Latest Articles

The Obama admin opens up the best lands in the west for solar development

The Obama administration is putting forward 285,000 acres of public land in the West as prime territory for solar development. About half of the land is in California; the rest is spread over five states, including Nevada and Utah. These sites, the administration says, have no looming environmental or cultural conflicts, and they're close to […]

Critical List: EPA comments on Keystone XL coming soon; Moscow catches the green bug

The EPA is going to release its comments on Keystone XL soon. Also, John Kerry's on the case. America at last launched a NASA satellite to observe the weather and climate of all the earth. And Al Gore rejoiced. No pesto for you! Pine nuts are the latest food to carry salmonella. Environmental laws aren't […]

The life of a seaweed gatherer [VIDEO]

Most of the seaweed we get these days is farmed. But way up in northern Maine, Larch Hanson is still harvesting it wild in its many varieties on the rugged coast. This video isn’t about the details of that process, however. It’s about the essence of life for Larch, who rises at dawn to cut […]

The New York Times joins the energy and climate ignorati

The New York Times has its head in the sand when it comes to climate and energy.Here are excerpts from two erroneous and contradictory pieces in this week’s dreadful New York Times special section on energy: NYT 1: According to the most recent estimates of the Energy Department, world energy demand is going to increase […]

From Occupy Wall Street to Occupy Earth

Photo: Eric WagnerThis essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission. What if rising sea levels are yet another measure of inequality? What if the degradation of our planet’s life-support systems — its atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere — goes hand in hand with the accumulation of wealth, power, and […]

Leaded gas goes the way of the dodo

The sign on the gas pump saying "unleaded" will soon be a quaint anachronism, like the sign on the plane saying "No Smoking." A successful push by the Natural Resources Defense Council to phase out leaded gas worldwide is rushing leaded gas towards the same fate as smallpox — total elimination by a public health […]

High and dry: Southwest drought means rising food prices

This pond in Texas dried out by late June.Photo: agrilifetodayVery few urban dwellers have paid attention to the catastrophic drought in the Southwest that began nearly a year ago. But last month, as farmers and ranchers assessed the year’s harvest, it became clear it had knocked back their yields and sales, while driving their costs […]

Food Studies: Deconstructing Big Food

Photo: Krystian OlszanskiFood 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. I’m in a food systems class this semester that is focused on the complex way that food moves from farm to plate (which […]

Facebook is building a renewable-powered mini-town in the Arctic

Facebook is building a server farm in northern Sweden, on the edge of the Arctic circle. The average temperatures there are so cold that they won't need to use anything but the outside air to cool 600,000 square feet of servers. But even so, the server farm will use as much power as 16,000 homes. […]

The Deniers are Devious Even When Admitting They're Wrong

There is dancing in the streets in the climate world these day after another of the deniers bit the dust. I’m talking of course about Richard’s Muller’s study that shows warming is, in fact, happening. http://tinyurl.com/3ntvrom Not only that, but the big baddies at Koch funded the study. And even better, the biggest baddie of […]