Latest Articles

Amazing illuminated art installations call attention to urban blight

Madrid’s Luzinterruptus collective’s large-scale light installations aren’t just haunting and beautiful — they’re also activist. Each piece is designed to call attention to some social or urban ill, from light pollution to nuclear radiation. Sometimes the targets are almost impossibly silly (sanitary napkins?), and sometimes the justification seems to have been reverse-engineered (are Madrid’s public […]

Did 350.org’s Twitterstorm to end fossil fuel subsidies work? Kinda

A storm of tweets cut through the Earth Summit cacophony for a brief moment Monday, but it also reignited old fights between rich countries and poor, and offered a reminder of just how far we still have to go.

Here’s a fuel cell that runs on brain juice

Whatever, Google Glasses; I’m holding out for the Google brain implant. And that just got a little more plausible, thanks to new technology for fuel cells that run off of blood sugar. In theory, if you popped one of these babies in your brain, it could get all its power from your own cerebrospinal fluid (the […]

Mayors in Rio, where they’re doing what they can

The C40 cities bring big news to the Earth summit in Rio: initiatives that could significantly reduce carbon and methane emissions.

Miner fired for whistleblowing gets his job back

A court found that Arch Coal had discriminated against Charles Scott Howard for his work exposing the company's safety issues.

For shame, America: Canadians dominate dubious awards in Rio

The United States, once a regular winner of the polluter-friendly Fossil of the Day Award, has fallen behind the pack, despite some pretty (un)impressive work at the Earth Summit.

Line ’em up, knock ’em down: Senate plans 73 farm bill votes today

Congress goes into vote-o-rama mode to move this year's monster of a food and farm bill forward.

Columnist: Millions for coal and oil, but not one more penny for clean energy

The Washington Post's Charles Lane argues we should abandon clean energy investment and cede that industry to China.

Tulsa authorities bulldoze edible garden for being too tall

Denise Morrison had read the city code and knew her plants were legal. So why did the city come to her yard and bulldoze her garden?

Fracking, Climate Action and July 28

“To address the huge threat posed by global warming, I believe it is essential to move as quickly as possible away from natural gas towards renewable energy resources, and to not further develop shale gas unless major (and expensive) steps are taken to greatly reduce methane emissions.” -Cornell U. professor Robert Howarth, May 31, 2012, […]