Sustainable North

From Business Week, Wednesday, November 18, 2009: New housing starts dropped 10.6% in October compared with September, to a seasonally adjusted rate of 529,000, the Commerce Dept.reported on Nov. 18. The number, which was lower than analyst estimates, is a seven-month low. October housing starts were down 30.7% year-over-year. Single-family housing starts were off 6.8% [...]

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From The New York Times, Tuesday, November 3, 2009: A remarkable conclave of leading figures from nine of the world’s major religions is under way at Windsor Castle in Britain, under the auspices of Prince Philip and  the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. Called “Many Heavens, One Earth,” the meeting is intended to generate [...]

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From The New York Times, October 30, 2009: Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s 3-year-old granddaughter, Onalenna, was puzzled. Her older cousin, Mungi, had just deflated a large, blow-up globe to demonstrate the imminent danger of climate change. “Are we going to go the moon then?” Onalenna asked her grandfather. “I don’t know, I will not be here,” [...]

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From Boulder Green Building Guild (BGBG), Tuesday, October 13, 2009: People who work in green buildings are more productive than employees who don’t, according to a recent study by researchers at the University of San Diego’s Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate and CB Richard Ellis. The study surveyed 154 green buildings, containing some 2,000 tenants, [...]

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From the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Thursday, October 22, 2009: There has been a sharp decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising. And fewer also see global warming as a very serious problem – 35% say [...]

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From NPR, October 27, 2009: Along the Gulf Coast and across the country, it’s being called a “silent hurricane.” Between 2004 and 2007, an estimated 100,000 homes in more than 20 states were built with toxic drywall imported from China. Click here to read more.

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From the Anchorage Daily News on Wednesday, April 1, 2009: Mat-Su College [Alaska] is gearing up to be home to a new line of classes aimed at making the college the first campus in the state to offer a renewable energy program. A seven-course program filled with classes on applied physics, electrical and mechanical safety [...]

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From the Anchorage Daily News on Monday, January 26, 2009: In the coastal tundra village of Kongiganak, some residents are keeping their lights on this winter by promising to sign over future tax refunds. But the persistent Bering Sea winds that drive up the cost of light and heat in impoverished Western Alaska are now [...]

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From the Fairbanks Daily Newminer June 30, 08 Hundreds of researchers are in Fairbanks this week to get the real dirt on permafrost. The Ninth International Conference on Permafrost officially began Sunday at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Held every five years, the conference attracts about 600 participants from more than two dozen countries. The [...]

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