Travel & Nature

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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Global warming threatens ski industry with meltdown

By 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

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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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:

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.

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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Climate change could wipe out one of world’s largest tiger populations

From Green Right Now Reports

One of the world’s largest tiger populations could disappear by the end of this century, according to a new study published in the journal Climatic Change. The World Wildlife Fund-led study says rising sea levels caused by climate change will destroy the tigers’ habitat along the coast of Bangladesh in an area known as the Sundarbans.

Tigers are among the world’s most threatened species — only an estimated 3,200 remaining in the wild. WWF officials said the threats facing Bengal tigers and other iconic species around the world highlight the need for urgent international action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“If we don’t take steps to address the impacts of climate change on the Sundarbans, the only way its tigers will survive this century is with scuba gear,” Colby Loucks, WWF’s deputy director of conservation science and lead author of the study, said in a statement . “Tigers are a highly adaptable species, thriving from the snowy forests of Russia to the tropical forests of Indonesia. The projected sea level rise in the Sundarbans will likely outpace the tiger’s ability to adapt.”

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Score one for the jaguars — the real ones — in the U.S. Southwest

By Barbara Kessler

Endangered jaguars have won a concession from the federal government that could lead to their recovery from the brink of extinction in the United States.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Tuesday that it will designate critical habitat for the wild cat, whose population has dwindled in the U.S. to the point where it is unknown how many, if any, remain in the country.

The FWS will propose specific areas for jaguar habitat by January 2011, according to a Federal Register announcement on Tuesday.

Wildlife conservationists who have been fighting for jaguar habitat were delighted.

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Portland’s Heathman Hotel: A landmark goes green with a waste-not renovation

By Barbara Kessler

It can be a challenge to update an historic building, let alone transform it into a model of green modernity. Rattling pipes crowd walls that need new duct work; old fixtures adhere stubbornly to aging walls and facades retain character, but heating and cooling – not so much.

Still, the historic Heathman Hotel in downtown Portland has recently undergone two green upgrades, and is determined to become a model of sustainability, while sacrificing none of its landmark historic elegance.

The 81-year-old Heathman, like most vintage urban hotels, has been through many nips and tucks over the decades. It got its first green redo about three years ago with the renovation of the guest bedrooms and living areas and the addition of a new heating and cooling system. The project, which won financial incentives from the Energy Trust of Oregon, and included switching to CFL light bulbs, proved enlightening: The changes trimmed energy usage by 20 to 30 percent at the 150-room hotel.

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Palm oil industry’s big carbon impact

By Shermakaye Bass

It’s The Year of Living Dangerously all over again.

On Tuesday, two journalists were arrested in Sumatra while covering a politically sensitive topic – palm oil harvesting and the ensuing decimation of Southeast Asia’s old-growth, carbon-capturing rainforests, and the subsequent release of giant CO2 pockets that lie beneath the forests and their peat swamps.

More disturbing than the reporters’ deportation, though, is how little we consumers seem to realize that, not only are we what we eat, but when it comes to palm oil, we are eating our own lifeblood. We’re ‘eating’ our oxygen, we’re ‘eating’ our fellow species. We’re consuming our own future by driving up carbon emissions much faster than we can offset them. We are the snake eating its own tail.

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Kimpton Hotels championing greener hospitality

By Barbara Kessler

If you’ve been taking your home green, you know how ideas can feed off each other. Someone gets picky about paper recycling; someone else becomes the food waste arbiter; pretty soon everyone has their eco-role and the household’s carbon footprint is shrinking.

Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants realized early on that green grows like that. The hospitality chain, with roots in San Francisco, has a history of putting eco-friendly ideas in place. Even before green hotel or green restaurant designations were developed, Kimpton was experimenting with eco-friendly practices at its San Francisco properties, such as the Hotel Triton, where motion sensors turn off lights and 60 percent of the waste gets recycled.

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