Latest Articles

We won a temporary victory on Keystone XL, but the fight goes on

Dear Friends, Um, we won. You won. Not completely. The president didn’t outright reject the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. My particular fantasy — that he would invite the 1,253 people arrested on his doorstep in August inside the gates for a victory picnic by the vegetable garden — didn’t materialize. But today the […]

What is the price of an environmentalist’s vote?

Photo: Tar Sands ActionThe Obama administration has decided to delay a decision on the Keystone XL tar-sands pipeline until after the 2012 election. This is only a temporary, inadequate victory, but an extraordinary achievement for the thousands of grassroots activists who put ourselves on the line. It’s also clear evidence for the environmental movement that […]

How Coke reversed a bottle ban in the Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon is very beautiful, except when it's covered with disposable Dasani bottles left by littering tourists, which is a major problem for the park. So the National Park Service decided to ban disposable bottles. But then a bigwig at Coca Cola, which has donated $13 million to the park service over the years, […]

How delaying Keystone XL could kill the pipeline completely

The Obama administration just announced that the Keystone XL tar-sands pipeline will be delayed as it studies a potential new route for the project, one that does not take it across a critical groundwater aquifer that supplies water to more than 1 million people. This delay, projected to be 12 to 18 months, might very […]

Are we all toast after 2017?

Cross-posted from Council on Foreign Relations. The annual International Energy Agency (IEA) World Energy Outlook (WEO) was published yesterday with an attention-grabbing headline: The chance of avoiding dangerous climate change will “be lost forever” unless the world changes course by 2017. The basic argument is simple. The world is constantly accumulating more fossil fuel-based infrastructure […]

Using Sustainable Water to Plan for the Next Billion

Last week, Danica May Camacho of the Philippines became the world’s symbolic seven billionth person. The occasion drew mixed feelings in the policy world — what does a booming global population mean for climate risks? To cite one issue, leaders are worried about the declining supply of water in regions vital to economic growth. This isn’t […]

Food Studies: What’s up with gluten?

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. Gluten is what makes bread dought elastic enough to risePhoto: Three Points KitchenIt’s clear that Americans have an obsession with gluten. Just begin typing the […]

Watch Rick Perry forget that the Department of Energy even exists

Energy. The word you're looking for is energy. Not a big priority, maybe?

An aging rust belt town becomes a laboratory for sustainability

Environmental Studies professor David OrrPhoto: Lisa DeJongThis story is the first of two pieces excerpted from a feature story in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Read part 2 here and the full Chronicle story here. Oberlin, Ohio — This northern Ohio college town is barely a blip on a map, far away from national centers […]

How electric vehicles can give a boost to local clean energy

A plug for plug-ins.This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. The Northwest could get an additional 12 percent of its electricity from local wind power if one in eight of the region’s cars used batteries. That’s the conclusion of a study [PDF] from […]