by Payton Chung
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Get ready for the summer driving season
Build your stockpile of gas now! 15
Posted 2 years, 7 months ago Gasoline supplies right now are plumbing historic lows, just as May and the "summer driving season" are about to roll around. This fact has the industry types at the WSJ's Energy Roundup abuzz with predictions of $4/gallon gasoline, should the inevitable disruption (refinery fire, hurricane, Iran war) occur. As in years past, areas with higher cost gasoline, mostly the blue states along the oceans and Great Lakes, will see the highest prices. Read More -
On the floor of GreenBuild Expo
Green building convention is abuzz 1
Posted 3 years ago I'm currently attending GreenBuild, the U.S. Green Building Council's big annual convention. This is just the fifth iteration, but already it's a behemoth. Last year it drew over 10,000 attendees, and this year it's expected to best that record.The vast trade show floor (over 700 exhibitors) testifies to the big business of green building. The show places leviathan bridge-builders next door to some guy selling composting toilets. An entire aisle is lined with suppliers of modular green roofs.
What I find interesting, though, is less the breadth of exhibitors than the depth. Read More
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Carbon fad diet
Slate and TH challenge readers to lose 2.5 tons apiece 7
Posted 3 years, 1 month ago Slate and fellow green blog TreeHugger have just launched an eight-week Green Challenge carbon diet. The goal: to get readers to cut their carbon emissions 20 percent through the usual variety of actions. The kicker: an interactive "my emissions" evaluation tool that friends can use to challenge one another. Nothing like a little competition to spice things up.(I'd love to share my results, especially since this week's theme is transportation, but it's not yet working for me. Anyone else?) Read More
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Green Bean counting 2
Posted 3 years, 3 months ago Chicago, like several other cities, has a Green Permit Program (PDF) that grants faster building permits for green buildings. Erik Olsen, the program's administrator, gets to scrutinize every single green building in the entire city. Luckily for us, Erik recently started GreenBean, a blog profiling the blueprints that cross his desk.So far, he's posted eight building profiles, including two single-family houses (both in my neighborhood -- must be my aura), high-rise offices, and the rehab of a YMCA into subsidized housing. For each, he notes the level of green-ness, unusual green techniques used, and… Read More
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Where does your gas come from? 0
Posted 3 years, 3 months ago Chicago Tribune reporter Paul Salopek spent the last year on "an energy safari," working backwards from the customers and night-shift clerks at a single Marathon gas station in exurban Chicago (and the downstate refinery that supplies it) to the exact fields where the oil first left the ground. Last September, for instance, 71% of its gas came from the U.S., 20% from Africa, and 10% from Saudi Arabia.The eight stories and related multimedia (photos from Iraq, Louisiana, Nigeria, and Venezuela, and a 12-part video documentary) neatly tie together the disparate lives on both ends of the petroleum… Read More
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Leave your car(e)s behind on vacation 0
Posted 3 years, 4 months ago Dreaming of getting away in August? How about getting away from your car? Xtracycle, a maker of "cargo bike" kits, offers up "car-free vacation tips" so you can fill your vacation with "clean, affordable, soulful transportation," whether in town or exploring the wilderness. Among the hints: plan ahead, choose your destination wisely, combine modes, and travel light. Read More -
Some Americans worried about global warming
Others ... not so much, says new poll 1
Posted 3 years, 4 months ago A recent Pew Center poll done just as An Inconvenient Truth was opening nationally finds, not surprisingly, that Americans don't care about global warming. Or do they?41 percent say global warming is a very serious problem, 33 percent see it as somewhat serious, and roughly a quarter (24 percent) think it is either not too serious or not a problem at all.
That puts global warming 19th among 20 issues ranked. However, a very strong partisan pattern emerges here: although it's dead last among Republicans, it ranks 14th for both Democrats and independents, above such "hot… Read More -
EU may introduce carbon tax on airplanes 3
Posted 3 years, 4 months ago Following up on an earlier post on commercial aviation and global warming: the European Parliament voted 439 yes / 74 no / 102 abstain last week to tax jet fuel used on cross-border, intra-European flights, to allow member states to impose VAT (sales tax) on jet fuel, and to apply a cap-and-trade system to carbon dioxide emissions from aviation. (Currently, international flights, including those within the EU, pay no tax on their jet fuel.)Airlines predictably condemned the maneuver, calling on the UN's International Civil Aviation Organization to issue a proposal that would apply globally. Read More
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Investors see green in buildings 2
Posted 3 years, 5 months ago
Contrary to popular belief, most developers don't bulldoze Bambi solely to satisfy their innate avarice. Instead, they pave the Earth at the bidding of their clients -- by which I mean lenders and investors, not homebuyers, office tenants, or other such "end users." Regardless of how exciting and cool a development proposal is, it just won't happen if some faceless banker doesn't advance a big pile of cash.
As rapacious national banks swallow smaller, local competitors by the dozen, these lending decisions have increasingly fallen to bankers blindly applying generic guidelines. The result: a paint-by-numbers… Read More
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NY Times headlines Chicago as "green business" 0
Posted 3 years, 5 months ago This Sunday, The New York Times ran a package of Business articles focused on "The Business of Green." (If previous packages are any indication, the links will remain active longer than the standard week.)Hearteningly for this Second City resident, Keith Schneider's banner headline -- To Revitalize a City, Try Spreading Some Mulch -- spotlights Mayor Richard M. Daley's efforts to improve the city's quality of life through greening initiatives. While many local wags have ridiculed the Daley as a mere gardener, the article calls new street trees and spiffy parks an "economic development strategy" central to the… Read More
