Green Options

A new tool in Google Earth shows you the “effect” of climate change in your area.

Using Google Earth, you can look at climate effects under three different scenarios — 1) Confronting Climate Change — “with Al Gore”, 2) IPCC High Emissions Scenario, and 3) IPCC Low Emissions Scenario. Other new tools let you examine other aspects of climate change and how to adapt to climate change.

Last week, the Internet celebrated its 40th birthday! Forty glorious years that saw not just the transition from ARPANet to the now popular Internet but also Web 2.0 and what not! The Internet has been a revolution–in the making! The Internet that we know of today has been around for a little over a decade. That is also the time period when awareness and action on the “global” climate crisis has been phenomenal. And the link, evident!

According to the Internet Governance Forum, Internet consumes up to one trillion kilowatt hours of electricity per year, amounting to around 5% of the world’s total electricity consumption. The ‘tools’ of the IT sector are also manufactured using metals of various kinds. So the question remains, can Internet really help solve the climate crisis? The answer, on behalf of a generation grown up with the Internet, a firm Yes!

Here are five ways how Internet is helping fight climate change:

It’s a brilliant marketing idea.

Although I have long been stalking Spoonflower (a fabric-on-demand printing service), checking out their Fabric of the Week, even subscribing to their promotional emails, I have never bought their services.

I have ideas, of course–fabric printed with the comic strip that my husband and I write, fabric printed with the rainbow patchwork pattern that I painstakingly piece together from a number of fabrics to make my crayon rolls, fabric printed with my pattern design for my dinosaur stuffies, etc. But these ideas have, so far, all remained in my head.

Until today, at least. Today I’m making at two of my design dreams reality. For free.

GreenTalk Radio host Sean Daily talks with green blogger Paul Smith from TriplePundit.com and Ecopreneurist.com Triple Pundit is the new conversation place all about integrating people, planet, and profits into today’s businesses. Ecopreneurist covers the latest trends in [...]

In today’s rapidly changing sustainable business landscape, it’s becoming increasingly important to be aware of what’s happening, emerging, and yet to be created where you could fill a need. How best to do that?

Although politicians themselves may be relative newcomers in the world of communicating in 140-character or less, those who write about and study politics aren’t. And that goes for those who favor environmental politics, too.

If you don’t know what DARPA is, you will soon.  The Defense Advanced Research Group invented the internet back in 1969, and now it has set its sights on geoengineering a cure for global warming.  What does that mean? For one thing, it means that a communications network originally designed for national defense somehow [...]

Al Gore has thrown his weight behind a new social venture to secure the .eco domain name. By financing “groundbreaking environmental initiatives that have a real, positive impact on our environment,” Dot Eco LLC claims the new .eco domain will be more than just a label.

While the U.S. Congress and President Obama attempt to jump-start the economy (the destructive “growth” one, not the nature-based, restoration ECOnomy) by spending hundreds of billions of dollars they don’t even have, many ecopreneurs and the green businesses they manage continue to prosper in the restoration ECOnomy.

True, some of the proposed Federal spending will be devoted to the “green economy,” providing a boost to renewable energy production, energy efficient construction and more fuel efficient transportation.  But the ecopreneurs my wife and I interviewed for our ECOpreneuring book have discovered that the “triple bottom line” approach to running an enterprise is more resilient to economic (or ecological) shocks — like the ones occurring around the world at an accelerating pace.

For example, take Small Potatoes Urban Delivery, or SPUD for short, founded by ecopreneur David Van Seters.  Already North America’s largest online organic home grocer, SPUD merged with Organic Express and Westside Organics in 2008. With the amalgamation, SPUD now serves four major U.S. west coast markets: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle and Portland.

In these times of change and challenges, we need success stories.  Here’s the story of SPUD founder David Van Seters, adapted from ECOpreneuring:

Small Potatoes Urban Delivery, or SPUD, is no ordinary delivery service. First, they promote organic food with free home delivery. Second, they sell food grown or produced by local or regional farmers, whenever possible. Their business model intersects the double-digit growth in organic food and the buy-local movement, while reducing carbon emissions and urban congestion through their resource-efficient delivery service. Topping it off, SPUD harnesses the Internet to offer customers the opportunity to customize their orders with a guarantee of satisfaction.