B Rosen via Flickr On April 22, 1970, Earth Day kicked off the environmental movement. The following year, Dr. Seuss published The Lorax. It featured the familiar whimsical drawings and rhymes, but in place of the usual humor, Dr. Seuss served up a dire warning about pollution and environmental degradation. Fifty years later, the book’s warning about environmental issues still stands. In many ways, the environment is in much better shape than it was before all the environmental legislation that came out of Earth Day. Unfortunately, deforestation continues its destructive course. W ..read more

NASA photograph of Earth In 1969, Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-Wisc.) witnessed the effects of a major oil spill that happened off Santa Barbara, California in January and February of that year. He had long been trying to spark interest in environmental issues. He also noticed the teach-ins offered on college campuses to protest the Vietnam War. Could some kind of environmental teach-in work just as well? With that, he conceived the idea for what became Earth Day in 1970. Nelson announced his plan to the Annual Symposium of the Washington Environmental Council (Seattle, September 1969). He may or ..read more

Image by Hebi B. via Pixabay Americans love a lush, green, grass lawn, even where grass doesn’t grow well. More and more people are beginning to discover lawn alternatives. You can have a beautiful and more sustainable lawn with less grass, or even without grass. More trees, shrubbery, flowers, and vegetables on your property reduce the amount of space you can devote to grass. And you can grow some other kind of groundcover in place of much or all of the grass you have. Not only that, you can take care of a grass lawn with fewer chemicals and less water than most people use. The various alt ..read more

Contributed by Rawal Ahmed With solar panels becoming a more viable option for many homes across the globe, it can be important to know what you’re getting into before you opt to install them. This is especially true as they can be quite an initial investment, which makes it all the more important to get the most out of them. Here are a few tips for how to maximise output from your solar panels. It all begins with choosing the right panel setup This might sound obvious, but it all starts with what type of solar panels you have. Much like a good meal, maximising solar panel efficiency is all a ..read more

Creation of Adam / Michelangelo (Sistine Chapel, 1510) Not many people search Google to find out what the Bible says about environmental stewardship. Maybe no one sees a connection between “religion” and the issues of the day. Yet according to Psalm 24:1, the Earth and everything in it belongs to God. He made it. He put people in charge of running it. People choose to run it any other way but his.  For most of human history, people have had little regard for the environment. Even prehistoric people hunted some animals to extinction. Even their farming and other technology were partly ..read more

How should meet environmental goals such as solving problem of plastic pollution? Individual acts such as removing plastic from the beach? Organizing beach cleanups and involving thousands of people? Or producing less plastic in the first place? Clearly, the answer is “all of the above.”  But here’s a too-common and foolish answer to the question I found in the comment section of a blog post: Holding these greedy petroleum based plastic bottling manufacturers accountable is the only solution. All single use plastics must be banned including plastic bags, bottles, plates, utensils, cups ..read more

Aerial view of Central Park, New York. Original image from Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress collection. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel. Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) is best known for designing Central Park in New York, the US Capitol grounds in Washington, and the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He opened the first landscape architecture firm in the US. But on closer examination, he was much more than just a leading landscape architect. He worked in journalism, sanitation, and health. In this post, we will explore Olmsted as an environmentalist, long before an ..read more

Contributed by Anna Brui Every decision we make regarding our homes plays a crucial role in shaping our environmental impact and the depth of our pockets. Do you look at the world around you through energy-efficient windows? Double- or triple-glazed windows? We’ve all been there, staring at those drafty, ageing windows that seem to let in as much cold air as they do natural light. You might be contemplating whether to invest in new, energy-efficient windows to combat these problems and contribute to sustainable living. The first question that often pops up is, “What does it cost to replace w ..read more

Hydrogen fuel cell block diagram from Wikimedia Commons I have written a few times before about the technological and financial hurdles facing the development of green hydrogen. Along the way, I mentioned specific companies working on hydrogen fuel cell projects. Hydrogen is not so much an energy source as an energy storage medium. Hydrogen fuel cells operate on the same general principle as batteries, but they can operate continuously as long as they have a steady supply of hydrogen gas. They emit no gases at the end of the process, only water. Now that it is possible, at least in Californ ..read more

Ivan Radic via Flickr Electric cars have certain advantages over gasoline cars. Chief among them, electric cars don’t emit greenhouse gases. They also have fewer moving parts and require less maintenance. For example, there is no engine oil to change. But before we can transition to them, we have to solve problems with electric car charging infrastructure. If we’re not careful, we can simply exchange one kind of bad environmental impact for another. Electric cars have their own potential environmental downsides. To begin with, electric car batteries require mining of minerals—not only lithium ..read more