Articles by Chris Schults

Planting the seeds of sustainability in pop culture.

Okay. It is Friday and the last day of Grist's summer publishing break -- which means a little diversion from the more serious posts.

Now, the images below are not conceptual renderings of DestiNY part deux, but pics of Olympus, a fictional "utopian" city featured in the anime movie Appleseed. While I won't go on and rave about this movie as I did with Sky Blue, I did want to mention that Olympus had a few interesting qualities.

One, a million solar roofs that would make Arnold envious. (Okay, so I'm not sure how many there were, but it seemed like a million).

Two, green roofs.

Three, Olympus seemed to be an efficiently dense city.

Four, it is run by Gaia! (So what if this Gaia is actually a self evolving computer network -- they used the term Gaia!)

Can the moon provide infinite clean, cheap energy?

Ok, since no one else has been brave enough to post this one ... from Wired re: Chip Proser's new documentary, Gaia Selene:

The moon, the film argues, will provide the Earth with infinite clean, cheap energy. Our ailing globe will stabilize. Wealth and good fortune will spread throughout the planetary system.

Not sold yet? Nibble on this:

Gaia Selene begins by building a picture of an Earth on the verge of environmental collapse. Global demand for energy is spiking. Nukes (too dangerous) and fossil fuels (dirty and limited) are problematic. With no earthly solution on the horizon, Gaia Selene insists we look to space, where we'll find two sources of cheap, clean energy.

And once we establish our moon base, we'll head out to explore the galaxy using our no-energy-required solar sails!

Luna, here I come! Who's with me?

His critics speak.

I'm pleased to announce that ABC News' This Week has also joined the list of news outlets covering global warming. In addition to the energy bill, roundtable panelists debated climate change, in response to George Will's position that we shouldn't believe the overwhelming scientific evidence because the "same" scientists warned us in the 1970s that the next global ice age was imminent due to global cooling.

If those pesky scientists were wrong about global cooling then they got to be wrong about global warming, right? Gotta love that logic!

Fortunately, George's colleagues pointed out that mayors from around the country are taking the issue seriously (which he scoffed at), as well as major corporations.

And This Week's viewers didn't let George off the hook easily either. Let's get these people on Gristmill!

Japanese dress down to save 81 million gallons of oil in summer

What do you do if your country needs to meet targets under the Kyoto global warming protocol? You dress down.

Yup, the Japanese government is encouraging public workers to wear less in order to use less oil. Since many in Japan don dark suits in summer, they crank up the AC to maintain an average temperature of 77 degrees. Someone figured out that Japan could save 81 million gallons of oil in one summer by setting the temperature at 82. To make the warmer workplace more bearable, employees now have the okay to wear short sleeves and go sans tie.

However, one possible unintended consequence of this move is that shirt sales are up. I'm guessing that they are not organic.