Green Links (and I don’t mean a golf course)

Here are the heretofor unpublished contents of my “Green” bookmarks subfolder:

Eco: Being Conscious, an environmental blog rather like mine except better.

MetaEfficient, a review site of efficient consumer products, including time-efficient ones.

Triple Pundit, a blog about green economics, a fusion that I think is very important, because corporations don’t want to change their ways unless it’s economically advantageous to do so. We need to be well-versed in economics to move things in that direction.

WorldChanging, an amazing blog, subtitled “another world is here”. Updated several times a day, lots of interesting info about all sorts of new-green-ism (PS: I think there should be a new political party called the New Greens).

Grist Magazine is a great online magazine featuring environmental news served ina humorous light. I haven’t explored it fully, but it looks phenomenal.

The Eco Street Blog is another great blog of the same genre as a lot of these others, I like the clean web design. It’s updated about once daily or so.

Groovy Green reminds me of Ideal Bite: a cool, youth-oriented green news and tips site(or at least oriented at someone who buys into our youth-worshiping culture).

Zerofootprint: Connecting people who care about the environment. Y’know, I was going to say “nuff said” right there, but I just looked at it like a responsible person (ew, responsible?) and saw that it actually may be the most amazing of any of the sites I’m listing here. That is for the simple reason that it combines some of the major categories of site (products, news, etc.) and adds an events calendar into the mix, and this is all on one website. Totally awesome.

New American Dream is another great eco-action and -empowerment site. Three goals it seeks to help you with: Live Consciously, Buy Wisely, and Make a Difference. I think that’s probably in the right direction…

Okay, that’s it for now. Sorry for the longish post, hope you enjoy those links.

California high-speed rail

I’m a big fan of public transportation. The more effective and extensive a system of public transport is, the more people will use it to get around, and that means those people are not driving cars. High-speed rail has shown around the world that it’s a pretty good means of transportation, so I was thrilled to read that California might be getting into high-speed rail soon. Why is California ahead of the rest of the country in environmental stuff so often?

Solar Roof Tiles and the Government

This is an article about roof tiles with embedded solar panels. I think I had heard of them, but not very much. The subject of this article is that the government is going to do a study and then produce a buyer’s guide for them. I’ve got to get some of those…

Greenest Car Companies

This is an article about a recent study that found BP and Toyota (no surprise there) to be the greenest “auto brands”. It also says the study found that 58% of Americans still don’t care how green their car make is. That’s disappointing, America, but I’m actually impressed. I was a more pessimistic than that. 42% of Americans really want to buy an environmentally friendly car. That’s a good deal more than like George W. Bush right now, so I’ll drink to that.

Vertical Gardening

Great idea from a link on Treehugger: Vertical Gardening. Basically, it’s a way to fit more plants into a smaller horizontal space, and I can see these racks of plants coating the sides of future skyscrapers. I’m such a dreamer. But wouldn’t that be cool? Imagine the CO2 from the city that all those plants would offset! Anyway, props to Synergy for the concept. I see this going places.

AMD Processors

So, I’m a wannabe computer geek, and that combined with my environmental inclination leads me to something of a hypocrisy. I like leaving my computer on all the time, or at least a lot of the time, but every moment that I’m away from my comp and leaving it on, I feel mountains of guilt. I hadn’t heard before that AMD (a company that makes computer stuff, most notably processors) is releasing a new processor that will cut computers’ energy use by two-thirds or so. That’s really wonderful. A lot of people leave computers on a lot of the time (more every day), and if this sort of processor diffuses throughout the market, that means that boom in computer use will not mean quite as big a boom in energy waste.

Farmers’ Markets

Farmers’ Markets are perhaps the best way to buy local food, which is wonderful for several reasons:

1) You support people in your area who are often struggling, instead of the owners of large plantations.

2) Frequently local farmers grow organic, and farmers’ markets are a great way to get such organic food at less than supermarket price (because there’s no overhead from the stores). That is, if there are organic farmers who participate in your local market.

3) Most of our produce is transported from elsewhere in the country, which has a high “carbon cost”; in other words, gasoline (probably diesel, and not the bio- kind) was burned to just move the produce to where you are. By buying your fruit and vegetables from local farmers at a farmers’ market, you reduce that carbon cost for your food down to near zero.

So, with that all said, there’s a great site through which you can find farmers’ markets in your area, at the USDA website.

Who Killed the Electric Car?

There’s this documentary out recently about the life of the electric car (called Who Killed the Electric Car?), and why we don’t see more of them around. I’m not excited enough to see it in theaters, but I’d like to see it some time. The title suggests finger pointing, perhaps at car and oil industries and their friends? And that, we all know, is one of knee-jerk liberals’ favorite activities. So go see it, if you wish. Looks good.

Hugg links

Here are three Hugg links:

1: Tips for driving more greenly at GreenerCars.com

2: An article about a company that is dominating the wave power industry

3: An article about renewable energy credits (RECs). I have to look into those more. They sound really cool, but I have heard allegations of corruption and pointlessness in relation to some “karma credits”.