Obama with Secretary of Energy Steven Chu

In Washington, money matters more than words, so no matter what politicians say, budgets provide the best way to judge their intentions. President Obama has been touting clean energy, highlighting it in his State of the Union address and touring Western states to promote initiatives like installing clean energy projects on public lands. But the best indication that he’s serious about clean energy comes in his 2013 budget, which includes a request for a 29 percent bump in funding for renewables.

The president won’t get everything he asks for in the budget, and in the grand scheme of funding, the $2.3 billion he wants to put towards renewable energy is pocket change. But it could make a big difference for solar, wind, and geothermal projects and research. The budget directs funds towards energy efficiency, which could receive 80 percent more money than it did last year. Research into electric vehicles is poised for a big bump, as is funding for commercial building efficiency. The president’s budget also ties these funding increases to an overall goal of increasing clean energy's share of the nation's overall electricity market to 80 percent by 2035. 

To reach that goal, which would draw on natural gas and nuclear power as well as solar and wind, the president needs to convince Congress to pass a clean energy standard, which would require utilities to start shifting to clean power sources. In addition to the political hurdles, there are the practical challenges of building renewable energy projects, improving renewable energy technology, and making sure that energy sources like natural gas and nuclear power are as safe as possible. The increased funding would help ensure that those logistical issues won’t derail progress if the politics fall into place. 

This budget doesn’t make President Obama an environmental hero. While renewable energy could gain funding, the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget will remain stagnant, with small cuts the administration attributes to streamlining government inefficiency.

And although the budget indicates the administration wants to support renewables, National Journal points out that Congress is eager to take a knife to any clean energy proposal the president can come up with. The budget also proposes cuts to oil and gas subsidies, which won’t disappear without the kind of knock-down political fight unlikely to be resolved in an election year.  

The alternative for the Obama administration, though, was to call for renewable energy funding to stay flat or decrease, which wouldn't have demonstrated any commitment. If Congress wants to slash the numbers, the president won't have much power to stop them. But President Obama said he would make clean energy a priority, and today he indicated he meant it. 

Photo courtesy of the Department of Energy

Last week, Nike announced a partnership with a strangely-named Dutch company: DyeCoo. The “coo” refers to carbon dioxide (one molecule of carbon, two of oxygen). DyeCoo has developed a commercial process to pressurize carbon dioxide until it reaches a state where it takes on the properties of both liquid and gas. In that state, the carbon dioxide can be used to dye synthetic fabrics, like polyester. What’s so incredible about this process is that it doesn’t use water.

Right now, dyeing fabric uses tremendous amounts of water. Nike says it takes 100 to 150 liters of water to dye one kilogram of fabric, the weight of five or so T-shirts. Dye factories have to process that water, along with the additional tons generated by bleaching and other textile processing, and dispose of it. Often, they dump the wastewater into nearby rivers.  

To get a sense of how much damage the textile industry can do to water, consider that in India the courts shut down one city’s entire dyeing industry—hundreds of factories that employed tens of thousands of people—because of the damage the chemicals were doing to the water quality of the Noyyal River, once an important source of water for agricultural irrigation. And when Greenpeace investigated a handful of textile factories in China last summer, its researchers found hazardous chemicals flowing into rivers, even after the wastewater had gone through some processing. The World Bank has some country-specific data on water pollution, and in 2007 attributed to the Chinese textile industry about 20 percent of the country’s organic water pollutants.

As a result of Greenpeace’s campaign, a handful of companies, including Nike, pledged to stop using all hazardous chemicals. Dyeing isn’t the only process that contributes to river pollution, but eliminating water from this one step will help. Through its partnership with DyeCoo, Nike’s going to be manufacturing “cutting edge” items, dyed without water. The company says it aims to scale this technology toward “larger production volumes.” 

DyeCoo has a couple of competitors. A waterless dyeing company called AirDye helped produce a collection of clothes for the designer label Costello Tagliapietra, which appeared during New York Fashion Week back in 2009. The technology that DyeCoo relies on has been around for decades; their innovation is a machine that could make the process work at a commercial scale. If a company as big as Nike can adopt this technology, it could push the textile industry toward an ideal production process, in which zero chemicals spew from factories into once-potable rivers. 

Photo via (cc) Flickr user Syeefa Jay

San Francisco is putting a new spin on car- and bike-sharing services. With federal backing, the city is partnering with a local car share service to offer members access to electric bikes, too. The program will launch this year with 45 bikes being integrated into the system, and an additional 45 will come into circulation in 2013, The New York Times reports.

Electric bikes are sneaking into the mainstream. Some replace pedal power with an electric motor; others still require pedaling but amplify a cyclist’s efforts. In New York City, restaurant employees use them to stretch delivery service into wider areas, even though they’re technically illegal in the state. Last year, a bike with an electric assist won the Oregon Manifest challenge, which asked bike designers to create a “utility bike” that could attract civilians to cycling.

That bike’s designer, Tony Pereira, told judges that his bike could replace a car. The San Francisco pilot program is asking more directly whether that’s true. Researchers at University of California-Berkeley will be studying the extent to which car share customers choose an electric bike over a car.

In theory, there should be a threshold at which a bike makes more sense than a car. The rider might rule out a regular bike because she needs to reach a destination quickly, or doesn’t want to arrive sweaty, or doesn’t want to face a particular hill. But she might not need the full power of a car to solve those problems. Since the pilot program will price the electric bike at half the rate of cars or even lower, car share members will have an added incentive to choose the e-bike — a vehicle that will have a smaller environmental impact.

An electric bike sharing program like this one taps into two transportation trends that have the potential to use less energy and decrease emissions. The first is a trend away from ownership: Millennials say they’re more interested in having access to a car than owning one. This makes particular sense for those living in cities: why take on the burdens of a car’s maintenance, safety, and storage when it sits idle most days? For those living in the densest cities, like New York, that logic starts applying to smaller vehicles, like bikes, as well.

The second trend involves tinkering with pricing to help people make rational transportation choices. Offering people the choice between a more expensive car and a cheaper e-bike rental falls into this category; so do other San Francisco initiatives like demand-based parking pricing. The Value Pricing Pilot Program, the federal transportation initiative that’s chipping in for the e-bike share, also supported the parking program, which raises the cost of parking where demand is high and lowers it where demand shrinks.

In both programs, pricing helps nudge consumers towards more efficient decisions. Perhaps drivers don’t need to park on the street they’ve always favored when another one is cheaper. Perhaps that trip to the grocery store doesn’t require a car. These are small decisions, but the more often consumers make smarter ones, the more emissions from transportation—one of the biggest contributors to climate change—will decrease.

Photo via (cc) Flickr user Tyler Howarth

In the lowlands on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro is a woman known as Mother Eunice e Rosangela. In 1997, Eunice and her husband began hosting a day care so that single mothers in the community could work without fearing for their children. But eventually, some mothers stopped coming back.

So Eunice started adopting. Today, in addition to Eunice's 32 adopted children, more than 50 children attend her day care. They are cared for by Eunice and her husband, along with six adults who help out in exchange for room and board. 

At first, the nursery was supported by friends, churches, NGOs and the city government, but most of the funding dried up the following year. So Eunice got creative. She set up a sewing cooperative, Costura Unida, on the top floor of her home, employing some of the mothers from the community. Still, the financial burden was heavy, and the household struggled to make ends meet.

All that changed a few months ago. Her children were watching a Brazilian TV show called Caldeirão de Huck when they decided to write the network a letter asking for help. Last December, a crew showed up and explained that Eunice had been chosen for a segment called "Home Sweet Home"—a sort of Brazilian Extreme Home Makeover. The show then commissioned Rosenbaum, a Brazilian design studio specializing in sustainability, to redesign Eunice’s home, preschool, and sewing shop using recycled materials. Today, Eunice's home is redesigned to incorporate PET bottles and plastic Coca-Cola crates—and a real roof made out of thick cardboard boxes.

After the show aired, Eunice’s popularity skyrocketed. Orders began flowing into the sewing co-op, and she started receiving donations from major companies as well as individuals to help care for the kids. A radio show even donated $17,000 so the sewing shop could afford materials for the increase in orders. And thanks to some entrepreneurial advice, the workers are training to work with recycled cloth, use plastic bags in creative ways, and package their goods in old plastic bottles.

But the best gift she has received, Eunice explains, is respect from the rest of her community—and beyond. Today, the community center even has its own website, where supporters around the world can follow the progress of its business, employees, and kids.

 
All photos © Rosenbaum, courtesy of Eunice e Rosangela

Photo via (cc) Flickr user USDAgov

Green consumers do not drink from disposable plastic bottles. They do not use styrofoam cups. They eschew foam packaging. They refuse disposable chopsticks. They certainly do not accept plastic bags at grocery stores. And if a group of London restaurants succeeds in what one local merchant called “a very ambitious project,” they will not drink from disposable plastic straws.

The restaurants’ Straw Wars campaign aims to reduce waste by pushing back on the use of cheap plastic drinking straws. “Don’t be a sucker,” the campaign admonishes. In the United Kingdom, the campaign’s website points out, 3.5 million people buy a McDonald’s drink with a straw in it every day. That is a lot of straws, which tend not to be recycled and instead make their way to the ocean with so much other single-use plastic. The campaign asks restaurant and bar owners to respond by handing out straws only when asked.

But as The Guardian wrote in its report on the Straw Wars campaign, “There are no figures for the proportion that plastic straws make up as a proportion of total plastic waste, though it is thought to be very small.”

In aggregate, the personal environmental choices that we all make do have an impact. But some have a bigger impact than others. On the scale of choices that make a difference, saying no to drinking straws ranks low. If restaurants and bars are going to join together to promote environmental awareness, I’m much more interested in the efforts they’re making to minimize the energy they use for transportation and their physical space than the tiny, tiny energy and waste savings they achieve by holding back some of the plastic straws they normally dispense.

Although it’s well-intentioned, this campaign, for me, is the last straw (so to speak) in the mounting pile of fatuous green campaigns. If other guilt-driven bans are any indication, I can predict what will follow. Rather than accept disposable straws, consumers will learn to carry around a sustainable straw for multiple uses—just 1,000 drinks or so and the sustainable straw will out-green its disposable competitors. The most common brand will be made from bamboo. Luxury brands might mimic the first straw ever discovered—a tube made from gold and studded with lapis lazuli. Hip, retro bars will revive the 19th century practice of sipping whiskey through rye grass. Sustainability bonus: Rye grass is compostable. Some enterprising designer will design a system in which the rye straws will be brewed into an ethanol that powers the bar’s back kitchen.

This isn’t to say that sipping whiskey from rye straws isn’t a fine pursuit. (I’d be surprised if some farm-to-table restaurant hasn’t revived the practice already.) But smart consumers know that the truly sustainable choices are the ones that would have the largest impact if everyone made them—living in smaller spaces, using less energy to heat and cool those spaces, eating less meat, and using less gas to get around.

Fine, say no to the straw. But demand bigger changes, too.

Photo via (cc) Flickr user Artnow314

To Jarrod Goentzel, energy is just another supply chain problem: the product being delivered is electrons. “We have to build inventory,” says Goentzel, executive director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s supply chain management program.

The problem? “There are not a lot of good ways to do that,” he says. Wind and solar plants don’t produce electrons as predictably as coal or nuclear plants do, and to increase their reliability—to build inventory—the energy needs to be stored somehow. But storage, particularly storage in large batteries, is expensive.

But what about large batteries that are already in use? Conveniently, electric vehicles have batteries. Using that capacity to help increase renewable’s reliability — an idea called vehicle-to-grid—is an intriguing idea for renewable energy advocates. Goentzel wondered whether it would be an attractive idea for a group of people he’s worked closely with over the years — fleet managers, people who could have access to a large number of electric vehicles.

“The natural place for vehicle-to-grid rollouts is going to be with fleets,” he says. To begin with, that means fleets operating in cities, where delivery routes are within the range of today’s electric vehicles. “The fleets all come back to the same location at night or whenever they're down. They're parked in one location. They can connect into the grid where the grid can manage it better.”

For Goentzel, the question isn’t whether a fleet of trucks can help grid operators with their jobs. It’s whether the grid can help businesses by increasing their revenue. Utilities might pay for electric vehicles’ storage and generation capacity, but would this approach make an impact on the cost of operating a vehicle? The business case he and his team laid out suggested the savings would total $700 to $1,400 — about 5 to 10 percent of vehicle operation costs.

“It's not going to completely drive behavior,“ Goentzel says. “But it's enough to pay attention to as a company or a fleet operator.”

The companies most likely to take note of this opportunity are truck companies like Ryder or Penske, which own large number of vehicles and operate them for other business. But, Goentzel says, “Any vehicle you see in the city is going to park at some point, and it's a viable candidate.”

That means UPS trucks, Peapod grocery-delivery trucks, service providers, government fleets, “any vehicle that’s of a decent size and there’s more than one of them, managed by somebody,” according to Goentzel, could live a double life. During the day, they could make their rounds; at night, or in off-hours, they could help ensure that the power from wind and solar sources matches the quality of the power form coal.

“It's a lot easier to aggregate and control a fleet,” says Goentzel. “It's a matter of turning individual behavior into fleet behavior. That's the work.” One day, any electric vehicle, even those parked in personal garages, could help manage energy flow.

Photo via (cc) Flickr user striatic

Between 2001 and 2008, the Illinois Housing Development Authority greenlit 248 affordable housing developments in the Chicago area. In Illinois, affordable housing operates on a simple principle: housing costs shouldn’t exceed 30 percent of a family’s annual budget. But rent isn’t the only variable that determines how affordable a particular home is. Sustainability matters, too.

Some of the Chicago housing developments had better access to trains and bus lines; others went into denser communities, where grocery stores and shops are accessible on foot or by bike. When the Center for Neighborhood Technology, a nonprofit that promotes urban sustainability, looked at average transportation costs associated with these developments, it found (PDF) a difference of $3,000 between the least and most “location-efficient”—sustainable—communities.

Transportation costs don’t only bust the budgets of low-income households. As the price of gas rises, working- and middle-class families can find themselves in what the New America Foundation calls “the energy trap” — stuck with the high costs of car ownership and fuel. It’s a particular problem for families that have moved out to the exurbs in search of more affordable housing without considering how much more they’ll have to pay to reach their jobs or their grocery store.

Environmental and economic priorities are often at odds to each other, but in this case, they line up. “Greater economic sustainability at the household level also leads to better environmental outcomes,” says Maria Choca Urban, the director of CNT’s transportation and community development program. Sustainability advocates often start with the premise that dense, transit-accessible community save energy. But start with saving money for individual households — savings that people might feel more connected to — and the end point is the same.

Finding sustainable housing doesn’t necessarily mean living in the city, either. Some suburban locations keep transportation costs low, offering access to good schools and safer streets. But Choca Urban cautions, “You can't just willy-nilly say you're going to the suburbs. There are better locations whether you're looking at the suburbs or the city.” Just being near a train or bus line isn’t enough to ensure lower costs, for instance: frequency of service matters, too.

CNT thinks the key is to make decisions about the location of affordable housing developments based on the combined cost of housing and transportation. Instead of limiting housing costs to 30 percent of a household’s budget, CNT is recommending agencies limit total housing and transportation costs to 45 percent. “From where we sit, it is reasonable to pay a little more for your housing if your transportation costs come within that 45 percent standard,” says Choca Urban.

In other words, it might be more expensive to live in a community where the grocery story is just down the block. But if living there means there’s no need to own a car, it might be the more affordable choice in the end.

Photo via (cc) Flickr user facelessb

That makes this weekend a less-than-obvious time to think about sustainability. Discussions about living sustainably often come around to sacrifice—giving up meat, incandescent light bulbs, gas-guzzling SUVs, cheap coal—and we are not going to give up the Super Bowl. The only path forward is to try to minimize its impact, to design the most sustainable Super Bowl possible. Here is what that might look like.

The Stadium. The greater sports world, like most modern businesses, is working to make operations more energy- and resource-efficient. Last year saw the creation of the Green Sports Alliance, and a Natural Resources Defense Council program has advised sports teams on going green since 2004. Stadiums now feature recycling, composting, napkins made from post-consumer content, scoreboards lit with LEDs, flushless urinals, seats made of recycled materials, retractable roofs that minimize air conditioning needs, and advanced building control systems that help reduce waste. Some teams, including the New England Patriots, are installing solar panels to help power behemoth stadiums; the Washington Redskins claims to have the largest array in the National Football League.

But on game days, even the Redskins’ solar installation provides only a fraction of the power the stadium needs. A Sustainable Super Bowl stadium will have invested in an energy storage system so that it can hoard solar or wind energy to use on days when the stadium needs the most power. It would also recycle wastewater and use it to water the field and flush toilets.

Getting to the stadium also drives up the Super Bowl’s environmental impact. This year, both teams come from the east coast, yet the game is being held in Indianapolis. Both teams, plus legions of fans, have to fly long distances for the game. A more sustainable choice of venue would place the game at a stadium centrally located to both teams or at the home stadium of one of them. Sustainable stadiums would also allow access only by public transportation, eliminating lines of idling cars and fields of parking lot asphalt (tailgating would be an unfortunate casualty).

The Ads. All eyes are on the TV during the Super Bowl, and the ad people know it. They hawk us cars and soda and snacks. They sell us beer we’re already drinking. They pitch blockbuster movies. Every commercial break offers an opportunity to give us this message: Go. Buy. More.

The Sustainable Super Bowl would sell us a different message. Instead of a handsome man zooming down the open road in a sleek ride, we’d see a handsome biker zooming down a city street on his shining bike, dodging cars slowed by traffic. The slogan would be: “The new open road.” Or, an Amtrak ad might feature a pretty girl on a train. An attractive man sits next to her. Romance ensues. Instead of ads pushing milk or pork, we’d hear about the benefits of beans or cauliflower. An ad from the U.S. Council of Mayors about a family discovering unknown adventures in their hometown might replace one selling trips to Disney World.

The Super Bowl Party. Rest easy: A Sustainable Super Bowl Party would still feature beer. The key is to get together with your friends—or, preferably, your neighbors, to minimize travel and waste. Turn on one TV. Pool your money for a keg. Maybe choose a local beer. (You know it’s better than Budweiser.)

Think hard about the snacks you make. Vegetable plates are a good choice, and if you can bear to cut up your own broccoli, you can skip the excess packaging and carbon costs of delivery. I’m also going out on a limb and advocate tofu buffalo wings. Yes, they exist. What makes buffalo wings so delicious? They are fried and covered with delicious, spicy sauce, then dipped in blue-cheese dressing. Does it really matter what is on the inside? You will taste neither the chicken nor the tofu. Try the tofu.

Photo via (cc) Flickr user AnnieGreenSprings

Photo via (cc) Flickr user Thomas Claveirole

The Republicans that control the House have never pretended to like alternative modes of transportation. But while the Senate’s bipartisan bill doesn’t scorn biking and walking and train-taking with quite the same verve, it still favors cars above all other forms of transportation. While Americans are moving towards a multi-modal transportation future, Congress is focused on shoring up a system designed in the 1950s to enable Cold War-era military movements and to please the auto industry. That system needs patching (its bridges, in particular), and fixing its creaking joints should, as Republicans promise, create jobs. But by prioritizing highways, the country is missing an opportunity to build a system that reflects the preferences and needs of today’s travelers.

It's clear that America’s travel culture is shifting. In the 1950s, a car defined a person. Now, a growing number of young people don’t even want drivers’ licenses: In 2008, only 65 percent of 18-year-olds had a license, compared to 80 percent in 1983. Millennials also say they prefer car access to car ownership. (That factoid comes from Zipcar, though, which has business interest in believing that’s true.) Although 20- and 30-somethings have been relocating less often during the Great Recession, when they do, they choose cities like Portland, Denver, Austin, and Washington, D.C., where biking and walking culture rules.  

Young people don’t necessarily stay in cities when they grow up, though—it does become more difficult to shrug off a dangerous intersection or subway delays with babies in tow. School quality, nostalgia for backyard adventures, and rising rents all have the potential to force people to the suburbs as they get older, too. But the government should be doing everything it can to keep young people in dense urban areas for economic as well as environmental reasons.

To roll back climate change, Americans are going to have to travel more responsibly, and by living in cities, without cars, young people are already stepping up. Instead of favoring a highway system conceived by past generations, Congress has an obligation to invest in the alternative systems that will rule the future.

Photo via (cc) Flickr user JoeInSouthernCA

One of the most visible fights between environmentalists and clean energy developers was over a solar project that infringed on the habitat of desert tortoises. “When there's a site that's problematic, the choices essentially are: move it to somewhere better, redesign it within the project area, or if neither of those are possible, offset the impacts via additional mitigation,” says Brendan Cummings, who directs the public lands program at the Center for Biological Diversity, which pushed to protect the tortoises. In this case the developer, BrightSource, agreed to provide additional resources to offset the impact its project would have on the tortoise habitat. But now, Cummings says, that sort of mitigation is less likely to be necessary: The administration and the developers are making better choices about where to site projects and how to design them.

“Renewable projects will have a negative impact on the place they're built on,” says Cummings. “Getting the size of land you need that's under one owner—it's usually much easier to go to public land than to private land.” But those impacts, he says, are counterbalanced by the advantages of renewable energy. Ultimately, pushing back climate change will help preserve the habitats of species all around the world, not just in the tracts of land disturbed by renewable projects.

Photo courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management

"Climate change": At this point, does that sound more like a political buzzword than a real scientific event? Even though most scientists agree that climate change is well underway, the public's understanding of it lags behind—whether due to confusion, religion, or willful ignorance. Our country's acceptance of the phenomenon has actually retreated in the past few years.

A new, free app for iPhones and iPads called Just Science jolts us back to reality by translating the science of climate change into layperson's terms. The app takes two centuries of data from the comprehensive Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) study, then converts it into a color-coded moving map that shows how today's monthly temperatures compare to historical averages since 1800. The result, according to developer Nick Orenstein, is a gradual, everyday reminder of what's happening to the planet.

"When a user curls up with his iPad on the couch or pulls out her iPhone at a coffee shop, their attention is focused and their mind is open for information input," Orenstein told Skeptical Science. "Do it right, and the result is a 'eureka' moment of lasting understanding that no politician, pundit, or preacher could refute."

Orenstein has succeeded in bringing a far-reaching global event down to earth. Just Science is couched in our individual experience, not vague rhetoric. It's also a highly addictive digital tool, one that taps into an element of discovery reminiscent of fourth grade science fairs. Most of all, the app fulfills our essential need to see for ourselves, rather than taking politicians and advocates at their word.

Images via YouTube.
 

Green sea urchin populations have plummeted in North America, thanks in large part to rising demands for uni, a sweet, creamy dish made from sea urchin gonads. As food writer Barry Estabrook recently noted, uni’s popularity on sushi bars prompted nearly 3,000 commercial fishermen to take to Maine’s seas in the mid-1990s in search of the delicacy. Diners couldn’t get enough, business boomed, and Maine’s fishermen hauled in nearly 40 million pounds of sea urchin worth about $33 million in 1994 alone.

As Estabrook warns, “never underestimate the power of human appetites to devastate an aquatic resource.” Green sea urchin populations couldn’t keep up with hungry sushi fans. In 2010, Maine’s fishermen brought in just 2.6 million pounds of uni. Though rehabilitation efforts are underway, green sea urchins continue to suffer low population numbers.

The sea urchin’s tale is sad, but familiar. Consumers have taken a serious jab at oceanic ecosystems with their collective knives, forks, spoons, and chopsticks. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, more than 70 percent of global fish species are either fully exploited or depleted. It turns out there just aren’t that many fish in the sea. Here are five more ocean-dwellers we are literally eating to death:

Bluefin Tuna

Few fish species rival the power, size, and strength of the mighty bluefin tuna. The average bluefin weighs in at 550 pounds and measures 6.5 feet long. Just one bluefin tuna can fetch more than $100,000. The massive haul is partly why regulatory agencies have failed to put adequate protections in place for the seriously threatened fish—it still hasn’t earned “endangered” status, though most scientists agree it should.

Western Atlantic bluefin tuna populations have declined by 80 percent since the 1970s, when demand and prices for the fish skyrocketed. The eastern stock of Atlantic bluefins hasn’t fared any better—according to the Center for Biological Diversity [PDF], the population has decreased by 60 percent in the past decade. The culprit? Sushi restaurants again, which prize the succulent swimmer for sashimi and spicy tuna rolls. The bluefin’s fatty underbelly, called toro, fetches a particularly high price.

Sharks

Soup is the reason so many shark species teeter on the brink of extinction. Shark-fin soup is a traditional Chinese dish served at major events like weddings and banquets to symbolize status and importance. Soup aficionados acquire their main ingredient through "finning," a brutal process in which fisherman catch live sharks, slice off their fins, then throw the animals back into the water to slowly die. About 70 million sharks [PDF] are killed through finning every year.

Decimating fish populations is never acceptable, but sharks pose a more complex problem. Sharks are apex predators, the kings of the ocean. They keep other species’ populations in check. When shark populations dip too low—and they have—entire oceanic ecosystems can get thrown dangerously out of whack.

Some cities, states, and even countries are beginning to offer sharks some protections. Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, the Bahamas, the Maldives, and several cities across the globe have banned the sale of shark fins. More bans are expected to pass this year, but it’s going to take a lot of legislating to make a tangible dent in overfishing.

Chilean Sea Bass

Chefs and consumers alike covet Chilean sea bass, otherwise known as Patagonian toothfish, for its rich, buttery flavor. The hearty dish rose in popularity in the 1990s, resulting in overfishing that seriously depleted Chilean sea bass populations by the end of the decade.

Some folks say that Chilean sea bass have rebounded in recent years. One fishery is even certified by the Marine Stewardship Council. But conservationists warn consumers not to start chowing down on Chileans anytime soon. Casson Trenor, a Greenpeace campaigner and author of the book Sustainable Sushi, recently wrote that “the very existence of a Chilean sea bass fishery is in itself evidence of an unsustainable fishing paradigm.” As Trenor notes, in order to even locate a “sustainable” Chilean sea bass fishery, fishermen were forced to travel to the waters of Antarctica and drop their hooks to great depth. If fishermen must literally sail to the ends of the earth to locate and haul back even one healthy catch of Chilean sea bass, should we really be eating those fish?

Orange Roughy

This flaky, white fish is another swimmer that’s been fished beyond the point of sustainability. Orange roughy’s popularity, combined with its slow growth rate and long lifespan, resulted in population declines of 80 percent between the 1970s and 1990s. Orange roughy can live to be 100 years old. Often, the fish are caught before they’ve had the chance to reproduce.

These are five of the most seriously threatened fish in the oceans, but they’re hardly the only unsustainable options. The Monterey Bay Aquarium, which produces a yearly “Seafood Watch” guide on environmentally friendly fish options, lists 21 types of fish on its “avoid” list.

And fishing is just one of many threats the oceans face: Climate change, offshore oil drilling, and pollution each create their own set of issues. Fishing itself can wreak havoc on other species, which can get accidentally caught in nets or destroyed by bottom trawlers.

That’s where you come in. With so many complex problems hammering ocean ecosystems, curbing fish consumption is a relatively easy way to put some bounty back in the briny deep. Consumers can wield their knives, forks, and chopsticks for good by following guides like Seafood Watch, which offer region-specific lists of which species boast plentiful populations and which fish are best to keep off the table.

While they’re not eating, diners can also speak for the oceans. California and Toronto recently enacted bans on the sale of shark fins largely due to consumer pressure. The long-term solution to protecting threatened fish species is to put city, state, and federal officials on the hook.

Photo via (cc) Flickr user adonofrio

The American Society of Landscape Architects and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at the University of Texas at Austin have been working to create a set of standards since 2005. Last week, the program they developed, The Sustainable Sites Initiative, certified the first three landscapes through its standards process. In Missouri, a corporate campus where parking lots retain storm water, a walking trail passes through restored prairie, and a garden grows vegetables earned three stars. A green space at a Texas college and a playground at a urban park in Memphis each earned one star. To earn certification, sites can earn points for features like soil restoration, water conservation, native plants, and sustainable land maintenance.

The organizations running SITES, which now include the U.S. Botanic Garden, hope the standards program will raise awareness of the possibilities of sustainable landscapes in the same way that LEED boosted the profile of sustainable building. When ASLA conducted a public opinion poll a couple years ago, respondents said they're concerned about the environment and they know how to make their homes greener, says Nancy Somerville, ASLA’s executive vice president. But when asked whether they knew what they could do to make their outdoor spaces more sustainable, their level of knowledge dropped. "The overall public has been completely unaware of what you want to be doing in the design and maintenance of the outdoor environment," Somerville says. "But all that connective tissue from the building envelope out plays as great or a greater role in the environmental sustainability and livability of our communities."

One of the challenges of developing the standards has been creating criteria flexible enough to work for a wide variety of outdoor spaces—from office parks and military complexes to national parks. The three sites that earned certification are participating in a pilot phase meant to identify any difficulties in using the system. A streetscape, for instance, might not be able to rack up points for using recycled materials or use of native plants because the standards must work as well for a wetland in Louisiana as for an arid zone in Arizona.

But the larger challenge might be convincing people that sustainable landscape are not inferior aesthetically to the lawns and gardens and road medians that have dominated America's outdoor spaces for decades. Holly Shimizu, executive director of the U.S. Botanic Garden, says people often believe sustainable landscapes must be wild and untended. Her organization is working to spread the principles established in SITES to a less technical audience: Landscapeforlife.org provides home gardeners with guidance on soil, water, and plants, derived from SITES principles.

“You can still have a lot of beauty in these projects, and you should,” says Susan Rieff, executive director of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. “But it requires a lot more care, I think, and a lot more thought. Just as building a green building takes more thought and attention than people were used to.”

Photo courtesy of SWT Design

A decade ago Ireland's booming economy transformed it from a nation with staggering unemployment and poverty into a prosperous isle that was a magnet for international corporations. Buckley told the Irish Times that since the crash of the Celtic Tiger, he's seen too many suicides, including that of a close friend. And, like many Americans, before the downturn a bank granted him a 100 percent loan to buy a home, even though he had no income to pay the monthly mortgage. Bill collectors, says Buckley, have come after him and "terrorized" his family.

When he found out that the Central Bank of Ireland was giving away the shredded cash, he "collected two trailerfuls" and started out creating mixed-media art with it. He began building his Billion Euro House in Dublin in December 2011 in an unrented office space. Each 6-inch by 2-inch brick is about $50,000 Euros, and provides such cozy insulation that despite the cold of winter Buckley says he doesn't need heat inside.

Nearly 500 people came to see the Billion Euro House in its first week and Buckley is thrilled it's gotten people talking about what's happening in Ireland and around the world. "This is just paper and people are committing suicide," he says.

Photos courtesy of Billion Euro House

Economic development and political power may have overlooked this community in favor of tourist magnets like the French Quarter, but SEE CEO Lea Keal, 32, and board chairman Stacey Danner, 37, see only opportunity in helping develop this community and others like it by providing access to solar power.

SEE provides financing to low-income residents to lease and eventually purchase solar energy equipment that is otherwise cost-prohibitive. Though they're getting cheaper, solar panels and mounts can still cost as much as $25,000, and that’s before you get to installation and maintenance. For that price, you’re not going to find too many solar customers in a city like New Orleans, where there are almost as many households with incomes below $75,000 (76 percent, according to 2010 Census figures) as homes that were submerged below floodlines after Katrina (80 percent).

Only a small percentage of wealthy families can afford to buy or get a loan for solar. “Before this, people needed either equity in their homes or sparkling credit to get solar,” says Darren Davis, 53, SEE's executive director of business development. Thanks in part to a $1 million loan from California-based Adam Capital this past fall, SEE is changing that equation.

Homeowners using solar power reap huge savings from cheap, clean energy—savings that poor families desperately need. “It’s expensive to be poor, and nowhere is that truer than in energy,” says John Moore, a former energy policy analyst under Mayor Ray Nagin who now does consulting work for SEE. “[If you are poor], you likely live in an energy-inefficient home, and your energy bills are higher than normal.”

Keal’s enterprise has found a way to get solar tech into residents’ hands for as low as $43 a month. Producing power from the sun and not the fossil fuel-sourced local power utility, Entergy, SEE can now replace light bills that often run $100-$200 a month with a lease payment that’s less than $50. Solar customers only pay for Entergy’s power if they use more energy than is absorbed from the sun through the panels—providing they use less energy than is produced, most customers pay only the leasing fee for the panels. And since they don’t rely on the grid, a solar-powered house will keep the lights on during a neighborhood blackout—an event not uncommon in New Orleans, especially after Katrina.

Another $5 affords customers maintenance service for the life of the system, typically 25 years. At the end of their lease agreements, anywhere from five to 15 years, they can purchase the solar panels outright for $1. It’s accepted across the solar industry that panels will last at least 25 years, but if the panels were damaged in, say, a hurricane, SEE technicians will repair not only the panels, but any damage to the roof as well.

SEE isn’t the only player in town for solar energy. It isn't even the only company offering a lease program—Brad Pitt’s Make it Right does, too—but SEE might be the only one that views “communities of color” as its target market and has the audacity to express that explicitly in a press release.

The company works with owners and renters (through their landlords), and offer leases regardless of customers' credit scores. SEE even guarantees that its interest rate, a low 2.85 percent, won’t change, even if a customer's pays late or misses payments five months in a row. Few companies will take on this kind of risk in any industry, except predatory subprime mortgage lenders or payday loan centers.

“They say it’s a risk,” says Danner, explaining why he’s taking a chance on this market, “but these are the people with some of the best payback records in America, because they have the most to lose!” Families need to keep the power on in their homes, so he figures they're going to pay for energy—whether from the sun or not. And for the most part, he’s right: Even those who have their power cut off have chances to get reconnected through government low-income housing energy assistance programs. Given SEE’s leniency—they'll only act after someone's skipped six monthly payments—it’s tough to default.

How does SEE get away with shouldering all that risk? Tax credits. Solar energy in Louisiana is perhaps the sunniest investment in the nation; SEE benefits from a federal tax credit that returns 30 percent of every dollar spent toward renewable energy, and Louisiana adds an additional 50 percent tax credit for solar.

With government subsidies so high, the only reason for a Louisianan not to slap solar panels on her roof is if she can't afford the thousands of dollars in up-front costs to reap the subsidies later. SEE fronts that money for low-income clients: The average customer pays roughly one-fifth of the cost of the equipment, while SEE collects its money back through subsidies and the interest paid by the customer.

Keal, Danner and Davis, and Moore are all black, and back at the office, Chinese-American staff member Alice Lai, 21, trains recruits from the neighborhood to become sales agents, including a 70-year-old man she is teaching to open a Gmail account. This kind of diversity is, unfortunately, not normal, not even in the do-gooder clean energy industry. SEE also offers workforce training—technical, entrepreneurial, financial—to anyone who wants to learn how to build their own solar enterprise.

“It’s what we call our own stimulus program for the ‘hood,” Davis says. “A lot of stuff we do is for goodwill. We are a for-profit, but there’s not much profit in this. We’re providing a service to the community.”

Photo by Shawn Escoffery

When asked why they went brown, companies are transparent: The color "symbolizes" eco-friendliness. Brown paper products have been shown to make people "feel like they were doing something good for the environment." Consumers need "visual differentiation" to know which products are environmentally sound. It's not even so important that a product be brown, just "that it's not white."

The Journal points out the obvious: Brown doesn't necessarily mean green. Today, "white paper can be made from 100% recycled fibers and whitened without chemical chlorine, traditionally the primary complaint against it." Seventh Generation actually adds a step to the production process—brown pigmentation—to make its diapers appear eco. It's not clear whether Target, Dunkin', and Cinnabon's new napkins are any better for the environment than the old ones were, they're just browner.

And at this point, it doesn't really matter: Brown is firmly linked to green in the consumer's mind. Eco-minded consumers now reach for brown, flecked products because they assume less environmentally conscious paper companies would take pains to dye them white. In fact, they may be rushing to tint everything beige.

Photo via (cc) Flickr user SixRevisions