First devastating weather patterns and destroyed coral reefs, then lousy harvests and global food shortages, now this: soaring beer prices. In an increasingly warmer world, precious, life-sustaining beer is becoming a luxury item. The past year has seen a drought in Australia, flooding in Germany, hailstorms in the Pacific Northwest, and lower crop yields throughout Europe – all resulting in a dramatic spike in the cost of grains and hops. Climate scientist Dr Jim Salinger......

The MTA will observe Earth Day (April 22nd) by stocking MetroCard vending machines with five million limited-edition green MetroCards. The cards aren’t “green” in the eco-friendly sense – they’re still not made from recycled material – they’re just, you know, green colored. So they’ve got that going for them. Oh, and some environmental factoids will be printed on the back. Governor David Paterson joined MTA officials at Grand Central Terminal yesterday morning for a......

The following post is from our advertiser, Campaign for New York's Future. Photo of crowded subway by Nick Whitaker Overcrowded subways, packed buses, gridlocked streets, and polluted air: just part of life in New York City? With a million more people on the way, these nuisances are poised to become a problem large enough to bring our city to a screeching halt. Tell your state legislators to pass congestion pricing and bring traffic relief and......

Museum Guard, by Atomische at flickrToday on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery on Amboy Rd. in Staten Island, another bank robbery on 5th Ave. in Manhattan, and a scaffolding collapse on Grand Concourse and 149th St. in the Bronx. A building slated for destruction on Governors Island will become a lab for the FDNY to examine the dynamics of high-rise fires and how best to defeat them. Fire crews from cities around the......

At this point, it's hard to tell whether Ed Begley, Jr. is more famous for his decades of acting or his decades of environmentalism. Sure, he's logged over 200 appearances on stage, film and television, including his Emmy-winning breakout role on St. Elsewhere and his priceless turn on Arrested Development. But his funniest performance is arguably his self-effacing cameo as a hardcore green activist in the classic 1999 Simpsons episode "Homer to the Max", in......

Explaining why global warming needs to be stopped in an urgent way, Mayor Bloomberg said, "Terrorists kill people. Weapons of mass destruction have the potential to kill an enormous amount of people. [But] global warming in the long term has the potential to kill everybody...This really is just as lethal. It's just the results are something we will face long term." The Mayor was addressing reporters after speaking at the United Nation's conference on climate......

Design by João Sequeira, with Ana Figueiredo, Marta Moreira, and Pedro Ferreira, of Lisbon, Portugal Mayor Bloomberg and the New York City Office of Emergency Management have announced 10 winners in the contest to design temporary housing for the thousands of New Yorkers who might be displaced in the event of a catastrophe, like a direct hit from a Category 3 hurricane. The 117 submissions from 30 countries had to create quickly assembled housing for......

FOOD: Trestle on Tenth, the “homey joins hearty” Swiss-inflected restaurant that takes its name from its proximity to the High Line and the avenue where it’s found, kicks off a special five-night series called “metzgete.” The Swiss tradition loosely translates to “butchers affair” and arises from the practice of salvaging every scrap of pig after the winter slaughter – “especially those parts that would or could not be dried, smoked or pickled for later consumption.”......

A tipster sends over what they describe as "a really rad clip of downtown Manhattan totally flooded, under what looks like 25 feet of water." We think it's more scary than it is rad...scarier than a fictional monster attacking New York. The real fear of what could be our future is shown below in what's part of Six Degrees Could Change the World which "explores the potential impacts of global warming degree-by-degree—through six degrees over......

Mayor Bloomberg continued his whirlwind tour through Asia yesterday with a stop in Bali, Indonesia to talk to United Nations officials about the global effects of climate change. This is after a foray to China, that brought to mind Ed Koch's Beijing inspiration for bike paths in NYC to The New York Times' Clyde Haberman. Like NYC, Bali was the victim of a devastating terrorist attack that killed and injured hundreds of people. True......

Senator Barack Obama might be back in Iowa on the campaign trail, but New Yorkers are still buzzing over his coffee - and bacon and eggs and toast - klatsch with Mayor Bloomberg on Friday morning. The meeting was supposedly caught Senator Hillary Clinton off guard - and not just because it was two blocks away from her midtown offices. Bloomberg's press secretary Stu Loeser said Bloomberg wanted to talk national policy with Obama,......

Weather and climate are different things. The former refers to day-to-day changes in the atmosphere, while the latter is a result of longer-term variations. The two can often be out-of-sync, which is why Gothamist gets violently agitated when people, on an unseasonably cold day, say "how can there be global warming, it's cold today," with the self-satisfied chuckle that goes with being a complete tool. Tomorrow, however, weather and climate will be walking hand-in-hand. Climatological......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an attempted bank robbery on East 23rd St. in Manhattan, a pedestrian struck on 82nd St. and Central Park West in Manhattan, and a homicide on Grand Ave. in Brooklyn. The politics of succession in the world of Masters of the Universe. Changing places, changing times, unsurpassable ambition. Sometimes the old is new: when a garbage hauling-controlling family tells you to do something, you do it, or they'll burn......

We’re probably not alone in the fact that we love wines from Burgundy but really can’t afford them. A great 1er (premiere) cru Gevrey Chambertain could cost us around $35 - $50, and while on special occasions they can be worth every cent, the reality is that we don’t get to have them as much as we like. But there is good news. Perhaps we owe a shout out to mother nature or maybe we......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a stabbing on 168th St. and Hillside Ave. in Queens, a sexual assault at Stanton and Attorney Sts. in Manhattan, and a missing child on Himrod St. in Brooklyn. Artist Eve Mosher is outlining in chalk the high water lines that floods will reach every four years by 2080 if global warming continues unabated. The project can be seen at her site highwaterline. Six-year-old Natalie Shea is now a......

Wired is asking if Diesel's latest ad campaign is evil or fun. The ads, which have been out for a few months now, show some major cities underwater as global warming takes over - and global warming chic becomes the latest trend! Wired decides:In their exuberant outlandishness, the ads carve out a little mental space where it's possible for a few seconds to contemplate global warming without thinking about disease, disaster and the possibility that......

Developer Charles J. Urstadt, the man behind the creation of Battery Park City in the 1970s, is eager to duplicate the feat further north up the Hudson by creating an additional 40 to 50 acres of Manhattan real estate. How? Well, by depositing fill dredged from Lower New York Bay. Urstadt estimates that the city could create land for $75 a square foot that could be worth $2,000 to $3,000 a square foot when developed......

Did you know you can make a salad out of weeds you find in Central Park? Or that there are mushrooms you can gather for free that taste just like chicken? There's plenty that you can find and eat in the city's park system and The Wildman Steve Brill is just the guy to show you where and how. Gothamist sat down to chat with New York's best known naturalist about the evils of lawns,......

The Smashing Pumpkins have officially made their return. The comeback (yeah, we're gonna call it a comeback) appears to be met with little fanfare. The new album, Zeitgeist, came out Tuesday - and was met with a lack of good reviews. The cover art is what we're concerned about here though. Bill Corgan chose (recent interviewee) Shepard Fairey to design the album art for the new album, saying: “Like a great artist can do, Shepard......

Via the CityRoom, this is a map from the Union of Concerned Scientists that depicts what would happen to the city if we don't confront climate change. From page 2 of the report on New York (PDF):Coastal flooding. Rising sea levels caused by global warming are projected to increase the frequency and severity of damaging storm surges and flooding. Under the higher-emissions scenario what is now considered a once-in-a-century coastal flood in New York......

Since the only truly green event is the one that doesn't happen, Live Earth is certainly being met with some criticism - but either way it's going to cast some green over the world tomorrow. If you aren't heading over to the "New York" event yourself, NBC Universal will be bringing the concert to the world with a three-hour primetime special Saturday night on NBC, 18 hours of live coverage on Bravo, seven hours on......

MUSIC: Tickets are still available for Daniel Johnston tonight. If you aren't familiar with the music of this Austinite, check out a little of what he has to offer from a recent appearance on the Henry Rollins Show (video here), or in the documentary "The Devil and Daniel Johnston," trailer below: 7pm // Warsaw [ 261 Driggs Ave , Brooklyn] // $18 PARTY: LVHRD is having their "MCFGHT 2 AUDITIONS" tonight. The mysterious bunch of......

New York City could be considered the Big Green Apple for the rest of the week. Bill Clinton and Mayor Bloomberg are hosting an international climate summit this week, beginning today and running through Thursday. And as part of other environmentally friendly festivities, Matt Dillon was on hand for the issuance of a challenge from Yahoo! to see which U.S. city was the most green. The winning city, that will be announced following the......

Mayor Bloomberg himself said that "New York can't just sit back and hope for the best," when it comes to global warming. He was prompted by a report that showed the city responsible for 1% of the country's greenhouse gas emissions. And while NYC lacks smoke-stack industry and a car-centric commuting culture, it is the city that never sleeps and never turns off its lights. 79% of New York's greenhouse gases are contributed by the......

Yesterday, the Sea of People took their climate action rally to Battery Park with hundreds of people present. Participants, dressed in blue shirts, blue scuba gear, even blue whale costumes, demonstrated how lower Manhattan will look when sea levels rise due to global warming, a possibility that's ever more alarming as we contemplate this rainy, stormy Sunday. Videographer Kelly Loudenberg spoke to participants and experienced the sea of people. And we interviewed Sea of......

The New York International Auto Show opened its Javits Center doors to the press today. While lots of car manufacturers were showing off more environmentally friendly models, one activist group made its distrust of Toyota's claims known. Freedom From Oil had members scale the interior walls of the Javits to hang a sign spoofing the Toyota ad campaign. It reads: "The Truck That's Changing It All The Climate" and "Toyota: not an environmental leader."......

With this weekend's spring forward, we can begin to look towards Spring and all that it will do for the selection of products at the Greenmarket. Dreaming of shoots and early tender leaves does feel a little off, especially since the spring forward is three weeks early this year. One of our farmer pals, clearly feeling conspiratorial, even made the suggestion that our feeling off about this early time jump-up is only temporary. His "theory"......

Hoorah! WNBC has a clip of Sue Simmons's Groundhog Impression, 2007 edition from yesterday's newscast. How did the WNBC anchor start imitating woodland creatures?Sue says her imitation of the groundhog face actually began before she came to New York, when she was a reporter in New Haven. On Groundhog Day one year, she ended a live shot with the groundhog face, and for weeks, people kept coming up to her asking for a repeat performace.And......

Gothamist is worried about global warming. Especially since we saw An Inconvenient Truth. Manhattan may start shrinking, then disappear altogether? No snow on Kilimanjaro? These thoughts were enough to make us run out to the hardware store for some energy efficient lightbulbs. Now the L.A. Times has an article on the effect global warming is having on wine production. Regions far north such as Sweden and Denmark--traditionally considered too cold for the development of wine--have......

If our global warming trend continues and dog days of January (yesterday’s high: 72) become the norm, one unanticipated side effect may be the prospect of a year-round stuffy theater season. Those who frequent off-Broadway theater have learned to accept their sticky fate in the summer, but the notion of theatrical sweat lodges through January is sure to separate the men from the boys. Such were my gloomy thoughts as I took my seat in......