December 31, 2011 | 10:00 PM

Slider: Living on Thin Ice

December 30, 2011 | 12:06 PM

A visit to one of India's greenest buildings

The new world headquarters of Development Alternatives has been billed as one of the city’s greenest new buildings, and has already started collecting awards for its sustainable design features.

December 20, 2011 | 9:12 AM

"Less cold" doesn't mean "never cold"

A massive snowstorm is walloping parts of the southwestern and central U.S. this week. Cue the deniers, who are busily typing "So much for 'global warming'!'" on as many websites as possible.

December 19, 2011 | 4:01 PM

4 ways the military is saving energy

After nine long years, the war in Iraq is finally drawing to a close. As the last U.S. troops, we've learned a lot of lessons -- and one of them is how important it is to reduce our dependence on oil and other fossil fuels.

December 13, 2011 | 9:54 AM

A very Inconvenient Youth

Over the last few months we've introduced you to some of our outstanding Climate Presenters from around the world. Today, we would like you to meet one of our youngest and most active Presenters, Corey Husic. Corey is a high school student from eastern Pennsylvania and a member of Inconvenient Youth, a group of young climate activists personally trained by our Chairman, former Vice President Al Gore, to give presentations about climate change. After travelling to Cancun, Mexico, to attend last year's United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Corey followed up with a trip to Durban, South Africa, this month to experience COP 17 and to meet with climate groups from around the world. We caught up with Corey to ask him a few questions. Why did you decide to become an Inconvenient Youth Presenter? When I learned about the opportunity to become an Inconvenient Youth presenter, I saw this as an experience to gain more tools that would be necessary to continue educating others about climate change and the importance of protecting the natural environment. Inconvenient Youth also provided a community of concerned youth who are willing to share ideas and work together towards fighting climate change and educating the public about this crisis. Without this communication, the effort will go nowhere quickly, and the work will be harder than necessary. Tell us about the most memorable presentation you've ever given. The most memorable presentation that I've given was to a high school environmental science class. During the actual presentation, many students had great questions and were involved in the discussion.

December 12, 2011 | 2:03 PM

Some news from Durban you haven't heard

[caption id="attachment_5670" align="alignright" width="240" caption="© 2011 Flickr/UNclimatechange cc by 2.0"][/caption]For the past two weeks, negotiators from around the world gathered in Durban, South Africa to discuss the next steps on a global climate treaty. Extending the negotiations by two extra days, delegates agreed on a path forward toward a global agreement with legal force that will apply to all countries in the years ahead. They also made progress on a Green Climate Fund to help developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change. We will be posting additional blog entries that outline the specifics of the agreement and the broader context. These are significant steps, but the science makes it clear that we need to do far, far more. 2010 marked the largest increase in global carbon pollution in recorded history, and global temperatures could rise by nearly 6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. In the face of this stark reality, we all have a lot of work to do. While the new agreement in Durban is not nearly sufficient to meet the challenges and opportunities that the climate crisis demands, it is important that the negotiators continued to forge ahead and laid new ground for further global action. But I'd also like to share with you another positive perspective from Durban that happened outside of the formal negotiations. Away from the spotlight, tens of thousands of activists gathered in one place to share their strategies for building the climate movement. These citizen leaders included members of our own Climate Presenter Corps, who have been trained by former Vice President Gore to engage audiences about climate change. One of them was Jeunesse Park, a Climate Presenter who was our South Africa representative for 24 Hours of Reality. Jeunesse gave several climate presentations in Durban, participated in a civil society march, and attended the World Climate Summit for businesses.

December 07, 2011 | 3:26 PM

If the earth is our princess, what is your gold coin?

[caption id="attachment_5538" align="alignright" width="185" caption="© 2010 Flickr/vtdainfo cc by 2.0"][/caption]The last time I felt passionately about a console-based video game, I was throwing punches. On a Nintendo, I pedaled a bike to the next level in a game called Mike Tyson's Punch-Out. The premise of the game was simple. You box (fight) at increasing levels until you get to the final round, where presumably you go head to head with Mike Tyson. Though I can't be sure, because I never made it there. I was a 6-year-old girl battling an addiction to the Rocky boxing saga, but that's a topic for another blog. But plenty of others did make it to the final round. They honed their skills, moved up from one level to the next, and finally made it to the top. What makes games so fun and addictive? It turns out there's a logic to the way games work that applies outside of Wii or Playstaton -- it also applies to the climate movement. Last week, at the Gaming for Good Concept Reveal in New York, Aaron Dignan, a gaming expert and author of Game Frame, described how playing games helps the mind learn how to evaluate and form habits and expectations around complicated systems. Think about the quintessential video game goal: Save the princess. The first step of the game is never "saving the princess" (or winning the fight with Mike Tyson). It's the last step, and the player is okay with that. The user builds up patience and endurance, with the expectation that layers will need to be slowly -- and times artfully -- peeled away before the solution is found. Before you can save the princess, you have to get into the castle. To do that, you need a key. To find a key, you need a map. But the map is guarded by a ninja. To triumph over the ninja, you'll need a sword. Maybe you need six gold coins before you can unlock the sword. One successful action isn't enough. You need to repeat your successful behavior if you want to make a difference and be victorious.

December 02, 2011 | 1:12 PM

"Debunking" deniers: Practical tips

[caption id="attachment_5441" align="alignright" width="202" caption="Source: U.S. Government"][/caption]Have you heard about The Debunking Handbook? It's a must-read for anyone interested in dispelling the misinformation put out by climate change deniers. The Handbook's tips are taken not from the latest climate science, as you might expect, but from psychological research. As its authors, John Cook (creator of the Skeptical Science website) and Stephan Lewandowsky (a professor of psychology at the University of Western Australia) explain, debunking a myth requires more than just "packing more information into people's heads." Our brains don't work like hard drives -- they're much more complex. Rooted in this science of how people think, the Handbook lays out the following advice for effective debunking:

1. Focus on the truth, not the myth. You want to increase your audience's familiarity with the right facts, not the misinformation. Don't give the myth more attention than it deserves, or your efforts might "backfire." It even helps, before you mention a myth, to add an explicit disclaimer: "The information to follow is FALSE!"


2. Less can be more. Although it might be tempting to list every piece of evidence that disproves a denier's argument, research shows this is "overkill." It's best to keep your argument simple. People are most likely to believe information that's easy to understand.

December 02, 2011 | 10:38 AM

Thinking creatively about the climate crisis

Earlier today, our Chairman, former-Vice President Al Gore, along with Alex Bogusky, PSFK and some of the top innovators in the gaming community met in New York to talk about the resulting concepts and dive into the findings of the Future of Gaming report.

November 30, 2011 | 10:07 AM

From the globe to your (hopefully not flooded) backyard

[caption id="attachment_5340" align="alignright" width="240" caption="© 2006 Flickr/kl801 cc by 2.0"][/caption]The new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) challenges us to think beyond changes in global average temperature and consider the impacts of climate change in our own backyards. Take for example, the backyards of people in New York State, which according to a report sponsored by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), is already seeing the impacts of climate change. The state has warmed more than 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970, and heavy downpours are happening more often. The sea level has also risen up to one foot since 1900 in some locations. These trends are likely to continue as carbon pollution builds up in the atmosphere.