The ocean is an important factor in absorbing and mitigating Earth’s carbon emissions, but it is becoming overloaded with carbon. Between 2000 and 2001, its absorbtion rate decreased by 10 percent.

Wow. Granted, each flight doesn’t literally kill a polar bear. This isn’t some sick inversion of the ringing bells that beget angel wings from It’s a Wonderful Life. But it does hammer home the increasingly annoying reality that most of the greatest technological advancements in human history—especially those related to convenience, mobility, and power—have brought about some of the worst environmental problems in the present. And the specific point is well taken: Air travel produces ungodly emissions, so if you’re going to fly, make sure the trip is worth it.

Via Treehugger. Thanks, Zach.

The test drive found some kinks still to work out (sometimes the generator becomes not silent, but very, very loud), but this is a pretty exceptionally good review of what could be the car that changes a lot of things—both for the environment and the American automotive industry—when it’s released in nine months.

And here is an accompanying slideshow of Volt porn.

We aren’t sure if this is in the wild, or someone’s pet crab to whom the owner gave an offering of a broken bottle as shelter. Either way, it’s kinda cute and kinda frightening. It doesn’t take much of a leap of though to figure this might be increasingly what our ocean critters look like—from crabs using broken bottles to octopi and eels using various discarded baskets and jugs for homes.

Read more about the health of our oceans in the full post.

The Fall is a photographic survey of our historic unconscious. Mosse traveled to intensely remote locations, from the Patagonian Andes to the Yukon Territories, and worked as an embed with the US military to produce work for this exhibition. The Fall is a rescue mission to try to locate our blasted sense of landscape and archeology, and reclaim the primeval waste for our imagination. Produced to an epic scale, each of the photographs in The Fall is a history painting for our times.

727, Santo Domingo, January, 2009.

C-47, Alberta, June, 2009.

Entropy has always been a painfully difficult concept for me to accept, yet it’s undeniable and unavoidable. There’s a grand sadness to the inevitability of material decay and transformation, which is masterfully captured in this series—just as it was in “Breach.” But that sadness doesn’t detract from the beauty of these photos. If anything, it adds to it.

Curtis Commando, Patagonia, November, 2008.

The Jack Shainman Gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. “The Fall” will show from November 19 through December 23. You can see all the images on Mosse’s website.

There’s a Jack Johnson song called “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” and we all know these three R’s are a good place to start when it comes to living a more sustainable life. While recycling tends to get the most attention, reducing and reusing can be equally effective tools in the battle to get by without creating a mountain of waste in the meantime.

Take, for example, eating. We all eat. We eat on the go, at home, at restaurants, in the car, at the office, at school, alone, socially—meals are an integral part our lives. Meals are also an easy place to make a difference environmentally: nearly one third of the waste produced in the United States is from packaging, and food packaging accounts for much of that.

Start by paying attention to your grocery shopping. Look at the way things are packaged, and opt for items with as little packaging as possible. Choose glass or paper packaging over plastic and Styrofoam. Go to the deli section for meats and cheeses. Prepackaged meats and cheeses often come on Styrofoam and wrapped in plastic. The butcher or deli at your grocery store will usually wrap your purchase in a bit of waxed paper.

Purchase fruits and vegetables from local farmer’s markets or produce stands. If that’s not an option, avoid produce in plastic containers and skip the baggie—your selections can be weighed just the same at the register. If possible, avoid individually wrapped items altogether by buying in bulk. Bringing your own bags with you whenever possible helps a great deal. Leave a few in your car and by the front door so you can grab them before you go.

When packing meals or snacks, chose reusable options for packaging. Love My Planet Lunches is a great company that makes washable, reusable bags you can take on the go. Keep a coffee mug and water bottle in the car, at the office, or by the front door. When you get a drink, you can opt for your reusable bottles and avoid adding to the 2.5 million plastic bottles thrown away each hour. Some stores offer a discount for those who bring their own cups.

When getting a snack, take it without a bag or box. If you order a bagel, ask that they put the cream cheese on it for you. This eliminates the plastic knife and container for the spread. If you are ordering takeout or bringing home leftovers, ask that they not include napkins, utensils, coupons, or condiments. If your office orders in, keep silverware and cloth napkins in your desk. In general, use storage containers instead of plastic bags, foil, and plastic wrap. Bringing awareness to your daily life is the biggest step.

It’s inevitable that we will purchase packaged items and that will create some waste. But, we can do our part to change the amount of packaging and waste we put out. Quite often, making these changes will benefit your wallet as well. Price tags are affected by packaging. When you buy local or in bulk, you remove the added cost of packaging. Not only does the earth win, your wallet wins too. A lovely shade of green for everyone.

Guest blogger Milissa Skoro is an actress and works on the Leadership Council for NRDC. Photo (cc) by Flickr user oceandesetoiles.

There have been an increasing number of stories coming to light detailing how organized crime syndicates around the world have been getting their dirty little fingers into the green world. The latest: 1) Italian police have arrested two businessmen on fraud charges, linking them with Mafia in wind farm permit fixing schemes; and 2) The government of Madagascar (such as it is) appears to be tied in with what’s being called a ‘timber mafia’, profiting from illegal wood sales largely sent to China.

Read more about those two stories in the full post over at TreeHugger.

Despite the deadline of the Copenhagen conference, Obama placed energy second on his priority list, guaranteeing that health care would occupy most of the year…. And then—as with health care—he left it pretty much entirely up to Congress to write the necessary legislation. That kept him from having to bear the blame for a byzantine bill, but it also meant that the Senate—the body from which he came, and whose culture he had to know—could work in its usual style, without White House pressure. Which at the moment means that Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham are essentially rewriting the legislation, to what end no one really knows.

Yesterday, Dave Roberts, another of the heavy-hitting environmental writers, chimed in on Grist with a piece called “Is Bill McKibben Right to Be Angry with Obama?”:

Alas, despite the far-reaching powers people tend to ascribe to the U.S. presidency in general and Obama specifically, it seems to me the real culprit is—yes, I’m going to say the same thing again, I’m boring!—the U.S. Senate.

….When it comes to matters under executive branch control, the progress over the last 10 months has been amazing—new fuel-economy rules, new enforcement of efficiency standards, EPA moving forward on CO2 regulations, energy standards and goals for all federal departments, tons of green stimulus money, national retrofit programs, delay of mining and drilling permits, sustained bi- and multi-lateral international climate diplomacy … the list goes on. Obama is doing what a president can do—more than any president has ever done.

Roberts argues that without conservative Democrats in the Senate on board, there’s only so much that Obama can do, and that further “White House pressure” in the form of public campaigning wouldn’t help. He blames Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), Jim Webb (D-Vir.), and Evan Bayh (D-Ind.).

What do you think? Elizabeth Kolbert, want to weigh in?

The Wooster Collective talks to Neozoon about their furry installations, and what they mean for how we view animals.

Neozoon’s work is both amusing and arresting. Seeing the playful animals in city centers and on monuments makes us smile. But the subsequent realization that these are actual animal pelts (made from discarded fur coats) creates a feeling of uneasiness.  For sure, their message does not go unnoticed.

WOOSTER: How do you choose the specific placements?

NEOZOON: Finding a place to release the Neozoons always depends on several criteria, the most important one being the animal itself. We try to find the right place for each one: where it feels at home, where it finds the attention it needs, were it finds fellow kind—like the bears in Berlin, who were close to the Berlin heraldic bears in their undeserving bear pit—or where it walks on historic trails, like the flock of lambs on their way to La Villette in Paris, once one of the largest slaughterhouses in Europe.

W: What do you think your piece adds to or subtracts from to the community?

N: At best, it raises questions, like: “Where have all those animals gone in my environment” or “oops—was this piece of shrink wrapped supermarket meat really once alive and kicking?” We take discarded fur coats and reintroduce them to the environment by returning them to their former shape, making it “live,” to let people perceive [that] this used to be a living animal. Then it was just an animal skin, with a human inside, and now it has returned as an animal. Maybe it also adds something wild to our civilized urban surrounding.

W: What type of reaction did you get from the community?

N: Overall the reactions are positive, both on the streets and via the internet. Often people encourage us, when they “catch“ us working, although, to be honest, some are also disgusted.

W: Is there a story about putting it up?

N: The starting point of our work is the material, which we get in masses for free because it is otherwise discarded and destroyed. It is a simple recycling process by which we can diversify urban space without being merely decorative.

W: Why did you choose the subject matter you did?

N: Our concern is the animal and its environment. We question the relationship of people and animals in a Western urban surrounding. You could really describe it as schizophrenic. On one hand, tons of meat: thousands of animals slaughtered every hour outside the cities and sold in clean plastic with expiration dates, and preferably not to be recognized as such. And on the other hand pets: insanely bred toys and overloaded with emotions. Its just interesting to see, how we perceive animals and how they seem to differ in value, just depending on what fits us best.

W: What is inspiring to you now?

There are a lot of interesting debates and weird stuff going on in transgenetic research, politics, economy, sociology, and it is all connected to the question of what separates human beings from animals and what connects them. And it is inspiring to reinvent our social, environmental, and natural surroundings.

To see more of Neozoon’s work, visit their website. To see more great street art, visit the Wooster Collective.

Top photo by Daniel Dick.