Sun Microsystems (the people behind the popular program language JAVA) have launched a new community-based website where companies and organizations can calculate, compare, and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. OpenEco.org is free and open to all organizations. The only cost of admission is sharing data, transparently or anonymously, with other community participants.

It is an interesting idea. It will allow companies to calculate how much GHG they are producing from things like buildings, and car fleets, and then compare them with other companies. Sort of like confessing your carbon sins, and then asking for help in order to rectify them.

Having free and open GHG calculators that are useful to big companies and organizations has the potential to save these companies a lot of money. Increasingly, GHG analysis is done with home-grown or proprietary tools, and often requires significant internal resources or expensive consulting services. With OpenEco.org, carbon accounting data that might ordinarily remain in a company's spreadsheet can be easily shared using the site's calculators. The tool enables organizations of all kinds to benchmark against one another, set realistic reduction goals and share best practices to meet them.

With the move away from city centers, and rapid increase in the number of cars on the road, it soon became clear that no amount of roads could handle the ever growing number of cars trying to cram on to them. Ever feel like you spend your whole life stuck in traffic? Well you are not alone: with the increase in the number of cars on the road, traffic congestion continues to worsen in American cities of all sizes. This gridlock is creating a $78 billion annual drain on the U.S. economy in the form of 4.2 billion lost hours and 2.9 billion gallons of wasted fuel—that's 105 million weeks of vacation and 58 fully-loaded supertankers.

Talk about waste. A gallon of gas has about 19 pounds of CO2, meaning that 2.9 billion gallons of gas wasted means 55.1 billion pounds of CO2 needlessly pumped into the atmosphere every year.

These are among the key findings of the Texas Transportation Institute's 2007 Urban Mobility Report. Improvements to the methodology used to measure congestion nationwide have produced the most detailed picture yet of a problem that is growing worse in all 437 of the nation's urban areas. The current report is based on 2005 figures, the most recent year for which complete data was available.

What sort of bike should I use?

This is what we are faced with every time we turn on the television, listen to the radio, or pick up a newspaper. It would seem that sometime in the last couple of years, the four horsemen of the apocalypse rode into town and started throwing a kegger. Is it all true? How can we possibly deal with such an overwhelming avalanche of bad news? Should I start working on my bunker?

First take a deep breath. Ok good. Now, just so you don't think I am trying to pull the wool over your eyes, most of it IS true. The ice caps are melting, global warming is real and we caused it, and every once in a while, a pit bull will attack a child. The problem is not the news, but how it is presented to us, and how we filter it.

With the 24-hour news cycle, the internet, a bevy of papers, and news radio, information in our day and age is like a fire hose. Trying to drink from that hose is only going to leave you wet with a very sore tongue. Besides being overwhelming this torrent of information also serves to dishearten us, and make us afraid to act. We have become so informed that we don’t know anything.

I remember the very first time I saw the ocean. I was astounded by just how big it was, how it smelled, the shapes, the colors... the whole experience washed over me and I sat fascinated for a long time watching the waves roll in. After living on the beach for 3 years, I still find the ocean wonderful, but that rush has mostly faded. The same holds true for watching the news every night and seeing that something horrible happened. The first twenty times you might care, but eventually you have to stop caring in order to preserve your sanity.

In the old days, hunting, gathering and fending off saber tooth tigers were all necessary survival skills. In our modern world, the dangers are far more subtle, but the same principle holds true. You have to develop the survival skills of the 21st century. One of the big ones is how to deal with mass media. Below are a couple of tips to keep you sane in this crazy world.

I have lived in the trenches of this battle for the last four years, and the "war" has been going on for the last 6 years. Getting a large renewable energy project built in the backyard of some of the nation's richest, and most politically-connected people, is not an easy task. The Wall Street Journal (supposedly one of the nation's best newspapers) has some interesting, and in my opinion foolish, things to say about the issue.

"But advocates often tout renewable energy not for its economics, but because it's virtuous. Many of those who are willing to impose the costs of various environmental schemes on other Americans based on "ideals" suddenly have started looking more closely at the tradeoffs when something they hold dear would have to be sacrificed, like a nice view. Wind energy is never going to be anything but a bit player in meeting the world's energy needs. The Nantucket tempest is useful mainly as a real-world test of whether some of the world's most privileged liberals wear their ideals all the time, or only when it suits them."

That’s a lot to chew on so lets break it down.

I have been in love with bike riding for years now, from the flat open roads of Ohio, to the bustling SUV traffic of Austin, the winding roads of Cape Cod, and now the horn-honking traffic of Boston. When I tell people that I ride my bike to work they say "that's great" as they look at me like I might be a couple cards short of a deck. For most people, the conversation stops there, but for those of us who get more engaged, I usually end up hearing something like "I would love to ride my bike to work, but…" It's the "buts" I am going to address today.

"But…it's too dangerous."

I will not lie to you: riding your bike can be dangerous. You are on a little sliver of metal and rubber, and the cars and trucks are huge armored tanks in comparison. A few people do get hurt riding their bikes, but the vast majority of bike riders do not. There are several very easy and smart things you can do to minimize the danger of bike ridding.

The first would be to wear your helmet. Your helmet will not save you from everything, but it is better than nothing. The second would be to follow the rules of the road. When you are a bike rider. you are considered a wheeled vehicle and that means you ride on the road, or margin (riding on the sidewalk is dangerous to pedestrians), you ride on the right side of the road, you stop at stop signs and red lights, and you use signals. You need to be aware of what is going on around you: just because someone looks at you doesn't mean they are going to stop. You should ride defensively. In short, don't ride like a crazy person, and chances are you will be fine.

Global Warming Survival Handbook

I wasn’t exactly sure how I felt about this book at first. I was fuzzy at best as to the whole Live Earth thing, and now they have an “official companion” book? But after getting into it a bit I found myself really engaged.

The book is basically a series of ideas (the book calls them skills) presented in an easy-to-understand way. Each “skill” comes with a little chart that shows you the cost, the time, the effort, and the impact of that skill. This is followed by a brief explanation of the skills intent, and a URL to check out for more information. In fact I was pretty freaking amazed that my main gig, The Sietch, was mentioned on page 71! They had not contacted me about entering the site into the book, but it was nice to see some love for my work.

The art for this book really brings it all together. It is the same style you see in the helpful airline pamphlets that show calm faced people serenely crashing their jets into the ocean while using their seat as a flotation device. Only this time, it's funny. The artwork and the style of writing are witty and, at times, I laughed out loud (Skill 20 is “put on a sweater” featuring a four part comic showing you how to put on a sweater with the first frame reading “Place your head through the neck hole. Be careful. If you accidentally enter a sleeve, you could be seriously injured.”). This marks perhaps the only time I have laughed about global warming.

I used to work for a renewable energy contractor. We would get calls from people all the time who wanted to install solar panels, solar thermal panels, wind turbines, and even geothermal systems. The very first questions we asked were "What is your current lighting system?" "Your current heating system?" "The amount of insulation in the home?" It was around this point that they would interrupt us and ask what any of this has to do with the shiny new solar panels they want on the roof.

Solar panels are cool: they are the slick blue pimps of the renewable energy world. The concept is just so simple: shine sun on panel, get electricity. They have no moving parts, work forever (25-50+ years) and are pretty easy to put up. What isn’t so sexy is making sure your walls have the proper amount of insulation, and that you replace all your old-fashioned light bulbs with CFL’s, and that your washer is not an energy hog.

People get so caught up in the image of “free” power from the sun or the wind, that they forget that the cheapest energy is the energy you don’t buy. For every dollar you spend on home efficiency you will take three to five dollars off the cost of your renewable energy system. It is that simple. Use less energy; buy fewer solar panels to supply that energy.

When I was a young lad, my father sat me down for two minutes of the most awkward conversation I have ever had the misfortune to be a part of; in the end I was left with a shaky sense of fear, and a healthy dose of confusion. This isn’t that kind of talk.

If you have a parent, or grandparent (or for that matter brother, sister, or friend) that displays all the outward signs of intelligence, but doesn’t seem to be doing any of the many simple things to make this world a better place, it is up to you to help them understand why they should start. My advice: start small.

There are several green options for making your shopping experience more sustainable, regardless of what you are shopping for.