Check out today’s Cool Hunting feature on Asymbol, pro snowboarder Travis Rice’s new fine art gallery. Offering limited edition prints of photographs and paintings might not seem a natural turn for a pro rider still taking home titles from the X-games, but the collection of snow and surf inspired works show Rice’s tastes extend well beyond double cork 1260’s. In particular, don’t miss Jeff Curtes‘ moody mountain images and the warped, monumental tension of Trent Mitchell’s Australian waves.

Equally impressive is Asymbol’s environmental commitment, contributing 5% of all proceeds to the Action Sports Environmental Coalition and Protect Our Winters. Says Rice of giving back, “And since we owe the environment we take from while we reap the rewards of its bounty, a portion of our proceeds will be donated to nonprofit organizations that are working to raise environmental and social awareness and accountability in the action-sports world.”

Works sell directly from Asymbol’s site in a variety of sizes, from $300 to $1,300.

(via Cool Hunting)

Streetfilms—the New York based film crew dedicated to documenting livable streets worldwide—has a new series out called “Fixing The Great Mistake,” examining what went wrong in the beginning of the 20th Century when urban planning began catering to the automobile. In this episode, Transportation Alternatives director Paul Steely White talks about the widening of Park Avenue, replacing what had once truly been a park with the eight lanes of traffic that we know today.

That planning still impacts lives today—and not just of New Yorkers. Back in the 1930’s and 40’s, under the guidance and political muscle of master builder Robert Moses, the problem of increasing automobile congestion in New York City had a then-futuristic solution: build roads, bridges and highways of a scale and quantity never before imagined. Expressways were built encircling Manhattan, I-95 was bulldozed through residential neighborhoods in the Bronx, and the elevated off-ramps of massive bridges cast a pall over communities in Brooklyn and Harlem. What few people realize is that Moses was instrumental in bringing his auto-centric urban planning to cities around the country; indeed, around the world. Like most Amercian cities with a beltway cutting through downtown, Portland has Moses to thank for the blight of elevated highways like the I-405 outside our offices (as well as I-205, and I-5, and I-84…).

But exciting change is afoot. Just as New York led the way into the era of autocentric urban planning, they may be starting to lead a way out. With the recent closure of Times Square to traffic, the installation of separated bike lanes and the failed but historic effort to introduce congestion pricing, New York is beginning to reclaim some of its public avenues for livable streets. For more news from the sustainable street, check out Streetfilm’s ever growing library of inspiring stories at streetfilms.org.

(via Worldchanging)

When the modish Hotel Modera opened up in downtown Portland last year, they welcomed guests into a renewed space, one thoroughly overhauled from what had been the threadbare shell of an old Days Inn. Perhaps the most striking part of the renovation, however, was the repurposing of a barren parking lot into a lush courtyard with a beautiful living wall. It’s that wall that keeps drawing me back to the space: the migration of green from the ground level planters onto the vertical plane breaking the horizon of concrete, a modernist reflection of Forest Park tucked away in the heart of downtown.

The landscape architecture blog Inspiration Wall has a nice photographic walking tour of the new courtyard, as well as a close up look at the G-Sky panels that the designers at Lango Hansen used to create the wall. But if you’re looking to bring a green wall into your home, check out today’s Cool Hunting post on Woolly Pocket Planters. Made of recycled plastic bottles, their “Wally” design makes it easy to grow your own vertical garden, indoors or outside. It’s got me looking at walls in and around my home in a whole new way.

(via Inspiration Wall and Cool Hunting, Modera pics © Lisa Town.)

Washington snowpacks are among the most sensitive to warming in the West because of their relatively low elevation.

Editor’s note: This post marks the first in a series of updates from our 2009 Grant for Change grantees, Benjamin Drummond and Sara Joy Steele. The Seattle-based documentary team will be sending us monthly updates from the field, as they work to build eight new stories for their long-term project, Facing Climate Change.

My partner Benj and I are a documentary team that specializes in multimedia stories about people, nature and climate change. A few months ago Nau awarded us their first annual Grant for Change to support our long-term documentary project, Facing Climate Change. Throughout this year, we’ll post periodic updates about our work in The Thought Kitchen, and we wanted to start off by introducing ourselves and explaining a little bit more about what exactly we’re doing.

Facing Climate Change uses photography and multimedia to personalize the story of global change through local people. We began this work back in 2006 with a series of stories about Sámi reindeer herders in Norway, volunteer glacier monitors from Iceland and fishermen of the North Atlantic. The G4C is going to help us create a new series of stories that explore the impacts of climate change through people who live and work in the Pacific Northwest. From wildfire fighters and apple growers, to coastal tribes, paramedics and snowmakers, people throughout this region must confront and adapt to the consequences of warming. Their unique stories about who they are and what they do, their everyday challenges and long-term ambitions will help to make an abstract issue more accessible to local audiences, while also contributing to a global conversation.

In the Pacific Northwest region, the area burned by fire is projected to double by the 2040’s and triple by the 2080’s.

We think that our own backyard is an ideal region for a case study, not only because of its diverse ecological, cultural and economic landscapes, but also because of an unprecedented new assessment that downscales global trends into local projections. At more than 400 pages, the Washington Climate Change Impacts Assessment documents the latest research on how climate change will likely affect eight sectors of our environment and economy by the end of this century: agriculture, coasts, energy, forests, human health, salmon, urban stormwater infrastructure and water resources.  Read More »

A few months ago, our good friend Ian Momsen told us that he was planning a six-month bicycle tour across the US. After a fleeting moment of envy, we knew that exciting adventures and challenges were ahead for this fellow Portlander. Ian’s objective for this trip is to connect people with places across the country through his photography and writing while leaving the smallest carbon footprint he can. Hitting the road with only a few key items”his bicycle, trailer, tent, computer, camera and solar panels (to charge his electronics)”the trip began.

Now, a month and half in and covering over 2,000 miles, Ian’s journey is taking him much further than he had ever imagined. Keeping a daily blog filled with rich descriptions and colorful images of the road, he’s able to bring us along on his amazing ride.

Read More »

There’s this band called MGMT (pronounced Management) and most of their music sounds like a debaucherous 3AM party soundtrack, but I was listening to their song “Kids” the other day and I heard these lyrics:

“Control yourself,
Take only what you need from it.
A family of trees falling,
To be haunted.

…

The water is warm,
But it’s sending me shivers…

…

Decisions are made and not bought
But I thought this wouldn’t hurt a lot
I guess not…”

My interpretation is that these guys are talking about sustainability, global warming and considering the consequences of our actions, so that there will be something left for the “kids” in the future. I could be wrong. Whatever the meaning is, it’s a pretty good jam for a Friday.

Wend, one of our favorite outdoor magazines, went digital this month, meaning that you can flip through a virtual copy of the previous month’s issue online. Check out a free version here.

Based out of Portland, Wend is expanding its reach by allowing anybody with an internet connection a chance to dig their first-person adventure stories, environmental reporting and amazing photography. Not only will this allow for richer content in the future (think video journalism and podcasts), but it also has the potential to lower the amount of paper and energy used in circulation. Aside from experiencing “Wend 2.0″ and doing less recycling, subscribers to the digital version also save around ten bucks a year.

For the next year, Wend will offer the previous month’s issue online for free. After that, it will only be available by subscription.

A few years ago I had the good fortune of paddling the Mountain River located in the Mackenzie River Valley in the Northwest Territories. That adventure inspired a trip that is currently in planning. I depart on June 27th for a two-week paddling trip on the Snake River in the Yukon. Those trips and others like them, combined with the fact that I’m Canadian, have engendered a life-long interest in wilderness preservation.

That’s why I read with interest the Canadian government’s announcement about the creation of a new national park. It’s called Naats’ihch’oh, which in the Dene language refers to Mount Wilson, a major landmark in the area and means “pointed like a porcupine quill.” The plan is to convert 25.5 million acres of northern boreal forest into a new national park and wildlife protection areas. For those who are counting, that’s about 11.5 times the size of Yellowstone Park.

The boreal forest comprises a band of trees about 1600 miles wide that spans across much of Canada ” just below the arctic tundra ” and continues in northern Scotland, Scandinavia and Russia. Large numbers of migratory birds and waterfowl make their summer home in the boreal. It’s also an important habitat for grizzly bears, dall sheep and woodland caribou and its trees are believed to play an important role in offsetting the rise of greenhouse gas emissions. It’s also excellent news, given the accelerating industrial activities such as the Mackenzie Gas project (including a proposed pipeline down the Mackenzie Valley) and unprecedented uranium exploration east of Great Slave Lake.

I killed a bird on the way home from the beach. There was no way of avoiding it. It crossed in front of my car quickly, emerging from the snowy bushes on the left shoulder and flying madly toward the other side of the road. I didn’t have time to react”to do so anyway would have put my family’s life in danger on the icy mountain pass.

I heard the small thud and looked in my rearview to see feathers flying and a black dot in the lane behind us.

I felt bad.

When I told my wife what had happened, it spawned a conversation about the cost of doing the things we love. We talked about the gas used to get to the ocean and my petroleum-laced wetsuit and toxic surfboard. Was the negative impact I had on the environment worth the positive impact the environment had on my life through surfing? Read More »

I’m at that stupid age where all your friends decide to get married at once. You know how it is: where you get to pretend that you LOOOVE pink silk bridesmaid dresses (I do love it, Rebekah!) and that you are excited to celebrate unity and togetherness ad nauseum by flying around the country for frantic three-day visits. Being the nerd I am, I’m not actually concerned about retaining my mental sanity in the midst of the summer of love. Honestly, I’m concerned about my carbon emissions.

Seriously. I bought this plane ticket a few days ago and was offered the option of, for $5.99, purchasing a one trip “TerraPass.” Apparently, with my four trips this year, I am using 129 gallons of fuel, and producing 2,527 lbs of CO2! TerraPass offered me the option of paying to offset these appalling numbers and using that money to fund wind farms, landfill gas capture, and the like. These seemed like worthy causes so I paid my carbon dues for the flight, but I still felt sheepish and slightly evil about flying in the first place.
Read More »