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Elon Musk Says Self-Driving Tesla Cars Will Be in the U.S. by Summer

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For many drivers who commute long distances, the prospect of owning a self-driving car – where a driver takes his hands off the wheel and feet off the gas – has been an elusive dream.

But on Thursday, Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla, took a big step in that direction when he announced that the maker of high-end electric cars would introduce autonomous technology by this summer. The technology would allow drivers to have their cars take control on what he called “major roads” like highways.

Mr. Musk said that a software update – not a repair performed by a mechanic – would give Tesla ‘s Model S sedans the ability to start driving themselves, at least part of the time, in a hands-free mode that the company refers to as autopilot.

But some industry experts said serious questions remain about whether such autonomous driving is actually legal and are skeptical that Model S owners who try to use autopilot would not run afoul of current regulations.

“There’s a reason other automakers haven’t gone there,” said Karl Brauer, an analyst with Kelley Blue Book. “Best case scenario, it’s unclear. If you’re an individual that starts doing it, you’d better hope nothing goes wrong.”

Mr. Brauer said while a handful of states had passed laws legalizing autonomous vehicles, those laws were written to cover the testing of driverless cars, not their use by consumers.

“It’s not just a philosophical reason why automakers haven’t allowed their vehicles to drive themselves,” he said. “There’s a legal reason, too.”

Alexis Georgeson, a spokesman for Tesla, said that there was “nothing in our autopilot system that is in conflict with current regulations.”

Ms. Georgeson said the system was designed to be used by an alert driver. “We’re not getting rid of the pilot. This is about releasing the driver from tedious tasks so they can focus and provide better input,” she said.

There are cars on the road today from the likes of Mercedes-Benz, Infiniti and Honda that have the capability of driving themselves on the highway. But the automakers have taken steps to prevent actual autonomous driving in such cars, and instead require consumers to keep their hands on the wheel. A few seconds without touching the wheel, for example, and a warning is sounded; the cars then simply come to a stop.

What Mr. Musk said Tesla was planning for this summer, however, would be a revolutionary step, said Jessica Caldwell, an analyst with Edmunds.com.

“Working through the legalities and the legislation continues to be an issue,” she said. “I’m not certain how Tesla would get around that.”

Tesla is not alone in pushing the envelope. Chris Urmson, director of self-driving cars at Google, raised eyebrows at a January event in Detroit when he said Google did not believe there was currently a “regulatory block” that would prohibit self-driving cars, provided the vehicles themselves met crash-test and other safety standards.

A spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration responded at the time that “any autonomous vehicle would need to meet applicable federal motor vehicle safety standards.” and that the agency “will have the appropriate policies and regulations in place to ensure the safety of these types of vehicles.”

Other automakers are in fast pursuit of similar self-driving features. Cadillac, for instance, said last year that it would make a so-called supercruise feature, allowing hands-free highway driving, available in its 2017 model year cars.

But analysts say the industry is banking that new state or federal rules will be in place by that time.

“A couple of years is a couple of years; that’s a lot longer than two to three months,” Mr. Brauer said. “Maybe Musk is hoping that by the summer he can get one state like California to sign off – but even that may be a stretch.”

Mr. Musk said on Thursday that Tesla had been testing its autopilot on a route from San Francisco to Seattle, with company drivers letting the car navigate the West Coast largely unassisted.

After the software update this summer, the cars can also be summoned by the driver via smartphone and can park themselves in a garage or elsewhere, he said. That feature, though, will be allowed only on private property for now, he said.

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said the question of liability for autonomous cars would have to be worked out, possibly through court cases, as insurance companies, manufacturers and individuals fight over who is responsible.

“If it’s fully autonomous, who’s responsible if there’s a mistake? The driver or the company who made it?” Mr. Tobias said. “I don’t see how Tesla’s going to clear the hurdles. They may have to go to each state legislative body and convince them, and that takes time.”

Mr. Musk also announced on Thursday that a software update within the next two weeks would give Tesla owners a new set of active safety features, including automatic emergency braking and blind-spot and side-collision warnings – features that are now available on a broad range of cars.

Also to be added are tools to help drivers monitor the status of charging stations and plot routes to ensure the ability to complete a trip without running out of battery power.

“It’s basically impossible to run out, unless you do so intentionally,” Mr. Musk said.

The move is intended to help reduce so-called range anxiety, the fear drivers have that their battery will run out, prompting them to constantly calculate distances and worry about being stranded.

The Model S sedan already has a range that starts at just over 200 miles for the base model. Other automakers have plans to match those numbers in the coming years. Nissan, whose Leaf currently has a range under 100 miles, has announced intentions for a 250-mile-range electric car, and Volkswagen has said that it will build a car that can go 300 miles on a charge by 2020.

General Motors unveiled its effort at a 200-mile range electric car, the Bolt, this year at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, and in February said it would begin building the car in late 2016, with a target price of about $30,000, after zero-emissions tax breaks.

LSE Students Stage Occupation In Protest At ‘Profit-Driven Education’

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Students at the London School of Economics have occupied a central administration room at the university in protest at what they call the marketisation of higher education.

The group of about 40 students used bicycle locks to barricade themselves in the Vera Anstey Suite of LSE on Tuesday night and have remained there since.

Organisers say the occupation they call the “Free University of London” aims to create an “open, creative and liberated space, where all are free to participate in the imagining of a new directly democratic, non-heirarchical and universally accessible education”.

They maintain the occupation is an attempt to change the “profit-driven and bureaucratic business model of higher education” that has locked students into debt and perverted the purpose of university.

A list of demands, released on Wednesday, called for LSE management to lobby the government to scrap tuition fees for all students, end zero-hour contracts for university staff, cut ties to organisations involved in wars and military occupations, and to ban police from entering the university campus.

“We demand an education that is liberating – which does not have a price tag. We want a university run by students, lecturers and workers,” the students wrote.

“When a university becomes a business the whole of student life is transformed. When a university is more concerned with its image, its marketability and the ‘added value’ of its degrees, the student is no longer a student – they become a commodity and education becomes a service. Institutional sexism and racism, as well as conditions of work for staff and lecturers, becomes a distraction for an institution geared to profit.”

The occupied space is being used as a hub for political discussion and debate, with workshops run throughout the day, including one entitled “Why is free education necessary in 2015?”.

One of the occupiers, Jade Jackman, said the group’s main aim was to start a dialogue with university management. She said: “We’ve opened up the door to lots of students who are coming in to talk about our demands. We want them to represent what all the students think. We just had an economics forum and a lot of people were talking about how they’re dissatisfied with the way economics is taught, because it means that we don’t see finance in a different way, we don’t compute it.

“We have one of our professors here at the moment, and we’re going to have a conversation with him, as well as with [political commentator] Owen Jones. The administration director called us this morning but we said that we didn’t any of the administrative staff in the room.”

A statement from LSE commended the students’ desire to achieve change. “On Tuesday evening a group of approximately 20 students occupied the Vera Anstey Room in the Old Building at LSE, highlighting a broad range of demands relating to higher education,” it read. “LSE was founded for the betterment of society and it is clear that this principle continues to be a guide for many of our students. Exchanges between the group and LSE security staff have been positive.”

The LSE occupation comes as students in the Netherlands this month called for similar changes to the country’s higher education system. Dutch students occupied the University of Amsterdam’s Bungehuis building in February, which resulted in the university board of directors initiating a lawsuit against the occupiers seeking a fine of €100,000 per student per day.

In 2011, LSE students carried out an occupation successfully calling for an end to the university’s relationship with Saif al-Islam Gadaffi, the son of the late Libyan dictator, amid charges of crimes against humanity. The previous year, students at University College London occupied a central area of the university in protest against government cuts and fees.

Are Insects the Next Climate-Friendly Superfood?

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Maybe you’ve see little cans of chocolate-covered ants or grasshoppers in the exotic food section of your grocery and thought to yourself, “Yuck-who eats that?” Insects may not come to mind when you think of superfoods. But they could be the next hot “alternative” protein. They’re low in fat and loaded with fiber.

You might be surprised to learn you may have been eating insects already. More than 30 companies are already using cricket flour in their products such as cookies and energy bars. And while eating insects is common in Latin America, southeast Asia and parts of Africa because they’re a cheaply available commodity, in the U.S. food items containing cricket flour, which is still expensive to produce, are being marketed as artisan products intended for adventurous foodies eager to try something before everyone else.

“Demand for food-grade insects is growing rapidly,” says the website for Tiny Farms, a Silicon Valley-based start-up “pioneering the industry production of insects.”

Currently, it admits, edible insects are a niche products with the cost of a pound of cricket flour ranging from $25-$45. But it says that’s due to lack of scale and it hopes to change that.

“Right now in February 2015,” said a recent post on the Tiny Farms blog “there are dozens of restaurants around the country experimenting with insects on their menus-from culinary hubs like San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City to more conservatively palated Austin, Texas and Youngstown, Ohio. Food startups Exo, Chapul, Hopper Foods and Bitty Foods are ramping up production of their cricket flour energy bars and baked goods and growing their brick-and-mortar distribution networks in addition to serving up online sales. Exo’s bars are even slated to be included in a snack box served on JetBlue Airlines flights. Boston-based Six Foods is preparing to launch their cricket chips, and dozens more new companies are developing products, business plans and marketing strategies to serve edible insects to the Western masses.”

Youngstown, Ohio is mostly known for the death of its once-prosperous steel industry, which shrunk the city from 170,000 people to 65,000. But maybe it will become the edible insect capitol of the U.S. Big Cricket Farms, a project mentored by Tiny Farms, bills itself as “America’s first urban cricket farm.” Launched just last year, it says it’s “devoted exclusively to raising human-grade entomophagical products” and that its crickets are fed high-quality, organic, sustainable feed. Founder Kevin Bachhuber first got the idea when he found himself snacking on bugs during a trip to Thailand and “found them to be delicious.”

“So I raise bugs and I feed them to people,” said Bachhuber in a recent TEDxYoungstown talk. “I’m shocked at how popular this has proven to be.”

The farm raises European House Crickets, which it says “are considered to be tastiest, and are thus the most popular. They also offer a better nutritional profile than some of the other cricket species that humans typically consume.”

The Washington Post referred to crickets as a “gateway bug” in an article titled How crickets could hook America on eating insects. What could they lead to? “Keep an eye on meal worms, fly larvae, caterpillars, black soldier flies and wax worms,” says the Post.

England’s Edible Unique, which serves the high-end gourmet market with edible bugs, offers such delicacies as chocolate-dipped crickets, bug kabobs, “extra large ‘n’ crunchy” Thai scorpions, bamboo worm larvae, edible giant water bugs and a mixture of Weaver ant eggs and Chinese black ants advertised as particularly “high in protein.” They’re sold out of insect lollipops so a lot of kids must have gotten a special treats.

WaterBugs

With agriculture accounting for more than 8 percent of U.S. greenhouse gases, there’s a great environmental benefit in going to insects as a source of protein. They require 1/12 as much feed as cattle, 1/4 as much feed as sheep and half as much feed as pigs and broiler chickens for the same amount of protein as well as a fraction as much water per gram of protein as all of these. And 80 percent of a cricket is edible, compared to 40 percent of a cow. A 2013 report released by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), Edible Insects: Future prospects for food and feed security, focused on using insects as viable solution for feeding the world’s growing population in a planet-friendly way as well as an engine for economic development.

“Insects as food and feed emerge as an especially relevant issue in the twenty-first century due to the rising cost of animal protein, food and feed insecurity, environmental pressures, population growth and increasing demand for protein among the middle classes,” it says. “Edible insects have always been a part of human diets, but in some societies there is a degree of distaste for their consumption. Although the majority of edible insects are gathered from forest habitats, innovation in mass-rearing systems has begun in many countries. Insects offer a significant opportunity to merge traditional knowledge and modern science in both developed and developing countries.”

So what kinds of insects are being consumed for the approximately 2 billion people worldwide who don’t live in societies with that “degree of distaste?” Beetles lead the list by a large margin, followed by caterpillars, bees, wasps, ants, crickets, grasshoppers and locusts.

Even earthworms are edible, according to Mother Earth News, which gives instructions on how to get the dirt they consume out of their bodies and says, “After purging, their flavor can be a little bitter. Drying them mellows this flavor; incorporating them into various dishes helps as well. They can be added to stirfries, stews, anywhere your imagination wanders.”

One big debate remains: can or should vegetarians eat insects? Opinions vary.

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France decrees new rooftops must be covered in plants or solar panels

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Rooftops on new buildings built in commercial zones in France must either be partially covered in plants or solar panels, under a law approved on Thursday.

Green roofs have an isolating effect, helping reduce the amount of energy needed to heat a building in winter and cool it in summer.

They also retain rainwater, thus helping reduce problems with runoff, while favouring biodiversity and giving birds a place to nest in the urban jungle, ecologists say.

The law approved by parliament was more limited in scope than initial calls by French environmental activists to make green roofs that cover the entire surface mandatory on all new buildings.

The Socialist government convinced activists to limit the scope of the law to commercial buildings.

The law was also made less onerous for businesses by requiring only part of the roof to be covered with plants, and giving them the choice of installing solar panels to generate electricity instead.

Green roofs are popular in Germany and Australia, and Canada’s city of Toronto adopted a by-law in 2009 mandating them in industrial and residential buildings.

How a community garden will steal your heart

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Let’s talk about food. Things are changing, and they have been for some time. Even back in the 70’s when the convenience of “engineered to withstand packaging and shipping” processed food took over, there was resistance to that beast. The resistance could have been due to poverty or simply for a love of growing their own food. Either way, the food movement is now, and it’s growing stronger each day. I attended a luncheon organized by the Virginia Green Building Council earlier this week, and was truly inspired by the stories, charisma, and passion Tanya Denckla Cobb expressed. She recounted her experiences, journeys, and stories surrounding this food movement across the U.S.Tanya is an Environmental Mediator at the Institute for Environmental Negotiation at the University of Virginia. She has been involved and researching this food movement since the late 80s. She is the author of, Reclaiming Our Food, which explores the movement in great detail.

Why?

As we eagerly listen and munch away on our sandwiches from Mona Lisa Pasta, Tanya encourages us to pipe up about why people are interested in this food movement and to think about what the motivating factors are surrounding the movement. Why do we shop at the farmer’s market or choose local foods? Why do we participate in community garden programs? She reiterates our responses: that there is a desire to regain a trust in our food and to re-establish a connection to our food. Of course, we also just want better tasting, less engineered processed food. We aren’t the only ones. Tanya wants to show us the motivation for urban farming and the food movement and the explore the impacts.

Healing lands and communities

She begins our journey in the heart of Philadelphia, PA. GreensGrow is a community garden that was started by two chefs who basically said, “We want a better tomato. We want a tomato with explosions of flavor. We need local tomatoes. We need a local farm.” Of course, having a farm in the middle of the city might sound impossible, but these two chefs and the community transformed an abandoned and contaminated lot into a beautiful productive flourishing urban farm. After an 18 inch concrete cap was poured on the site to remedy the contamination, they started with hydroponics and then moved to using raised beds. Now they offer educational tours, cooking demonstrations, and have greenhouses for year round production. What was once an eyesore and health hazard to the community is now a nationally recognized leader in urban farming.

I’m halfway through my caprese sandwich on focaccia, and we’re traveling to Boston, MA, which is also a mecca for urban farming. The South End and Lower Roxbury Open Space Land Trust consists of 16 community gardens and pocket parts. Upon visiting some of these gardens Tanya was impressed by how the people are “ingenious and creative in finding ways to use spaces in communities.” Some of the garden plots were using the space in all three dimensions to grow food. These gardens were started in the 1970’s and are an integral part of the community’s identity. They have been passed down from generation to generation. After the Boston School of Public health conducted soil testing in some of the gardens, they realized it was contaminated with creosote from the railroad ties that were generously provided to create structure for the plots. Upon proposing that the gardens be closed, the community vehemently protested, which has opened up a whole new field of research on ways to clean the soil and remove the contamination to save the gardens. Growing collards and sunflowers will remove some toxins from the soil over about a five year period. Ultimately, the ties were removed and a mixture of two parts healthy soil to one part contaminated soil was deemed acceptable.

Now we’re on the other coast in Portland, OR. A once termed “shut in neighborhood” where crime, drugs, and trash prevailed, and no sense of community existed makes a dramatic shift. A small garden was installed in the center of this public housing complex. Subsequently, the people in the apartments started interacting with each other regularly, crime rates went down, they started cleaning up, and they said no more drugs in our neighborhood. It transformed this neighborhood so much so that the public housing authority asked the organizers to set one up in all of their public housing complexes.

Another Portland, OR public housing community was the recipient of a Hope VI grant, which aims to revitalize the worst public housing projects into mixed-income developments. A community garden established in one of these developments really is the heart of the community. Without the garden there wouldn’t be much interaction between the different cultures or income brackets. The residents of the development formed the Seeds of Harmony Garden Committee to put serious thought into what they wanted to get out the garden and what they wanted to grow. Ultimately, they wanted it to be about sharing ideas, culture, and love.

The gardens do more than heal lands and communities. They also allow individuals and communities to flourish, and can be a center for professional and economic development. Janus Youth has been very instrumental in the development of several urban farming programs in low-income neighborhoods in the Portland, OR area, one of which is the Seeds of Harmony Garden. They aim to unite the various cultures in the community, encourage entrepreneurship, provide employment and job skills training, and facilitate youth development by providing leadership opportunities at Food Works, a three acre certified organic farm.

Now we journey a little farther up the West Coast. Seattle, WA has made strides toward allowing public lands to be used for private profit, something frowned upon in many areas of the U.S. The result has been very beneficial to those low income families that take advantage of the P-Patch Community Gardens. They can grow produce, which they can both sell at farmer’s markets and use to feed their families. The P-Patch gardens are much more though. They really are a place for all members of the Seattle community, and “are places to share love of gardening, cultivate friendships, strengthen neighborhoods, increase self-reliance, wildlife habitat, foster environmental awareness, relieve hunger, improve nutrition, and enjoy recreational and therapeutic opportunities.”

Hopping back to the East Coast, one of the most impressive stories of passion, entrepreneurship, and economic development is Nuestras Raices in Holyoke, MA. A community of migrated Puerto Rican farmers gazed upon a vacant lot below their apartment building. The area was the poorest in Massachusetts after the loss of many tobacco harvesting and paper mill jobs. The members of the community knew what to do, they knew how to grow food, so they were perplexed as to why they were not able to feed their families. Finally, they decided to do something about it. They occupied the abandoned lot and built a garden incorporating vibrant colors into the structures. They put so much work and detail into the gardens. When Tanya asked “what if the land owner comes back and wants to take over?” They said, “so what? We’ll go somewhere else. It’s better to light a candle than curse the dark.” Eventually, they further developed and opened a co-op, restaurant, and use the space to help other members of the community start small businesses. Finally, they realized they needed large plots of land so that they could train others how to farm. They acquired a 30 acre inner city farm where they focus on food systems, economic development, and agriculture.

Kids are the key

Above all, one of the primary motivating factors of this movement is health. Two-thirds of the population in developing nations is overweight or obese. Just as the push to recycle saw success when kids brought home school projects about recycling and “dragged the parents along,” so too will the food movement, and an emphasis on eating healthy, buying local, or growing your own. Community gardens are popping up at schools all across the U.S. It might start out as an after school garden club, which gets the parents involved and funds are raised to actually build the garden. Next, the kids have recipe contests or tastings to get familiar with the vegetables. Then the cafeteria serves the food from the gardens on the lunch menu. The kids’ garden is incorporated into all aspects of the curriculum to further emphasize its importance. Finally, the child starts to educate parents about the vegetables. Tanya found in one circumstance, the parent didn’t even know how to cook the vegetables after a kid actually chose brussel sprouts, when he could have anything he wanted in the store!

Small Act grows big results

On closing, Tanya expresses that she hopes she has demonstrated “how a seed can be planted that can transform and heal spaces, identities, our health, and our communities.” These gardens perfectly embody how a Small Act can blossom into something much greater with more meaning than just food on a dinner plate. The essence of this movement is about love and community. It’s about reclaiming our land, and reclaiming our food.

4 Aeta Tribal Women Return From India As Solar Engineers

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MANILA, Philippines-Six months flitted like a dream for four Aeta grandmothers who traveled 4,800 kilometers to undergo free training in India and are now officially solar engineers.

Wearing shades and cheerfully recalling their experience at Barefoot College in Rajasthan, India, the four were a far cry from the group of introverts who left in September last year.

The four-Evelyn Clemente, 49; Sharon Flores, 40; Cita Diaz, 40; and Magda Salvador, 42-flew home on Monday from India via a Cathay Pacific flight.

“Time went by so quickly it feels like a dream,” Flores told the Inquirer in Filipino, recalling the kindness of strangers that gave her and her companions the opportunity to literally light up their communities.

“We know only a little English. We know how to write only our names. But it was enough,” she smiled.

First trip

A solar engineer sets up systems, including photovoltaic (“photon,” or light, and “voltage”) panels, to capture the sun’s heat and light and convert these into electrical or thermal energy for practical use. This is known as “green engineering.”

The use of solar power effectively reduces the consumption of traditional fossil fuels, such as oil, natural gas and coal. A college degree is usually required to become a solar engineer.

Flores said she and her companions did not feel lost although it was their first trip ever far away from their home provinces of Zambales and Tarlac.

“People were kind wherever we went,” she said.

Language barrier

According to Salvador, the group learned solar electrification with 32 other classmates from 11 countries.

“We hardly understood each other, speaking different languages. But somehow, we all got along well,” Salvador said.

She said the drive to learn something useful for their communities was the one factor that everyone shared.

For her part, Clemente admitted that she and her companions found the lessons difficult at first but soon got the hang of it.

“They (teachers) used color-coding to teach us so it soon became easier for us to learn,” she said, pointing out that the method effectively broke the language barrier.

Rural needs

The four women have not had any formal education until their trip to Barefoot College with the help of the Indian government and the nongovernment organizations Diwata Women in Resource Development Inc., Land Rover Club-Philippines and the Philippine Mine Safety and Environment Association.

Since 1989, Barefoot College has been focused on using solar energy to address needs in rural and remote villages worldwide.

Barefoot College, formerly the Social Works and Research Center, is an organization committed to helping the poor, neglected and marginalized sectors around the globe.

‘Change the world’

According to Indian Embassy First Secretary N. Ramakrishnan, the primary concept of Barefoot College is to “train a grandmother and change the world.”

He told the Inquirer that Barefoot College took in semiliterate, middle-aged women from far-flung areas around the world “to train them and then carry forward” what they learned.

Ramakrishnan said the Indian government sponsored the women’s education through the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperative Program of the Ministry of External Affairs.

Diwata Women president and lawyer Patricia Bunye said two of the new solar engineers already had the capability to help light up 100 households using solar energy.

Clemente and Flores live in a resettlement area in Sitio (settlement) Gala, Aningway Sacatihan, Subic, Zambales, with some 130 families. Diaz and Salvador are residents of Bamban town in Tarlac.

Bunye said her group was reaching out to possible financiers to set up solar electrification in two communities. Each community would need $56,000, or P2.5 million, she said.

Lighting up lives

Ramakrishnan said the four women’s education in solar engineering was more than symbolic.

“In lighting up their lives, they would be lighting up their villages,” Ramakrishnan said.

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water-conservation-swirl-faucet-design-simin-qiu-4

This Water Faucet Saves Water By Creating Beautiful Spirals

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Simin Qiu, a student at London’s Royal College of Art, has invented a unique water faucet that uses the laws of physics to save water.

Qiu was inspired by the many sacred spirals that exist in nature, in plants, shells and many other examples of natural spiraling phenomena. Qiu also noticed that water spiraled in nature in many circumstances, especially when in a pipeline.

Researching further, Qiu found that water actually slows down while in a spiral or pipeline, so he set out to create a water faucet that would create a spiral, and hopefully save water.

This goal led Qiu to design a water facet called “Swirl”, which sends the water from the faucet in a pipeline, and allegedly saves up to 15% on water usage! Qiu then created three different designs which will each save money on your water bill, although every faucet has a unique pattern.

Qiu’s Swirl design won an iF Design concept award in 2014, and he hopes to be able to distribute the faucet on a mass scale in the near future.

John Vibes writes for True Activist and is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war. .

Throw Out Your Toothpaste – Coconut Oil Works Better Than Any Commercial Toothpaste

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Toothpaste is one of those things that everyone buys, but did you know that standard toothpaste produced commercially is loaded with nasty chemicals? They contain things like Sodium Laurel Sulfate, which exacerbates canker sores, and triclosan, which is similar to BPA in that it causes hormonal disruption.

Hell, just look at the stuff. Why on Earth would you need to put sparkly blue fluorescent paste in your mouth? Fortunately there is an alternative.

Coconut oil is a powerful plant extract that is capable of killing bacteria responsible for oral decay. Irish scientists found that coconut oil is able to kill steptococcus mutans, which is the bacteria that causes dental erosion. It’s also able to kill Candida albicans.

So how should coconut oil be used as a toothpaste? You can use straight coconut oil or try this recipe.

You will need:

  • 6 tablespoons of coconut oil
  • 6 tablespoons of baking soda
  • 25 drops of essential oil (if you prefer a flavor)
  • 1 tsp of stevia (only if you want it to be sweeter)

Instructions:

  1. Mix ingredients in a bowl and whip until it’s a light, creamy texture.
  2. Pour into a mason jar. Leave the lid on between uses.

There you go! Have you tried this recipe before? Let us know what you think.

Obama Signs Executive Order Cutting Federal Government Carbon Emissions

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CREDIT: Dennis Schroeder, NREL

On Thursday morning, President Obama signed a new executive order that requires the federal government to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2025 from 2008 levels. A fact sheet distributed by the White House noted that this could boost government renewable energy sources to 30 percent, and save taxpayers $18 billion in energy costs.

Calling this action a “triple win: a win for environment, a for the economy, and for the American taxpayer,” White House Senior Advisor Brian Deese told reporters that this executive order will “raise the bar” beyond previous actions the President has taken to confront climate change head-on.

One reason is that it’s not just federal agencies that will commit to cutting carbon pollution. Several major federal suppliers, such as Lockheed Martin, General Electric, and IBM announced new voluntary commitments to cut their own emissions as well. With suppliers and agencies jointly shrinking their carbon footprints, the White House estimates that greenhouse gas emissions will drop by 26 million metric tons – 5 million from the private sector, 21 million from the public sector. In total, this is the equivalent of taking 5.5 million cars off the road for a year.

A new scorecard will allow citizens to keep track of how individual suppliers are doing on greenhouse gas management.

CREDIT: whitehouse.gov

Deese said these were new, “very ambitious goals,” beyond what the companies would do normally. He noted that IBM, for example was committed to cutting energy-related greenhouse gas emissions 35 percent by the end of the decade against 2005 levels.

He said the administration was “very confident” that this progress would continue past the end of the President’s term because these goals make financial sense for the agencies that will be implementing them.

When Obama rolled out his Climate Action Plan in 2013, he noted that the federal agencies had already cut their emissions by 15 percent since 2009, and pledged to have the government powered by 20 percent renewable sources by 2020.

In 2009, the President signed an executive order that directed agencies to “increase energy efficiency” as well as “measure, report, and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions from direct and indirect activities.”

A year later, he set the goal more specifically: a 28 percent cut in direct greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, and a 13 percent drop in indirect emissions. The White House estimated that doing this through a combination of energy efficiency, cutting petroleum usage, and boosting renewables would avoid between $8 and $11 billion in energy costs.

The Pentagon has been pursuing a smaller energy footprint for years, as it saves money and saves lives. Operationally, some of the worst threats are attacks on convoys bringing fuel to forward operating bases. If those bases can stop relying on a loud diesel generator in lieu of a quiet renewable power source, it can help protect lives. When domestic bases consume less energy through efficiency, EVs, and renewable power, there is more room in the budget for other priorities.

It’s starting to work. In Fiscal Year 2013, the Defense Department’s total energy use had fallen to its lowest level on record (records began in 1975). DoD’s energy consumption is massive even on a global scale, with nearly 300,000 buildings on 500 installations across the globe. The EIA, which reported the data, noted the drawdown in Iraq and Afghanistan as one cause. It also highlighted lower government building energy use since the 2007 energy bill set initial goals – energy intensity had dropped 17 percent in FY 2013 compared to 2003.

Outdoor LED lights could save the U.S. more than $6 billion per year, by using 80 percent less energy than the incandescents they would replace.

The Department of Energy has conducted several gateway demonstration projects in museums to see if LED lights could handle environments that demand high-quality lighting. For the most part they did, with thousands of dollars in energy savings in one demonstration gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum alone, earning back the investment within 18 months.

One blind spot in federal carbon emissions, however, is taxpayer-owned oil, gas, and coal extracted from public lands. According to a new report from the Center for American Progress, emissions from federal lands and waters could have accounted for nearly a quarter of the country’s total energy-related emissions in 2012. The real number may never be known, however, because the Interior Department, which is in charge, does not have a comprehensive plan to measure and cut emissions from public lands energy extraction.

Canada’s Largest Food Retailer To Sell Ugly Produce At Low Prices To Cut Food Waste

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CREDIT: Niloo / Shutterstock.com

Shoppers in Canada will have to look beyond appearance if they want to help reduce food waste – and save some money along the way.

Loblaws, the country’s largest food retailer, launched a campaign last week to sell misshapen, “ugly” produce at a discounted rate in an effort to curb the country’s food waste problem (annually, Canadians waste some 40 percent of their food).

The campaign, called No Name Naturally Imperfect, offers aesthetically displeasing apples and potatoes at a discount of up to 30 cents in select Loblaws-owned stores in Ontario and Quebec. “We often focus too much on the look of produce rather than the taste,” said Ian Gordon, senior vice president, Loblaw Brands, Loblaw Companies Limited, in a press statement. “Once you peel or cut an apple you can’t tell it once had a blemish or was misshapen.”

CREDIT: Loblaws

According to the U.N. Environment Program, between 20 and 40 percent of produce is thrown away by farmers simply because it isn’t pretty enough for grocery store shelves. The produce being sold under Loblaws’ new campaign would have been used for juices or soups, or might not have been harvested at all, due to their appearance. Though the campaign is beginning with apples and potatoes, company officials hope that the program will serve as a springboard for the sale of other ugly fruits and vegetables in the future.

The move offers savings to both the consumer, who can access healthy produce at lower costs, and the Canadian government, which loses some $31 billion dollars annually on food waste. Globally, food waste costs nearly $400 billion annually, but according to a February report released by the U.K.-based Waste & Resources Action Program (WRAP), countries could save between $120 and $300 each year by focusing on reducing food waste.

In developed nations, food waste happens most often at the retail and consumer level. Grocery stores often adhere to strict quality guidelines that place too much emphasis on appearance, leading to the disposal of produce that is nutritionally sound but not aesthetically pleasing. Each year, enough unspoiled food is thrown away in developed nations to feed the world’s 870 million hungry people.

CREDIT: Shutterstock

But food waste is more than an economic burden – it’s increasingly becoming an environmental burden as well. Most food waste ends up in landfills, where it decomposes and releases methane, a greenhouse gas nearly 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. In the U.S., where nearly 30 percent of food is wasted, organic waste is the second most prevalent element in landfills. Globally, food waste accounts for 7 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest producer of greenhouse gases, eclipsed only by the United States and China.

Loblaws isn’t the first retailer to decide that the industry’s insane standards of beauty are a detriment to their bottom line and the environment. In 2014, the E.U. launched the European Year Against Food Waste, prompting French supermarket Intermarché to sell disfigured fruits and vegetables for a lower price than their conformist counterparts. The campaign, titled ” Inglorious Fruits and Vegetables,” created a 24 percent uptick in store traffic, reaching 21 million customers in its first month alone.

As greenhouse gas emissions increase – driven by food waste and countless other factors – consumers might be forced to be less picky eaters anyway. A new report published by climate scientists at the University of Melbourne warns that the effects of climate change, including shifting rainfall patterns and climate-related diseases, will result in the production of less flavorful, lower-quality food. Apples, for instance, are sensitive to heat, and can be affected by as little as 10 minutes of extreme sunlight. If mealy, sunburned apples don’t sound like an appealing future food, maybe buying a small, knobby apple now isn’t such a bad alternative.

NOAA: Hottest Winter On Record Globally, 19th-Warmest Winter In U.S.

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If you live on the East Coast of the United States, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has just released some statistics that may surprise you:

    • Globally, this has been the hottest winter on record, topping the previous record (2007) by 0.05°F.
    • This was “the 19th warmest winter for the contiguous US.”
    • Globally it’s easily been the hottest start to any year (January-February), beating the previous records (2002, 2007) by 0.07°F.
    • This was the second warmest February globally, and “slightly below” the 20th-century average in the contiguous U.S.
        Note: For NOAA, winter is the “meteorological winter” (December 2014 to February 2015).

As the NOAA map above shows, other than the “cooler than average” northeast, this winter has been “warmer than average” and “much warmer than average” and “record warmest” over every other land area in the world.

In particular, many Western states saw their hottest winter on record – which is not a surprise if you live in drought-stricken California or its neighbors:

Now entering its fourth year, the drought in California is so bad that NASA senior water scientist Jay Famiglietti warned that “the state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing.” Global warming-driven record heat has made this the worst California drought in 1200 years, as scientists explained in December.

The Earth keeps setting the record for the hottest 12 months in the surface temperature record, as we reported Saturday. NOAA’s global data show we’ve started this year at a record pace – and early indications are that March will be warm globally – so we are on track for what is likely to be the hottest calendar year on record.

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Tesla’s Ultra-Speed Hyperloop Transportation System Will Change Transportation As We Know It

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Elon Musk is at it again. Next year the construction of an innovative, ultra-speed transportation system called Hyperloop will commence in central California. It is the world’s first supersonic overland transport system, with the ability to reach speeds up to 800 mph.

Like most other Musk-inspired creations, the Hyperloop conceptseems like something straight out of the future.

” We feel now that we’re at a stage where questions are answered on a theoretical level so now we’re moving on to prototyping,” Dirk Ahlborn, CEO of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), told IBTimes UK.

To begin, the first 5-mile stretch Hyperloop system will begin construction in 2016 in a brand-new sustainable community called Quay Valley, located between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

” This five-mile stretch will allow us to completely test the technology, from the boarding process to the safety procedures – really everything except top speed,” Ahlborn said.

Musk’s vision sees the Hyperloop as a 400-mile long network of above-ground tubes with very low air pressure inside them, which allows bus-sized capsules to travel through those tubes at near supersonic speeds (approaching 800 mph).

When built, the full-scale version of the vacuum transportation network will take passengers and freight at speeds of up to 760mph. The system is being deemed as a 1000% improvement on today’s transport.

” We will move people and cargo at speeds never thought possible. We will make the world smaller, cleaner and more efficient,” states HTT on their official website.

Beyond the US, dozens of other countries have expressed an interest in Hyperloop, including China and the United Arab Emirates. For Ahlborn, these countries offer the most hope for full-scale systems being implemented because, “if they decide to build something like Hyperloop, they just build it.”

Almost 200 engineers from NASA, Yahoo!, and Airbus are involved in the project realization. There is also a group of 25 students from University of California (UCLA) working on different issues including cost estimation, route planning, and capsule design.

This proposed transportation system is extraordinary, with a glowing potential to change the way the world commutes as we know it. Someone in New York could simply hop on and be in Miami in under 2 hours, or Los Angeles in just over 3 hours. Not to mention how much more affordable this type of transportation will likely be compared to flying. We are so excited about this! Stay tuned for more updates on the Hyperloop as things progress.

What are your thoughts on this new transportation concept? Share with us in the comment section below!

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