Work & Play

Greener cars for 2010: Here are 11 to watch

Chevy Volt. Photo: Green Right Now

The electric car is almost here. Hybrids abound. Diesel has cleaned up its act. Even conventional internal combustion engines can be tweaked to do a bit less harm to the environment.

A brighter, cleaner future is a mantra at the auto shows this year. Scratch beneath the surface, however, and a different sort of impression emerges: Change may be coming to the automobile industry, but progress is slow — even grudging — and the message can be murky.

Chevy has been hyping the much-discussed Volt, for example. The manufacturer’s new electric car – due later this year – can go up to 40 miles on a single charge before a gasoline engine kicks in to keep passengers from becoming stranded.

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Google Maps adds bike routes

From Green Right Now Reports

If you’re one of the 57 million Americans who ride a bike, mapping your daily commute, exploring new trails, and planning recreational rides should be easier with a new online tool from Google, which has added biking directions in the U.S. to Google Maps.

Google says the feature, announced at this week’s National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C.,  has been the most requested addition for Google Maps. The service includes step-by-step bicycling directions, bike trails outlined directly on the map and a new “bicycling” layer that indicates bike trails, bike lanes, and bike-friendly roads.

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eBay opens green shopping hub

From Green Right Now Reports

eBay, that giant online garage sale, announced today that it will offer a new green shopping hub.

Mandala Record Clock made from an old vinyl album, and sold on eBay

The hub will help shoppers identify products that are green by virtue of being vintage or used; made of sustainable materials or designed to save energy.

The new shopping hub was formed as a response to eBay’s “Green Team” shoppers who’ve taken a pledge to be green. This online community, which eBay says is about 150,000 strong, has “committed to making greener lifestyle choices.”

Concurrently, eBay is partnering with Team Earth, a coalition of NGOs and private sector companies, to protect rainforests. For the first 250,000 people who pledge to reuse on eBay through its “Green Team Challenge” the company will protect an acre of rainforest in their name.

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Yes, that’s a ‘green’ Ferrari

The HY-KERS vettura laboratorio (experimental vehicle). (Photo: PRNewsFoto/Ferrari North America, Inc.)

By Tom Kessler

At the Geneva Auto Show this week Ferrari, a company whose products are normally associated with red, flashed a bit of green. And we’re not just talking about the paint job.

Ferrari’s HY-KERS vettura laboratorio (experimental vehicle) is a hybrid version of the 599 GTB Fiorano that slips in a high-voltage electric motor capable of producing 100 horsepower.  The test car reduces CO2 emissions by 35 per cent.

The iconic company says the hybrid project is aimed at ensuring that Ferrari will be in a position to comply with future CO2 emissions standards, particularly in urban environments. City driving is traditionally where sports cars typically become major fuel hogs because their engines are designed for maximum efficiency and performance at high RPMs rather than the low revs and low engine loads of city driving.

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Calling out cell phones on radiation

Motorola Droid is at the high end of the radiation scale.

From Green Right Now Reports

Whether cell phone radiation presents a human health risk remains one of those dangling  public health questions. Some studies have suggested that longtime users of cell phones face an increased chance of developing brain or salivary gland cancers. But many others have found no link, prompting some public health groups to give cell phone a clean bill.

In the absence of a clear signal either way, and in the  belief that we’d be better off to err on the side of caution, the Environmental Working Group analyzed the radiation from some of the newest model cell phones.

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Global warming threatens ski industry with meltdown

Ski resorts face tough choices and an uncertain future. (Photo: Bill Sullivan)

Anyone who has ever traveled to a big-time ski resort knows that conquering the mountain is a daunting task – and an expensive one, too.

For the 2009-10 season, a one-day lift ticket at Vail (Colorado) is $97 for an adult. Over at Aspen/Snowmass, a two-day advance purchase pass will set you back $191.

Of course, that’s just the beginning. If you’re a flatlander or a relative novice, you’ll probably have to rent equipment. (Plan on $40 a day and up.) If you’ve never skied at all, you’ll want to get a few pointers before climbing onto that lift: At Vail, a one day beginner lesson at Golden Peak Ski and Snowboard School is $165.

Planning to stay close to the slopes? The Vail Plaza Hotel & Club can keep you near all the action. For a mid-March visit, a standard room with two queen beds runs about $539 a night. If you’re bringing a crowd, a three-bedroom condo averages $2,475 each evening you put head to pillow.

Yes, there are less tony accommodations at not quite so chic locales, and rates vary by time of season (Christmas and Spring Break are the most expensive bookings), but you get the point. The ski trade is Big Business backed by even Bigger Businesses, and enormous investments are subject to conditions that can change… like the weather.

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New Hampshire’s Mountain View Grand Resort buys only green power

The historic Mountain View Grand Resort and Spa in Whitefield, N.H.

From Green Right Now Reports

Who would want to ruin this view? Not New Hampshire’s landmark Mountain View Grand Resort & Spa. The resort has moved away from sky-polluting fossil fuels to using all green, renewable energy.

Not only did Mountain View Grand put up its own 121-foot wind turbine last year, it now buys all renewable energy from Constellation Energy, in the form of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). The RECs represent power that’s been produced by green sources, in this case, wind power.

These changes have won the ski and summer resort set in the White Mountains a place on the U.S. EPA’s list of Green Power Partners that use 100 percent green power. (See Mountain View’s EPA profile.)

Mountain View Grand’s shift to total green power avoids an estimated 1,626,231 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, which is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from 135 passenger vehicles each year, or the CO² emissions from the electricity use of 102 average American homes for one year, according to the resort.

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Green goods: A smarter dimming switch

By Tom Kessler

Anyone who has gone to the trouble of installing dimmer switches because they can help cut your energy costs was probably chagrined to learn that they don’t work with the early generations of CFL bulbs. Even the newer CFLs that are said to be dimmable often don’t play nicely with slider controls — they hum, they buzz or they just don’t work at all.

So here’s a bit of good news: Leviton Manufacturing is introducing the first slide dimmer specifically designed for use with a wide variety of dimmable CFL bulbs. The company says its Leviton Decora CFL Slide Dimmer optimizes the performance of dimmable CFL bulbs and works with the widest range of dimmable CFL bulbs available.

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Cash crunch puts a pinch on America’s state parks

By Bill Sullivan

Here’s an early entry in the running for Environmental Quandary of the Year:

Mount Tamalpais State Park. Photo: California State Parks

Up to his elbows in budget shortfalls and ravenous, under-funded programs, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger last year proposed closing 220 of 279 state parks. The reaction: Staunch opposition by environmentalists and park activists, so Schwarzenegger terminated the plan, if not the problem.

Earlier this month, he returned with a different solution: An estimated $140 million could be raised for state parks…if oil drilling off Santa Barbara could be expanded.

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Best places to view the wintering Bald Eagle

From Green Right Now Reports

As mascots go, the U.S. Bald Eagle has been much beloved, but not always well tended. Once prolific in the U.S., the population wavered and fell dramatically in the 20th Century — until biologists discovered that DDT and other pollution was impairing the bird’s ability to reproduce.

Bald Eagle (Photo: National Wildlife Federation.)

That was one big canary in a coal mine.

With DDT now banned, the Bald Eagle has rebounded, and was removed from the Endangered Species list in 2007. Where once the U.S. Bald Eagle numbered only several hundred breeding pairs, there are now an estimated 9,000 or more Bald Eagles living in the wild, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

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