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Let's make urban revitalization greener, greater, and more inclusive

Improving the environment, economy, and social equity in distressed neighborhoods is possible if the right players are involved.

Rick Perry to run for president; climate deniers cheer

The climate skeptics can finally get excited about the 2012 election: Texas Gov. Rick Perry, their candidate of choice, is about to officially throw his hat in the ring.

Moms rally to defend raw food club after federal raid

After members of California's Rawesome Food Club were thrown in jail, raw-food proponents, many of them mothers, are uniting in their defense.

A must-read report on shale gas

The report could offer the beginnings of a blueprint for compromise on fracking regulation.

Singapore aims to become a city in a garden

Singapore wants to go from being "a garden city" to "a city in a garden." That could mean benefits for residents' health, children's development, and water and air quality.

DOE panel calls for more study of fracking emissions

The panel's findings acknowledge that studies have produced conflicting results about just how "clean" the natural-gas industry is.

Six of seven fracking committee members have ties to natural gas industry

The government is convening a panel of experts to weigh in on how (and whether) fracking can be made safer. Yay! Six of the seven committee members have financial ties to the natural gas industry -- including the chairman, who's a board member of two energy companies and has received $1.4 million from them over three years. Boo!

Must-see photo essay about the drought

George Steinmetz' photo essay in Time about the drought in Texas, New Mexico, and Georgia is absolutely gasp-inducing. That's thanks to the beauty of the images, sure. But it's also the magnitude of the disaster (crops fail, waterways recede or disappear) and the shocking evidence of wastefulness (homeowners irrigate their lawns despite the record-setting drought; […]

Buy an electric car, get a steep discount on the rooftop solar panels required to charge it

Ford has teamed up with SunPower to offer buyers of its forthcoming Ford Focus Electric a significant discount on SunPower's home solar power systems. This is more than just two companies teaming up to target a demographic likely to want to be interested in both their products: It also makes sense in terms of helping families get off of oil and coal at the same time.

Wall Street Journal uses infrastructure as excuse to tell Tea Party to shove it

If you thought the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal couldn't possibly become any more backward or retrograde, the good news is, you're right! Today, the editors of the only newspaper opinion section to occasionally defeat Fox News in terms of sheer mendacity finally turned the corner and found a reason to break with the Tea Party notion that government should just go away already, so the country can turn into Somalia or Pakistan as quickly as possible.

The surprisingly powerful op-ed, written by Ed Rendell (Democrat, former governor of Pennsylvania) and Scott Smith (Republican mayor of Mesa, Ariz.), advances the notion that transportation is the one thing our government should be spending money on, even in this economic climate.