Latest Articles

Experiment in (e)co-habitation gets the green light

It looks like a hippie commune. It smells like a hippie commune. But the Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage is not a hippie commune!

Rick Perry's energy plan: drill more, pollute more, spew a lot of hot air

Rick Perry released a new attack ad and op-ed that lay out a strategy of drilling for more oil and gas and rolling back clean air and water standards.

Food Studies: the taste-testers' blind spots

Why taste tests conducted in controlled environments don’t tell the whole story.

Welcoming invasive species, while keeping terrorists out

Since Sept. 11, the Department of Homeland Security has scaled back efforts to protect the nation from destructive, invasive pests. How secure do you feel now?

Obama's jobs council hearts environmental destruction

The Fortune 500 CEOs who make up the president's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness are all about building Keystone XL, reinstating deepwater drilling in the Gulf, and fracking up West Virginia. The idea is that these projects will create jobs and economic growth, at least until there's a disaster of some sort that economically depresses […]

Street artists see the city as their canvas

The artist Gaia is part of a young generation using art to revitalize cities, engage residents, and connect to the past.

Virgin Atlantic plans to halve jet fuel’s carbon footprint using industrial gas

Virgin Atlantic is promising that within a few years, they'll be able to make their long haul flights with half the carbon impact that their jet fuel creates now.

The key technology here captures gases from steel production and makes them into jet fuel. It's supposedly better than biofuels, in part because it doesn't raise the same land use concerns. Virgin's not making the transition on its own: the company is partnering with Boeing, Swedish Fuels, and New Zealand-based Lanza Tech.

USDA pushes veggies, but subsidizes meat

The Washington Post reports that the USDA's nutrition guidelines are seriously out of step with food subsidies. The government recommends people eat fruits and veggies as nearly half their daily intake, and protein as less than a quarter — but they subsidize meat in totally different proportions. We whipped up this little graphic to compare […]

Enviros cross out ‘Bush’ on lawsuit, write in ‘Obama’

It's official. Environmental groups are disenchanted enough with the Obama administration that they've decided to hit it with the same tactic they used for Bush, a tactic that the environmental movement has relied on since time immemorial to get done what needs to be done: suing the crap out of the government.

Today, a suite of environmental groups that includes NRDC, EDF and Earthjustice revived a 2008 lawsuit they'd first brought against the Bush administration. Its aim is to keep people from breathing nasty, dirty, health-threatening air by forcing the government to tighten smog standards.

The Washington Post's boneheaded conventional wisdom on Solyndra

The Washington Post is spouting the Very Serious Conventional Wisdom: government is a "crappy" venture capitalist that shouldn't be picking winners.