New York “rides in” the New Year as Times Square visitors bike to help power the New Year’s Eve Ball (© Charles Sykes, Invision, for Citi, on Treehugger). You heard it right. When the festive ball drops to usher in 2014, renewable energy will contribute to the flashiness of its cascade. For the past three
There are tons of reasons to bike. Tons. It’s ridiculously, insanely good for helping preserve a livable planet. It’s ridiculously, insanely good for our health. And it’s ridiculously, insanely efficient (saves a ton of money for individuals, cities, counties, states, and countries). But there’s one more key reason that is often overlooked: it’s ridiculously,
Princeton Survey The Streetsblog DC recently published a story on a telephone poll of 1,003 Americans, which was commissioned by the advocacy group America Bikes and conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates. The results were “unequivocal: 83 percent said that federal bike-ped funding should increase, or at the very least be maintained.” The car is becoming
Biking has become a lifestyle, a way of life. Cyclists who hit their favorite bike paths or bike routes every day are like another cut of the zen surfer who never missed a dawn and a wave. Now, we have the bike-path-gilding travelers that make Kerouac’s On the Road look sedentary. Devotees of biking vary
Renting a bike is a great option for going green for short distance transportation. Enter Splintster, offering an appealing combination of friendship, greener living and a cleaner, more connected community.
Cars kills countless people ever year. Hitting someone with your car on purpose is akin to shooting someone — a car can be used as a deadly weapon. I don’t know the full details of the story below, but from Chris DeMorro’s retelling of it on sister site Gas2, it certainly looks like a
Here’s one more awesome and inspiring bicycling video for the day. Again, it’s about living on your bike, and enjoying the freedom, high quality of life, and mental and physical health that comes from that. I don’t remember where I ran across this one. Enjoy! What more is there to say about bicycling–it’s good for
I intended to share this nearly a week ago when I ran across it. Actually, right after it was published, it seems. If you haven’t seen it yet (it’s gone a bit viral), it’s a must watch. Title = “The Man Who Lived on His Bike.” Living in Groningen (in the Netherlands), I feel like I saw people
Seamlessly Integrated Bike Flow “Cycling is part of everyone’s life, because it was made part of everyone’s life.” This film, Cycling for Everyone, is a light, moving record of health and happiness. The film shows Amsterdam as a place where sharing the road is easy and safe. Inhabitants of this city and country value cycling so much that the rich and the
I just ran across this video the other day for the first time in awhile. Like the first time I saw it, I immediately thought about how it is such a wonderful advertisement for bicycling. Better than just about any bicycling video or ad I’ve ever seen, it does such a good job of capturing
This is absolutely, insanely hilarious… and adorable. Not only that, I think it really shows the tremendous feeling of empowerment that comes from riding a bike… and not just the first time! 😀 Little Kid Gives Epic Speech After First Bike Ride – Amazing videos are here Kid’s got some spunk.
A recent story that celebrates spontaneity, cycling, urban wanderlust, and the wonderful wave of sustainable bike-sharing programs is a welcome happiness to all of us wanting more biking freedoms. From an article found on the League of American Bicyclists (LAB) website: “Bike sharing is like a big advertisement for bicycling,” says Darren Buck, a Virginia Tech (VT) student. “Folks walking by
Aura as a Protective Body of Light Energy One’s Aura is a body of light, a body of energy, that spreads out from our center and lights up a field of astral and ethereal layers of light protection. It is a large round globe of energy from within that spreads outwardly around us.
For anyone who wants to green their life — really wants to — I think there are 5 basic requirements … or, to make them sound nicer, we’ll call them ingredients. Can you live a “green” life without one of these? Well, yeah, but it is perhaps a “light green” life, not a fully green life. Think
2011 was a big year for the environment, in some good ways and some bad ways. Here’s a quick run-down of the top 10 stories of the year, in my opinion: 1. Tremendously high levels of carbon emissions continue to warm Earth. Despite efforts to switch to clean energy, increase energy efficiency, and use more
Watching this video, one finds something so simple, so commonsense, and at the same time, so brilliant in it. Things as they should be is what Planetsave is all about. Copenhagenize leads us to the thoughtful, simple way things should (and could) be in this beautiful video of an Utrecht traffic garden. Adults and children alike need this now.
Change is percolating in spirit while the cold New England winter blows in. But, if you’re in Boston, just imagine what spring will bring — The Boston Globe reports the city will increase its new bike sharing program by 50 percent, adding 300 bicycles. The desire is there and the need is going to be supplied. Since the beginning
Brazilian Bike Culture The Copacabana neighborhood in the city of Rio de Janeiro is enjoying an upswing economically, as is the whole of Brazil. The changes are progressively upbeat, integrating a greener travel style. Copacabana’s air is a bit fresher and the sounds of traffic are more naturalistic and harmonious due to the widespread use of
Check out this super cool bicycling video, beautiful music and graphics. Though, would be nicer without the subtitles (if you understood the language).
This is a great story I ran across on Copenhagenize, of what the title says (a woman bicycling to the hospital pregnant and with contractions), but also with an ironic poster added at the bottom.
Too cool, eh?
Top green living stories of the past couple days:
By Bill McKibben
Dear Friends,
The last two weeks have been spectacular.
In Washington DC, phase one of the tar sands campaign has just come to an end, and 1,252 North Americans have been arrested in a massive civil disobedience campaign. This historic groundswell was focused on stopping the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline — but it also sent a larger message that people everywhere are willing to take bold action to move our planet beyond fossil fuels.
Some top green living stories of the last few days:
I write about cool bike stories here a lot, since bicycling is both one the best ways to green your life and is one of the best ways to make your life more relaxing, healthier, and more enjoyable.
But, one of the things I strive for here on Planetsave is finding ways to help people make positive changes in their lives, not just talk about how cool green living is.
Here are 7 good green living stories of the last day or so. Check ’em out:
Other than the terrific piece new Planetsave writer and activist Kate Follot just wrote, here are some top activism stories of the past few days. They cover topics related to transportation, the tar sands, climate change, animals, nature, food, and more. Check them out:
Just ran across this great infographic on bicycling facts and the future of bicycling on our sister site sustainablog and, of course, wanted to share it on here. It’s the feature green living “story” of the day. The infographic is from our friends over at Well Home Energy Audit. Check it out and enjoy!
Cities around the world have blossoming bike sharing programs. But unlike blossoming flowers, these programs will both make people smile AND reduce their allergies. How, exactly? Well, increasing allergies is one predicted (and I think already occurring) result of global climate change. And bicycling for transportation purposes is one of the best options for combating climate change.
Check out this fun Dutch bicycling federation video I just ran across on Copenhagenize. Nice.
Solar power is growing at a super fast pace these days, and despite (or maybe partly because of) the tremendous economic problems the country is facing, that is continuing. Solar PV is projected to double in the US this year, and is expected to grow 47% a year up to 2015.
Full disclosure: Heather is a friend of mine from college. We recently reconnected (on Facebook, of course) and she mentioned this sweet project she’s trying to get funded. Immediately, I though, “Wow, that’s an awesome project and a great fit for Planetsave!” So, here’s more on the project, via Kickstarter (where you can go to help fund it).
Bicycling not fast enough for you? Well, it turns out that, in some situations, bicyclists are even faster than jets.
Top green living stories of the past week or so:
Some good green living stories from around from the past week….
I seem to eternally be searching for the best way to share every single green news story I think is important with you. But never seem satisfied or able to keep up with my systems. Maybe this one will last?…
The idea I’ve got now is to do a weekly link drop of stories we didn’t cover each day of the week, but with a different theme each day of the week. To start with, Monday will be “Green Living Monday” (as you can see above). Why? Who knows, that just sounded good to me :D. Also, I guess it is because I am trying to stress green living more and more these days.
This is totally awesome. The ridiculousness of this guy getting a ticket for not riding in the bike lane is made obvious when he decides to then ALWAYS ride in the bike lane, film it, and show the world who should really be getting the tickets.
Here’s a totally awesome new vertical bike storage design I ran across this weekend. Green in more ways than one.
Rain is, without a doubt, one of the biggest deterrents to bicycling. People, for some odd reason, don’t like to get wet…. Well, a company called Veltop has you covered (pun intended)
Here’s another great biking story. I covered and shared a video of perhaps the oldest living bicyclist in the world, Octavio Orduno, who bikes nearly every day at the age of 103, a couple months ago. Now, here’s another great one of an “aging” cyclist.
This is an email I received from Bill McKibben of 350.org this week. Thought it was worth a full share, so here it is.
Bicycling benefits your health so much that researchers have found its benefits outweigh its risks. In other words, bicycling should extend your life span, not shorten it. Additionally, you should feel healthier and more fit bicycling than not. Plus, it’s fun, as 103-year-old Octavio Orduño, who still bikes nearly every day, will tell you.
Nonetheless, everyone can see that bicyclists are less protected than others on the road. The risk of being hit or crashing is something that deters a lot of people. Furthermore, people do get hit and killed bicycling (don’t forget, though, that millions of people get injured and killed in car accidents, too — and more bicyclists on the road actually makes the road safer for everyone). I don’t know if there are more bicycle accidents on Friday the 13th or not, but it seemed like a good day to write about bicycling safely.
You’re halfway home on a Friday evening and looking forward to a quick pint at your local, when disaster strikes. Slowing down at a set of lights, a momentary lapse of attention by the rider behind you sees him edge his front wheel into the rear of your bike, catching your derailleur in his spokes. The consequences are a buckled front wheel for him, and a broken rear mech for you.
Borrowing (or directing you over to) another article by bicycle experts over on BikeRadar, in honor of Bike Month (and one of the greenest forms of transport on the planet (if not the greenest), here’s another great one….
BikeRadar highlighted some top tips from bike enthusiasts in its forum recently, tips on bike choice, riding, and gear. Below are a few of my favorites, but if you want to read all of them (recommended) just click on the link above.
May is Bike Month (if you weren’t aware), and it’s a good month for biking, of course, since the weather is quite nice in most places.
To help you get into the spirit of biking or help you with some practical bicycling issues, I’m going to direct you to a number of great bicycling articles by true bike experts (and I’ll share a bit of the key points from those articles with you as well) over the coming weeks. I’ll also write a few of my own based on my experiences and research.
This first article I’m going to direct you towards comes from BikeRadar, a great site for super bike enthusiasts. (But don’t worry, it’s tailored to normal folks.)
We all know that bicycling, walking, and maybe even roller blading or skateboarding are available, green modes of transport, but there are a few more out there. Eco-adventurer Boaz Frankel has traveled 12,000 miles across the U.S. using 101 different modes of transport and has a new series, the Un-Road Trip on Halogen TV, to share his experiences.
I think most of us green bloggers get quite frustrated with Earth Day. It can be a struggle for us to stay positive at this time. Why? Because we write about critical environmental issues and solutions to them all year long, and we are confronted with how little others are aware of or interested in such issues when Earth Day comes around. All of a sudden, a large number of people ‘care’ about the environment,… but don’t expect that to stay ’till tomorrow. We get numerous pitches from non-green companies who want us to feature them in our Earth Day posts (as well as pitches from truly green companies, of course). For one day, it is more “fashionable” to be green. But just for one day.
Following up on a post last week from Genesis Bikes, the company is promoting bicycling this year — and in Bike Month, May, especially — with an innovative social media campaign and bike giveaway that I thought was worth sharing.
