I said I was going to start doing weekly summaries of my articles from around the web just a couple posts ago, but my last one was actually published almost a month ago now (partly due to a vacation). The result is: I’ve got a lot of catch-up to do. Here it goes.
Activism
Is it wrong for beautiful women to take off their clothes to promote vegetarianism? This is a question I and many others have asked. I think in the case of recent Alicia Silverstone and Pamela Anderson PETA ads, it was a fine choice, but I’m sure there are others who would disagree. What do you think?
In another modeling meets activism story, I responded to criticism of what I think was actually good fashion activism regarding the BP oil spill (the author of a piece on Fast Company didn’t think so). Not a huge fan of fashion, but I loved this fashion spread in Vogue.
I was also happy to see that Animal Planet is continuing the story of The Cove with it’s new series, Blood Dolphins. Important and sad issue that doesn’t seem to be going away yet.
And, on the take action front, a few great action opportunities I wrote on were regarding California sea otters, Southern sea otters, protecting communities from coal ash,
And Greenpeace has been up to a lot of fun stuff lately (of course), such as a tremendous effort to stop Arctic oil drilling, 4 activists getting arrested and deported from Greenland for that, and an excellent campaign telling Facebook to unfriend coal (as well as a back-and-forth blog discussion between Greenpeace and Facebook on that topic).
Also, I think this would best fit here — I got to find out from 9 green bloggers who their green heroes were recently. Got 23 (or more) heroes in the answers. Fun post if you are into green stuff (& of course you are).
One big green hero, Bill McKibben, had a great showing on the Late Show with David Letterman recently. Posted the video on Planetsave. A nice watch.
Food
Our readers on EatDrinkBetter spoke up and told us what they think are the best fruits in the world. Check out this top 10 list & see if your favorite fruit is on the list.
Promoting slow food, I had a piece on the movement and a major issue regarding a threatened seed bank in Russia that it is tackling as well. Both are important issues in my mind, but hardly on the public radar it seems.
Other food pieces I wrote were on:
- millet recipes and what millet’s good for
- a pizza and raw food pate recipe
- black bean recipes and what black beans are good for
- a turnip-fennel-turmeric-shitake mushroom recipe for your liver and lungs
- and some curry recipes and a little bit on the health benefits of curry
Global Warming
I wrote a couple big global warming news summaries on Planetsave in the past month. The issues are still highly relevant today. The second one focused on the relationship between global warming and food and water.
I also wrote a piece on an excellent list of 119 one-liners people can use to respond to global warming deniers (and the one-liners ARE backed up by and linked to scientific pieces).
Another nice, science-based piece I covered was on 10 indicators humans are causing for global warming. The indicators are quite clear.
I also promoted an ongoing petition telling Glenn Beck to stop telling global warming lies (can’t believe he’s allowed to say what he says on the air).
If you’re into green business, I also wrote a piece on a cool CO2 Climate Game from WWF & Allianz.
Some of the first signs of devastation from global warming come from natural disasters and some come from the high number of species going extinct from it, such as the high % of lizards expected (and already starting) to go extinct from it. This is such a sad story — I love lizards so much.
I also wrote on the possibility that conservatives are finally starting to accept global warming is real and caused by humans, as well as a response to a weak critique of that article.
Green Living
Need your lawn cut but don’t want to use a polluting lawn mower? Rent a goat. That’s what more and more people and companies are doing these days.
I wrote about plastic bag bans in India a couple months ago. Now, Mexico City has become the latest big city to ban plastic bags. Kudos to MC!
In a couple more weekly summaries for Planetsave, I discussed cool green living and green tech news from around the web and green living, clean tech, and activism news a week later.
I also wrote on the great importance of cutting coal for our 6th Going Green Tip on Planetsave, focusing on the variety of environmental harms burning coal causes and the health costs related to those.
Clean Transportation
Want to read some clean transportation news? I’ve got a number of stories on that. I wrote on:
- an awesome transit center in San Francisco (twice)
- a 1,000 km/hour train coming to China (twice)
- the health benefits of transit
- how UK transport emissions could be cut 76% by 2050
- an awesome new website that helps you see how much you pay (or could pay) for transportation
- a pedal-powered yellow submarine in France
- and 7 reasons public transit is cool
And, of course, my “Going Green Tips” series on Planetsave wouldn’t be complete without a full post on green transport (#4 on our list).
Bikes
The bike stories I wrote on fall into a number of the categories above, but I wrote on bikes so much I think they deserve their own category. Here are the bike stories from the past few weeks:
- London Cycle Scheme “Boris Bikes” Visualized
- Old-Fashioned Bicycle Carnival in Yogyakarta
- Bike Shop Advertising GONE WILD
- New York City Bicycle Sharing Program to be BIG!
- World Naked Bike Ride Video from Portland
- Bicycle City
- Burrito Bike Delivery for the Homeless
Clean Tech
Other clean tech news wasn’t neglected either. From stories on
- the “2010 Smarter Cities for Energy” to
- the world’s largest tidal turbine in Scotland to
- France launching a €1.35 billion ($1.73 billion) clean energy program to
- the increase of renewable energy production and decrease of coal consumption in Europe to
- affordable solar power through breakthrough solar systems to
- the ongoing possibility of a nationwide renewable energy standard
there’s a lot to choose from.
Humor
Working in this field, you have to lighten up with some humor once in awhile. The Onion is one of the best places to do so, in my opinion. It had a great piece recently that was both humorous and extremely insightful on the ongoing disaster of oil REACHING port safely. This one was so good, I also wrote about it twice.
I’ve also got a funny, funny video of a (fake) Australian Senator talking about an oil disaster in that region of the world. Seemed like the Onion in video format to me.
City Planning
Getting back to my roots in city planning, I’ve been writing on this topic (and topics related to it) a lot more recently. Some of the stories I thought linked to city planning (ones other than the transport and bike stories above) were on:
- a new sustainability director in NYC
- a “sunken garden” in Sydney, Australia
- the idea that power is shifting from nations to cities
- the cities with the worst commutes
- the first net-zero affordable community
- a super green Mexico eco resort and spa
- Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation building a sustainable green neighborhood in one of the poorest and hardest hit (by Hurricane Katrina) neighborhoods in New Orleans
- and a Malibu ecoPARK.
Other News
I was proud to announce last month that Planetsave was chosen as the 13th best green blog for students. Always nice to receive some recognition. I also wrote another Important Media weekly roundup somewhere in the midst of all those other articles.
If you haven’t read too many stories on the animals humans have killed off, here’s another one on a cool giant turtle that scientists thought never met humans and now have discover we actually caused to go extinct.
With another oil fire in the Gulf, and plenty more potential oil disasters on the horizon, I had a few posts and coordinated guests posts on the topics of clean and dirty energy recently.
And, on the positive front, turns out that a red fox thought to be extinct is not extinct. Nice, uplifting find by biologists in California!
That’s it for now. Whew!
Hope somebody is decides to read this and enjoys it! 😀
Photo Credit: LZ Creations via flickr