Latest Articles

Live chat about Walmart’s greenwashing

Join a live chat with Stacy Mitchell about Walmart's sustainability efforts and how they've been coming up short, on Nov. 30 at 3:00 p.m. ET / noon PT.

A coal strip mine next to a national park?

When I think of Utah’s Bryce Canyon National Park, I envision its beautiful rock spires (also known as “hoodoos”) reaching into the sky. I think of it as an amazing place to visit and hike, one of our country’s beautiful national parks famous for its stunning vistas, and for its unique plants and animals. It’s […]

‘Human centipede’ business model saves 39 million tons of CO2

One company's trash can be another's treasure — for instance, a server farm produces excess heat, making heat a waste product, but a greenhouse runs on heat and considers it a necessity. The U.K.'s National Industrial Symbiosis Program (NISP) helps match up companies that produce waste with companies that need it. Essentially, it's a Human […]

Infographic: The metals that make our technology are running out

This infographic by Camden Asay (click to embiggen) shows that we're fast running out of the stuff that powers our vehicles and our weaponry. But we've got even less time left with our gadgets. Yttrium and indium, two of the rare-earth elements that enable us to have TVs, computer monitors, and touch screens — oh, […]

Don’t drink the weed killer: Atrazine taints rural groundwater

Photo: T.P. MartinsIf you want to understand all that is wrong with our government’s environmental safety priorities, you need only look at the sad story of the weed killer atrazine. Despite the fact that study after study has demonstrated its dangers, it remains one of the most commonly used herbicides in the U.S. — to […]

Anonymous vigilantes clean up Bangalore

The Indian city of Bangalore is not the cleanest, apparently. So a group of young Bangaloreans is cleaning up the city, a block at a time. And they're doing it anonymously.  After a year of "spot-fixing," the group — they call themselves the "Ugly Indians" — has managed to clear more than eight miles of […]

Electric car ad from 1912

Matt Novak of the always worthwhile blog PaleoFuture just stumbled across this ad for an electric car — from 1912. The Columbus Buggy Company once employed 1,000 people in a factory that produced horse-drawn carriages, and at the dawn of the automobile it attempted to make the leap to motorized versions. At the time, there was nothing odd about […]

A gift guide to bike stuff that people actually want

Photo: Adams CarrollI’m not going to hate on shot glasses with bikes on them or leather holsters for carrying wine bottles by bicycle, but if you want to give someone a bicycle-related gift this holiday season that is actually useful on a daily basis, this guide is for you. I’ll start small and build from […]

How transit and smart growth are saving Cleveland

Cleveland is one of those ailing American cities constantly held up as an example of the country's decline. But The New York Times has taken a look at a revitalization plan the city's been working on and found that, in one uptown area at least, the city is actually growing. And the drivers of that […]

Giant banks screwing the economy are also screwing the climate, says report

When they're not making massively leveraged bets on the collapsing value of your savings account, the world's largest banks are doing their best to destroy the ability of this planet to support human life, says a new report. Watchdog group BankTrack investigated which banks are financing Big Coal, and discovered that America's largest financial institutions […]