DIY Video: How To Rock Your Own Seed Bombing Campaign

Seed bomb away!!!

I played a lot of Army when I was growing up. Start with a bunch of 10 year old boys, throw in some Maine woods, some plastic toy guns, and clumps of mud (or grenades as we thought of them) and you’d get a whole weekend of pure fun.

So seed bombing definitely appeals to the 10 year old in me. Seed bombing is the act of tossing balls of clay, dirt, and seeds into vacant lots and other urban areas in need of some green. After a good rain and some time in the sun the seeds sprout out and make that spot of urban blight just a little bit greener.

Check out this DIY video showing the best way of undertaking your own green guerrilla seed bomb campaign.

Via [FreshCut] & [The See3 Blog]

Deforestation is Driving Snakes Out of the Jungle and into Rio Di Janeiro

Snakes!

Deforestation!

Deforestation and Snakes!

It sucks to suffer from Ophidiophobia (fear of snakes)and live in Rio De Janeiro right now. The city is being invaded by snakes, driven from their forest home by logging. The AP has it:

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil: Snakes are increasingly invading the eastern Amazon’s largest city, driven from the rain forest by loggers and ranchers who are destroying the reptiles’ natural habitat, the government’s environmental protection agency said Tuesday.

The agency, known as Ibama, has been called out to capture 21 snakes this year in Belem, a sprawling metropolis of 1.5 million people at the mouth of the Amazon River, Ibama press officer Luciana Almeida said by telephone.

Link [International Herald Tribune]

Photo credit: Flickr user Chad Mill 

Higher Gas Prices + Road Congestion = Greener Mass Transit

Is everyone else just getting killed by gas prices? I can’t believe how short a distance $20 in gas now gets me. I work from home and don’t drive much and I’m still hating the wallet gouging the gas pump is digging me for. I know gas is never going to be cheap again and the whole situation has prompted me to make some big life changes.

First, me and my family are moving into downtown Portland, Maine. We moved back east a few years ago and have been living in the rural just north of the city of 100,000. Over the past few months we realized that we were sick of driving everywhere and sick of the money it cost us to do so. We’ll be moving to Portland’s West End, a cool old money section of town that is smack dab next to just about anything you’d want to walk to on the city’s peninsula. I’m getting an electric skateboard and downsizing my car.

Grist’s Ryan Avent points out that oil prices are at an all time high in real terms. Gas prices peak during the summer so it’s likely a lot of the country could see $4/gallon gas come June. He hopes the higher prices combine with hassles of congestion will spur our investment and focus on clean mass transit. He has it:

If new infrastructure primarily comes in the form of new lane miles, then congestion reduction will only be temporary; eventually, developers will respond to the new investments by building along the new capacity — that is, outward. In the space of a few years, the congestion benefits will be erased, and with no reduction in vehicle miles traveled or emissions, since increased efficiency may well be canceled out by longer commutes. Critically, exposure to higher fuel costs will remain.

If, however, congestion is addressed by the implementation of congestion pricing, along with significant investments in high-capacity rail service, both inter- and intracity, then efforts to clear the nation’s arteries will also yield reductions in emissions and miles traveled, and the addition of automobile alternatives will make it easier for commuters to substitute away from driving when gas costs soar.

We’re going to spend a lot of money on infrastructure in the near future. It is critical that we use that money to maximum good effect. New highways will bring little to no long-term return on investment. If we’re going to spend, we should spend smart.

As much as higher gas prices hurt my individual pocket, it could be a very effective way to push things in a smarter, greener way. Let’s hear it for $5/gallon!

Link [Gristmill]

Breathe Deeply in the Polluted Air that is Moscow

Moscow looks like a lovely place to live. (Photo by Alexander Petrenko)

Russia’s Capital City is an expensive (34.4 more expensive than NYC) dirty place to live. World Front Page has it:

Over the past two years escalating numbers of vehicles on the roads put a stifling strain on the environment. Today Moscow has nearly 3,000,000 cars. Gray-brown noxious haze of smog covers the streets filled with jam-packed traffic, which blows out tons of unhealthy exhaust fumes of carbon monoxide and other harmful chemicals. Additionally there are 12 huge heat power stations, 53 district heating stations and 3,000 industrial enterprises still operating within the city borders. As a result concentrations of harmful substances often exceed maximum allowable by 10-20 times.

Link [World Front Page]