Christopher Butler

November 11th 2009

John Robert Smith on Transportation

I was able to catch up with John Robert Smith, CEO of Reconnecting America, and he recorded a short two minute video for me. If you only watch one of the videos I post, make it this one. He makes two incredibly important points that are too often overlooked when it comes to the livable cities agenda. The first is that we need to build an urban-small town-rural coalition around a new transportation policy. The other is that these issues are, or should be, non-partisan.

Posted at 9:03am and tagged with: transportation, environment,.

November 10th 2009

Today’s idea: Detroit’s “massive failure” makes possible a radical transformation of the blighted city, an article says, including shrinking it down to its urban core and turning much of the place over to crops. And an ineffective government is actually a plus.

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Posted at 2:29pm and tagged with: environment,.

November 7th 2009

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Amazing! This laptop is made from recyclable paper pulp.

Writeup from Dvice.com:

It’s something computer companies are already striving for, but designer Je Sung Park is taking the idea of a recyclable computer to its furthest limits. His Recyclable Paper Laptop is made from pulp and reprocessed materials, and would be broken down into the same when all is said and done.

Posted at 1:07pm and tagged with: environment, computers, design,.

Amazing! This laptop is made from recyclable paper pulp.
Writeup from Dvice.com:
It’s something computer companies are already striving for, but designer Je Sung Park is taking the idea of a recyclable computer to its furthest limits. His Recyclable Paper Laptop is made from pulp and reprocessed materials, and would be broken down into the same when all is said and done.

November 7th 2009

A Giant Crack in Africa Will Create a New Ocean

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A 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean eventually, researchers now confirm. The crack, 20 feet wide in spots, opened in 2005 and some geologists believed then that it would spawn a new ocean. But that view was controversial, and the rift had not been well studied. A new study involving an international team of scientists and reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters finds the processes creating the rift are nearly identical to what goes on at the bottom of oceans, further indication a sea is in the region’s future. The same rift activity is slowly parting the Red Sea, too.

Posted at 10:03am and tagged with: environment,.

October 27th 2009

A Postcard from the Arctic

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The New York Times DotEarth blog features a letter and sound piece from artist David Rothenberg, “a philosopher, musician and author of fascinating books on whales, birdsong and a host of other facets of the natural world,” who, along with 20 others, has embarked upon a journey to the arctic…

October 14th, sailing toward Magdalena Fjord, 79.6°N, 11°E

We are 14 artists, 2 scientists, and a crew of 4 sailing as close to the North Pole pack ice as we can get away with. Aboard the M/S Noorderlicht, a hundred-year old Dutch schooner, we left Longyearbyen one week ago in the Norwegian territory of Svalbard, the most northerly point in the world with regular air service, for several weeks traveling the Arctic through open sea and sheltered bays, stopping along the way to respond to the landscape in uniquely artistic ways.

The letter is meant to be read along with the sound file, so go there now…

Posted at 5:11pm and tagged with: art, environment,.

October 24th 2009

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Posted at 4:05pm and tagged with: video, environment, the-future,.

October 23rd 2009

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Posted at 4:08pm and tagged with: environment, video,.

October 23rd 2009

19 notes |#

GOOD Magazine

Posted at 9:02am and tagged with: environment, food,.

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There’s probably enough wasted food in the United States and Europe to feed the world’s hungry three times over.

”

October 22nd 2009

The New Localism: the longer people stay in their homes and communities, the more they identify with those places, and the greater their commitment to helping local businesses and institutions thrive, even in a downturn.

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…in reality Americans actually are becoming less nomadic. As recently as the 1970s as many as one in five people moved annually; by 2006, long before the current recession took hold, that number was 14 percent, the lowest rate since the census starting following movement in 1940. Since then tougher times have accelerated these trends, in large part because opportunities to sell houses and find new employment have dried up. In 2008, the total number of people changing residences was less than those who did so in 1962, when the country had 120 million fewer people. The stay-at-home trend appears particularly strong among aging boomers, who are largely eschewing Sunbelt retirement condos to stay tethered to their suburban homes—close to family, friends, clubs, churches, and familiar surroundings.

This is surprising to me. I live in a very transient area (Chapel Hill, NC), so from my vantage point, it seems like nobody is from here and nobody stays.

Posted at 4:09pm and tagged with: environment,.

October 22nd 2009

1 note |#

Posted at 1:06pm and tagged with: environment, solar,.

October 22nd 2009

Reblogged from proofmathisbeautiful| |#

proofmathisbeautiful:

macmankev:

spatula:

Bustler: Team Germany Wins Solar Decathlon…Again

Posted at 9:02am and tagged with: solar, environment, design,.

proofmathisbeautiful:

macmankev:

spatula:

Bustler: Team Germany Wins Solar Decathlon…Again

October 21st 2009

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These videos are wonderful (a couple more here). From The Fun Theory website about this one in particular:

Many of us return our plastic bottles and cans. Noticeably fewer recycle their glass. Maybe that’s because we don’t get any money in return, as we do for cans and plastic. Can we change this attitude by making recycling glass fun to do? So you are not just rewarded with a good conscience, you also get a smile. See the results here.

Posted at 4:47pm and tagged with: video, environment,.

October 21st 2009

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Matthew Yglesias settles a silly argument:

Superfreakonomics contains a number of significant misleading claims about climate change and clean energy, but the one I found most shocking was the contention that solar panels actually make the world warmer because they’re black. Solar panels are not black. They’re usually blue. This is an easily verifiable fact. This is a photo of a company I visited in Dresden where they manufacture solar panels. Their office is covered in solar panels. Blue solar panels.

They wouldn’t let us take pictures inside their factory so as to discourage industrial espionage by the Chinese (or so they said), but I can assure you that what they were manufacturing was blue solar panels. But if you look at their website you can clearly see that they’re blue. During the tour someone even asked why the solar panels are blue. We were told that you can make them any color if there’s some particular desire for funny-colored ones, but they determined that this particular shade of blue is the most efficient one to use. And that’s why most solar panels are blue.

So two quick takeaway lessons from that chat. One is that solar panels are usually blue. The other is that contra Levitt, Dubner, and Nathan Myhrvold the guys who build solar panels aren’t idiots who’ve never considered the fact that different colored material has different light-absorption properties.

So wait, solar panels are blue?

Posted at 3:47pm and tagged with: environment, solar,.

Matthew Yglesias settles a silly argument:
Superfreakonomics contains a number of significant misleading claims about climate change and clean energy, but the one I found most shocking was the contention that solar panels actually make the world warmer because they’re black. Solar panels are not black. They’re usually blue. This is an easily verifiable fact. This is a photo of a company I visited in Dresden where they manufacture solar panels. Their office is covered in solar panels. Blue solar panels.They wouldn’t let us take pictures inside their factory so as to discourage industrial espionage by the Chinese (or so they said), but I can assure you that what they were manufacturing was blue solar panels. But if you look at their website you can clearly see that they’re blue. During the tour someone even asked why the solar panels are blue. We were told that you can make them any color if there’s some particular desire for funny-colored ones, but they determined that this particular shade of blue is the most efficient one to use. And that’s why most solar panels are blue.So two quick takeaway lessons from that chat. One is that solar panels are usually blue. The other is that contra Levitt, Dubner, and Nathan Myhrvold the guys who build solar panels aren’t idiots who’ve never considered the fact that different colored material has different light-absorption properties.
So wait, solar panels are blue?

October 16th 2009

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From The INFRASTRUCTURIST:

The whole natural gas question in this country is a complicated one. On one hand, we have oodles of the stuff, it’s relatively low carbon, and it would seem to be a sensible pillar of our country’s energy future. On the other hand, extracting it from Mother Earth does nasty stuff to the water supply. How nasty? Check out this video shot in Fort Lupton, Colorado, a little town just north of Denver’s northernmost suburban sprawl.

Until a year ago, these Fort Lupton residents had run-of-the-mill, non-flammable water. But there’s some aggressive oil and gas production in the area, and now local faucets are liable to create a massive fireball if you hold a lit match near them.

Posted at 11:06am and tagged with: video, environment,.

October 5th 2009

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I saw this image on a bag I got from our local co-op. It got me thinking about the role of design in environmentalism. There is something to all the ‘green’ details that are showing up on our consumer products that probably do more to encourage us to consume rather than conserve. It’s almost as if we see these ‘green’ cues and, assuming we care about the planet, are able to feel better about whatever purchase we’re considering.

If you look at this image, it simplifies a system which depends first upon the actions of the consumer (who recycles their paper), and then upon the reclamation center, which probably cannot reclaim 100% of the material brought to it. So, that said, the cycle is limited to a certain number of ‘rotations.’

Posted at 12:07pm and tagged with: design, environment,.

I saw this image on a bag I got from our local co-op. It got me thinking about the role of design in environmentalism. There is something to all the ‘green’ details that are showing up on our consumer products that probably do more to encourage us to consume rather than conserve. It’s almost as if we see these ‘green’ cues and, assuming we care about the planet, are able to feel better about whatever purchase we’re considering.
If you look at this image, it simplifies a system which depends first upon the actions of the consumer (who recycles their paper), and then upon the reclamation center, which probably cannot reclaim 100% of the material brought to it. So, that said, the cycle is limited to a certain number of ‘rotations.’