Compact Living

Any interest in organizing an LHB team dedicated to a year of Compact living as described in the Living Green magazine (pg 16) Mary Larson e-mailed today? We could set up our own guidelines and see how creative we get with local sources...

Formula 1 Greening (Int. Herald Trib. Blog)

From the International Tribune:

Can Formula One really make motor sports green?

Posted by James Kanter in Automobiles, General

Once airlines and carmakers started rebranding as green businesses, it was only a matter of time before Formula One motor racing — the sport that is perhaps the most emblematic of our fossil-fuel-powered world — took a similar path.

This week in Geneva, Max Moseley, the president of the sport’s rule-making body, the International Automobile Federation, announced how he intended to deliver on earlier promises to adapt Formula One to a world where carbon profligacy is increasingly frowned upon, and in some cases (think of those bans on the humble incandescent light bulb) outlawed.

Starting this season, F1 cars must use some biofuel in their tanks. In addition, the practice of doing laps that serve little purpose other than burning off fuel will be dropped. Starting next season, clean technology systems to harvest kinetic energy from deceleration and to capture heat from machines’ powerful engines will become mandatory.

The measures, said Moseley, “will make the sport at once more environmentally friendly and road relevant” and put it “at the cutting edge of future automotive technology.”

Even so, it remains an open question whether the sport can survive and thrive in a world where performance is prized above efficiency — no matter how much F1 bosses insist that those goals are complementary.

For more on the greening of the sport, look out for a story this weekend by our Formula One correspondent and blogger, Brad Spurgeon, who will be reporting from the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne.