Latest Articles

Doing your wash is hurting the planet, and it’s not because you’re using hot water

Sorry to have to bum y'all out, but here is a new way that we are all destroying the planet without even realizing it: by washing our clothes. And, yah, I know you wash your clothes in cold water, but I'm not talking about the energy your machines use. I'm talking about how whenever you wash clothes made of synthetic fibers, tiny bits of plastic flake off and get flushed with the wash water into the sewage system.

Disadvantaged teens build 160 MPG hybrid car

West Philadelphia High School has a dropout rate of more than 50 percent, and 85 percent of students are low-income. But instead of making trouble in their neighborhood, getting in one little fight, or even shooting some B-ball outside of the school, a team of 15 dedicated West Philly students built a badass hybrid car that gets 160 miles to the gallon. Then they entered it in a contest where it beat the pants off cars built by fancy Ivy League engineers.

Texas tries to censor climate change information

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is learning the hard way that politicizing a government report is much, much harder after you've hired a reputable and principled scientist to write it. John Anderson, the author of the agency's report on Texas' Galveston Bay, says the agency removed references to humans' contributions to climate change. Anderson and the research center that gave him the assignment are fighting against the release of the edited report.

Ocean of trouble: Report warns of offshore fish farming dangers

In light of the FDA's recent approval of genetically engineered salmon, the latest Food & Water Watch report on open-ocean aquaculture might leave some advocates feeling a little clammy.

Cheap, genetically engineered salmon sushi, coming soon!

The only thing that stands between us and eating fish riddled with genes that some dude spliced together in the lab is the Office of Management and Budget. The FDA has finished its evaluation of genetically engineered salmon and recommended that the fish be commercialized.

The GE fish grows fast and big, which means more fish for all of us. But it also could have worrisome impacts on the environment, because it's a fish that we programmed in order to bend its entire existence to our will!

Population facts and figures at your fingertips

The number of people in the world is expected to reach 7 billion by the end of October 2011. Our rate of increase continues to slow from the high point of over 2 percent in 1968. Still, this year’s 1.1 percent increase means some 78 million people will be added to the global population in 2011.

Even Republicans favor the EPA rules that Republicans are trying to block

Yet another nationwide poll has found that the public overwhelmingly supports clean air protections, across demographic and party lines. Yes, even Republicans.

Bill McKibben: 'Wall Street has been occupying the atmosphere'

Here's Bill McKibben speaking at an Occupy Wall Street "mic check," where the crowd repeats back everything he says and acts as a sort of human-powered amplifier. The reason that it’s so great that we’re occupying Wall Street is because Wall Street has been occupying the atmosphere. That’s why we can never do anything about […]

What do banana peels and coal ash have in common?

Americans want strong protections against toxic coal ash — that’s why they submitted more than 450,000 public comments during the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) process to put long-overdue protections in place. Unfortunately, Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.) recently introduced the Coal Residuals Reuse and Management Act of 2011 (H.R. 2273), which would handcuff EPA’s ability to […]

Coal ash regulations would create 28,000 jobs

Republicans have been arguing that environmental regulations kill jobs. But research keeps showing that it's just not true. An independent analysis of the coal ash industry, for instance, reveals that stricter safety regulations would create 28,000 jobs overall.