NewWays for Environmental and Social Change

“I will open up the doors of governement and ask you to be involved in your own democracy again.”
President Elect Obama
Change.org is poised with a clean interface to send ideas to our president elect for his next four years. Anyone can send their ideas for promoting the change they like to see, while the world [...]

Here are 100 steps we can all make to go greener in the coming year!
In Your Home – Conserve Energy
1. Clean or replace air filters on your air conditioning unit at least once a month.
2. If you have central air conditioning, do not close vents in unused rooms.
3. Lower the thermostat on your water heater [...]

The following speech was given at Netroots Nation 2008 in Austin, Texas.
I have a little bit of whiplash. Thirty-six hours ago I was in the Arctic with Jimmy Carter. This is not a joke, you all. (Laughter) It sounds like a joke, right? You hear about the black guy in the Arctic with Jimmy Carter? [...]

More parks, fewer cars. The Zen-like philosophy behind Park(ing) Day — the annual event that attracts artists, urban planners and open space advocates interested in setting up ad hoc miniature parks in metered parking spaces on urban streets — appears to have hit a tipping point. What began as a quirky San Francisco-based project by [...]

As if the announcement of a high-speed rail line that will go from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 2 hours and 40 minutes isn’t exciting enough, Navigant Consulting now claims that the bullet train can run with zero greenhouse gas emissions.
According to the energy consulting firm, the train’s expected usage of 3,350 GWh each [...]

SHAPLEIGH, Maine - Walk about 100 yards down a well-worn path, past wild berry bushes, and take a left into leafy growth. Just a few more feet into the green canopy, and there they are, jutting out from the earth.
“I don’t even like the sight of them here,” said Liz McMahon, a Shapleigh resident for [...]

Coal River Mountain is one of the last mountains left intact in the beautiful Coal River Valley of West Virginia. However, Massey Energy has plans to mine 6,000+ acres of the mountain - or almost 10 square miles.

(Photograph by Bob Stefko/Getty Images)

A tidal wave of televisions is headed for the electronics hereafter. As the United States transitions to all-digital TV, the shutdown of analog broadcasting next February actually won’t affect most televisions in the country—87 percent of U.S. television-watching households already get their TV through cable or satellite. Nevertheless, the deadline is [...]

Most who live in a residential neighborhood in the city, or the burbs, have the island out front. You know, the one grassy null between sidewalk and street. Why have just a plain strip of grass when you can have a bountiful garden?
Why not add more plant diversity to our neighborhood and planet? Why not [...]

Who:
Furniture companies, recycling companies, or entrepreneurial people looking for a prospective sustainable business
What:
Contract an agreement with your local municipality, recycling organization, or neighbors to collect plastics. Plastics can be shredded up to about pellet size and used as a filling for couches, futons, mattresses, recliners, chairs, and other furniture. Furniture can then be sold as [...]

A community in Canada has an unusual form of solar power that can provide over 90% of the annual heating and hot water needs for the homes, despite being situated in a cold Alberta location where winter temperatures can reach -33 degrees C (-27 F).

You’re going to be more secure if there are no nuclear weapons in the world, because if you achieve this goal, you won’t be risking having nuclear weapons blow up in one of our cities.

At the conferences abroad I’ve been attending, it was certainly borne in on me that the notion of a two-tiered world—where some countries can have nuclear weapons and others can’t—is getting less and less acceptable.

Welcome to New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment – now also known as the Clean Energy State.

Since giving his state its new nickname four years ago, governor Bill Richardson has helped create at least 37 incentive programmes promoting green power.

Sure, it’s easy enough for one person to attempt energy self-sufficiency: put a solar panel on your roof, run your car on biodiesel, and you’re halfway there. But how easy is it for an entire town to become self-sufficient?

There is a growing green boom in the idea of generating “green collar” jobs. Certainly we have reported on advantages of going greener in the marketplace, but what if everyone had access to the skills required to make a more sustainable imprint through a New Deal like workforce, only greener. Even my home town of Seattle will be hosting a conference at the University of Washington with keynote speaker Governor Christine Gregoire on the how to stimulate the economy of the the “emerald city,” by investing in cleaner more efficient technology, securing jobs in the community while making us less dependent on Big Oil and other non-renewables. What if if the green baton can be passed from city to city, in a national effort to make a more sensible and sustainable way to encourage equal job opportunity for all income levels, while stimulating the economy and sustaining the environment for generations to come.This may be worth considering a deal to vote on.