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My Xbox 360 is a little hungry when plugged in. According to tests, it consumes roughly 160 watts of power at any given time. This pales in comparison to the Sony Playstation 3 (which racks up 380 watts) but it's still a hog compared to previous consoles. Thankfully, beyond the occassional DVD and some epic battles of Gears of War the power hasn't been on that often. Still, it could be a greener experience.

That might all soon change. Sure Halo 3 is right around the corner, but even more intriguing is a new global warming-themed contest sponsored by Microsoft and Games For Change that seeks to encourage people to create a game based on climate change. The worldwide competition will inspire gamers to come up with a concept that not only entertains, but also inspires. From the release,

"The current generation of gamers is among the most socially conscious in history," said Suzanne Seggerman, co-founder and president of Games for Change. "We know from experience that young people are looking for ways to help make the world a better place, and who better to support this effort than an industry leader like Microsoft?"

Stora Enso’s purchase of wood from Saami reindeer grazing areas in the Inari area in Upper Lapland has prompted an Italian Ethical Fund – Banca Etica – to exclude Stora Enso from its ethical investment portfolio, tells Saami Council in their press release.

Photos from ongoing logging operations can be viewed in Flickr.

Continue reading Stora Enso excluded from ethical fund…

Sandhill Cranberry Farms via Equal ExchangeFair Trade often conjures images of distant lands and foreign cultures. However, Fair Trade is not limited to the Third World and its benefits are realized by all people. There are several organizations within the states that follow the ideal set by the Fair Trade movement.

Equal Exchange has started a "Bringing Fair Trade Home" program which seeks to extend the "model of partnership to family farmers, farm workers, and farmer co-operatives." There are small co-op farms which produce their organic almonds, organic cranberries and pecans. "All are family farmers, and people with a commitment to their communities, to growing delicious, nutritious crops, and to stewardship of the land they work." With U.S. farmers falling from 6.5 million in 1935 to 1.9 million by 2003, and "over 50% of the revenue generated globally by food retailing is accounted for by just 10 corporations", there is a similar need of support to small family farms regardless of their location.

In 2005 Equal Exchange partnered with Organic Valley, the Farmer Direct Co-operative and RAFI-USA, to create the Domestic Fair Trade Working Group with the goal to gather people of similar beliefs from the US and Canada and develop a set of Principles for Domestic Fair Trade "which translates the goals and priorities of the international Fair Trade movement into the regional, domestic and local spheres."
The principles created are similar to the international Fair Trade criteria but tailored to fit small domestic farms: family scale farming, capacity building, democratic co-ops which have participatory ownership and control, rights of labor, equality and opportunity, direct trade, fair and stable pricing, shared risk and affordable credit, long term trade relationships, sustainable agriculture, appropriate technology, indigenous peoples' rights, transparency and accountability, education and advocacy.

Farmer, farmer, put away your DDT. I don't care about spots on my apples, just leave me the birds and the bees, please. Sometimes we listen to the songs, and we can even sing along with them, but we don't actually hear the words. "Big Yellow Taxi" just might be one of those songs. It's worth your time to learn the words (and if you have children, teach them).

Though many of us in the younger generations may think that this is a Counting Crows song, it was actually originally written and performed by Joni Mitchell in 1970. The song covers such topics as development & urban sprawl:

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swinging hot spot.

Editor's note: Green Options is pleased to welcome Robin Schidlowski to the writing team. Robin is a feature writer and co-editor for the Urban Alliance for Sustainability's newsletter, and lives in the Bay Area. She'll be covering happenings in that part of the world, as well as writing about urban and general sustainability, and "zero waste."

Paul Hawken spoke in San Francisco last Friday on the final stop of his book tour, as a part of the Long Now Foundation seminar series. In his new book, Blessed Unrest, Hawken describes the global movement, which he declines to give a name, toward environmental and social justice. In a 60 minute speech and Q&A session, Hawken proffered an explanation for what is transpiring.

Hawken told a story of how Ralph Waldo Emerson was inspired by Antoine and Bernard Jussieu in Paris and subsequently wrote Nature. He then told how a college-aged Henry David Thoreau was inspired by Emerson and wrote Civil Disobedience, and how Rosa Parks then read Thoreau's essay the summer before she refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus in 1955. He was describing the networking and the roots of the collective conscious that he calls the “curriculum of the 21st Century”.

Hawken observed that the common thread between the literally millions of organizations in the movement is that, although they all have different ways of expressing their goals, none have contradictory values. They are all, in unique ways, exhibiting moral opposition to an unjust state. He quoted Thoreau: "If the government is unjust, the just man is in jail." Hawken described an atomized, bottom-up collection of organizations working to put down the injustice that permeates every institution, everywhere. He told of how the movement, like the immune system, categorically identifies and destroys disease (or the disease destroys it).

Photo Credit: Whitehouse.gov

Jimmy: Well… since President Bush is SOARING in the polls with his approval rating hovering in the 30% range I thought it might be interesting to take a look at his environmental record and his perceived Turn-Around on the environment, particularly on climate change.

As I have noted before Bush doesn’t always earn the enmity the environmental community harbors against him. One personal anecdote that would be funny if it wasn’t sad is this walk-the-walk vs. a talk-the-talk comparison of residence between George Bush and uber-conservationist Al Gore. Now Big Al has since made amends and is LEEDing the way by giving his place an environmental make-over… but it sometimes makes me wonder where his heart really is.

Bush does live somewhat conservatively to the extent any president can but what about Bush’s policy? I find it hard to cut through the rhetoric with the environmental community attacking every policy as not enough and Bush seemingly unwilling to aggressively defend his policy for fear it might hurt his street cred as an evil capitalist.

Bug Based Bio Fuel
Oxygen Trick Could See Organic Costs Tumble
Solar Decathalon Preview
Air Quality By SMS
EU Sees Green Future For Business

(more)

(Posted by David Zaks in News and Views at 8:31 PM)

This is part 2 of my series of posts about visiting GM Headquarters in Detroit for the ChallengeX program and to meet with some GM executives. I attended this event representing both GreenOptions.com and EcoGeek.org, and these articles are cross-posted to both sites. Previous story here.

Several of the vehicles were available to be driven at the ChallengeX event. Of the vehicles that were there, I was most interested in driving the University of Waterloo's entry. Most of the teams (12 of the 17 competitors) were using a B20 biodiesel blend as their fuel and all but one of the others used some form of internal combustion with E85 ethanol or reformulated gasoline. But the University of Waterloo team took a different approach.

The Waterloo vehicle was powered by a hydrogen fuel cell (with onboard batteries for backup) and propelled by front and rear electric motors. When I sat down behind the wheel, my guide from the Waterloo team explained that some of the things in the vehicle that are different from the way we're used to driving a car. There were a number of different sounds, coming from the front and the rear, as various systems came online to start the fuel cell system in operation. Matt Stevens from the Waterloo team explained the whole sequence of operation to me this way:

If green office buildings provide important benefits, like decreased absenteeism and improved productivity of the workers inside, it only makes sense that schools and students reap these same rewards. Surely every parent would love for their kids to have fewer sick days.

To further this concept, Global Green, USA is hosting the 2007 Green Schools Symposium on Thursday, June 14th. You might remember Global Green from it’s pre-Oscar bash in February, which featured the likes of Orlando Bloom and Leonardo DiCaprio. This event, however, has a slightly different (and less famous) audience.

The Symposium will provide a forum for discussing case studies, new research on the benefits of green schools, and new design tools to help create resource-efficient, healthy, and productive schools. This year, the conference features a special focus on charter schools. The one-day event will be held at the California Science Center.