consistent and laudable actions in support of climate science—and of consequent policy—others have worked aggressively to undermine the science and block science- based policy proposals.
Generation Anthropocene - Stanford University
History is accelerating. As we move farther into the Anthropocene, we must ask ourselves what we want for the planet today and what will we preserve for the next generation. But how do we know where to place our conservation efforts in this new geologic age?
http://www.stanford.edu/group/anthropocene/cgi-bin/wordpress/
"Economic Impacts of Increasing Hawai'i’s Food Self-Sufficiency" UH Mānoa Professor Pingsun Leung and alumnus Matthew Loke
Recent surges in the price of oil and food safety scares have heightened concern about energy and food self-sufficiency in Hawai‘i among the general public, business community and government leaders. This is understandable, given that Hawai‘i, located approximately 2,500 miles from the continental United States, is one of the most geographically isolated areas of the world. Hawai'i residents are at the mercy of global events over which we have very little influence or control.
This publication focuses on the economic multiplier effect of increasing food self-sufficiency. The authors hope this background information can raise awareness and be useful for further public policy debate on increasing food self-sufficiency in Hawai'i.
Economic Impacts of Increasing Hawai'i’s Food Self-Sufficiency can be download for free from the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources website.
http://www.hawaii.edu/newsatuh/2009/0126/index.php?story=7
“The Tragedy of the Commons” Garrett Hardin (1968) Science 162, 1243-1248
This classic paper is one of Science's most requested articles. Hardin's article spurred tremendous debate about the universality of the commons metaphor to the human condition as a whole in the realm of population studies and the environment. The essay also served as popular metaphor for a variety of situations at the intersection of science and society, in realms ranging from biomedicine to university administration to the Internet.
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Tragedy_of_the_Commons_(historical)
"Global land temperature in May 2012 is warmest on record"- Joe Romm
The average global temperature (land and ocean) for May 2012 was the second warmest May temperature since recordkeeping began in 1880, and the temperature over land surfaces was the warmest on record for May. May 2012 also marks the 327th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th-century average. The last month with below average temperatures was February 1985.
http://www.climatewatch.noaa.gov/image/2012/global-land-temperature-in-may-2012-is-warmest-on-record
More than 2,000 Heat Records Matched or Broken in Past Week - Reuters
More than 2,000 temperature records have been matched or broken in the past week as a brutal heat wave baked much of the United States, and June saw more than 3,200 records topped, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Monday.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/02/us-usa-weather-records-idUSBRE8611EL20120702
"Not Even Close: 2012 Was Hottest Ever in U.S." - Justin Gillis
The numbers are in: 2012, the year of a surreal March heat wave, a severe drought in the Corn Belt and a huge storm that caused broad devastation in the Middle Atlantic States, turns out to have been the hottest year ever recorded in the contiguous United States.
Australian Climate Commission's Report, 2013
The Climate Commission was established to provide all Australians with an independent and reliable source of information about:
- the science of climate change,
- the international action being taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and
- the economics of a carbon price.
Australia's Angry Summer shows that climate change is already adversely affecting Australians. The significant impacts of extreme weather on people, property, communities and the environment highlight the serious consequences of failing to adequately address climate change. It is highly likely that extreme hot weather will become even more frequent and severe in Australia and around the globe, over the coming decades. The decisions we make this decade will largely determine the severity of climate change and its influence on extreme events for our grandchildren.
http://climatecommission.gov.au/report/the-angry-summer/
"Storms Threaten Ozone Layer Over U.S., Study Says" -Henry Fountain
Strong summer thunderstorms that pump water high into the upper atmosphere pose a threat to the protective ozone layer over the United States, researchers said on Thursday, drawing one of the first links between climate change and ozone loss over populated areas.
"Global Warming's Terrifying New Math" - Bill McKibben
If the pictures of those towering wildfires in Colorado haven't convinced you, or the size of your AC bill this summer, here are some hard numbers about climate change: June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719
"The Drowning of Hawaii" Diana Leone
Warmer waters. Melting ice caps. Disappearing glaciers. They are all expected to raise ocean levels by 39 inches in the next century, forever reshaping Hawaii. That's using the projection of one meter, or 39 inches, of sea level rise, a figure many scientists and planners who have reviewed global climate change predictions say is likely for Hawaii. Specific projections for areas less populated than urban Honolulu haven't been made, but every island would be affected by climate change in one way or another.
http://maui-tomorrow.org/news/2007/2007-09The%20Drowning%20of%20Hawaii.php
"National Assessment of Shoreline Change: Historical Shoreline Change in the Hawaiian Islands" Charles H. Fletcher et al.
A principal purpose of the USGS shoreline change research is to develop a common methodology so that shoreline change analyses for the continental U.S., portions of Hawaii, and Alaska can be updated periodically in a consistent and systematic manner. The primary objectives of this study were to (1) develop and implement improved methods of assessing and monitoring shoreline movement, and (2) improve current understanding of the processes controlling shoreline movement.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1051/
"Goodbye, Miami" - Jeff Goodell
By century's end, rising sea levels will turn the nation's urban fantasyland into an American Atlantis. But long before the city is completely underwater, chaos will begin.
"Caribbean Coral Reefs Face Collapse" Fiona Harvey
Caribbean coral reefs – which make up one of the world's most colourful, vivid and productive ecosystems – are on the verge of collapse, with less than 10% of the reef area showing live coral cover.
"Carbon Dioxide Level Passes Long-Feared Milestone" Justin Gillis
The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported on Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years.
"Will Big Business Save the Earth?" Jared Diamond
THERE is a widespread view, particularly among environmentalists and liberals, that big businesses are environmentally destructive, greedy, evil and driven by short-term profits. I know — because I used to share that view. But today I have more nuanced feelings. Over the years I’ve joined the boards of two environmental groups, the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International, serving alongside many business executives.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/opinion/06diamond.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th
"Game Over for the Climate" James Hansen
GLOBAL warming isn't a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves "regardless of what we do." If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.
"Rachel Carson's Prescience" Rob Nixon
I revisit Carson's sea writings with some apprehension. Will her 1950s ocean plenitude feel impossibly pastoral when measured against the environmental anxieties that permeate our thinking about oceans today? Fifty years on, I do find myself—unfairly, anachronistically—yearning for a more persistent premonitory stance from Carson toward the finitude of sea life, more evident alarm. Yet I am also startled to find that she foreshadowed, even if episodically, many 21st-century concerns about the unsustainable practices that have left us with acidifying oceans, dying coral reefs, melting sea ice, collapsing fish populations, moribund fishing villages, and the blight of factory ships and gargantuan trawlers that scour the ocean bottom.
http://chronicle.com/article/Rachel-Carsons-Prescience/134012/?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en
"Could Global Warming Cause War?" Brad Knickerbocker
"Many experts view climate change as a "threat multiplier" that intensifies instability around the world by worsening water shortages, food insecurity, disease, and flooding that lead to forced migration. That's the thrust of a 35-page report (PDF) by 11 admirals and generals this week issued by the Alexandria, Va.-based national security think tank The CNA Corporation."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0419/p02s01-usgn.html
"Australasia Has Hottest 60 Years in a Millennium, Scientists Find" Alison Rourke
The last 60 years have been the hottest in Australasia for a millennium and cannot be explained by natural causes, according to a new report by scientists that supports the case for a reduction in manmade carbon emissions.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/may/17/australasia-hottest-60-years-study?CMP=EMCNEWEML1355
"How Green Is My House?" NYT editorial staff
Consumers are trying harder to do what they can to reduce their carbon footprints — from switching to fluorescent light bulbs to recycling more refuse — though it’s not always easy. New technology isn’t perfect, and expectations can be unrealistically high.
For homeowners, what are some simple and cost-effective ways to make houses (including inefficient old houses) greener and more ecologically sensitive?
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/how-green-is-my-house/
"Message in a Bottle" David Ferris
Seabirds are starving with bellies full of trash. Fur seals in New Zealand poop shards of yellow and blue. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is twice the size of Texas. Now the bad news: Plastic never goes away, and scientists are finding that it absorbs toxins with spongelike efficiency. The fix? Cut it off at the source.
http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200905/message.aspx
'Indonesia's tiger habitat pulped for paper, investigation shows' Fiona Harvey
The habitat of the endangered Sumatran tiger is being rapidly destroyed in order to make tissues and paper packaging for consumer products in the west, new research from Greenpeace shows. A year-long investigation by the campaigning group has uncovered clear evidence, independently verified, that appears to show that ramin trees from the Indonesian rainforest have been chopped down and sent to factories to be pulped and turned into paper.
"Daring rescue of whale off Farallones" Peter Fimrite
"A humpback whale freed by divers from a tangle of crab trap lines near the Farallon Islands nudged its rescuers and flapped around in what marine experts said was a rare and remarkable encounter. 'It felt to me like it was thanking us, knowing that it was free and that we had helped it,' James Moskito, one of the rescue divers, said Tuesday. 'It stopped about a foot away from me, pushed me around a little bit and had some fun.' Sunday's daring rescue was the first successful attempt on the West Coast to free an entangled humpback, said Shelbi Stoudt, stranding manager for the Marine Mammal Center in Marin County."
http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Daring-rescue-of-whale-off-Farallones-Humpback-2557146.php
"Watching Whales Watching Us" Charles Seibert
"Whales, we now know, teach and learn. They scheme. They cooperate, and they grieve. They recognize themselves and their friends. They know and fight back against their enemies. And perhaps most stunningly, given all of our transgressions against them, they may even, in certain circumstances, have learned to trust us again."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/magazine/12whales-t.html?th&emc=th
"Shipping causes 'chronic stress' to whales" Damian Carrington
Shipping noise causes chronic stress to whales, scientists have shown for the first time, after using the halt in marine traffic after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to conduct a unique experiment. The effect on whales of propeller noise, military sonar and explosions set off in the search for oil and gas is highly controversial. Environmental campaigners claim the noise interferes with the singing of whales, or even kills the animals, and are currently suing the US government over the navy's use of sonar. The research, published on Wednesday, provides the first evidence of physical harm, according to Rosalind Rolland, a researcher at the New England Aquarium, in Boston, US.
Pesticides linked to honeybee decline Damian Carrington
Common crop pesticides have been shown for the first time to seriously harm bees by damaging their renowned ability to navigate home.The new research strongly links the pesticides to the serious decline in honey bee numbers in the US and UK – a drop of around 50% in the last 25 years. The losses pose a threat to food supplies as bees pollinate a third of the food we eat such as tomatoes, beans, apples and strawberries.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/29/crop-pesticides-honeybee-decline?CMP=EMCNEWEML1355
Pesticides pose danger to bees Dave Keating
Neonicotinoid seed treatments could be banned after European Food Safety Authority finds high risk to bees. A widely-used method of pesticide seed treatment in the EU may be causing European bee populations to decline, according to a report released today (16 January) by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/2013/january/pesticides-pose-danger-to-bees/76158.aspx
"Mystery Malady Kills More Bees, Heightening Worry on Farms" MICHAEL WINES
A mysterious malady that has been killing honeybees en masse for several years appears to have expanded drastically in the last year, commercial beekeepers say, wiping out 40 percent or even 50 percent of the hives needed to pollinate many of the nation's fruits and vegetables.
Studies fault Bayer in bee die-off Josephine Marcott
A corn pesticide manufactured by the German chemical company Bayer has come under scrutiny in two scientific studies that indicate that it is responsible for mass deaths of pollinating bees.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0406/Studies-fault-Bayer-in-bee-die-off
"Vote for the Dinner Party" Michael Pollan
One of the more interesting things we will learn on Nov. 6 is whether or not there is a "food movement" in America worthy of the name — that is, an organized force in our politics capable of demanding change in the food system. People like me throw the term around loosely, partly because we sense the gathering of such a force, and partly (to be honest) to help wish it into being by sheer dint of repetition. Clearly there is growing sentiment in favor of reforming American agriculture and interest in questions about where our food comes from and how it was produced. And certainly we can see an alternative food economy rising around us: local and organic agriculture is growing far faster than the food market as a whole. But a market and a sentiment are not quite the same thing as a political movement — something capable of frightening politicians and propelling its concerns onto the national agenda.
"Report: ExxonMobil Spends Millions Funding Global Warming Skeptics"
"A new investigation by Mother Jones magazine has revealed that ExxonMobil has spent at least $8 million dollars funding a network of groups to challenge the existence of global warming. We speak with the author of the report, a member of one the organizations that receives money from Exxon and a journalist covering environmental and climate change issues."
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/22/1338256
Why Trees Matter Jim Robbins
TREES are on the front lines of our changing climate. And when the oldest trees in the world suddenly start dying, it's time to pay attention.North America's ancient alpine bristlecone forests are falling victim to a voracious beetle and an Asian fungus. In Texas, a prolonged drought killed more than five million urban shade trees last year and an additional half-billion trees in parks and forests. In the Amazon, two severe droughts have killed billions more.
"Heartland associate taught 'biased' climate course at Ottawa university" Suzanne Goldenberg
An associate of the Heartland Institute, the thinktank devoted to discrediting climate change, taught a course at a top Canadian university that contained more than 140 false, biased and misleading claims about climate science, an expert audit has found.
"Global warming – signed, sealed and delivered." Naomi Oreskes
"AN OP-ED article in the Wall Street Journal a month ago claimed that a published study affirming the existence of a scientific consensus on the reality of global warming had been refuted. This charge was repeated again last week, in a hearing of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. I am the author of that study, which appeared two years ago in the journal Science, and I’m here to tell you that the consensus stands. The argument put forward in the Wall Street Journal was based on an Internet posting; it has not appeared in a peer-reviewed journal – the normal way to challenge an academic finding. (The Wall Street Journal didn’t even get my name right!)"
"Global boom in coal power – and emissions" Mark Clayton
"Forget the documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth.' Disregard rising public concern over global warming. Ignore the Kyoto Protocol. The world certainly is – at least when it comes to building new electric-power plants. In the past five years, it has been on a coal-fired binge, bringing new generators online at a rate of better than two per week. That has added some 1 billion tons of new carbon-dioxide emissions that humans pump into the atmosphere each year. Coal-fired power now accounts for nearly a third of human-generated global CO2 emissions."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0322/p01s04-wogi.html
"Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate" Andrew C. Revkin
For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming. “The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood,” the coalition said in a scientific “backgrounder” provided to lawmakers and journalists through the early 1990s, adding that “scientists differ” on the issue. But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html?th&emc=th
"Climate change will shake the Earth" Bill McGuire
The idea that a changing climate can persuade the ground to shake, volcanoes to rumble and tsunamis to crash on to unsuspecting coastlines seems, at first, to be bordering on the insane. How can what happens in the thin envelope of gas that shrouds and protects our world possibly influence the potentially Earth-shattering processes that operate deep beneath the surface? The fact that it does reflects a failure of our imagination and a limited understanding of the manner in which the different physical components of our planet – the atmosphere, the oceans, and the solid Earth, or geosphere – intertwine and interact.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/26/why-climate-change-shake-earth?CMP=EMCNEWEML1355
"Global Warming Study Finds No Grounds for Climate Sceptics'Cconcerns" Ian Sample
Independent investigation of the key issues sceptics claim can skew global warming figures reports that they have no real effect
"The Long Emergency--What's going to happen as we start running out of cheap gas to guzzle?" James Howard Kunstler
"It has been very hard for Americans -- lost in dark raptures of nonstop infotainment, recreational shopping and compulsive motoring -- to make sense of the gathering forces that will fundamentally alter the terms of everyday life in our technological society. Even after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, America is still sleepwalking into the future. I call this coming time the Long Emergency."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/7203633/the_long_emergency/
"A Better Shade of Green" J. Wayne Leonard
A renewable portfolio standard is said to be needed for creating and improving renewable energy technologies. In practice, however, it does little to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and makes energy production excessively expensive.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/24/opinion/24leonard.html?th&emc=th
"American taste for soft toilet roll 'worse than driving Hummers'" Suzanne Goldenberg
Extra-soft, quilted and multi-ply toilet roll made from virgin forest causes more damage than gas-guzzlers, fast food or McMansions, say campaigners
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/26/toilet-roll-america
Nature-Deficit Disorder Timothy Egan
There's a term for the consequences of this divorce between human and habitat — nature deficit disorder, coined by the writer Richard Louv in a 2005 book, "Last Child in the Woods." It sounds trendy, a bit of sociological shorthand, but give the man and his point a listen.
"Beyond Parabens: 7 Common Cosmetics Ingredients You Need to Avoid" Jasmin Malik Chua
Consumer choice is a powerful thing. Say "jump or I'll spend my cash somewhere else" and you'll set executives scrambling to use one another as makeshift human trampolines. It's for this reason and this reason alone—at least for the major corporations—that we're seeing such a proliferation of products cheerily proclaiming that they're BPA-free. Well, parabens are the bisphenol-A of the beauty industry, from the scary headlines to the happy proclamations that beam at you when a product has kicked them to the curb.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/08/beyond-parabens.php
"In Brazil, Paying Farmers to Let the Trees Stand" Elisabeth Rosenthal
Deforestation, a critical contributor to climate change, effectively accounts for 20 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions and 70 percent of the emissions in Brazil. Halting new deforestation, experts say, is as powerful a way to combat warming as closing the world’s coal plants.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/22/science/earth/22degrees.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
"Message in a Bottle" David Ferris
Seabirds are starving with bellies full of trash. Fur seals in New Zealand poop shards of yellow and blue. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is twice the size of Texas. Now the bad news: Plastic never goes away, and scientists are finding that it absorbs toxins with spongelike efficiency. The fix? Cut it off at the source.
http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200905/message.aspx
"Dissenter on Warming Expands His Campaign" Leslie Kaufman
"As a spokesman for Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, Mr. Morano was for years a ceaseless purveyor of the dissenting view on climate change, sending out a blizzard of e-mail to journalists covering the issue. Now, with Congress debating legislation to curb carbon dioxide emissions, Mr. Morano is hoping to have an even greater impact. He has left his job with Mr. Inhofe to start his own Web site, ClimateDepot.com."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/us/politics/10morano.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
"A 50-Year Farm Bill" Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry
"Industrial agricultural has made our food supply entirely dependent on fossil fuels and, by substituting technological “solutions” for human work and care, has virtually destroyed the cultures of husbandry (imperfect as they may have been) once indigenous to family farms and farming neighborhoods. Clearly, our present ways of agriculture are not sustainable, and so our food supply is not sustainable. We must restore ecological health to our agricultural landscapes, as well as economic and cultural stability to our rural communities."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/opinion/05berry.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
"Skyfarming" Lisa Chamberlain
A Columbia professor believes that converting skyscrapers into crop farms could help reduce global warming and make New York cleaner. It’s a vision straight out of Futurama—but here’s how it might work.
http://nymag.com/news/features/30020/
"Lays Touting Their Potato Chips as Locally Grown -- Have They Gone Too Far?" Tara Lohan
Since May, it has launched a series of 30-second national and regional television ads that feature farmers standing in front of green fields or in barns piled high with spuds. They ride tractors, joke with their dad or brother, point to family members in photos and talk about how many generations they've been farming and how long their family has grown potatoes for Lay's. They hold up a single potato in their hand and say things like, "We grow potatoes in New England, Lay's makes potato chips in New England, so that's a pretty good fit." Of course the place changes -- from California to Michigan to Florida to Texas. But you get the idea.
"20 Foods That Make You Smarter" Sara Ost
Simply put, your brain likes to eat. And it likes powerful fuel: quality fats, antioxidants, and small, steady amounts of the best carbs. On a deadline? Need to rally? Avoid the soda, vending machine snacks and tempting Starbucks and go for these powerful brain boosters instead. The path to a bigger, better brain is loaded with Omega-3 fats, antioxidants, and fiber. Give your brain a kick start: eat the following foods on a daily or weekly basis for results you will notice.
http://www.alternet.org/story/141963/20_foods_that_make_you_smarter/
"Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food" Bryan Walsh
Horror stories about the food industry have long been with us — ever since 1906, when Upton Sinclair's landmark novel The Jungle told some ugly truths about how America produces its meat. In the century that followed, things got much better, and in some ways much worse. The U.S. agricultural industry can now produce unlimited quantities of meat and grains at remarkably cheap prices. But it does so at a high cost to the environment, animals and humans. Those hidden prices are the creeping erosion of our fertile farmland, cages for egg-laying chickens so packed that the birds can't even raise their wings and the scary rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria among farm animals. Add to the price tag the acceleration of global warming — our energy-intensive food system uses 19% of U.S. fossil fuels, more than any other sector of the economy.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1917458,00.html
"Share My Ride" - Mark Levine
Zipcar’s predicate is that sharing is to ownership what the iPod is to the eight-track, what the solar panel is to the coal mine. Sharing is clean, crisp, urbane, postmodern; owning is dull, selfish, timid, backward. In Zipcar’s view, sharing is big business too — bigger, potentially, than anyone can fathom. Its claim is that the winners in the new economy will be those who crack the puzzle posed by scarce resources. (The company, which is barely a decade old, almost seems to have been founded with 2009 in mind.) At the moment, its 275,000 members in the U.S., Canada and London share 5,500 cars.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/magazine/08Zipcar-t.html?th&emc=th
"Bring Your Own Plastic Container" Helena Echlin
I usually bring my lunch to work in recycled yogurt containers. It bothers me to see my co-workers, who eat out, discarding so much trash: plastic clamshells from Caesar salads, Styrofoam pho containers, and cardboard sandwich boxes. Many are conscientious about recycling, but not all containers can be recycled. In any case, as we all know by now, reuse is always better. Ecoconscious Chowhounds are bringing their own containers to restaurants to hold their takeout food or leftovers. So recently I found myself wondering: Do health and safety codes allow this? And is there a specific type of container restaurants prefer that you bring? I decided to investigate.
http://www.chow.com/stories/11343
"In German Suburb, Life Goes On Without Cars" - Elizabeth Rosenthal
VAUBAN, Germany — Residents of this upscale community are suburban pioneers, going where few soccer moms or commuting executives have ever gone before: they have given up their cars .Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community. Car ownership is allowed, but there are only two places to park — large garages at the edge of the development, where a car-owner buys a space, for $40,000, along with a home.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/science/earth/12suburb.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
Ray Anderson Obituary
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/08/ray-anderson-dies-green-building-pioneer_n_921645.html
"Google discloses carbon footprint for the first time" - Duncan Clark
Google's carbon footprint is on a par with the United Nations, the internet giant revealed on Thursday as it published its energy usage for the first time.
Google says that it emits 1.5m tonnes of carbon annually but claims that its data centres consume 50% less energy than the industry average. The emissions are slightly higher than the country of Laos in south-east Asia and equivalent to the UN's operational footprint.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/08/google-carbon-footprint?CMP=EMCGT_090911&