How we're learning to use fungi for more sustainable design Fungi built the first soils, hold ecosystems together, and now offer practical tools for food, medicine, materials, and pollution control.  We've been using them for millennia, and now more weird and wonderful uses are emerging. What fungi are Fungi belong to their own kingdom.  They don't make food from sunlight, and they don't swallow it as animals do.  They grow as fine filaments called hyphae that spread through

Once buried by politics, hemp is reemerging as a hero of sustainable building. Humans build lots of stuff. We need sustainable materials...

Why cheap, abundant energy is problematic—even if it's renewable. Cheap energy sounds like an obvious win. Who wouldn’t want lower bills...

The many uses of fossil hydrocarbons, and what we do and don't have alternatives for. We tend to call the coal, oil, and natural gas...

The 3 factors that determine total resource use and environmental disruption. Human existence necessarily causes some disruption to the...

The basics of why and how, and is it helpful or harmful? Water is arguably the most important natural resource we need. Without energy...

7 interconnected problems worth solving The environment is everything that surrounds us—air, water, land, plants, animals, and other...

Exploring the economic and environmental impacts of biofuel. Biofuels have garnered significant attention as an alternative energy source...

When more from less leads to more from more. The Jevons Paradox is an economic theory that describes a counterintuitive phenomenon:...

When shared resource use leads to collective loss. Garrett Hardin popularized the "tragedy of the commons" in his 1968 article of the...

Exploring the foundation of life. Photosynthesis is the process by which plants use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into...

Defining the usefulness of energy and resources. In order to understand exergy, we must first understand energy. Energy is all around...

How Embracing Scarcity Thinking Leads to Abundance After years of thinking deeply about resources, I've come to this conclusion: Treat a...