Latest Articles

Keystone XL could be a terrorist target — and more from my post in the N.Y. Times

The Keystone XL pipeline could be a tempting target for terrorists. That's one of the points I make in a new "Room for Debate" post on the New York Times website.

Mr. Morriss gets acquainted with Irish Confetti

Merriam-Webster: Irish Confetti – “A rock or brick used as a missile.” We recently wrote about professional clean energy critic Andrew Morriss being schooled by Center for American Progress’s Kate Gordon before a friendly crowd at the fossil industry-funded CATO Institute. Back in April, Mr. Morriss couldn’t answer Ms. Gordon’s inconvenient points about the huge government welfare checks […]

Yes, EPA regs will cost jobs: heavily subsidized, value-destroying jobs

The latest line of attack from the dirty-energy caucus has been that "54,000 direct jobs" will be lost if, as expected, new EPA regulations lead to the shuttering of around 20 percent of the U.S. coal-power fleet. The key thing to remember is that these are some of the most heavily subsidized jobs in the U.S. economy.

Graphic: The sad state of American forests

The New York Times has an interactive infographic about the state of forests worldwide. Here's North America. The orange area has been decimated by the mountain pine beetle — warmer winters mean the beetles live longer and simultaneously make the trees more vulnerable. And the bright red spots lost between 20 and 88 percent of their […]

Water for crops, but farmworkers go thirsty

The water in California's Central Valley is so contaminated with nitrates from fertilizer runoff that the U.N. has placed it on a global list of places with "social problems linked to a lack of access to clean water" alongside Bangladesh, Uruguay, and Namibia.

U.K. plants think it's spring again

Anyone who was sighing "Oh, to be in England, now that spring is here" back in April get another shot now. The weather has been so unseasonably warm that flowers are starting a second blooming season. Robert Browning would be psyched.

New Agtivists: FoodCorps foot soldiers

Meet three young members of FoodCorps, a new national program which asks young leaders to improve the food systems in limited-resource communities.

Why is Britain's best environmentalist barred from the U.S.?

John Stewart -- not that Jon Stewart, the one with the H -- was voted the U.K.'s most effective environmentalist in 2008. Like our Jon Stewart, he gets things done. So how come his visa was revoked while he was over the Atlantic, traveling to the U.S. for a speaking tour?

Can cash payments win over wind farm opponents?

This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. A 50-turbine wind farm in Goodhue County in southeastern Minnesota has met with stiff local resistance, a frequent tale in the wind industry.  Recently, the project developer won a key court case to move forward, after […]

Dinner & Bikes Tour: The best and the worst

After a month in search of bike-friendly communities, Elly Blue returns to report the good news: The things are popping up everywhere.