Science & Technology

Image courtesy of conner395 via flickr

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'd be hard-pressed to miss the continuous stream of news stories describing the threat posed by the world's dwindling reserves of freshwater. With some talking up the potential for water becoming the next "oil," it has become imperative for international NGOs and governments to focus their energy on forestalling a global crisis that could devastate developing countries. Fortunately, the WWF and Nature Conservancy have developed a handy new resource, the FEOW (Freshwater Ecoregions of the World) map, to help guide current and future conservation efforts.

Science & Technology

Solar rooftop installations just got a lot easier: Lumeta, a subsidiary of construction heavyweight DRI, has developed a solar panel sticker -- the Power-Ply 380. The company says its convenient peel-and-stick solar technology allows it to be installed almost twice as fast as regular rack-mounted panels -- a claim put to the test in the above video.

The panels are half as heavy as concrete roofing tiles and can be tailored to fit on most tile designs -- concrete, clay, profile and flat (added bonus: they come in a variety of colors). As Wired Science's Alexis Madrigal notes, the Power-Ply's main downside is that it loses the sun's optimal angle, thus making the peel-and-stick panels less efficient than some of its alternatives.

Business & Politics

When I recently had the opportunity to interview Greensburg mother Sharon Schmidt she sounded tired but resolute. Much like you’d expect a mom who has been through a lot in the recent past, putting her own life back together while ensuring her son has the best possible experience as a high school junior despite the fact that their entire town has been rebuilding from a tornado that took it off the map.

Her words give life to what it means to be a mom from Greensburg, and I suspect you’ll enjoy reading what she has to say this Mother’s Day as much as I did listening to her speak a short time ago.

TreeHugger: What’s this school year been like while Greensburg is being rebuilt?

Sharon Schmidt: It’s started out just kind of surreal and at the very first of the school year in late summer and very early fall there were still some very bad storms and we were living in Femaville, and they didn’t have their storm shelters yet so it was just very trying.

I guess when they would hit we would have gotten notice, but they were fast moving storms so it was unsettling I guess… But they do have shelters now (at school) so as a mother I feel better about it.

Business & Politics

Fewer and fewer Samis live the nomadic life these days. Photo courtesy wiki commons

Reindeer herding is no piece-of-cake job - the hours are long and the weather mostly crummy. But at least ten percent of the indigenous Sami people (also called Lapplanders, or Lapps) in Europe's far north have herding as their traditional occupation. Though they've over time been encroached upon by different assimilation pressures and have been shifting to stationary reindeer farming over nomadic herding, a rapidly-warming Arctic climate is the latest serious threat to their livelihood.

Traditionally Sami reindeer herders traveled over ice roads - broad hooves mean the herd can forage for food below the snow. But changing climate over the last decade means winters can bring unstable ice and more rain, and temperature changes that make snow thaw and freeze to thin ice sheets that reindeer hooves can't penetrate.

"Climate change is threatening our economy as reindeer herders," herder Olav Mathis-Eira told The Independent. "Because this is part of our traditional way of life, if the economy goes, probably the entire Sami culture would go with it."

Via: The Independent
See also: Arctic Emissaries Head To Washingtonand Finnmark 2007

Business & Politics

The essence of branding is developing a clear identity for the messenger -- as opposed to marketing, which merely focuses on the message. However, in the non-profit sector, branding frequently falls by the wayside. My theory is that when your messages are as serious as saving the planet, it's hard to look beyond them. (It should also be noted that many non-profit communications are the result pro-bono work, often completed by different agencies - which can make it hard to maintain consistency across campaigns.)

I've already removed myself from junk mail lists thanks to Green Dimes and the Center for a New American Dream – so the only solicitations I now receive are from the environmental, human rights and animal welfare organizations that I contribute to. And I'm always astonished at these organizations' apparent failure to realize that they are competing with one another for my attention and for my contributions (both in terms of whether or not and how much I contribute). But here's an example of good branding in the sector:

Cars & Transportation

From Bogota to Istanbul to LA (LA!?), StreetFilms have been a great source for accessible yet detailed films that outline lessons in making streets more pedestrian, bicycle and mass-transit friendly, and in greening the cities that so many of us live in. Now their latest installment takes a look at Melbourne, and finds that many of today's most congested cities could learn a thing or two:

Cars & Transportation

Here at Treehugger we've seen lots of examples of activism in high schools as part of our Go Green School of the Week Series (for instance, here, here and here). The following story about a group of high school students in New Jersey, however, truly stands out for the quality of their activism, as well as the intransigence and narrow-mindedness of the principal involved in the incident. The students are members of an environmental club at their high school that had raised $2,000 and wanted to use the funds to donate a bike rack to the school. However, they were told that the school did not want to promote cycling due to safety concerns, and thus the gift was rejected. Ironically enough, the rejection came on Earth Day.

Fortunately, these enterprising high schoolers didn't just sit on their heels. No, they came together and organized the following protest: "more than 50 students rode their bikes to school, commuting in pairs and groups. After studying up on state biking laws -- and carrying copies with them -- the students legally tethered their bikes in conspicuous clusters around lamp posts, trees and other poles dotting the circular drive in front of the school." The students also delivered a letter to the principal. So what was his response?

Business & Politics

"Revolutionary." That is the word Oswald Schmitz, Oastler Professor of Population and Community Ecology at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, uses to describe the conclusions of research into how predators influence ecosystems. Pre-revolutionary logic: the soils -- and plants' interaction with soils -- determine the types of plants that grow. This in turn determines the types of herbivores present, thereby indirectly determining the population of carnivores. So effectively the ranges of wolves or cougars depend on the soil type. Reminds me of a joke...