i got a 95

Green is very hip these days (compared to previous days). Interesting how it's taking on, with regard to marketing, there are some novel approaches out there, and even the "greenwashing" of products or concepts that aren't much more sustainable than their traditional counterparts. But if there's one thing that cannot be debated, it's walking more and driving less. Better for our wide American bottoms, and the embarrassing score we get RE: energy consumption.

There's a cool calculator, Walkscore, which will score your home's walkability within its neighborhood:

http://walkscore.com/

It indexes all of the amenities, down to a hundredth of a mile in distance, to your home, and gives you a score. You can link it to real estate websites when selling a property. Pretty cool, says the Landscape Architect / Urban Designer nerd that I am.

Of course there are always flaws in an automated system, I noticed some of the amenities listed as closest weren't really the closest, but it's still a good tool for evaluating a location quickly.

On a broader scale, there's the concept of One Planet Living, which is a nice lens for both personal and global impact. The concept behind it is that given the way that many of us live, there are not enough resources to go around if we were all to live that way. If everyone on Earth were to live like the average European it would take three worlds, and five if we all lived like the average American. Test your ecological footprint on the WWFs website and they'll compare your impact to the average American, European, and African individual's. It will then also give suggestions of easy and high-impact changes you can make given your lifestyle to reduce your footprint. I have a pretty small footprint compared to even the average European, given my lifestyle, but there is always a way to improve...

Here's to a future.