Green Options

Several hundred volunteers recently posed naked on a glacier in Switzerland, to raise awareness about climate change. New York artist Spencer Tunick, who has staged photo shoots of nude gatherings in cities around the world, teamed up with the environmental activist group Greenpeace to immortalize a "living sculpture" of the six hundred people atop the retreating Aletsch glacier.

The Great Aletsch is the largest and longest glacier in Europe, and forms part of [...]

Hundreds of climate change activists gathered near London’s Heathrow airport yesterday to protest against extension plans and greenhouse gas emissions. Demonstrators assembled just north of the airport for a week-long campaign aimed at highlighting both the double standards of the British government and the aviation industry’s damaging impact on the environment.

The British government has vowed to reduce green house gas emissions, but at the same time it supports plans to expand [...]

Three French women with a passion for India founded an eco-friendly fair-trade fashion house just over a year ago. “Les Fées de Bengale”, the Bengal fairies, is a Franco-Indian organisation run entirely by women, for women.

After a life-changing visit to India, Sophie Dupuy, 30, was determined to establish lasting ties with the country. She joined forces with Camille Dupuy, 28, and Élodie Lederf, 25, and together they launched the “Les Fées [...]

What would a trip to France be without that symbol of national identity, that beacon of cultural pride, that epitome of paradox, the very quintessence of French – what would your visit be without wine? Be you a neophyte or a connoisseur, there are countless possibilities for drinking and tasting, relishing and savoring, a great variety of wines from the different winegrowing regions of the country. But how many of them will be organic? [...]

After traversing the ocean blue in your eco-friendly wind-powered wonder, which some insist on calling a sailboat, you have built up a healthy appetite for some organic Old World fare. Let’s say your first port of call is England, and more specifically London where you have a pressing appointment with the Queen. In order not to appear too ravenous in front of royalty, you seek out some sustenance, settling for nothing less than superior [...]

Summertime is vacation time, and for many the temptation to travel abroad is irresistible. If you have an environmentally-friendly lifestyle at home, you may be wondering how to stay green overseas. Sustainable and ethical tourism options are rapidly increasing in number, for the most part in the form of organized tours. But if you prefer to travel independently, it is often more complicated to keep your carbon footprint to a reasonable minimum.To save [...]

The most recent episode in the ongoing dispute over the London congestion charge, once again pits the Mayor against the American Embassy. A congestion charge of £8, around $16, is levied on private vehicles entering a central zone of the vast capital city of Great Britain during working hours from Monday through Friday. The American Embassy, among others, is located in the central zone but refuses to pay the charge for its fleet of vehicles. [...]

A decidedly competitive air reigned at a debate on carbon emissions, one of many discussions during “Green Week” in Brussels, Belgium. Watching the debate live on the European Commission’s website last Thursday evening, I witnessed a verbal jousting match between the American ambassador to the European Union and a representative of the World Wild Life Fund. Both sides delivered several blows below the belt, provocative comments that made the match all the more exciting.[...]

Editor's note: Green Options is pleased to welcome Heidi Strebel to our writing team! Heidi is a language and literature teacher, and freelance journalists, living in Paris, France. She'll be covering the continental beat for us here at GO.Only left-wing anti-growth idealists believe that, because of human activity, our environment is in disastrous, ever-worsening condition. Such statements are a thing of the past, you might think, vestiges of an ignorant age before the advent [...]