New and Cool

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Twenty-Five Stories from the Central Valley, an online exhibit, uses photos, theater, stories and sound to paint a vivid picture of the environmental toxins that “the other Cali­for­nia” lives with every day. Women leaders give us a window into the little-known lives of people who are making this region safer for everyone. Their stories are shocking, sad, and inspiring.

State of the Planet 2010 by the Worldwatch Institute

Bicycle Highways and other cool innovative ideas.

EPA P3: People, Prosperity and the Planet Student Design Competition for Sustainability. EPA head Lisa Jackson lays out the vision (video). More design challenges.

Goodguide to 70,000 products, including a way to to get info on how earth-friendly a product is by scanning barcode with your cell phone. Slideshow of best and worst companies.

Slideshows of 2009 Best and Worst in transportation, critters, Copenhagen etc

Avatar movie has a very strong environmental theme. 3D works really well.

David de Rothschild Sets Sail on Plastic Ship Plastiki to Pacific Gyre "Great Garbage Patch" Gyre slideshow. See also Solid Waste page

Catalog Choice: The free service that lets you reduce unwanted mail. you can also opt out of having the Yellow Pages delivered, sometimes multiples by competing companies. You can do the same for junk snailmail.

Patchwork Nation divides the U.S. by county into 12 community types using demographic, political and socioeconomic data. Tracks 24 representative communities to see how economic trends play out at the local level. Analyzes national data by community type to give the big picture more context.

Here's an evolving argument map of the Copenhagen Climate talks (also video?).

"Without a doubt, with no hyperbole: Theo Jansen is an absolute genius. Listen to his talk about the new creatures he builds from 'plastic tubes and lemonade bottles'"...Link

Octopuses have been discovered tip-toeing with coconut-shell halves suctioned to their undersides, then reassembling the halves and disappearing inside for protection or deception, a new study says. Not only are they incredibly smart, the can control the color and even texture of their skins and "morph." Another example. This once can open a glass jar.

Sourcemap is an open source project about where things come from. You can create your own maps, and add information. Other eco-maps.

Secret of Success TEDtalk.

Explore climate change in Google Earth tours and YouTube channel.

Rising Ocean Levels interactive maps

See Earth from space right now

Worldometers, the dashboard of Spaceship Earth

Demo of Gapminder.org Newer talk on poverty

Mannahatta Project. Eric Sanderson pictures New York -- before the City. 400 years after Hudson found New York harbor, Sanderson shares how he made a 3D map of Mannahatta's fascinating pre-city ecology of hills, rivers, wildlife -- accurate down to the block -- when Times Square was a wetland and you couldn't get delivery. TEDtalk video. Slideshow and site

In this image-filled talk, Yann Arthus-Bertrand displays his three most recent projects on humanity and our habitat -- stunning aerial photographs in his series "The Earth From Above," TEDtalk video. Download his amazing new movie Home.

Stewart Brand is a systems thinker par excellence. Brand, the center hub of the human network, has a new book, Whole Earth Discipline. video overview. He's putting the whole book online for free, with annotations and a reading list link. He makes some stands that are heretical to mainstream greens (pro-nuke and GMO). Those who heard Fred Turner's plenary talk last year will have some sense of how important Brand has been and continues to be. He lobbied to get NASA to release the first picture of Earth from space, predicting its iconic power to unite and inspire. Because of his work with Gov Brown, CA uses half the energy per capita as the rest of US (comparable to EU), and he's working on a 10K year clock. about clock)

Sylvia Earle on Google Earth 5 mapping the oceans. Interview here's a sample

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER speaks on a panel about CA role in Copenhagen. A previous overview: 09.26.08 "Keeping California Cool" Commonwealth Club talk on CA taking the lead on global warming.video audio

Extensive coverage of the California drought and climate change including Where does my water come from?

"Empty Los Angeles" pictures remind me of best-selling book The World Without Us multimedia

Rob Hopkins reminds us that the oil our world depends on is steadily running out. He proposes a unique solution to this problem -- the Transition response, where we prepare ourselves for life without oil and sacrifice our luxuries to build systems and communities that are completely independent of fossil fuels. TEDtalk video.

"My company built an office building out of shipping containers in Providence, RI. It's called the Box Office, it's energy efficient, it upcycles 32 shipping containers, and will create incubator office/studio space in a neighborhood that needs it." time-lapse video

fellows talk links