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Solar-powered MP3 player supports a top priority: Educating third world women
As we noted recently girls’ education and family planning are the most important elements of a successful climate change strategy and poverty alleviation. However, educating people in very poor countries that don’t have electricity is a challenge—especially when the majority of the population Read More...
India plans to leapfrog western car ownership and goes straight to car-sharing
Developing countries have the opportunity to bypass stages of development that don’t make sense anymore given the current status of technology. And that can make a big difference for the health of their societies and the planet. Why would all people in India buy their own cars when car-sharing Read More...
Eating nuts reduces the risk of cancer recurring by 42 percent
Nuts and especially tree nuts such as hazelnuts, chestnuts and walnuts reduce the chances of the cancer coming back, a new study shows. People eating two ounces a handful or more of nuts every week reduce the risk of cancer recurring by 42 percent, and lower their chances of dying from the cancer Read More...
Ford names Jim Hackett as new CEO in push to build self-driving cars
Ford has named the head of its driverless cars division as its chief executive in a sudden regime change, as the company that pioneered the assembly line looks to the next stage of the industry’s evolution. The Detroit-based carmaker said Mark Fields, who has run the company since July 2014, Read More...
Meet Mexico city's first bike mayor
Mexico City falls far short of the cycling infrastructure that bike activists dream of: as many residents say, it’s no Amsterdam. Although only 30 percent of daily trips in the city are made via private car (the other 70 percent are made by public transportation, by bike, or on foot), Mexico Read More...
Black Lives Matter awarded 2017 Sydney peace prize
The human rights movement Black Lives Matter has won this year’s Sydney peace prize. The movement, which was founded in the US by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi in 2012 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder of black teenager Trayvon Martin, will be honoured in Read More...
How to start thinking like a permaculturist for a thriving garden year-long
Read any manual, permaculture included, and there will be a slew of jargon through which we must sort. Subject specialists tend to speak in a language very difficult for others to understand, not necessarily because they are trying to exclude novices but perhaps because the topic and its vocabulary Read More...
China shows why renewable energy is the future, not coal
The problem with change is it takes so damned long to get here. China built its incredible industrial might by using thousands of cheap laborers to build cheap fuel coal-powered generating plants. Then it reaped the whirlwind of air that was unsafe to breathe. Now it is focused on renewable energy. Read More...
This machine keeps organs alive, and other inventions set to change the world
Each year the European Patent Office (EPO) highlights some of the best inventions with the potential to change the world. Some of the inventions on this year’s list include a plastic bottle made entirely out of plants, a sponge that absorbs oil from water, and a machine that keeps organs alive Read More...
Pineapple dresses and mushroom shirts: Unusual materials to replace cotton
Fabrics such as cotton come at a dear cost to the environment, but what other materials can we possibly use instead? A look at a recent fashion competition for low-impact innovations indicates that the materials of the future may come from things like agricultural waste, pineapple leaves, or even Read More...