Over the century after it was first launched, the British-built steamship, the SS Ayrfield, hosted a variety of different sailors and cargo. During World War II, it was used by the Australian government to transport food and supplies to soldiers in the Pacific theatre, and afterwards, sold to a shipping company to transport coal.

But although the vessel was wrecked and decommissioned in the early 1970s, left to rust in Sydney's Homebush Bay, it has since been slowly commandeered by a new type of crew: a floating forest of lush mangroves.

© Rodney Campbell

As imposing as it must have seemed when rolling off the shipyard line in 1911, a steel-hulled testament to human ingenuity, after decades of service the SS Ayrfield, like many of our formerly-prized possessions, became mired in obsolescence. Though in the years that followed, that wrecked old coal ship has come to represent something else entirely -- the ease with which nature can reclaim even the stateliest symbols of our civilization.

Nowadays, what was once an eyesore has become a favorite spot among photographers, its contrast of the shipwreck's rust and lush vegetation against the city skyline acting as an easy allegory for degradation and renewal.

© Rodney Campbell

While it can often be disheartening to consider how fleeting our creations actually are in the long stream of time, it is also reassuring to know that once we leave the helm, it won't remain lifeless long. Indeed, perhaps a similar fate to the SS Ayrfield awaits many other vessels at sea today and even some not yet built -- carrying our cargo for just a short while before the roots of a forest or a coral reef take over for the long shift.

Fleet Composite Squadron 6 conducts boat operations off coast of Naval Station Norfolk, VA. (Credit: U.S. Navy)

Yesterday Terry McAuliffe, Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate, revealed newfound support for oil and gas exploration off the Commonwealth’s coast. The Washington Post reported that he now backs legislation sponsored by Virginia’s Democratic U.S. Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine that would open offshore areas to oil and gas exploration.

Offshore oil drilling is viewed by Virginia politicians on both sides of the aisle as a budgetary panacea, in part because of the economic activity drilling would create, but perhaps more so because the Warner-Kaine bill would direct a portion of drilling royalties back into the commonwealth’s coffers. But the bottom line is that any development carries with it massive risk to the state’s environment and the current economic drivers that rely on healthy and accessible oceans and coasts.

A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis of Virginia’s tourism industry reported that the sector supports more than 200,000 jobs, yielding an economic impact of more than $20 billion in 2011, and that Virginia’s beaches alone attracted nearly 10 percent of the state’s tourists. Virginia’s coast and ocean also support thriving fisheries; in 2011 fishermen landed 247,000 tons of seafood in Virginia, worth more than $191 million, ranking it the third largest seafood producer in the country by weight.

As Gulf Coast states painfully learned in 2010’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, offshore drilling accidents can devastate robust tourism industries, the health of marine ecosystems, and both the productivity and the reputation of the marine fisheries supported by those ecosystems. Unfortunately, Congress has so far failed to pass any reforms to reduce the risk of spills or blowouts, meaning the few regulatory reforms made by the Department of the Interior to improve offshore drilling safety in the aftermath of the Gulf spill could be rolled back by a future administration.

Drilling offshore Virginia would also be incompatible with another vital activity carried out along the state’s coast — keeping our nation safe. Naval Station Norfolk, the largest naval complex in the world, is one of the state’s primary economic engines, supporting more than 71,000 military and civilian employees. Overall the Navy was responsible for more nearly $15 billion in economic impact in Virginia in fiscal year 2009.

In 2010 the US Department of Defense determined that 74 percent of the areas eyed for oil and gas leasing offshore Virginia would directly interfere with the extensive military activities that are carried out in the region, including ordnance training and aircraft carrier operations. As Virginia Representative James Moran put it, “When you come down to it, the Navy’s operations are much more important to the Virginia economy, let alone national security, than … drilling operations.”

Furthermore, most of the areas where the Navy did not find potential conflicts are either in major shipping lanes or off the northern part of the coast where Virginia’s desire to drill would come into conflict with their neighbors in Maryland where the sentiment is distinctly anti-drilling. After watching the oil gush in the Gulf of Mexico unchecked for more than a month, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley took an unequivocal stance, saying “I would be opposed to any drilling off the Chesapeake Bay.”

Virginia can still look to the ocean to shape its energy future, but rather than drilling for oil, the Commonwealth should be pursuing offshore wind energy development. McAuliffe’s campaign website notes that Virginia’s offshore wind resource could generate up to 3,200 megawatts of electricity “in just the 25 most promising offshore parcels” — development that would support as many as 11,600 jobs. Furthermore, the Department of the Interior’s “Smart from the Start” program has already identified sites for wind turbines off Virginia’s coast that would not conflict with either military operations or the shipping industry. As CAP has reported, offshore wind holds vast promise for producing clean energy at modest prices that will be stable over the long term — much more than can be said for oil or natural gas.

Rather than looking to the industries of the past and falling victim to another black gold rush that would compromise Virginia’s robust blue economy, Virginia’s leaders should instead look to a proven source of homegrown energy development that will create new jobs without jeopardizing current ones or contributing to our nation’s unsustainable thirst for climate-altering fossil fuels. Prioritizing development and protection of the state’s existing coastal-dependent industries like tourism, and fishing, and its world class military emplacements, while boosting support for renewable energy development is a common-sense approach to moving one of America’s most historic states toward a brighter economic future.

Shiva Polefka is a Research Associate for Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress where Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy.

Following CAP’s piece yesterday that details exactly what it means to use gasoline to travel this Memorial Day weekend, here is an infographic that shows the cost of Big Oil. Gas prices are rising in the Midwest and spot crude oil prices for the West Texas Intermediate benchmark is nearly $5 per barrel higher than last year at this time.

The oil industry uses high prices to make big profits, spends them to keep their tax breaks, and then pushes for more dirty, unconventional oil like Canadian tar sands — which will not have any impact on gasoline prices.

Allison Arieff literally wrote the book on modern prefab and knows the subject better than just about anyone. She writes in the New York Times about the trend towards multifamily housing, calling it " the killer app for the modular industry."

In 2004, Allison was proselytizing prefab for single family house, and I was selling them. We both dreamed of a revolution in the homebuilding business where architect designed, elegant, green and affordable homes would be available to anyone. In the end it didn't work out as we thought it would:

Absent economies of scale, the dreamed-of cost savings are basically impossible to achieve. Imagine building a custom car on a Ford assembly line and you can get a sense of how that might work. The repetition involved in creating a multi-unit building simply aligns with prefab’s capabilities in a way that single-family homebuilding does not.

It also became obvious that there is more to it than just the boxes that make the house; there is also the cost of land, foundations and servicing. It ended up that they were pretty well all big country homes, or prefab sprawl.

The future of green, elegant and small housing is multifamily, and as Allison concludes, "Prefab can make that happen more quickly, efficiently and economically than conventional construction — and increasingly, it’s doing exactly that."

Great article in the New York Times

Claesson Koivisto Rune are TreeHugger favorites, designing best-of-show lamps, air purifiers, prefab houses and chairs. Now they are trying to address a serious problem in Africa: the wasteful, dangerous and inefficient way people cook. The traditional way, sitting a pot on three stones and building a fire under, uses a lot of wood and puts out a lot of smoke and particulate.

Top Third Ventures went to Claesson Koivisto Rune to design a stove that "looks good, feels good and makes them proud." The architects tell Designboom why it looks the way it does:

To hand out functioning – but crude and cheap – cooking tools to 'the poor' is commendable but condescending. would I myself really appreciate a cheap and ugly tool offered to me because it 'works and improves my life'.

It appears to be a form of rocket stove, dozens of which have been designed and proposed for use in Africa to use less wood and produce less smoke. They can be made of a lot of different materials;

Kelly Rossiter/CC BY 2.0

Kelly saw one made of cement, built into a house in Kenya, that also uses very little wood and burns relatively cleanly.

Claesson Koivisto Rune at ICFF / Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0

I am going to assume that this stove doesn't actually work better than any of the other rocket stoves we have shown. Does design make a difference? Will its design increase the rate of acceptance among people who have often rejected non-traditional stoves? It is an important question; Sami discussed it two years ago, quoting an expert:

There have been thousands of stoves programs; I'm familiar with hundreds of them," says Bryan Willson, a professor of mechanical engineering at Colorado State University. "And it's hard to identify programs that have been successful." Willson says it's time to bring 21st century capitalism to bear. "There's a global need for 500 or 600 million cookstoves," he says. "And nobody is willing to write a big enough check to donate our way to that solution. So we really need to be able to develop products that people will want to buy.

I love CKR's attitude that "as designers we need to put the same effort into an African stove as were we designing an Italian sports car." Perhaps this is the one that will catch on, but I think in Africa I would rather have a Land Cruiser.

claesson koivisto rune: baker cookstove for developing countries from designboom on Vimeo.

Like the mice of New York, cockroaches are being shaped by urban environments. Scientists have found that a particular strain has evolved in such a way that it can outsmart human traps.

In the first part of the experiment, the researchers offered the hungry cockroaches a choice of two foods - peanut butter or glucose-rich jam [known as jelly is the US].

"The jelly contains lots of glucose and the peanut butter has a much smaller amount," explained Dr Schal.

"You can see the mutant cockroaches taste the jelly and jump back - they're repulsed and they swarm over the peanut butter." (source)

The scientists found that this happened because the special mutant cockroaches perceived the sweet taste of glucose as bitter. In a natural environment, this would make them less likely to survive and reproduce, weeding them out of the gene pool. But in an environment where there are many traps set by humans, this aversion to glucose can actually help them survive and reproduce more than their sweet-toothed cousins.

Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0

Via BBC

See also: NASA timelapse: 3 years of the sun in 3 minutes, with commentary from a heliophysicist

From Chipotle to high-end eateries like Le Bernardin, 100 New York City restaurants have agreed to cut the amount of food waste they send to the landfill in half through composting and recycling.

Bloomberg announced the restaurants would participate in the New York's first Food Waste Challenge, as part of the city's goal to divert 75 percent of solid waste from landfills by 2030. Reducing the amount of food waste that ends up in landfills will also cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.

According to a press release from the Mayor, food waste comprises one-third of the city’s more than 20,000 tons of daily refuse and restaurants account for 70 percent of commercial food waste.

The city provides resources to restaurants to help them teach staff about composting best practices and measuring the amount of waste diverted from mixed trash. The restaurants previously determined how much waste they generated to use as a baseline.

The program nicely coincided withe the theme of this year's World Environment Day, which aims to bring attention to all types issues related of food waste. According to the United Nation's Environment Programme, organic wastes that could be composted are the second largest component of landfills in the U.S.

We can do all the fancy stuff in New York's Design Week, but on TreeHugger the tiny house rules. The two most popular posts of the week were Kim's looks at living with less. I should learn from this and stay home next year.

First up is Carrie and Shane Caverly of of Santa Fe, New Mexico's Clothesline Tiny Homes. More: Eco-minded 204 sq. ft. tiny home packs in tons of thoughtful details (Video)

Riding a bike has so much going for it, from being an emissions-free mode of transportation to keeping riders fit and healthy to just being a fun activity, that it's hard to see why so more people aren't doing it.

One big stumbling block for the bike-curious is the risk factor, especially after dark, considering you're balanced on top of a relatively fragile vehicle as you navigate through automobile traffic, where even the smallest car is huge in comparison.

So being visible while riding at night and in the mornings is paramount for staying safe, and while there are other, simpler ways of lighting up your bike, the Monkey Light Pro is certainly the winner when it comes to having the ultimate in customizable lighting on your two-wheeler.

Imagine being able to display custom graphics on your wheels while spinning, and even set up 'playlists' of images or animations to cycle through. Or being able to turn your wheels into traffic control devices by displaying a Stop sign to cross-traffic. Monkey Light Pro can do all of that, and more.

© Monkeylectric

Monkey Light Pro has 4 separate pieces that connect to most common-sized adult bike wheels and are securely fastened to the spokes (said to take about an hour to install and set up). Once installed, images and animations can be downloaded to the units and set up to display on the wheels, and thanks to accelerometers and sensors tracking speed and direction, the display is said to be stable even when accelerating or braking (Fixie riders take note - it also works when riding backwards).

The 256 LED lights on the units allow for 4,096 colors, which can be customized into designs uploaded via Bluetooth. The Monkey Light Pro also allows users to upload up to 1,000 photos or 90 seconds of video to the devices, which means that GIF memes could literally leave the internet and hit the streets on the wheels of your bike.

"Mount the Monkey Light Pro to your bike wheel and take your message to the streets. Once you're rolling the display fills the bike wheel and is visible from both sides. The Monkey Light Pro is waterproof, durable and designed for use on city streets. Crank your bike to eleven."

Right now, the Monkey Light Pro, is in a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter, where support from cyclists, artists, and crowdfunding enthusiasts have already chipped in $56,000 toward the campaign goal of $180,000, which will take it from fully tested prototype to a production model. If you want to see this novel bike/art/safety/activism tool fully come to life, go drop a couple of bucks in the jar over at Kickstarter, or check out their other bike lights at Monkeylectric.

Just one request: If you end up with one of these, please leave Grumpy Cat out of it.

Beer purity law of 1516

Flickr/CC BY 2.0

On the status of fracking in Germany, De Spiegel writes:

Attempts at introducing legislation on fracking in Berlin have been postponed several times. In mid-May, Merkel's cabinet agreed on a proposal to ban fracking in catchment areas for lakes, such as Lake Constance in southern Germany, that are drinking water sources. But several areas would be exempt from the ban.

Berlin wants to develop a law that would define the conditions under which the technology could be used in Germany. The fracking procedure is used to release shale gas from stone deposits deep in the earth. The process is controversial because, among other reasons, it involves the use of chemicals that could contaminate the water supply.

Wikimedia/CC BY-SA 2.0

If you are curious about the beer purity law, here's the whole story.

Via Der Spiegel

See also: Nearly half the rice sold in Guangzhou (pop. 12+ million) is contaminated by cadmium

The sun, to many of us, is like water to a fish. Very important, but we kind of forget about it because it's always been there. But the great nuclear fusion reactor in the sky is a fascinating astral body that deserves our attention, not only because it powers almost all life on Earth (exceptions are some chemotrophs and such) and bathes us in enough energy to easily meet all the needs of our human civilization, but also because it is beautiful in its own right and a great playground for scientists.

The video below is a timelapse produced by NASA. It shows 3 years of the sun in 3 minutes (a bit more in the version with the commentary track by heliophysicist Alex Young) in a way you've probably never seen it before. Highly recommended:

In case you just want to chill out while looking at the sun (without damaging your eyes), here's the same thing but without the commentary track:

Via NASA

See also: Google buys flying wind-turbine startup Makani Power

by Brad Johnson, campaign manager for Forecast the Facts

The nearly $300 million climate-resiliency initiative established by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg using Sandy relief funds will not address climate pollution, according to a city official.

The New York City Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency (SIRR), formed in November 2012, will release a report this month indicating how $294 million in federal funding from the Superstorm Sandy relief act should be spent to increase the city’s “climate resiliency.” The report “will present policy recommendations, infrastructure priorities, and community plans, and identify sources of long-term funding” in addition to the emergency federal funds — but it apparently will not include an accounting of the carbon footprint of that infrastructure development.

In an email, SIRR spokesperson Daynan Crull told Forecast the Facts that because the initiative’s job is to “protect New York City against future climate threats,” it “does not directly address energy generation vis-à-vis fossil fuels”:

SIRR’s directive is rebuild and protect New York City against future climate threats, so it does not directly address energy generation vis-à-vis fossil fuels. However, New York City has been a global leader in environmental urban policy, pioneering PlaNYC — one of the most comprehensive sustainable and environmentally conscious policy programs ever established for a major city. It is upon this foundation that SIRR is built. Indeed PlaNYC established the New York City Panel on Climate Change, which is supporting SIRR’s work with the best climate science available.

Crull’s statement makes no sense — if SIRR’s plan is to “protect New York City against future climate threats,” it must necessarily “address energy generation vis-à-vis fossil fuels.” One cannot wall off energy use and infrastructure planning into separate boxes. This announcement is especially troubling because it is not clear that New York City is increasing any of its investments in renewable energy or carbon pollution reduction in response to Sandy. Instead, the city is moving forward with new fossil-fuel infrastructure, including a fracked-gas pipeline planned to cut through the Rockaways.

In 2011, PlaNYC set relatively strong climate-pollution goals for the city: a 30 percent reduction from 2006 levels of carbon pollution by 2017, with hopes of achieving an 80 percent reduction by 2050. However, much more ambitious targets are technologically possible — Stanford researcher Mark Jacobson has detailed a strategy for getting New York State’s energy use carbon-free by 2030. And no climate plan for New York City is complete without goals for divesting the financial industry from fossil-fuel producers like New York’s richest man, David H. Koch.

SIRR’s work will update 2011′s NYC Vision 2020 Comprehensive Waterfront Plan, which included a chapter on climate resilience, defined incompletely by the planners as “adaptation strategies” to climate change impacts such as sea level rise and more intense storms. The devastation of Superstorm Sandy gives the waterfront plan’s recommendations new and tragic urgency — one of the stated goals was to “develop a better understanding of the city’s vulnerability to flooding and storm surge.” The waterfront plan did not explicitly call for resilience measures to emphasize carbon reduction, an unfortunate oversight that looks to be continued.

It is possible that the public word from SIRR is misleading. The climate-resiliency plan is being developed in consultation with the New York City Panel on Climate Change, co-chaired by climate scientist Cynthia Rosenzweig and urban environmental scientist William Solecki; the NYC Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability, led since December 2012 by Sergej Mahnovski, a renewable-energy expert; and Goldman Sachs vice president Marc Ricks, a lead architect of PlaNYC.

Despite the official word that the SIRR plan will not address fossil-fuel energy generation, there are reasons to hope that the plan will promote infrastructure investments that are intended simultaneously to protect New York City residents from the damages of climate-change-related threats and to reduce the pollution that fuels those threats — and provide true climate resilience.

The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University released their most recent survey this week:

The Yale survey, “Public Support for Climate and Energy Policies in April 2013,” dates back to 2008 and is an important barometer for public opinion on clean energy and climate issues.

In general, the year’s survey finds that support for prioritizing clean energy remains high, albeit with a recent dip, due in part to the increasing polarization of the American electorate.

Still, strong majorities support renewable energy and regulation carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

Here is more from what’s in the report, by the numbers:

Were your opinions reflected in the poll?

Watching a diverse, powerful coalition of groups in North Omaha, Nebraska, come together against a coal plant has been inspiring in the past few months. Residents are working with members of the local NAACP, the Malcolm X Foundation, the Sierra Club, and many others to call for clean energy and the retirement of Omaha Public Power District's North Omaha coal plant.

They are tired of the health effects that air pollution is having on their neighborhoods. According to the Clean Air Task Force, pollution from burning coal at OPPD’s North Omaha coal-fired power plant is linked to 240 asthma attacks, 22 heart attacks, and 14 premature deaths annually, as well as more than $100 million each year in health and environmental related costs, which are then passed on to taxpayers. North Omaha is largely an African American population, with an average household income of $17,000 The asthma rate in this community is nearly 20 percent -- more than twice the national average.

The North Omaha coal plant (pictured below) is one of the dirtiest in the nation. Last year, the NAACP ranked it the 16th worst environmental justice offender in the nation (although with recent coal plant closures and retirements, it's now moved into the top ten).

Courtesy of WOWT-TV Omaha/Video screen capture

Krystal Craig used to live in the North Omaha neighborhood, but was forced to move because of her son's severe asthma.

"It seems to be much better out here," Krystal said of her new neighborhood, away from North Omaha. She wishes the rest of the families in her old neighborhood could breathe easier. "I don't want people to have to pick up and move so their children can be able to breathe."

That's why Krystal and a coalition of groups delivered close to 1,000 petitions to the Omaha Public Power District last week calling for the utility to move beyond coal.

"The pollutants released by burning coal at the North Omaha power plant can be extremely irritating to the throat and to the lungs, which can trigger asthma attacks and contribute to larger health issues," said Cynthia Tiedeman, a retired Omaha Public School District nurse, who spoke at the delivery event.

Cynthia, Krystal, and many North Omaha residents want clean energy for their neighborhood -- and for all of Nebraska. Not only do they know it won't pollute the air or water, but they also recognize the potential clean energy has for generating jobs and boosting the local economy. It's no coincidence that companies like Facebook are choosing Iowa over Nebraska for siting new facilities -- it's at least in part because of Iowa's aggressive wind power development. Just across the river from Omaha in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Google has announced plans to expand an existing data center.

Nebraskans are tired of seeing the economic development go to Iowa -- look at how much money Mid-American Energy is investing in Iowa wind. These big wins for wind energy are possible for Nebraska, but without investment or good energy policies in place, Nebraska sits on the sidelines and watches economic development boom in Iowa.

According to the American Wind Energy Association, Nebraska has the fourth-greatest wind-power potential in the U.S., and it also ranks ninth in solar power potential. The state can do better for public health and the economy by moving beyond coal to clean energy.

We at the Sierra Club are proud to stand with the North Omaha residents in calling for more clean energy instead of more coal and asthma attacks. As Cynthia Tiedeman said, "Kids in North Omaha deserve better than pollution from an outdated coal plant in their backyards."

TAKE ACTION: Tell the Omaha Public Power District to retire the North Omaha coal plant and invest in clean energy!

(Credit: Andreas Gebert/EPA/Corbis)

German brewers are sounding the alarm that allowing fracking could pollute water and ruin German beer. [Telegraph]

German brewers have warned Chancellor Angela Merkel that any law allowing the controversial drilling technique known as fracking could damage the country’s cherished beer industry.

The Brauer-Bund beer association is worried that fracking for shale gas, which involves pumping water and chemicals at high pressure into the ground, could pollute water used for brewing and break a 500-year-old industry rule on water purity.

Germany, home to Munich’s annual Oktoberfest – the world’s biggest folk festival which attracts around 7m visitors – has a proud tradition of brewing and beer drinking.

Under the “Reinheitsgebot”, or German purity law, brewers have to produce beer using only malt, hops, yeast and water.

“The water has to be pure and more than half Germany’s brewers have their own wells which are situated outside areas that could be protected under the government’s current planned legislation on fracking,” said a Brauer-Bund spokesman.

“You cannot be sure that the water won’t be polluted by chemicals so we have urged the government to carry out more research before it goes ahead with a fracking law,” he added.

Eugene Robinson: “President Obama should spend his remaining years in office making the United States part of the solution to climate change, not part of the problem.” [Washington Post]

Former Republican Governor Jane Swift commends President Obama for choosing Gina McCarthy to run the EPA, and urges the Senate to confirm this “qualified nominee.” [Boston Globe]

New research says that Mount Everest’s glaciers have shrunk 13 percent in the last 50 years, and that rate is accelerating. [Guardian]

Budget woes, the sequester, and system failures have seriously impacted National Weather Service warning and forecasting capabilities. [Capital Weather Gang]

NOAA predicts a very active hurricane season in 2013. [Washington Post]

An economist’s take on climate change’s odds: “Prudence would seem to dictate taking action to cut back greenhouse gas emissions significantly.” [PBS]

CA Gov. Jerry Brown on climate change: “We’ve got a big challenge. It’s daunting. This is not just about science, this is about activism.” [AP]

Will a changing climate lead to increased plagues of locusts? [Guardian]

What China is doing about their serious air pollution problem. [NPR]

More than a hundred rallied against the potential LA Times sale to the conservative activist Koch brothers. [LA Times]

The interesting thing about this week’s Keystone vote was not that it passed, but that it lost Democratic support. [Washington Post]

The State Department has begun releasing the 1.2 million comments it received regarding the Keystone pipeline, revealing how controversial the project is. [The Hill]

Russia approved an incentive program to boost renewable-energy production, targeting almost 6 gigawatts of new capacity by 2020 and its first solar parks. [Bloomberg]

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton signed legislation that included the state’s first solar energy standard. [Minnesota Clean Energy & Jobs]

Rural Australians who have been protesting coal seam gas reportedly encountered gunfire today, but are standing their ground. [The Chronicle]

Houston’s air quality is dangerous already — what happen should tar sands begin to flow from Alberta to Harris County? [DeSmogBlog]

The world’s first wind/current power system will be installed off the coast of Japan this year. [CleanTechnica]

Just as we saw following Hurricane Sandy, the devastating tornado that hit Moore, Oklahoma raised the question of whether the storm could be attributed to climate change. As noted earlier, while global warming is making many weather events more extreme, tornados are harder to attribute to climate change. Andrew Revkin asked a number of climate scientists to share their thoughts on the connection (or lack thereof). Revkin notes that the question of whether this storm is related to climate change is important in the long-term, but that the more important issue right now is how we design homes and communities to prepare for disasters. The responses are interesting and cover a range of topics, from resilient design to building codes.

This response from Daniel Sutter, a professor of economics at Troy University is particularly interesting:

Also with regard to your previous post about flimsy homes, consider the contrast between how cars and houses are marketed. Cars are sold under brand names, and we have a dual system of federal regulation of designs for safety and auto makers designing cars that are safer than federal regulations require, with certification by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Houses are mainly sold without brand names (I couldn’t tell you who built the house I own here in Alabama) with safety assurances coming through building codes. Many times we see that homes perform poorly in tornadoes or hurricanes, while during a commercial break on the Weather Channel last night there was a car ad touting the model’s crash test rating from the IIHS. If houses are indeed flimsy, there is probably a systematic reason for this.

Lloyd recently looked into whether shipping containers or modular designs are better for post-disaster shelters. And Kevin Kelly explained how complicated technological and societal interconnectedness makes responding to disasters a huge challenge.

There's much more to dig into at Revkin's post, so read the rest.

IMAGE: "Rebuild Moore" - Architecture for Humanity is working to help rebuild Moore, Oklahoma. After the Haiti earthquake students from Moore West Junior High raised funds for the organization to help rebuild schools for displaced students. Architecture for Humanity has 7 architects from and/or based in Oklahoma, so they already have people on the ground there. Learn more and donate to their efforts here.

The UK-based grocery store chain announced in its intentions to help consumers reduce wasteful shopping habits.

The Guardian reports that marketing and deals lead consumers to buy more food than they will eat:

After criticism of the prevalence of supermarket "bogofs" (buy one get one frees) and other deals which help to create an annual mountain of food waste, the UK's largest retailer said its food promotions would, in the future, not be designed to encourage people to buy large amounts of food with a short shelf life.

The chain has also been criticized by the advocacy group This Is Rubbish for a lack of transparency about how much food goes to waste in its stores.

One of the ways the company hopes to help customers is by changing the way expiration dates are displayed. Further specific details of how Tesco will get consumers to waste less remain fuzzy, despite rolling out a feature about the issue on its website. The company is working to conduct consumer research with the Waste & Resource Action Programme, a nonprofit organization that's funded by several government bodies, including the European Union and the UK's Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs.

It is a particularly appropriate time for Tesco to address the its role in food waste. The larger issue of food waste is the central topic of this year's World Environment Day. According to the United Nation's Environment Programme, roughly one third of food produced globally isn't eaten and waste is occurring at every link of the supply chain.

Jaymi's Notes:
I can't pass up a grilled portobello mushroom, especially when it is stuffed full with sauteed leeks and spinach. Talk about a hearty summer main dish. This recipe is extra flavorful thanks to the balsamic vinegar mixed in with the leeks and spinach. The melted cheese on top is a delicious addition. I added roasted red peppers with the cheese topping for a little extra flavor.

Of course, this is a vegan dish if you leave the cheese off, or if you use a vegan cheese alternative.

More on The Cooking Project.

© Jaymi Heimbuch
Kelly's Recipe:

My husband eyed the portobello mushrooms on the counter and looked at me quizzically. It's a bit of a running joke in our house that if you go to my mother-in-law's for dinner and you happen to be a vegetarian, you will get a single broiled portobello mushroom on your plate. That's it. Dinner.

I can tell you that what I made was much tastier, and just about as easy to make. I'm always happy to discover a recipe that is simple to make, doesn't take long, is healthy and actually tastes great. You can serve these mushrooms as a snack, as an appetizer or as a side dish for a larger meal. We had it for lunch with a salad on the side. This recipe calls for leeks, which I didn't have, so I ended up using a regular yellow onion, and I decided to sautee it first before I added it to the spinach and vinegar mixture.

This recipe is from Grilling Vegan Style by John Schlimm. There are lots of great sounding recipes in this new book, and I expect I'll be dipping into it frequently and grilling lots of vegetables and tofu over the next few weeks.

© Jaymi Heimbuch

Grilled portobello mushrooms stuffed with sauteed leeks and spinach

2 leeks, washed carefully and cut into 1/2" coins
3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, plus additional for rubbing the mushrooms
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Salt and freshly ground pepper
2 cups chopped fresh spinach leaves
4 portobello mushroom caps
1 cup crumbly vegan cheese of your choice

1. In a large bowl, combine the olive oil, balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper to taste and whisk well. Add the leeks and spinach leaves to the oil mixture and toss to coat thoroughly.

2. Heat a sauté pan on medium heat. Add the mixture to the pan and lightly sauté until the spinach begins to wilt and the leeks begin to turn translucent.

3. Heat grill to medium-high. Rub the mushroom caps with olive oil and grill them, gill side down for 2 to 3 minutes. Turn over the caps, fill them with the leek and spinach mixture, and divide the cheese among the four caps. Close the grill and cook the stuffed mushroom caps for 7 to 8 minutes, until the cheese begins to brown. Serve warm.

© Jaymi Heimbuch

With gyres of it swirling in our oceans, to landfills packed to overflowing with it, plastics are a true, non-biodegradable modern day bane. To tackle this pervasive problem, we've found various ways to recycle, upcycle and transform plastics into clothing, architecture and art, often with surprising results. Using 1,500 recycled bottles, this new parking canopy in Lincoln, Nebraska, shows that old plastic bottles can still impart a fresh aesthetic.

© Garth Britzman

© Garth Britzman

© Garth Britzman

Created by American artist Garth Britzman, in collaboration with University of Nebraska students, this piece, titled (POP)culture, took 200 hours to make and features a bit of coloured liquid within each bottle, adding some vibrancy to the transparent plastic. Britzman explains:

© Garth Britzman

Bright and quirky, this project demonstrates that a simple (and problematic) material can easily be transformed into something quite striking. More over at Garth Britzman's site.