From bicycle lovers to lovers on bikes, bike art to art on bikes, the largest bicycle sharing program in the world to some of the smallest bikers, enjoy this bicycle city photo tour of Paris, France!

Paris doesn’t have a long history as one of the best bicycle cities, but with the introduction of the largest bicycle sharing program in the world, bicycling in Paris has boomed and the city is becoming commonly associated with the bicycle now. Its whole culture is changing due to the bicycle’s increasing relevance in the city’s daily life.

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Groningen would be number one on this list if we were looking at percentage of residents who bicycle for transportation purposes. About 57% of travel in Groningen is by bicycle!

The city has been named the world’s best bicycle city a couple of times (1993 and 2006). It is a university city which is part of the reason why it has so many people bicycling, but it has done amazing things to make the city more bicycle friendly as well. The bicycle facilities you can see on the following pages will probably blow your mind away.

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Berlin is a great bicycle city! Full of bicyclists, bike art, bicycle infrastructure, and unique bikes for a variety of different purposes, Berlin is #7 on this “great bicycle cities” list.

If you go to Germany, you will probably hear some Germans saying how much they love their cars (i.e. Mercedes, BMW, Audi). However, you will probably be surprised to see how many people actually love their bikes. Berlin is perhaps the best example. You can see people from across the class spectrum using the bicycle for a wide range of purposes. Even the postal service and other delivery services use bicycles.

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Naked bicyclists, folding bikes, balloon bikes, and more — enjoy this bicycle photo tour of Barcelona.

The third B in a row, Barcelona is next on this list of great bicycle cities (right ahead of Basel, Switzerland and Bogota, Columbia). As a dense city with a wonderful climate, Barcelona is naturally a wonderful place for bicyclists. However, a lot has been done to make it more so. The biggest carrot encouraging bicycling, by far, is Barcelona’s relatively new bike sharing program — Bicing. This is perhaps the best or second best bike sharing program in the world. It is one of a new generation of sophisticated, smart bike sharing programs. Read more about it on page 2.

Beyond Bicing, the city is also working on creating new bicycling routes and bike parking and it hosts fun Bike Week celebrations every year in May. Also, it has been creating better infrastructure for bicyclists due to so many more people bicycling within the past few years. It is transforming itself into a truly world-leading bicycle city.

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Bogota is a true testament of how a city can be transformed. Through “radical” action for a better city and clean green transportation, Bogota has become a leader in bicycle transportation.

One step ahead of Basel, Switzerland on this list, Bogota boasts an amazing transformation in the transportation infrastructure and alternative transportation usage of a modern city. Unlike many cities that are renovating primarily for cars or, more admirably, mass-transit, Bogota made sure to put a lot of focus on improving their city for bicyclists and pedestrians as well, the greenest transportation modes!

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I’m such a geek. This week, I’m headed to the legendary Red Rocks Park in Morrison, Colorado, for four sold-out nights of music from the Vermont-based band, Phish, at what is arguably one of the greatest outdoor music venues in the United States, if not the world. And I will, at some point or another, be thinking about the New Deal.

That’s right, in the middle of some twenty-minute swirling, epic jam, my mind will undoubtedly stray a little and wonder about the millions of unemployed Americans that were employed during and after the Great Depression building thousands of roads, bridges, post offices, schools, dams and, well, amazing places like Red Rocks.

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NASA has released the first ever images of mysterious polar night clouds that form 50 miles above Earth’s surface, and says that they might be linked to global warming.

The startling images were captured by NASA’s “AIM” satellite (Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere), and show night clouds above 70 degrees north latitude on May 25. Since then, eyewitnesses on the ground have reported seeing the formations on June 6 over Northern Europe (see image after the jump).

When viewed from space, the mysterious clouds are known scientifically as Polar Mesospheric Clouds, or PMCs, when seen from the ground they are called Noctilucent or “night-shining” Clouds.

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As shown year after year, public transit is a key factor keeping our planet from warming much further than it already is! It is also one of our best bets for slowing and eventually stopping global warming in the future. Beyond that, public transit helps the environment, the economy, and you in many other ways as well.

An organization working for you to increase and improve public transportation and to fight global warming, smog, excessive traffic congestion, water pollution, hours lost from home, stress, road rage, and your car becoming your home needs your help now.

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Introducing Halley Station (75°34’S 26°34’W), located on the 150m thick, continually moving, Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica.  Named after the Astronomer Edmond Halley, the current station (Halley V) is the fifth to be built.  It is the British Antarctic Survey’s most remote research station and has been operational since 1956 (established by the Royal Society for the International Geophysical Year, 1957-58).   Halley Station (also known as Base Z) has presented itself in many forms since those first buildings in 1956.

The extreme environment challenges even the most thought out buildings.  Blizzards and snow drifts eventually bury any structures left on the ground and the constant movement of the ice shelf compresses any structures under the surface, making these buildings eventually unsuitable for use.

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As might be expected, the earlier posters were much more difficult to track down (mostly because there were fewer events to advertise). I also found the paucity of posters from the 1980’s indicative of Reagan-era anti-environmentalist sentiment.

1970

(Pogo via Walt Kelley)

1971

(Pogo via Walt Kelley)

1982

(via Shigeo Fukuda)

1990

(via markbult)

1991

(via Istvan Orosz)

1992

(via Niklaus Troxler)

1994

(via Encore Design)

1995

(via Paul Rand)

1999

(via pibburns.com)

(via Butterfly-Stamps)

2000

(via Bob Masse)

(via New Jersey Dept of Environmental Protection)

(via robotplanet.co.uk)

2001

(via redskinfan.de)

2002

(via Ohio Dept. of Nat. Resources)

(via PA Department of Environment)

2003

(via Mobile Bay Nat. Estuary Program)

2004

(via U.S. Army)

2005

(via AboutUtila)

2006

(via vjfashton.com)

(via The Natural History Museum of Santa Maria)

2007

(via Nature in the City)

(via Metro Transit)

2008

(via Salem State College)

(via Nature in the City)

(via Ecoworldly)

2009

(image via studio KIND)

(via Harrison Miracle)

We thought it might be fun to celebrate with some stunning photos of this planet we all live on!

Even if you’re not hitting up a local Earth Day event, you can still take today to celebrate. We hope these photos of the land and the critters who share it with us get you inspired!

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Brisbane, Australia

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Only four Chevy Volt models are actually built and out in the world, and I had the pleasure of seeing one in person at the 2009 Aspen Environment Forum. As I’m a blogger, not a photographer, you’ll have to excuse my photos - these are the best of about 25 I took when the car was on display inside (not the best lighting).

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Tesla fans, you’ve got a friend in Digg founder Kevin Rose. He managed to get his hands on what look to be three press photos of Tesla’s upcoming Model S sedan, and proceeded to leak them out to the public.

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With all sorts of claims being made about clean energy and clean tech, it is more than a mere academic exercise to explore what those terms really mean. One way of defining something is by defining what it is not. For example, the large bucket-wheel excavators like those used in the open-cast lignite mines of western Germany are not clean tech. And here’s why…

At 300 feet tall and 600 feet long, the largest bucket wheel excavators are the biggest land vehicles ever made. Though they only dig at a maximum of 0.37 mph, these machines move 240,000 cubic meters of material daily, about as much as a football field dug to 100 feet deep.

Because they continuously dig, transport, and dump material twenty-four hours a day these machines require 16 megawatts of externally supplied electricity; and there are twenty-two currently in use in the four open-cast lignite mines in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. 

Bucket wheel excavators have been working these lignite fields since 1933, playing an instrumental role in fueling the Hitler machine with coal-based synfuel. Over the years, the mining activities have scarred the land and created massive canyons, reaching up to 500 metres deep and over 10 Km wide (see a 360 degree panorama of the lignite coal mine in Garzweiler). Continued…

The scale of the Rhineland lignite operations is such that entire communities have been razed and their occupants relocated to new villages, to make way for the dirty excavation of a dirty fuel.

After the land has been mined, reclamation efforts have fallen short of repairing local ecological services provided by wetlands and forests.

An estimated 30,000 people have been relocated by lignite operations in the Rhineland. Fifty-eight villages have vanished thanks to mining activities in the region, including some that date back to the Roman Period.

The latest to give way to the encroaching mining operations is the village of Otzenrath. Current plans are to work the fields for another 25 years, and if that is the case, more villages will be slated for demolition, erasing thousands of years of history and culture from the map. Continued…

The arrangement now, is such that, landowners no longer receive land in exchange for their property, only cash (parcels of land were once part of the package); with acreage at a premium in the German countryside, this can put a real pinch on local farmers who may lose a sliver of their land that they are never able to put back into productivity.

The Rhineland lignite mines are currently working at depths of up to 350m, and will dig up to 500m deep, depending on the depth of the lignite layers. At such depths, it is imperative for effective extraction to keep the earth dry, so ground water is drained out by a chain of pumping stations.

Most of this water goes unused and ends up in the Rhine and Maas rivers, lowering the water table in the region and concentrating the contaminates in what is left. The end result being poor quality water and less of it, and an ecosystem that may take thousands of years to repair itself.

Lands that were once prized for their rich top soil are never fully restored such that they can sustain productive agriculture. Even after the lignite mining pits are reclaimed, the soil left over is not suitable for vegetable farming or productive animal grazing because the good top soil (or, “overburden”) has been scraped off and remixed with the slag leftover from burning coal at local plants.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention the poor fuel quality of lignite, losing as much as 60% of its energy to the atmosphere as waste heat, and more carbon dioxide, particulates, and sulphur dioxide than bituminous and subbituminous coal.

There you have it, the evidence has been presented, and the case has been made. I will let you decide for yourself, but by my own calculations, bucket-wheel excavators are decidedly not clean tech.

Images: 1., 2. Wikipedia; 3., 4., 6., 7. BK59; 5., 8. © Forbidden Places, used with permission of author; 9. Courtesy of oeke-energie.de

Well apparently there are still plenty of people out there who either don’t know…or don’t care.
When I first saw this website I was shocked by the foods on it, it’s a meat-filled calorie bomb photo gallery you wont believe! (Who knew you could batter and fry just about anything imaginable, and/or cover it in bacon?  Yuck.)

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Choice Camps, a Boston-based summer camp and youth travel referral service, has just launched a great resource for parents - ChoiceCamps.com.  It’s a website designed to improve the way families find summer camps and teen travel programs online.

Says Nick Riotto, co-founder of Choice Camps:

“Until now, there has been no comprehensive, trusted resource for families to find safe, reliable, and top-rated summer camp and teen travel programs online. Through our online and phone components, it is our goal to inspire families to send their kids to camp, help them make informed decisions, and guide them in selecting an appropriate summer experience.”

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Those are some of the introductory words of Lou Dematteis, one of the authors and photographers of the new photo book Crude Reflections: Oil, Ruin, and Resistance in the Amazon Rainforest.

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Image credit: Tim Hurst

The scale of the Rhineland lignite operations is such that entire communities have been razed and their occupants relocated to new villages, to make way for the dirty excavation of a dirty fuel.

After the land has been mined, reclamation efforts have fallen short of repairing local ecological services provided by wetlands and forests.

An estimated 30,000 people have been relocated by lignite operations in the Rhineland. Fifty-eight villages have vanished thanks to mining activities in the region, including some that date back to the Roman Period.

The latest to give way to the encroaching mining operations is the village of Otzenrath. Current plans are to work the fields for another 25 years, and if that is the case, more villages will be slated for demolition, erasing thousands of years of history and culture from the map. Continued…

The arrangement now, is such that, landowners no longer receive land in exchange for their property, only cash (parcels of land were once part of the package); with acreage at a premium in the German countryside, this can put a real pinch on local farmers who may lose a sliver of their land that they are never able to put back into productivity.

The Rhineland lignite mines are currently working at depths of up to 350m, and will dig up to 500m deep, depending on the depth of the lignite layers. At such depths, it is imperative for effective extraction to keep the earth dry, so ground water is drained out by a chain of pumping stations.

Most of this water goes unused and ends up in the Rhine and Maas rivers, lowering the water table in the region and concentrating the contaminates in what is left. The end result being poor quality water and less of it, and an ecosystem that may take thousands of years to repair itself.

Lands that were once prized for their rich top soil are never fully restored such that they can sustain productive agriculture. Even after the lignite mining pits are reclaimed, the soil left over is not suitable for vegetable farming or productive animal grazing because the good top soil (or, “overburden”) has been scraped off and remixed with the slag leftover from burning coal at local plants.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention the poor fuel quality of lignite, losing as much as 60% of its energy to the atmosphere as waste heat, and more carbon dioxide, particulates, and sulphur dioxide than bituminous and subbituminous coal.

There you have it, the evidence has been presented, and the case has been made. I will let you decide for yourself, but by my own calculations, bucket-wheel excavators are decidedly not clean tech.

Images: 1., 2. Wikipedia; 3., 4., 6., 7. BK59; 5., 8. © Forbidden Places, used with permission of author; 9. Courtesy of oeke-energie.de

The Swiss Alpine Museum in Bern is hosting a photographic exhibition which documents the gradual disappearance of many of Switzerland’s glaciers. Featuring contrasting photos of Swiss landscapes over the last 100 years the pictures reveal the full extent of glacial retreat in some regions.

See the dramatic contrasts between old and new at the melting glaciers picture gallery.

Photo of the Matterhorn Glacier courtesy of Flickr.

The scale of the Rhineland lignite operations is such that entire communities have been razed and their occupants relocated to new villages, to make way for the dirty excavation of a dirty fuel.

After the land has been mined, reclamation efforts have fallen short of repairing local ecological services provided by wetlands and forests.

An estimated 30,000 people have been relocated by lignite operations in the Rhineland. Fifty-eight villages have vanished thanks to mining activities in the region, including some that date back to the Roman Period.

The latest to give way to the encroaching mining operations is the village of Otzenrath. Current plans are to work the fields for another 25 years, and if that is the case, more villages will be slated for demolition, erasing thousands of years of history and culture from the map. Continued…

The arrangement now, is such that, landowners no longer receive land in exchange for their property, only cash (parcels of land were once part of the package); with acreage at a premium in the German countryside, this can put a real pinch on local farmers who may lose a sliver of their land that they are never able to put back into productivity.

The Rhineland lignite mines are currently working at depths of up to 350m, and will dig up to 500m deep, depending on the depth of the lignite layers. At such depths, it is imperative for effective extraction to keep the earth dry, so ground water is drained out by a chain of pumping stations.

Most of this water goes unused and ends up in the Rhine and Maas rivers, lowering the water table in the region and concentrating the contaminates in what is left. The end result being poor quality water and less of it, and an ecosystem that may take thousands of years to repair itself.

Lands that were once prized for their rich top soil are never fully restored such that they can sustain productive agriculture. Even after the lignite mining pits are reclaimed, the soil left over is not suitable for vegetable farming or productive animal grazing because the good top soil (or, “overburden”) has been scraped off and remixed with the slag leftover from burning coal at local plants.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention the poor fuel quality of lignite, losing as much as 60% of its energy to the atmosphere as waste heat, and more carbon dioxide, particulates, and sulphur dioxide than bituminous and subbituminous coal.

There you have it, the evidence has been presented, and the case has been made. I will let you decide for yourself, but by my own calculations, bucket-wheel excavators are decidedly not clean tech.

Images: 1., 2. Wikipedia; 3., 4., 6., 7. BK59; 5., 8. © Forbidden Places, used with permission of author; 9. Courtesy of oeke-energie.de