Nov 22, 09
Worldchanging Timeline: 2003-2009
We here at Worldchanging just celebrated our sixth anniversary! In addition to publishing a series of "101" posts, highlighting some of the iconic pieces we've published over the years, and a primer on blogs and other resources we lean heavily upon, we though that it might also be useful to share a timeline of the project so far, noting some representative events, to give the interested reader a sense of where we came from and how we got here; perhaps knowing something of the evolution of...
The Solar Forest: Charging Station And Shady Spot For Electric Cars
by Christa Morris The approaching age of electric vehicles presents us with a secondary, albeit significant, challenge: building accessible recharging stations with renewable energy. While we’re at it, can our parking lots be shady, please? One solution may already have arrived. In Neville Mars’s dreamy design, appropriately dubbed the Solar Forest, large, leaf-shaped photovoltaic panels on branching “trees” will provide both shade and power-up plugs for electric cars relaxing...
Best In Show: Solar Clothing
Last week, researchers at solar firm Konarka Technologies said they'd made a breakthrough in the move to incorporate solar power into clothing. Their finding was a new, more efficient type of photovoltaic wire that could one day be added to clothing, shop awnings and sails to generate renewable electricity. Here we take a look at the history of solar fashion so far, from bags to jackets. Konarka already produces this 'power plastic', an organic photovoltaic material that converts sunlight...
To The Next U.S. President: 100 Words for 100 Days
The eyes of the world are riveted on the U.S. election. That's understandable: this may well be the most important election in the history of the world's most powerful nation. But while the last days of this campaign leading up to the election are important, what comes after the election will be even more important. The next U.S. president will face a nation in economic chaos, a people suffering from deepening political divisions, and a planet in desperate need of leadership on a whole host...
Biomimicry: Built Like Nature, Works Like Nature
This article was written by Jeremy Faludi in October 2007. We're republishing it here as part of our month-long editorial retrospective. Biomimicry -- getting ideas from nature for the way we make or do things -- isn't just for robots and velcro. Plant leaves and sea sponges are inspiring researchers and companies to invent better photovoltaic cells; one by building the cells the way nature does, the other by having photovoltaics work more like photosynthesis. Built Like Nature Daniel...
Can Sustainability Save the Midwest?
Since World War II, Midwestern farmers have been encouraged to use machinery, chemicals and government policies to ramp up crop and livestock production to feed the growing population and economy. But since then, many farmers have felt the harmful effects of this quantity-over-quality production model, and have started to investigate how to make their methods more sustainable. During the past few decades, small organizations promoting sustainable agriculture have been popping up and banding...
Design and the Elastic Mind
"Design and the Elastic Mind,” a current exhibition at the New York MoMA running through May 12, brings together a wide range of design, art, architectural, computational and scientific experiments that challenge us to stretch our minds and see how design participates in science and science can be engaged in design. The intermingling of design and science is part of a larger trend where design is being explored as a process of knowledge creation across many scales. Design work included...
2007's Best: Energy
A Carbon-Negative Fuel "Impossible!" you say. "Even wind and solar have carbon emissions from their manufacturing, and biofuels are carbon neutral at best. How can a fuel be carbon negative?" But listen to people working on gasification and terra preta, and you'll have something new to think about. ...Gasification and terra preta as a means of sequestering carbon is far cheaper than injecting CO2 into mine shafts, but it's still not cheap. Biopact calculated that "under a basic scenario...
2007's Best: Apparel
Sarah's Vanity + Sanity: What Would a "100-Mile Wardrobe" Look Like? What would a "100-mile wardrobe" look like? Most likely the fashion analogue wouldn't actually be confined to a 100-mile radius, but how small a circle could we draw and still get the goods that make us feel good? It might not be a circle, since an apple is wonderful due to proximity and freshness while a sweater is wonderful due to the vision and inspiration of the designer. But even if the equivalent system is a more...
Biomimetic Solar Cells
Biomimicry -- getting ideas from nature for the way we make or do things -- isn't just for robots and velcro. Plant leaves and sea sponges are inspiring researchers and companies to invent better photovoltaic cells; one by building the cells the way nature does, the other by having photovoltaics work more like photosynthesis. Built Like Nature Daniel Morse at the University of California Santa Barbara has been getting inspiration from sea sponges to make efficient solar cells....
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