"Can a four-level house with a three-car garage and a kitchen full of energy-hungry Sub-Zero and Wolf appliances truly qualify as a model of environmental responsibility?

Photo by Douglas Healey for The New York Times

NRDC is trying to prove that it can, by applying for LEED certification."

NRDC?! The Natural Resources Defense Council?! Say it ain't so!

It ain't so. This NRDC is NRDC Residential — a division of the National Realty and Development Corporation.

Read the article in the New York Times.

The following is from the good folks at Architecture 2030. Yes, it's simple. Even simplistic. But the point, I think, is just to start. If you're sympatico, just put on some blue for Earth Day. Easy. And then, as long as you're started, make that phone call.

BYOBlue / Earth Day 2008, April 19-22

Want to stop global warming? Wear BLUE for Earth Day 2008! Join millions of people around the world who will be wearing BLUE to signify their vote for NO COAL.

Earth Day 2008 is going to be historic! Architecture 2030, along with numerous other groups around the nation, is calling on everyone to wear BLUE during Earth Day 2008 to signify their vote for No Coal. Events will be happening around the world from April 19th through April 22nd, so...

If you're attending the Earth Day event on the National Mall in Washington, DC on April 20th, wear BLUE.

If you're attending another Earth Day event, wear BLUE.

No matter what you're doing for Earth Day 2008, wear BLUE.

A BLUE shirt, top, sweater or jacket...whatever. Just wear BLUE.

Then, on April 22, as a culminating action, pick up the phone, call Congress at 202-224-3121 and ask for an immediate 'Moratorium on Coal' — a halt to the construction of any new coal-fired power plants. Through this Call for Climate event, Earth Day hopes to generate over a million phone calls to Congress. Visit Earth Day's website to learn more about this critical event.

Your BLUE vote will count. Fifty-nine coal plants were canceled in 2007. That's over a third of the 151 planned. That happened before millions of people joined together to say No Coal.

BYOBlue for Earth Day 2008. Be the vote that tips the balance.

Architecture 2030
BYOBlue
Earth Day events 2008

It's not a new idea, but this book is less than a year old. From the blurb for Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto, by David Tracey:

"In the case of guerrilla gardening, the soldiers are planters, the weapons are shovels, and the mission is to transform an abandoned lot into a thing of beauty. Once an environmentalist's nonviolent direct action for inner-city renewal, this approach to urban beautification is spreading to all types of people in cities around the world.

These modern-day Johnny Appleseeds perform random acts of gardening, often without the property owner's prior knowledge or permission. Typical targets are vacant lots, railway land, underused public squares, and back alleys. The concept is simple, whimsical and has the cheeky appeal of being a not-quite-legal call to action."

Just sowing some seeds. Spring is right around the corner.

The amount of energy the sun gives to the Earth on a constant basis is about 1.4 kilowatts per square meter at the Earth's outer atmosphere. Insolation is the amount of solar radiation that actually reaches a given spot on the Earth. On a sunny day, that insolation can be about 12 kilowatt hours per square meter. That's the same amount of energy contained in about 40 cubic feet of natural gas.

Various sources have said that the amount of solar energy that reaches the Earth's surface in one year is 10,000 times greater than all the energy, of all kinds, that humanity uses in one year.

That should be plenty to go around, right? We're usually more concerned about taking proper advantage of this free resource than divvying it up. But take the modern carbon economy, the growing legal infrastructure supporting it, and a good old-fashioned neighborly dispute, and you've got Sunnyvale, California environmentalists pitted against each other, fighting over the sunlight.

Read more...

Some smart people on the greenbuilding email list (along with just about everyone else on the internet) have been discussing the Nano — at $2,500, the world's cheapest car — which is being introduced by Tata Motors in India, which apparently has visions of marketing it internationally.

You can read the whole thread in the archives. Here are some excerpts, omitting bunches of good stuff solely for the sake of brevity, and in a couple cases taken slightly out of context. The writer's name links to the original post.

"Here is a $2500, 50MPG car that seats five (presumably five people who haven't been binging on twinkies). Environmentalists are howling, yet we are also lauding the Prius, which gets the same mileage and costs ten times as much." — Lawrence Lile

"Now everyone in India can afford a car. Don't get me wrong, the line between cultural imperialism and environmental conscientiousness can be close sometimes. But it's like [if] you took a big country with lots of cars, and then subsidized oil — it would drive up emissions vastly. Oh that's right, that's the US." — Keith Winston

"You have nailed the environmental argument against these cars on the head. This article seems to indicate that the Tata will be cleaner than the average Indian car, but still won't meet US standards, which says a lot about the average Indian car." — Lawrence Lile

"Until we in the US demonstrate a low carbon lifestyle we have no moral standing to criticize others for emulating our long-standing material and energy profligacy." — Reuben Deumling

Read more...