sustainability

For centuries now, civilization has been working toward an unsustainable future, burning fossil fuels for heat and electricity and creating a way of life that is a model of inefficiency. The tiny Danish island of Samso is leading the way back to sustainability, becoming the one of the first industrialized places in the world to qualify as completely energy self-sufficient.

One of the greatest challenges the ever-growing human population of this world faces is that soil salinity – Too much salt in the earth and cereal crops won’t grow. The knock on effects of this are large in scope and serious in nature, which is why a breakthrough in salt-tolerant crop development by an international team of scientist could change or even save millions of lives in the future.

Sustainable transport may be just another task on environmentalists' to-do list, but for car designers it's a path to rethinking how automobiles are built, and from what they're made. That's the idea behind the "Stauro," a conceptual roadster with the horsepower of an exotic supercar, using recycled materials in its construction. The eco-friendly hot rod envisions a day when high-performance gasoline engines are replaced by powerplants using citrus-oil and steam. No, they're not kidding.

The Super MoneyMaker Pump—yes, that's the real name—sucks up water from sources as many as 30 feet below the ground, can spray it up to 40 feet high, and can even push it through 1,000 feet of hose to cover a larger section of land. In all, the pump can irrigate two acres of land, and costs only around $100.

MIT professor Martin Fisher and his team at KickStart, a nonprofit, invented the pump for small-scale farmers. Since it's human-powered and easy to use, it allows them to irrigate crops all year round, instead of just waiting for the rainy season.

From a birds-eye view, the domes of the California Academy of Sciences, set to open in the fall, bulge out of the ground like giant scoops of green ice cream. These undulating hills built into the museums 2.5-acre, flora-covered roof integrate the building into the green space of surrounding Golden Gate Park. They also conserve energy, since the roof insulates and ventilates the 400,000-square-foot museum below.

The United Arab Emirates is a small federation of seven states on the southern end of the Persian Gulf. Its reserves of oil and natural gas have allowed the nation to prosper economically. In recent years, the country has seen a boom in massive constructions: The world's tallest skyscraper is scheduled to be completed in late 2008. Other superlatives include the world's largest mall, an indoor ski slope and a series of man-made islands off the coast made from dredging hundreds of millions of tons of sand from the Gulf's bottom.