Control Your Smart House From Your Smart Phone

Our world runs on electricity. It has for years, and there is every reason to believe that it will for many decades in the future. It is difficult for us to imagine what it must have been like before the rural electrification movement just before the Second World War. (Who am I kidding, it is hard to imagine a time when there was no Internet that so easily connects my desktop here in rural Oregon with pretty girls

5 Green Business Ideas for Entrepreneurs

Environmentalists have long been advocating for sustainable practices in big businesses for almost half a century. The crusade for regulation and liability of polluting and environmentally-destructive activities had long been pushed, but it’s only today that the green movement became mainstream. Today, more businesses implement and use sustainable practices and materials in their products. There are also more

Climate Change and Too Big To Fail, Nothing New

As much as I like to tout the virtues of localism in relation to sustainability, I am also a student of history, and an enthusiastic traveler. This has led me to begin studying Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Angkor Wat is said to be the largest single religious monument in the world. It was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1992, providing some international funding to the beleaguered Cambodian government to help p

Who Let The Fish Out Of The Barn?

We seem to be giving more thought about where our food comes from, and that is an altogether good thing. When we begin to think about environmental problems it is all to easy to begin a festival of finger pointing at the transportation industry and the energy market for all of our problems. However this attitude ignores why transport and energy are so important. The most basic of human endeavors isn’t selling

The Sleep Of The Just

Back when I was working full time in the woods, at the end of the day my partners and I would joke about getting “the sleep of the just… the just plain tired.” While there is nothing to compare with the rest at the end of a hard day, you can’t deny that the sleep and rest is more effective in comfortable surroundings. An environmentalist column may seem like a strange place to discuss luxury

Green Christmas Products You Can Sell

Just a few days to go and it’s Christmas. This is the season everyone is excited about. There’s the good old Yuletide feeling. People will receive (or have received) bonuses. They’re probably planning what to buy as gifts for their loved ones. Many will be decorating their houses to have that Christmas look. And of course, we can’t forget about that special menu for the Christmas dinner. Thi

A Short History Of Beer

We’ll be the first to admit that all too often, environmentalists come off as an overly serious lot. This may be because there is so much that has gone wrong for our lovely planet, and so much of it seems to be mankind’s fault. Our seriousness often obscures the fact that by and large we are a happy and fun-loving bunch who truly enjoy the wonderful life that this wonderful planet provides for us. So

Go Green with Your Business Card

A couple of years back, people didn’t think much about the environment getting degraded, especially when they had tons of personal problems to deal with: crumbling relationships, unsettled structured settlement, and unpaid loans, to name a few. It was only a few years after when everyone has suffered a great deal from all sorts of catastrophes that everyone has gotten involved in protecting the environment. M