Whole Travel Blog

Horses love the outdoors, so why not give them sustainable homes? That’s exactly what Blackburn Architects, a full-service architectural planning and design firm based in San Francisco and Washington DC, is doing. Their Greenbarns use passive lighting and ventilation, specify low-VOC materials for construction, and even offer additional solar panels and rainwater harvesting to take them almost competely off the grid.

Greenbarns - Let Your Horse Be Green

While the US Green Building Council (USGBC) does not yet have LEED certification for agricultural buildings, simply putting solar panels on the roofs of these barns could have a significant impact on the environmental footprint of ranches and farms around the world. A single barn roof of solar panels can often power an entire farm in the Midwest, and most farms have 2-3 barns.

Eat Green, Live Green?

The San Francisco-based design firm Mike and Maaike, which designed Google’s G1 phone, has come up with the Autonomobile, a concept for a self-driving, low-speed electric car of the future. They acknowledge that this car will probably never be built - especially considering the years of skepticism and months of anticipation before the G1 was launched - but they hope to at least provide some inspiration for the future of ground transportation.

Who needs a steering wheel? Give me a couch!

The design by Mike and Maaike takes the opposite approach to Tesla Motors, which is working to spur interest in electric vehicles by making them sporty and fun to drive. So instead of all the bells and whistles of a sports car, the Autonomobile’s design is all about quality time while in transit. A lounge area with no steering wheel, accelerator or rear-view mirror allows comfortable seating for 7, whether working on computers, watching television or just relaxing and conversing. Technology has a long way to go before it can provide this type of experience, but hopefully this provides inspiration for the designers of our future transports.

London mayor Boris Johnson wants his city to lead the charge in making the UK the electric vehicle capital of the European Union. Less than a month after Johnson presented a 35-page plan to get the electric vehicle market going with government funding, London’s official foreign direct investment agency, Think London, pitched more than 50 cleantech companies at an event in San Francisco.

With London hosting the 2012 Olympic Games, there is a lot of capital flowing into infrastructure and technology improvements around the city, and to meet their 2025 goal of 60% carbon emissions reduction the expected capital requirement is £20 billion. This creates a nice incentive for many US and international companies to setup shop in London, and hopefully means we’ll get to a greener tomorrow faster.

With the economy in the dumps and California facing a massive $24.3 billion budget shortfall, lawmakers have turned to halting all general fund contributions to California’s 279 state parks within 2 years. What does this mean for residents and visitors to California? In all likelihood, this could close 223 parks - 80% of the state-owned parks in California. While it’s imperative that the state find ways to close the budget gap, these parks are already operating on shoestring budgets and have deferred maintenance for many years just to make ends meet so residents and visitors can enjoy this state’s natural beauty. Can you imagine if this park was suddenly closed?

Armstrong Redwoods, near Guerneville, CA

Now we agree that it is absolutely necessary that California create and execute a balanced budget this and every year, but with the entire budget of state parks only constituting 0.26% of the budget shortfall, is it really worth losing these outdoor escapes at a time when many people need to hit the reset button and get outdoors? Elizabeth Goldstein, president of the California State Parks’ Foundation, said, “Not only is it this bad for people who are relying on state parks more than they ever have for recreation and vacation, but it is also bad for the communities surrounding these parks.” She further pointed out that for every dollar spent on state parks, $2.35 in tax revenue is generated through economic activities in the park’s surrounding areas.

To read more, check out the San Francisco Chronicle article. And to get involved, write to your representative (to find out who that is, look here).

The City of San Francisco launched a revolutionary online mapping project last week, Urban EcoMap. The site tracks the amount of carbon emissions by zip code, and even breaks down the information to the source of the greenhouse gases: transportation, energy use or waste. It was announced by Mayor Gavin Newsom on Earth Day, and it’s finally up and running. We’re excited by the many tools this site has to empower you to evaluate and reduce your carbon footprint.

Which San Francisco neighborhood is greenest?

The overall goal of this project is to reveal San Francisco residents’ bad habits and lower the City’s emissions back to 20% below their 1990 levels (as per the Kyoto Protocol). If this takes off, it could provide a great case study for local action providing a global impact. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.

This past weekend, San Francisco hosted an outdoor music festival in Golden Gate Park, Outside Lands, that proved to not only be jam-packed with such notable acts as Beck, Radiohead, Ben Harper, and Jack Johnson, but also, to be eco-friendly. Artists jammed on a solar-powered stage, music lovers feasted on organic, sustainably farmed foods, and various eco-education opportunities abounded. Ecomomentum discusses the event here. Check out the festival’s “Eco Lands” website for more detailed information.