The West is going up in flames – there are so many fires right now it’s hard to keep track of them all. By now you’ve probably heard about the Waldo Canyon “super fire” tearing through the mountains in Colorado Springs, but you may not have heard as much about the other huge wildfires in the surrounding states. Google is tracking all of the fires in the west using their Crisis Response tool, and you can stay up to date with their interactive map showing where all the fires are, how big they’ve gotten, and any special alerts, closures, evacuations and shelter locations.
We have noted many times that flame retardants in polyurethane furniture don’t do much at all to stop fires and might do a lot of harm to our kids; Now the New York Fire Department is looking at changing the way they fight fires, in the face of the way fires themselves have changed.
We tend to focus on cell phones and computers when we talk about e-waste, but, of course, video game consoles, and the games themselves, also use materials that, more often than not, end up in landfills. What’s the overall impact of all of those games? Take a look at the infographic below to get an idea.
The wildfires in Colorado, the worst in the state’s history, have snared headlines for over a week now. Violent flames, hundreds of thousands of acres in destruction, thirty thousand evacuees, at least one casualty, untold damage, and a visit from the president, who stopped by Colorado Springs for a photo opp filled with grim looks and charred rubble.
But this isn’t just a freak occurrence. According to Princeton University’s Michael Oppenheimer, a lead author for the UN’s climate science panel, it’s exactly what we should expect to see much more of in a world beset by climate change.
Recently, the Green Lane Project, hosted by Bikes Belong, officially kicked off in six selected focus cities: Austin, Chicago, Memphis, Portland (Oregon), San Francisco and Washington D.C. Each city will work towards becoming a national leader in installing a world-class network of marked (green) bike lanes.
When we add up the numbers, only about 1 in 5 American households is suitable for solar, which means that the vast majority of the population cannot contribute much in the solar movement even if they wanted to.
In the last few years this has been changing: community-owned solar enables households that otherwise wouldn’t be eligible for solar panels in the past to invest in, and make use of, this technology.