Australia’s Federal Tourism Minister has floated the idea of covering portions of the Great Barrier Reef with a shade cloth. Portions of the reef naturally shadowed are healthier than those exposed to direct sunlight, probably an effect of higher water temperatures. More evidence that in the world of 2050 there will be no such thing as nature: nature will be another human-managed resource.

No, not Cletus (warning: big Flash site, arbitrarily gratuitous pop culture reference) but the real deal. A substance called Belousov-Zhabotinsky gels, which undulate in the presence of the right kind of catalyst, have been modeled theoretically, making it easier to build devices built around the gels.

Tim Haab over at Environmental Economics proposes a method for reducing fossil fuel consumption that sidesteps the drawbacks of a gas tax. He proposes a consumer gasoline allowance market, with supply capped at today’s consumption and reduced over time. Want a drive a Hummer? No problem, you’ll just have to pay more to buy up gas credits from people who are driving Priuses (Prii?). It’s probably no more palatable to America’s drivers than a gas tax, but it has the potential to be more fair.

The Ecocity Farm packs fish and vegetables into a high density, vertically stackable, recycling and recirculating farming system. It’s farming for technology enthusiasts and urban culturati. You know it’s a brave new world when a farm is, “…packaged into a turn-key, IT supported retail franchise.” [treehugger]

The folks at Google Will Eat Itself are a seriously deranged bunch (witness the epilepsy-inducing background animations on their website), but their concept is admirable in a screw-the-system kind of aesthetic. They have websites, on the websites are Google AdSense ads, from the clickthrough they buy Google stock. Do you see how Ouroubouros eats his own tail? [z+]