Kendra P

Kendra P
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Posts by This Writer

9 years 1 month ago

With the dog days of summer just a hair’s breath away, thoughts naturally wander to what for many of us is the period at the end of a sentence filled with potlucks, cookouts, and swimming: namely, fireworks.

From our neighbor to the north's Canada Day celebrations, to the Cannes Fireworks Festival, to the Sumida River Fireworks Festival in Japan, to our very own 4th of July celebrations, for people around the world celebrating summer often involves pyrotechnics.

Unfortunately, fireworks, though pleasing to the eye, are heavy on the earth. They often contain a heady mix of...
9 years 3 months ago

In the United States, recently, gas has gotten expensive.

Or so the press would lead you to believe.

The question is, expensive compared to what? Outside of countries that supply all of their own oil, even at $4-dollars per gallon, current gas prices are a steal. In London, the going rate was $8.17 per gallon as of March, in Istanbul, Turkey - $9.63. Even in Canada, which supplies the US with more foreign oil than any other nation, gas in Toronto costs roughly $5.00 a gallon.

The current shock and awe and misdirected ire over seemingly ever increasing gas prices illustrates...
9 years 4 months ago

According to the U.S. Green Building Council, the building sector comprises roughly half of all the green house gas emissions released in the US, with roughly 25% of that coming from on site use of fossil fuels. For most of us who aren't in a position to either build a home from the ground up, or engage in costly retrofits that though may save money in the long run do not fit into our budget in the short-term, it can often seem like there isn't much we can do to reduce the carbon footprint of our homes.

And while it's true that short of swapping ones home for a tumbleweed tiny home,...
9 years 4 months ago

A Simpsons-esque squat yellow house sits in the shadow of a looming nuclear power plant.

A B.P. refinery in Southern California hangs a massive American flag hanging from its endless structure pipes and turrets.

A quaint Iowa village with a neatly laid out square, large verdant trees, and modern windmills in the distance.

These images and more are captured by Prix Pictet Growth Winner Mitch Epstein in his photographic series entitled "American Power".

The series, described by the photographer as an examination of “how energy is produced and used in the...
9 years 4 months ago

What often gets lost in amidst the discussion of our use of fossil fuels is this - fossil fuels are incredibly dirty. Burning fuel for energy rarely results in pristine, fresh air.

This is why in January of this year the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) finally issued a ruling that will phase out permits for the most polluting grades of heating oil - No. 4 and No 6. These oils, according to a report by the Environmental Defense Fund, although they make up a mere 1% of the oils burned in New York City emit more soot pollution than all of the city’s cars and...
9 years 4 months ago

It takes someone with quite the cast iron stomach to hear the words “meat glue” and think “I want some of that”.

There’s a decent chance, however, if you’ve eaten meat, you’ve likely bitten into something held together by meat glue.

Why yes, meat glue is not the product of dystopian novel but is rather a very real product.

Officially meat glue is a transglutaminases enzyme derived from pig and /or beef blood. When sprinkled on scraps of meat, which are then pressed together using plastic...
9 years 4 months ago

Bob Parsons, CEO and Founder of the internet domain registering and web hosting service Go Daddy.com – famous for sexist and vaguely misogynistic commercials - recently posted a video of himself  killing an elephant.

It’s an understatement to say that the reaction has been one of mostly outrage.

PETA, has called on conscious supporters who have websites registered with Go Daddy to switch domains, while internet registering service Namecheap is donating 20% to savetheelephants.org for every new transfer made by end of day on April 1, 2011.

If you’re like most...
9 years 4 months ago

Called the lungs of the planet, the Amazon rainforest absorbs some 1.5 billion metric tons of CO2, every year – except when it doesn’t.

In 2005, during a ‘once-in-a-century’ drought and again in 2010 during another still more severe drought, the Amazon stopped absorbing carbon dioxide and started to release it.

Why?

Normally the Amazon absorbs CO2 as a consequence of photosynthesis – the trees breathe in carbon and release oxygen. Yet in years when unusual weather patterns drastically reduce Amazon rainfall, the result is trees that grow more slowly (reducing their...
9 years 4 months ago

Across the United States funding for public education is being slashed.

In Florida, Governor Rick Scott is proposing 1.75 billion dollars in cuts (or roughly 10% of the education budget) while three years of budget cuts have left California's schools some 17.5 billion dollars poorer.

While much of the attention of these budget cuts is focused on the teachers (who are often losing their jobs) or the students (who are increasingly packed into overcrowded classrooms in schools that are financially...
9 years 4 months ago

Some 21,000 succulents call the roof of New York City’s Con Edison‘s three-story Learning Center in Long Island City, Queens. The facility - some pales in comparison to the 2.5 living roof atop the Postal service facility in mid-town Manhattan. Meanwhile Chicago, the city that plays host to more green roofs than any other US City, added some 600,000 square feet of green roofs last year bringing their total coverage to a whopping 7 million square feet according to a December Yale Environment 360 article....

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