Modern Serenity

As we enter the fall of 2011, the race for the presidency is well underway, and those of us in states that hold the first presidential primaries are still receiving the brunt of the attention.  The Republican candidates have swarmed New Hampshire and have made clear what is truly important to them and what they [...]

Imagine creating your own nutrient rich soil booster right in your own home, using nothing but trash, water, air and … worms? If you think that sounds crazy, think again. Vermicomposting has become one of the latest must-do green projects for anyone looking to reduce waste and promote healthy living, and is considered a viable [...]

To address poor water quality in rural communities, including ones along the United States and Mexico border, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) this month announced a partnership to improve drinking water and wastewater systems. The agreement will also create jobs in these communities because of the anticipated [...]

Royal Dutch Shell announced on Friday that a platform flow-line was leaking hundreds of barrels of oil into the North Sea. According to a press release issued Friday on the company webpage, the flow-line on the seabed is “now isolated and depressurized.” Although the company said leakage had been “considerably” reduced, there was no indication [...]

I recently moved to a small college town in upstate New York and was tickled to find t-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Don’t Frack with My Water” at a local store.  The shirts are a cute way of addressing an issue that is anything but.  High-volume hydraulic fracturing – commonly known as “hydrofracking” or simply [...]

50,000 plant and animal species go extinct every year according to David Tillman, professor of ecology at University of Minnesota. This rate is at least 100 times higher than the natural rate of extinction and approaches the same apocalyptic rate experienced 65 million years ago, after many scientists believe a meteorite hit earth, shifting normal [...]

We are coming into an era of environmentalism in which the term no longer conjures radical ideas in most people’s minds. One can now be in favor of protecting the environment in the most elemental ways [...]

Ryland King, founder of Environmental Education for the Next Generation (EENG) won a $100,000 grant from Dockers, through an online contest on the clothing company’s Facebook page. The contest, officially coined Wear The Pants Project, allowed Facebook users to vote for one of 3,000 contestants to receive a monetary kick to jumpstart their dream-project. “We ended [...]

Sustainability can be described as a “closed loop system”, meaning that there is no outside input and each part of the system sustains itself and supports other parts of the system. Small livestock are an integral part of self sufficiency by not only providing food but by also providing manure for fertilizer, waste reduction and [...]

On July 19, 2011, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke wrote a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama that addressed Iceland’s continued whaling practices, forcing action by the US Federal Government. According to the letter, Iceland killed 273 endangered fin whales in 2009 and 2010. Iceland has not harvested any fin whales so far in 2011, [...]