Where's the beef? Well, it's not in West Texas these days. It's always been kind of dry and desolate, but the last two years of epic drought have taken a serious toll on the region, driving in tumbleweeds and driving out agriculture and related business.

Earlier this month, a West Texas Cargill cattle processing plant suspended operations, leaving about 2,300 residents of Plainview out of work, more than 10 percent of the town's population. The company says it's not a permanent closure, but let's be real, Cargill: This is looking a lot like devastating dust-bowl economics, round two. From The New York Times:

Dozens of former plant workers have already moved, finding new jobs with the plant’s owner, Cargill, or other companies outside Plainview or outside the state, many pulling their children out of the town’s 12 public schools. When workers receive their last paychecks in three weeks, the question is whether they will stick around. And then, the more existential question, can the town survive without those who leave?

Eat organic all you want. Avoid plastic like the plague. It may not matter after all -- you could still be ingesting a lot of nasty bisphenol A and phthalates, chemicals that leach from plastics and potentially disrupt human endocrine systems.

A study by Sheela Sathyanarayana published in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology compared one group that avoided BPA and pthalates in accordance with written directions and another group that ate a catered, local, organic diet prepared without use of plastic for cooking or storage.

From Fast Co.Exist:

The researchers assumed that urinary BPA and pthalate levels would drop in the catered group compared to the group using written instructions -- people are generally bad at following advice from their doctors after all. "Instead we saw big spikes and increases in the catered diet group and no changes at all in the written education group," she says.

Nearly 100 years ago, Dust Bowl refugees from the middle of the country sought new lives and livelihoods in the Golden State. Now California is fixing to become its own damn dust bowl. The last two months in the northern Sierra Nevada, normally the wettest time of the year, have shattered an all-time weather record as the driest January and February in recorded history.

From The Sacramento Bee:

The northern Sierra is crucial to statewide water supplies because it is where snowmelt accumulates to fill Shasta and Oroville reservoirs. These are the largest reservoirs in California and the primary storage points for state and federal water supply systems.

If February concludes without additional storms -- and none are expected -- the northern Sierra will have seen 2.2 inches of precipitation in January and February, the least since record-keeping began in the region in 1921.

That is well below the historical average of 17.1 inches.

Last summer, New York mayor and soda-hating bazillionaire Michael Bloomberg's charity launched "The Mayors Challenge" to award $9 million to five cities "that come up with bold ideas for solving major problems and improving city life." The field has now been whittled down to 20 top concepts.

"From sustainability and public health, to education and economic development, cities are pioneering new policies and programs that are moving the country forward," said Bloomberg in announcing the contest. "Historically, cities have seen each other as competitors in a zero-sum game, with neighbors pitted against each other in a battle to attract residents and businesses. But more and more, a new generation of mayors is recognizing the value of working together and the necessity of borrowing ideas from one another."

Bloomberg seems to miss his own point, though, in setting up a battle for funds between cities, some of which have far more resources and innovation street cred than others (I'm looking at you, San Francisco). That's part of why I want to give a special shout-out to Milwaukee's entry for the city's HOME GR/OWN project.

After an epic string of screw-ups, Shell is pulling way back on its plan to conquer the far north frontier and drill the ever-loving hell out of it. Pause, baby, pause!

Shell has spent more than $4.5 billion in its quest for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas off the north coast of Alaska and so far has nothing to show for it but a series of embarrassing mishaps.

"Our decision to pause in 2013 will give us time to ensure the readiness of all our equipment and people following the drilling season in 2012," Marvin Odum, director of Shell's "Upstream Americas" operations, said in a statement.

From Tesco to Burger King to IKEA, the horse-meat saga has gripped the western world for the past month. Horse hasn't even made it into stateside meaty meals, but you wouldn't know it from our outsize horror at the idea of chowing down on lovable ponies.

As someone who hasn't eaten animals in a really long time, I've been kind of confused about all this. Why the moral panic about this four-legged mammal and not all the other ones that end up in sandwiches? This isn't a modest proposal -- I'm genuinely trying to understand.

"The unfolding drama around Europe's horse-meat scandal is a case study in food politics and the politics of cultural identity," Marion Nestle wrote at Food Politics. "They (other people) eat horse meat. We don't. Most Americans say they won't eat horse meat, are appalled by the very idea, and oppose raising horses for food, selling their meat, and slaughtering horses for any reason."

Raising horses for meat was re-legalized in the U.S. in late 2011, against the wishes of the Humane Society, which argued that horses shouldn't be eaten because they're considered "companions." But since then, no horse slaughterhouses have actually managed to open their doors in the U.S.; one would-be horse-meat purveyor recently sued the government for moving too slowly on inspections.

As Cord Jefferson points out at Gawker in a post entitled "You should eat horse," horse meat is cheaper than beef, comparable in terms of calories and protein, and has way more omega-3 fatty acids. But he notes that there's some legit cause for concern:

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority has come a long way, baby. Back in the '90s, it was mired in $75 million in debt and under investigation by the FBI. Now it's being honored [PDF] as one of the top transit agencies in the nation.

The Philadelphia Daily News has the story of how SEPTA was turned around over the last two decades, in large part thanks to board chair Pat Deon. After years of operating in the red, Philly's transit systems added revenue-generating advertisements, balanced its budget, and drove right into the black.

SEPTA's chief financial officer, Richard Burnfield, said the Deon-era board's commitment to running SEPTA like a business with balanced budgets has attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding that riders enjoy through new Silverliner V regional-rail cars ($330 million), 440 new hybrid buses ($232 million) and beautifully rebuilt subway stations such as Spring Garden and Girard ($30 million).

There were also some notable cultural shifts at the agency.

A big accomplishment during Deon's tenure has been the cessation of hostilities between the 15-member board's 13 suburban members and two city members.

They may have located our ideal bliss points, but multinational food companies are far from hitting the mark when it comes to treating workers and the environment decently.

A new "Behind the Brands" report from Oxfam rates "10 of the world's most powerful food and beverage companies" on their ethics: Coca-Cola, Mars, Nestle, Kellogg's, General Mills, Associated British Foods, PepsiCo, Unilever, Danone, and Mondelez International (previously known as Kraft). Surprise: They didn't do very well. The highest grade was a 38 out of 70.

From the report:

Western states fighting for each other's water may be missing the big picture. As climate change continues, many regions of the U.S. will get hotter and drier, so much so that some of the nation's most important reservoirs could dry up, according to a new study by researchers at Colorado State University, Princeton, and the U.S. Forest Service. From the study:

Although precipitation is projected to increase in much of the United States with future climate change, in most locations that additional precipitation will merely accommodate rising evapotranspiration demand in response to temperature increases. Where the effect of rising evapotranspiration exceeds the effect of increasing precipitation, and where precipitation actually declines, as is likely in parts of the Southwest, water yields are projected to decline. For the United States as a whole, the declines are substantial, exceeding 30% of current levels by 2080 for some scenarios examined.

The study includes a number of maps showing how water might dry up under different scenarios. Here are ones showing projected changes in water yields in 2020, 2040, 2060, and 2080 under a somewhat middle-of-the-road scenario:

More dramatic scenarios see reservoirs such as Lake Mead and Lake Powell drying up completely.

In a decision that sent the internet into a tizzy today, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has decided that employees will no longer be allowed to telecommute to work. USA Today reports:

Yahoo's decision is meant to foster collaboration, according to a company memo sent to employees Friday.

Yahoo's head of human resources, Jackie Reses, wrote that communication and collaboration will be important as the company works to be "more productive, efficient and fun." To make that happen, she said, "it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people and impromptu team meetings."

According to Census figures from 2010, about 9.5 percent of the U.S. workforce telecommutes at least one day a week. That's actually not very much, considering telecommuting can be more productive for some workers, not to mention more comfortable. Millions of Americans working from home or local co-working spaces each day save millions of tons in emissions each year, and potentially cut down on traffic deaths.