If you visited EarthFirst last week, you probably noticed something was amiss.

No longer. Today, EarthFirst is introducing a brand new look: brighter, greener, easier to use than before. Our eco future looks better than ever, and we wanted a community to match. Thanks to the WordPress wizardry of fellow green publisher Chris Baskind and his web team, EarthFirst is now as fresh and dynamic as its readers.

If you’re reading this via one of our feeds — in Google Reader, on iGoogle, or some other RSS client — click over to the main site and take a peek.

Faster, simpler, better

The first thing you’ll see is a cleaner, more open look. We’ve simplified the home page to make finding what’s new much easier. There’s a big, colorful features section right up top with the latest articles. Below that, you’ll see what’s still fresh and green. There’s always a cool video and cartoon in the sidebar, and quick links at the bottom to help you find what you need.

One of the biggest changes is in site performance. The old EarthFirst had gotten pretty sluggish. It’s no fun waiting for a page to load — we’re in a hurry, too — so we’ve done some things to make browsing a lot zippier. Hope you notice the difference. We’ll keep an eye on this in the future.

New ways to comment

We’ve never required you register to add your opinions to an EarthFirst article. After all, it’s a hassle to keep up with all the passwords we already have. Why add another?

Along those lines, we’ve adopted the DISQUS (it’s pronounced “discuss”) commenting system. You’ve probably already seen DISQUS-equipped sites around the web. DISQUS allows you to log into EarthFirst, and display your avatar, using many popular online identities. We currently support:

Facebook
Twitter
Yahoo IDs
OpenID

If you don’t have one of these, you can also create a DISQUS ID by registering here. This will also allow you to effortlessly comment at thousands of other blogs and websites — and keep track of those conversations, all in one easy place.

Not interested? That’s fine, too. You’ll find the usual blanks for your name, email address, and website. Comment away, no registration necessary. We will, however, permit authenticated users (people who have logged in through one of the services above) to post their comments to the EarthFirst without waiting for someone to approve their comment. Authenticated comments containing links may still be held for moderation.

Depending on your settings, DISQUS may ask if you’d like to share your comment and our article on Twitter or Facebook. We’d really appreciate this — it helps grow EarthFirst, and gets the word out about green news and causes.

What do you think?

EarthFirst is still a work in progress, and we’ll be adding more content and features to the site through the coming weeks. What would you like to see? A forum, perhaps? Maybe a marketplace, with EarthFirst-reviewed goods worthy of greening your life? Maybe there’s a topic you’d like us to cover in more details.

We want your feedback. Try out the new comment system and sound-off below!

Judging from its launch press release, the Bloom Box “energy server” is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

And perhaps it is. After months of media speculation, Bloom Energy finally took the wraps off its fuel cell technology last week at a press conference featuring such luminaries as California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and former United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Heavy hitters, to be sure, trotted out to add credence to company’s claim that their new Bloom Box centers will soon provide “clean, reliable, and affordable power 24/7.” Who wouldn’t want that?

What the Bloom Box does

Bloom says its fuel cells convert a number of fuel sources — natural gas or biogas, for instance — into energy through an electrochemical process. This sounds a lot cleaner and sexier than combustion methods of power generation, and Bloom promises to deliver compact 100 kilowatt units in a footprint not much bigger than an automobile parking spot.

The idea is to build decentralized networks of Bloom Boxes, each powering small groups of buildings. Since power transmission is inherently inefficient, the concept moves us one step closer to the nirvana of an “energy internet,” where nodes share and generate energy, not just consume it.

But wait a minute …

With claims like this (and an optimistic launch report by CBS’ 60 Minutes), it’s no surprise that mainstream media reports have been little short of gushing. But not so fast, says Hank Green of the popular CleanTech blog EcoGeek. Despite Bloom Energy’s rosy press release (linked PDF download), there remain some nagging inconsistencies:

The Bloom cell really only runs on one kind of fuel: methane. Where it’s sourced is irrelevant.
The first Bloom energy servers will be ferociously expensive. Claims of quick returns on investment seem unlikely.
Bloom says its cells are even cleaner than renewable sources, such as wind and solar energy. This is patently false.

Hank is still a big fan of Bloom Energy, and we’re looking forward to seeing how this technology develops, too. Read the rest of his comments at EcoGeek. You can see the 60 Minutes Bloom Box report below.

The death of Sea World Orlando orca trainer Dawn Brancheau has revived the question of whether or not it is ethical — or even safe — to keep killer whales in captivity.

Brancheau died from drowning and injuries sustained Wednesday when Tilikum, a massive 12,000 pound male orca, grabbed the highly experienced marine mammal handler during a public talk at the popular Florida park. Rescue workers were forced to pen and lift Tillikum from the water to recover Brancheau’s body. While park visitors report that the orcas seemed “agitated” prior to the incident, the precise cause of the attack will probably never be known.

Is it time to free Willy?

Captive Orcas are sometimes released back into the wild. Keiko, the performing orca who portrayed the subject of the 1993 movie Free Willy, was returned to the Icelandic waters from which he was taken after an exhaustive effort to make him ready for freedom. Though Keiko eventually migrated to Norway, he never fully integrated into wild orca pods, despite continuing care by wildlife managers.

Whatever Tillikum’s future, it almost certainly will not include release. Captivity takes a toll on orcas, particularly a specimen of Tilikum’s size. Years of concrete walls and steel pens have worn down his teeth to the point that trainers must rinse his jaws each morning to prevent infection, and he’s an integral part of Sea World’s breeding program.

Activist and scientists speak out

Orcas are wide-ranging animals which, in the wild, might swim up to 100 miles per day. The confines of a whale tank — no matter how large — force orcas into sedentary behavior unnatural to their species. Marine mammal specialists believe this cramped lifestyle causes a high degree of emotional and physical distress for killer whales, despite the best intentions of their handlers.

Now Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the famous oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, and president of the Ocean Futures Society, is speaking out. While recognizing the tragedy of Dawn Brancheau’s death, Cousteau asks whether it is time for humans to how we view killer whales.

“Maybe we, as a species, have outgrown the need to keep such wild, enormous, complex, intelligent, and free-ranging animals in captivity,” says Cousteau in the video below. “[In captivity} their behavior becomes abnormal — even pathological. Maybe we have learned all we can from keeping them captive.”

What do you think? Has our custody of orcas gone beyond scientific curiosity, to mere exploitation? Is it time to set the orcas free?

Post image by Flickr user suneko under a Creative Commons license

Want to be a force for positive change – and look good doing it? A company called Wear Your Intention, which creates organic apparel printed with messages of peace, hope, faith and love, is donating 100% of the profits of their Changing the World Limited Edition T-Shirt to Haiti earthquake relief efforts.

The American Red Cross is Wear Your Intention’s Share & Care Charity of the Month. Each month, Wear Your Intention usually donates $5 from the sale of a designated product to a charity or non-profit organization whose work is focused on improving the lives of those in need. But this month, they’ve decided to give even more.

It’s all part of Wear Your Intention’s Force for Positive Change Campaign, which seeks to inspire people to be more positive – and spread that positive energy to others in the process. See the rest of the offerings (including a men’s/unisex “Peace” tee) at WearYourIntention.com.

Link [Wear Your Intention]

Walk into store full of gadgets and home goods, and you’re generally hard-pressed to find things like clocks, radios, calculators and lighting made with something other than plastic or unsustainably produced metal. If you do manage to score something made of wood, it’s probably a holdover from the paneling-obsessed 70s – not exactly stylish.

A company called Lexon is looking to put an end to that problem with minimalist, modern gadgets and home goods made from bamboo, corn plastic and LED lights. Items like the Mini Dolmen Radio, Dolmen LED light and Safe Calculator fit seamlessly into modern interiors, and are also purportedly eco-friendly (it’s unclear whether the bamboo is FSC certified, and then there are problems with corn, but we digress…)

Prices aren’t listed, but you can check out the whole collection on the Lexon Design website.

Link [Lexon Design] via [Alternative Consumer]

Since “going paperless” has proven to be a difficult challenge for so many companies despite their good intentions, printers are still an integral part of most offices. But even with waste-preventing practices in place, there’s still all that ink and wasted paper.

Enter the PrePeat, a new eco printer that uses zero ink or toner, and doesn’t even need fresh paper. With a special type of coated paper, the PrePeat can print on the same sheet again and again.

The manufacturer claims that the thermal printing head can erase the document and, in the same pass, print a new one on the same sheet without degradation in quality. No word yet on price, which will probably be considerably more than most of the printers currently on the market – but hey, once you factor in the cost of paper and ink it’ll probably be a great buy.

Link [Gadget Review] via [Pocket Lint]