AlternativesMagazine

Every city has this issue, but Austin’s is certainly among the top among surveys that measure congestion and related issues. They’re among the worst. Not only do they have a problem; they knew their problem was growing faster than they could keep up with. With an estimated 450,000 people using city roads daily, transit is an enormous challenge. Austin officials, understandably, have been working on solutions.  Things started coming together when Rocky Mountain Institute, a Colo.-based think tank on energy and transportation, began looking for a place to put its vision for transformational mobility change into practice. After a search that began in 2014 with 1,000 potential cities, RMI choose Austin as its proving ground. RMI’s legion of out-of-the-box thinkers are at the helm of a mobility revolution in a city where individual vehicles have ruled the road. By shifting from transportation based on fossil-fueled personal vehicles to a system with options — shared, electrified a

The cross-country road trip is as American as apple pie. Which is why it’s so ironic that the latest motorhome innovation comes from overseas in Germany, where a new, electric motorhome has been unveiled by RV company Dethleffs . This motorhome is built for the open road, with a sleek design and head-to-toe solar panels so you never have to worry about finding the next charging station. That's right: The open road is officially calling. Where we’re going, we don’t need charging stations. The transportation industry is being flipped on its head by taking two of the most basic essentials—the driving experience and fuel—out of the equation entirely. Self-driving vehicles and rechargeable technology is changing the landscape of driving. That market has been expanding beyond everyday vehicles with advances in things like electric-powered semi trucks . And we’ve seen the rise ( and possible peak ) of the tiny home market, where solar panels and other green technology is often

 . . . . live in a what? I know that sounds little tongue in cheekish, but most people live their lives in the same place their entire life -- same town, same neighborhood, same house. Once in while they take the typical "2 week" vacation, but hurry back to tell their friends what a great time had they had -- at DisneyLand and to mow the grass. They never really break away, or do anything completely off the chart. This lifestyle is obviously not for everybody. And some have already quit reading. But many are breaking away from their so-called "normal" life, downsizing and finding out what it's really like to be free. And it's not just young people with a trust fund waiting, but older, retired people who aren't ready to be wired up for oxygen. But why a Van? READ >> Some people spend 14 years of their lives like this. Some life.

Recent studies continue to shed light on how everyday cycling is not only good for our cardiovascular health but also a way to save billions in health care costs. While everyday cycling is starting to be recognized as a low-impact form of exercise there remains resistance to accepting riding a bike as a form of preventive health care across North America. Clearly, biking is advantageous for one’s physical health. It’s widely known that cycling is a low-impact form of exercise that’s good for the cardiovascular system, a way to control weight gain, and benefits our immune system. In addition, daily bicycling can have positive effects on our mental well-being. In June 2013, the American Medical Association voted in favor of recognizing obesity as a disease; the Food and Drug Administration already does. This newly-labeled disease is predicted to affect more than 44 percent of all Americans by 2030 if no action is taken. Canada is not exempt from this health crisis: in 2010, Statistics

That shot of expresso you have every morning? It might just be making you live longer and reducing your risk of getting cancer, diabetes, liver disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Type 2 diabetes. According to the research as reported in Science Daily: “Drinking coffee was associated with lower risk of death due to heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and kidney disease. People who consumed a cup of coffee a day were 12 percent less likely to die compared to those who didn’t drink coffee.” And, it did not seem to matter whether you drank caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee which suggests that the effect is not related to caffeine. Even better news… when you drink 2-3 cups a day, the association becomes stronger– an 18 precent reduced chance of death as opposed to 12 percent. Researchers do not know what it is in coffee that creates this association to a long life, however, according to Veronica W. Setiawan, lead author of the study and an associate professor of preventive medicine

WASHINGTON — Industry has made more than 9.1 billion tons of plastic since 1950 and there's enough left over to bury Manhattan under more than two miles of trash, according to a new cradle-to-grave global study. Plastics don't break down like other man-made materials, so three-quarters of the stuff ends up as waste in landfills, littered on land and floating in oceans, lakes and rivers, according to the research reported in Wednesday's journal Science Advances . "At the current rate, we are really heading toward a plastic planet," said study lead author Roland Geyer, an industrial ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "It is something we need to pay attention to." The plastics boom started after World War II, and now plastics are everywhere. They are used in packaging like plastic bottles and consumer goods like cellphones and refrigerators. They are in pipes and other construction material. They are in cars and clothing, usually a

A 60-acre solar farm in Camp Ripley, a National Guard base in Minnesota. by Michael Reilly July 12, 2017   When it comes to renewable energy, Minnesota isn’t typically a headline-grabber: in 2016 it got about 18 percent of its energy from wind, good enough to rank in the top 10 states. But it’s just 28th in terms of installed solar capacity, and its relatively small size means projects within its borders rarely garner the attention that giants like California and Texas routinely get. A new report on the future of energy in the state should turn some heads (PDF). According to the University of Minnesota’s Energy Transition Lab, starting in 2019 and for the foreseeable future, the overall cost of building grid-scale storage there will be less than that of building natural-gas plants to meet future energy demand. Minnesota currently gets about 21 percent of its energy from renewables. That’s not bad, but current plans also call for bringing an additional

A double-decker I-15 could be in Salt Lake City's commuting future Cities have become nearly unliveable. Correction: are unliveable. If you live in, or near one, traffic is the monster you have to white-knuckle through on a daily basis. The typical American family has more vehicles than licensed drivers and in our "drive everywhere culture" it's getting worse every year.  Salt Lake City, UT is a great example. It's one of the fastest growing cities in the country and it's having a hard time keeping up with the rapid growth. However, building more infrastructure to accommodate vehicles is pure lunacy. Not too mention the unbelievable cost. But that's what they are considering for the I-15 interstate through Salt Lake City. And the plan they are considering is to double-deck the highway. The political masses very rarely, if ever, entertain the thought of alternative forms of transportation. I mean REAL SERIOUS forms of alternative transp

Add caption   Walking around in foul, soupy smog is bad enough; biking through it at a modest clip can feel like hooking your lungs up to a Ford F-150’s tail pipe. But in the future, cycling in heavy air pollution could be less damaging, if a two-wheeled intervention from Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde pans out. This week Roosegaarde’s Rotterdam-based studio revealed its “smog-free bicycle” concept. The idea is to mobilize fleets of high-tech cycles (perhaps via Chinese bike-share programs like Mobike) to cleanse the nasty miasmas that enrobe the nation’s vast urban centers.  In theory, these bikes would include a device, likely mounted on the handlebars, that can pull in ambient air and run it through positive-ionization filters to remove particulate matter. The result — a clean, healthy breeze blowing into cyclists’ faces. If such a program was adopted on a huge scale, the bike-mounted smog scrubbers might even have a marginal impact on improving a city’s overall air quali

INSANITY Why more cities need to embrace bike lanes, bike parking and other bicycle infrastructure in their urban cores. The Value of Bicycle Lanes and Thoroughfares There is a growing connection in the relationship between amenity- or service-oriented businesses and the proximity to bicycle thoroughfares. These kinds of businesses would include restaurants, coffee shops, pubs, boutiques, and the like. Michael Andersen, who writes for BikePortland and People for Bikes, has written numerous articles that detail this trend. “Bikes, it turns out, seem to be a perfect way to get people to the few retail categories that are thriving in the age of mail-order everything: bars, restaurants and personal services. And in Portland, where an early investment in basic bikeways has made bikes a popular way to run errands, retailers are responding by snapping up storefronts with good bike exposure.” Locally, an example of these changes taking place is North Williams Avenue (and Nor

By Dominique Mosbergen from the Huffpost 4/27/2017 Discarded plastic bottles and other garbage blocks the Vacha Dam, near the Bulgarian town of Krichim, on April 25, 2009. Single-use plastic containers like bottles and plastic bags are “the biggest source of trash” found near waterways and beaches, according to the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy. Plastic ― a versatile, durable and inexpensive material ― has in many ways been a boon to humanity, used in everything from medical equipment to parts of airplanes. But some of the very traits that have made plastics so popular (they’re cheap, and therefore easy to throw away) have also made them a growing problem in our landfills and oceans.  Today, plastics are the No. 1 type of trash found in the sea. Ocean Conservancy, a nonprofit that organizes an annual coastal cleanup event in more than 150 countries worldwide, said plastic debris makes up around 85 percent of all the trash collected from beaches, waterways and oceans ― and t

By Teri Harbour Creator of the Arjuna Card Game ( www.ArjunaCardGame.com ) I wear size 11 shoes but I am continually trying to reduce the size of my carbon footprint. One thing I’ve contemplated doing is to live a less traditional lifestyle. It is the traditional Western lifestyle focused on satisfying our material pleasures that results in waste and diminished natural resources.  If we practice NOT giving in to so many of our desires, perhaps we could reduce our environmental impact: not eating so high on the food chain, eating organic, not drinking out of plastic, reducing the packaging we buy, (in fact, reducing our buying,) not feeling like we need to own every beautiful thing we see, not using excessive toiletries such as make-up, using less paper goods and less electricity/fuel. We can’t take our bodies with us when we pass on to the next realm, so why put so much energy into making these bodies excessively beautiful and lavishly comfortable right now?  Of course, we wan

Tiny homes have recently taken the housing market by storm, appearing all over rural and urban America as an affordable and eco-conscious solution to an increasingly tight housing supply, plus the desire for a life of adventure, more time and freedom are all listed as inspirations for going small. Simply put, it is a social movement where people are choosing to downsize the space they live in. The typical American home is around 2,600 square feet, whereas the typical small or tiny house is between 100 and 400 square feet. Tiny houses come in all shapes, sizes, and forms, but they enable simpler living in a smaller, more efficient space. What’s cool about tiny homes is that the entire space is sort of a broadcast of some sort of value that you hold in relation to homes, sustainability, and how you’re living your life. For most Americans 1/3 to 1/2 of their income is dedicated to the roof over their heads; this translates to 15 years of working over your lifetime jus