Green Environment

A ban on the clearing of tropical forests in Indonesia is on the verge of being extended in a historic deal that could protect some of the world’s most threatened habitats. Indonesia is home to about a third of the world’s remaining tropical forests, which provide a habitat for endangered species such as the orangutan and Sumatran tiger. For the past two years the government has imposed a moratorium on felling forests in an effort to halt the deforestation that has laid waste to much of the country’s virgin habitat and cleared the way for plantations of palm oil and pulp, paper and timber businesses. But that moratorium is about to expire, and the termination would leave loggers and plantations free to expand into fresh areas. Reports from agencies and local press on Friday night suggested the country’s president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, was about to sign up to an extension of the deal. via Indonesia’s tropical forests set to benefit from further clearing ban | World news | guardian.co.uk.

Helvey Design Studio has created a series of furniture built to last a lifetime. Their FIRST Collection has been designed with the principals of simplicity, minimalism and quality craftsmanship. Each piece is handcrafted in San Diego, California, using only sustainable, responsibly sourced goods such as naturally felled Northern California Black Oak, FSC certified Black Walnut from South Carolina, and steel that is 99% recycled and made in America. Want one of the beautiful pieces seen here for yourself? Back Helvey on Kickstater and scoop one up for your home! + Helvey Design Studio The article above was submitted to us by an Inhabitat reader. Want to see your story on Inhabitat? Send us a tip by following this link. Remember to follow our instructions carefully to boost your chances of being chosen for publishing! Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg Post tags: "green furniture", FIRST Collection furniture, FSC certified wood furniture, handmade furniture, Helvey Design Studio, Northern California Black Oak table, recycled materials furniture

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) thinks putting off efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions risks “catastrophic” losses for the United States’ economy and society. That’s according to a new report on the economic and environmental effects of a carbon tax CBO published Wednesday. The CBO is the group of analysts tasked with modeling and projecting the consequences of Congress’ proposed laws, so that lawmakers can have some idea of what the likely consequences of their actions will be. You may recall the CBO from the big role its scores played in the debate over health care reform a few years ago. They’re a highly respected, methodologically cautious, and strictly nonpartisan outfit that’s widely viewed as the go-to authority for refereeing policy disputes in Washington. With China on the verge of unilaterally putting a cap on its own carbon emissions, and with wide support for a carbon tax amongst voters, politicians, industry, economists and think tanks, the fact that CBO is using its position to highlight the risks of not addressing climate change is worth paying attention to. Now, much of their report’s content wasn’t new. It projected that a price of $20 per metric ton on carbon dioxide emissions would bring in $1.2 trillion in revenues between 2012 and 2021, and cut emissions by roughly 8 percent over the same period, which came from work CBO did in 2011 (page 205). And the debate over what to do with the revenues from a carbon tax, which much of the report is dedicated to, is also familiar. But one thing that is noteworthy is CBO’s blunt assessment that allowing climate change to continue unchecked could be very costly to both the United States and global society: Climate change resulting from an increase in average temperatures is a long-term problem with global causes and consequences, including effects on humans and ecosystems. Significantly limiting the extent of future warming would require a concerted effort by countries that are major emitters of greenhouse gases. Nonetheless, U.S. efforts to decrease emissions would produce incremental benefits, in the form of incremental reductions in the expected damage from climate change. Researchers have attempted to estimate the monetary value of the future damage from climate change associated with an increase in CO2 emissions in a given year — and thus the value of the benefits from a commensurate reduction in emissions — a measure referred to as the social cost of carbon (SCC)… Those values are highest when researchers attach significant weight to long-term outcomes and when they incorporate a small probability that damage from climate change could increase sharply in the future — causing very large, or even catastrophic, losses. Delaying efforts to reduce emissions increases the risk of such losses. Given the inherent uncertainty of predicting the effects of climate change, and the possibility that it could trigger catastrophic effects, lawmakers might view a carbon tax as a reflection of society’s willingness to pay to reduce the risk of potentially very expensive damage in the future. Even CBO’s 2009 round-up of climate change science, which focused heavily on the uncertainty built into such projections, pointed out that the worst case scenarios for climate change “even if unlikely, would justify more stringent policies than would result from simply balancing the costs of reducing emissions against the benefits of averting damages from the expected or most likely degree of warming.” As for the question of how to structure a carbon tax, the Center for American Progress’ Richard Caperton put forward a proposal last December for a tax of $25 per ton on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. That ought to put us on a course to reduce those emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and 80 percent by 2050, though the tax would ultimately need to be expan

Read the rest of David Emitt Adams Places Tintype Images on Cans Collected from the Desert Floor Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg Post tags: american west, Arizona, can, david emitt adams, desert, landscape, patina, Photography, rust, wet-plate collodion, yuma

Read the rest of Andrea Ponsi’s Sprawling House on the Bay is Powered Entirely by Renewable Energy Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg Post tags: AIA SF, Andrea Ponsi, bay area, House on the Bay, Jensen Architects, marin county, Marin Living: Home Tours, net-zero house, photovoltaic panels, San Francisco, solar panels, Solar Power, Tiburon

Moooi showcased a stunning collection of chandeliers that look like bursting fireworks at this year’s ICFF. Called Raimond, the low-energy light is loaded with LEDs, and its spherical form calls to mind constellations and fluffy dandelions. Each orb-shaped lamp is made from a thin metal framework that carries low voltage current to the bulbs, eliminating the need for wires. Read the rest of Moooi’s Raimond Chandelier Bursts with Dozens of Tiny LED Lights Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg Post tags: eco design, energy efficient lighting, fireworks chandelier, green design, ICFF, LED Chandelier, Moooi, sustainable design

Greek yogurt is delicious, high in protein, and a good alternative to sugary snacks. However the $2 billion dollar a year industry has a dark side that comes in the form of toxic acid whey. It takes three to four ounces of milk to create yogurt and the rest becomes a runny, hazardous byproduct that cannot be released back into the environment. As it decomposes, acid whey depletes oxygen from streams and rivers, killing wildlife and creating “dead zones” over large areas. Read the rest of Byproducts from Greek Yogurt Prove Toxic to the Environment Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg Post tags: acid whey, biogas, byproduct, chobani, dead zone, fertilizer, greek yogurt, lactose, New York., toxic, Waste

The world is on a crash course to run out of freshwater, according to United Nation’s Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. At yesterday’s UN’s International Day of Biological Diversity, Ban Ki-moon addressed a number of the water security issues facing the planet today. Only a small amount of water on earth is freshwater, and the Secretary General reinforced that there is a delicate relationship between water and biodiversity. Read the rest of UN Says the World Is On Course to Run Out of Water Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg Post tags: ban ki-moon, Biodiversity, Climate Change, conservation, ecology, ecosystems, global crisis, United Nations, water issues, water shortage

New York-based textile artisan Sinje Ollen‘s Clothing for Furniture brings new life to dusty and damaged furnishings by covering up holes, stains and other blemishes. Ollen’s colorful removable covers are made from hand-knit wool, and she carefully consults with all of her clients before beginning work – so each piece is unique. We had a chance to check out this amazing project at Wanted Design during New York Design Week – read on for a closer look! Read the rest of Clothing for Furniture: Sinje Ollen’s Colorful Knits Give Old, Damaged Furnishings a Fresh New Life Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg Post tags: Arne Jacobsen Egg Chair, Berry Pi, clothing for furniture, eco design, green design, green interiors, knitted covers for furniture, new york design week, New York green designers, Sinje Ollen, sustainable design, textile arts, textile designers from New York, wanted design

It’s probably fair, if crude, to talk about national societies as having “moods,” or going through particular psychological states — especially in economic depressions, when they become more fearful and less willing to take risks. The United States has spent the last few years mired in the worst economic slump since the Great Depression, and a cap-and-trade system or a carbon price is unquestionably an attempt to structurally raise the price of some forms of energy. However meritorious, those policies are something of a step into the economic unknown, and thus understandably worrying to the average voter. So if the economy is affecting the national mood, that’s a problem for policy efforts to fight climate change. And earlier this week, the Washington Post’s Brad Plumer dug up a new study that put some hard data to that phenomenon at the political level. What Grant Jacobsen of the University of Oregon did was take a look at how unemployment in various states changed the votes of senators from those states. He used the League of Conservation Voters’ (LCV) scorecard as a measure of 296 senators’ friendliness to pro-environment votes. Then Jacobsen determined how their score changed as unemployment in their state went up and down between 1976 and 2008. The result? For every one percent point unemployment went up, the average senator’s LCV score dropped 0.48 percentage points. Jacobsen statistical analysis also suggested this result was like due to a meaningful correlation between unemployment and the vote score, rather than random chance or noise. To make sure he wasn’t just reading swings in the political leanings of the legislative body, Jacobsen also compared the American Democratic Association’s (ADA) scores — a widely accepted measure of liberalism — to his findings. With that control, the relationship between voting and unemployment actually strengthened, to 0.64 percentage point drop in the LCV score for every one percentage point increase in unemployment. Jacobsen also found the LCV decline was 0.83 percentage points when just looking at Republicans, and 0.29 when just looking Democrats, though the latter result wasn’t as statistically robust. Now, changes of 0.64 and 0.48 may not sound like big swings on a score that goes from 0 to 100, but lawmaking is a game of inches. Just to bring the point home, Jacobsen also looked at how votes from 1981 to 2008 would’ve changed if a given state had always experienced its minimum unemployment rate. (See table at right.) Accounting for whether a particular Senate vote was straight majority or involved a filibuster, he determined that environmentally favorable votes would’ve increased from 36 percent to 41 percent under improved economic conditions. That’s almost a 14 percent increase in the rate of favorable votes. Not exactly peanuts. This fits in with other studies on the relationship between support for environmental policies and the economy. As Plumer noted, Matthew Kahn and Matthew Kotchen used Google searches and surveys in a 2010 finding that higher unemployment lowers voters’ concern with global warming. Jacobsen’s paper mentions two other studies showing that per capita income increases correlate with higher support for environmental legislation, and more upcoming work from Kahn and Kotchen. Furthermore, the Center for American Progress’ Dan Weiss previously went through the history of environmental legislation, and found that most of the bills passed when unemployment was low. “The first Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (hazardous waste disposal) were all enacted when unemployment was 6 percent or lower,” Weiss determined. “Only six major environmental laws were enacted with annual unemployment over 7 percent, and none with unemployment greater than 7.7 percent.” U