Latest Articles

Walmart by the numbers: Green vs. growth

Walmart’s six-year-old sustainability campaign has helped improve its public image, enabling the company to grow bigger and faster. That growth, ironically, has dramatically increased the retailer’s environmental footprint, and hurt local economies and the U.S. job market along the way.

Public support for clean energy isn’t enough; passion and money win in politics

  Stephen Lacey flags a poll that shows that the public feels positively about clean energy and, if given the choice, would prefer to pursue clean energy over fossil fuels. Similar positive results have been found, again and again and again, in polling about air pollution rules and the EPA. These results are notable and […]

Inspector general will investigate Keystone XL

According to a memo posted by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the State Department's inspector general will conduct an investigation into the Keystone XL permitting process. Fourteen members of Congress requested an audit two weeks ago, citing irregularities in the environmental review for the pipeline.  Just to recap: At TransCanada's suggestion, the State Department hired environmental […]

Is post-Jobs Apple going to stop poisoning China?

While Steve Jobs was head of Apple, the company was one of "America's least philanthropic companies," lacking even a basic corporate charitable arm. Apple also often seemed reluctant to green its operations. But under new CEO Tim Cook, that might be about to change. In the meantime, many of Apple's suppliers are still poisoning the […]

Beijing denies air pollution while party elites get home air purifiers

While China's citizenry are dying in record numbers owing to catastrophic levels of urban air pollution, the country's leaders are breathing Perri-Air. That is, their offices and homes use elaborate, expensive air filters to prevent the country's elites from having to breathe the same toxic shit as the plebes in the street. Meanwhile, the government reports […]

Incredible shrinking farmland

Photo: Alicia Guy Joel Huesby comes from a long line of conventional farmers, but in 1994, he had what he calls an epiphany that led him to switch to organic farming. He’s of the mind that we’ll drive ourselves to extinction if we drive our farmlands that way first. “Conventional commodity agriculture, to my way […]

Keystone XL would be right on top of latest Oklahoma earthquakes

Red: proposed route for Keystone XL Orange star: epicenter of Saturday's magnitude 5.6 earthquake in Oklahoma, which buckled a highway and cracked a building. The state is currently recovering from the quake and bracing for storms. A decade hence, if Keystone XL were running straight through the state, would they also be dealing with a […]

One-wheeled electric motorcycle is like a Segway, but cool

Sure, the RYNO looks like the hideous progeny of a motorcycle and a unicycle (nobody likes to talk about that night behind the circus tents), but it could be your new means of urban transportation. It runs off a lithium-ion battery that recharges in 90 minutes, has a smaller footprint than a Vespa, and is […]

Most honey isn’t really honey

Chances are, that stuff sittng in the plastic bear in your pantry doesn't technically qualify as honey. The FDA requires honey to have microscopic particles of pollen, which allow the honey to be traced to its source so regulators can be sure it comes from safe origins. But nearly all of the honey that's sold […]

We could replace coal power with geothermal — 10 times over

The United States has so many viable spots for producing geothermal energy — i.e. tapping into the heat of the Earth’s core to generate power — that the country's geothermal potential is equivalent to "10 times the amount of coal capacity in place today," according to Climate Progress. Southern Methodist University developed this geothermal map […]