Latest Articles
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The peaceful side of Oakland’s port shutdown march
See related slideshowI arrived at Occupy Oakland Wednesday a few hours before the planned march to the Port for what was supposed to be a teach-in about food justice. But by 3:30 p.m. the speakers had stopped trying to compete with the warring musical factions on either side of Frank Ogawa Plaza — hip hop […]
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Some Oakland occupiers have a beef with Whole Foods
Representatives of the less-peaceful element at Occupy Oakland got wind that Whole Foods was threatening to fire employees who participated in Occupy's general strike, so they vandalized a local store. It turns out those rumors were false, but who could turn down the chance to wreck a Whole Foods? The troublemakers spray-painted the front of […]
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Consumers losing faith in Big Food
Photo: Christopher Cotrell Four years ago, a coalition of agribusiness companies and industry groups, including Monsanto, the American Farm Bureau, the Midwest Dairy Council, and the National Pork Producers Council, got together to start the Center for Food Integrity (CFI), a nonprofit organization whose mission is “to build consumer trust and confidence in today’s food […]
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Franzen on love, sex, population, birds, and making the world less toxic
If you’ve read the bestseller Freedom, you won’t be surprised to hear that novelist Jonathan Franzen describes himself as “a long-time green.” One of the book’s main characters, Walter Berglund, is “greener than Greenpeace,” Franzen tells us on the first page. Walter throws himself into campaigns to fight population growth and save birds, ultimately leading […]
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Fox, don’t make fun of grad students, they just made a terrible life choice
Since the new IPCC synthesis report isn't coming out until 2014, deniers can't nitpick its findings yet. (Okay, yes, there was a typo in the bit about Himalayan glaciers in the last one, but that doesn't change the fact that GLOBAL WARMING.) Therefore, they've resorted to ad hominem about the graduate students who contribute to […]
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NASA’s impressive satellite snapshot of Snowtober
It's not supposed to snow like this in October, but you know, extreme weather is the new normal. And whatever Fox News might think, that also includes more extreme snowfall. Three million people lost power in Snowtober, and more residents of Connecticut were affected by this storm than by hurricane Irene. (More Central Park trees, […]
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Solar cheaper than fossil fuels in a decade, says Steven Chu
Solar power will be cheaper than fossil fuels at some point between the end of this decade and 2026*, said U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu at the Washington Post's Smart Energy conference this morning. (For more on what Chu said, check out Guardian reporter Suzanne Goldenberg's tweets from the conference.) The date at which […]
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Investors throw money at cleantech companies
The financial turmoil of the past few years has made venture capital financing hard to come by, but clean technology is still raking it in. In this past quarter, cleantech companies raised more than $1.1 billion, according to Ernst & Young. That's a huge jump — 73 percent — from last year. Most of the […]
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Republicans are taking real vote on imaginary dust regulations
A House subcommittee is voting today on a bill that would bar the EPA from regulating farm dust. Of course, the EPA isn't trying to regulate farm dust, but voting on legislation that has anything to do with reality is so pre-midterms. Republicans like John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Herman Cain have been citing the […]
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This bridge is made from recycled plastic
This 90-foot bridge in Wales Scotland (whoops, the company is Welsh, not the bridge) is Europe's first to be made entirely out of recycled plastic, not to mention the longest plastic bridge ever built. More than 50 tons of plastic went into making the bridge, which can carry vehicles up to 44 metric tons (heavier than […]
