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Occupy Wall Street plans green Sunday

Got purpose?Photo: Jennifer PredigerIf you’ve been wondering whether, and how, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests relate to the environment, events planned for Sunday may offer some answers. As part of a Climate Justice Day event at New York City’s Zuccotti Park, OWS’s environmental working group is organizing activities, panels and teach-ins on topics ranging […]

San Diego residents push for new urban agriculture rules

The right to keep dwarf or miniature goats in your backyard is just one of the changes being promised in San Diego’s new urban agriculture ordinance.Photo: robotikaSan Diego resident Adam Hiner is hoping to get his chickens back. Adam and his sister were keeping hens too close to their house (breaking the city’s law that […]

Why ‘market-based’ is poor criteria for solar policy

The energy market isn’t as free as we’d like to believe.Photo: USDAThis post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. When it comes to solar policy in the U.S., there are three flavors: tax or cash incentives, long-term CLEAN Contracts, and solar renewable energy credit […]

Climate change is our biggest challenge, says McKibben — but we need to keep working on population

Photo: TakverIn the late ’90s, environmental activist and author Bill McKibben wrote a book about his and his wife’s decision to have only one child, connecting their personal choice to global issues of population growth and sustainability. These days, McKibben is intently focused on fighting climate change, kick-starting a clean energy revolution, and, as a […]

Regular or unleaded? Are we willing to invest in healthier homes?

Photo: Steven DepoloHey, have you heard? It’s Lead Poisoning Awareness Week! Stop. I know what you’re thinking. “We don’t have a ribbon,” says Beth Bingham, communications director for the national Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning. “We get a lot of calls from people wondering what color ribbon they should wear. Everyone else has a […]

Cool energy-storage projects popping up; expect a lot more

Tracking the politics of clean energy can be a surreal and dispiriting experience. D.C. is so swamped in fossil-fuel money, fossil-fuel lobbyists, and fossil-fuel-owned pols that the conventional wisdom is absurdly pessimistic about clean energy: It’s unreliable, it costs too much, it can never work, blah blah. Meanwhile, out in the real world, costs are […]

Emboldened by Students Taking Action

Weight of the world got you down? Stressed out by visions of exploding mountains, warming planets, and mounting to-do lists? Me too. Thankfully, I had a major ray of hope recently that I would love to share with you, in the hopes that it will lift your spirits as much as it lifted mine. Yesterday, […]

Food Studies: From trimmings to terrine

Food Studies features the voices of volunteer student bloggers from a variety of different food- and agriculture-related programs at universities around the world. You can explore the full series here. Who wouldn’t be turned off by forcemeat? The name alone sounds pretty gross. When it was time to focus on these cold, repurposed meat preparations […]

November 6: More Than Just the Climate Movement?

November 6 at the White House is a big day and an important place. That afternoon, one year before the 2012 elections, thousands of people from around the country will be doing something that has never been done before. We will be surrounding the White House, a mile or more in circumference, in a Circle […]

This is the weekend we hit 7 billion

Well, the 7 billionth baby is expected to arrive around Halloween. Spooky! Here's what you should read to prepare. "I am the population problem." It's easy to blame developing countries, but if you want to find the source of the population problem, check the mirror. Population isn't just about counting heads. The impact of humanity […]