Enchanted Highway
Flummoxed by a spate of fatal car accidents on a stretch of highway in Australia, government officials turned to a group of Druids to solve the problem. According to a report in Whole Life Times (Oct. 2003), Arch-Druid Gerald Knobloch identified disturbing energy patterns in the area and erected two one-ton quartz pillars alongside the road, which he predicted would restore a sense of well-being to the highway. Two years later, the number of accidents on that stretch of highway fell from six a year to none.

Wind at Their Back
Calgary transit officials have taken energy conservation to a whole new level, reports Transportation Choices (Aug. 2003). The city's 18-mile light-rail system runs completely on the power generated by 12 windmills on two nearby wind farms.

Learning to Shop
School field trips to places like the local fire department or zoo are gradually being replaced by visits to national chain retailers like Toys 'R' Us and Petco, which hosted 3,300 student tours last years, notes In These Times (Nov. 17, 2003). 'This branding of young minds has become its own industry,' writes Jim Hightower, 'with companies like the Field Trip Factory operating as go-betweens to link local schools with corporate chains.'

Paper Cup Trail

• Number of disposable paper cups Starbucks would save each day if 50 customers per store used reusable mugs: 150,000
• Weight of the paper this savings would represent: 1.7 million pounds

-- Source: A Starbucks 'Green Team' memo

Air Lasn?
Anticonsumerism guru Kalle Lasn and his Adbusters magazine are entering the marketplace with -- what else? -- a line of sneakers, notes Reason (Nov. 2003). Blackspot sneakers will be manufactured in a unionized South Korean factory abandoned by Nike. They'll be sold in independent shoe outlets and online at blackspotsneaker.org. To critics like Naomi Klein, who railed against the plan in a recent Toronto Globe and Mail article, Lasn answers that it's time to take activism in a new direction. 'We've decided to stop whining about Nike,' he says. 'Why not make $10 million and use it to run a media literacy campaign instead?'

Green Domestic Product
The Canadian government may be the first in the world to adopt environmental indicators as a way to measure national wealth, according to Ode (Nov. 2003). The National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy has proposed a set of indicators based on six primarily environmental measurements to supplement Canada's traditional economic indicators, such as GDP and GNP. The government is expected to consider the new indicators after this June's federal elections.