Latest Articles

Making my first clean kilowatt

On May 25, my husband and I generated our first kilowatt of clean, solar electricity from the rooftop of our home here in West Virginia. It was AMAZING — as in, your-first-paper-mache-baking-soda-volcano amazing. As soon as we turned on the system, I kept running back outside to check out the new meter that measures our […]

Ken is leaving Barbie over her deforestation habit

Barbie's got a dangerous addiction to endangered Indonesian hardwood, and Ken isn't putting up with it anymore. Once he found out Mattel packaging uses wood from the fragile Indonesian rainforest, at least some of which is from evil conglomerate Asia Pulp & Paper, he was out of there, girl.  This video leans a little hard […]

When the Nile runs dry

A new scramble for Africa is under way. As global food prices rise and exporters reduce shipments of commodities, countries that rely on imported grain are panicking. Affluent countries like Saudi Arabia, South Korea, China and India have descended on fertile plains across the African continent, acquiring huge tracts of land to produce wheat, rice […]

The new New Urbanism: Fast, nimble, flexible, and tactical

Creating the new New Urbanism, on the street in Madison, with plenty of beer.Photo: Aurash KhawarzadLast week, the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) held its 19th annual meeting in Madison, Wisc. You may not have heard of the CNU, but you have almost certainly seen its influence in American development. The movement — which […]

Websites help you choose a walkable, low-commute home

Looking for an apartment involves a lot of guesswork — if you believe Craigslist, absolutely everything is "steps from shopping and transportation!" If you want to figure out how to maximize walkability and minimize commute, you have to actually schlep over there. Or, now, you could just hit the web. PadMapper integrates rental listings, Google maps, […]

California could ban Styrofoam

Takeout in California will never be the same. The state's legislature is halfway to forbidding restaurants and vendors from packing their products in Styrofoam containers: the California Senate's on board, and the House is supposed to vote on the measure by the end of the summer. The problem (besides that Styrofoam is an evil, atmosphere-killing […]

Blair Mountain: A new milestone in the climate justice movement?

Those making the March on Blair Mountain are part of a long history of activism.Photo: Cheshire Tongkat/March on Blair MountainTim DeChristopher is a climate activist and cofounder of Peaceful Uprising. He has been beatified as a saint in the Church of Earthalujah by the Reverend Billy and convicted as a felon by the United States […]

A three-step plan to solve the fossil fuel crisis

(from Fake Science) Brilliant in its simplicity. Even better: Since we may be approaching the carbon levels that killed the dinosaurs in the first place, we could just let the fossil fuels we burn kill the cloned dinos all by themselves.

Europe’s ‘solar tunnel’ is a high-speed rail line with solar panel topping

Europe’s new rail innovation is the solar equivalent of a Good Morning Burger. We take two miles of Belgian high speed rail tunnel, soak it in rich creamery butter, and then we cover it with a shelter to protect it from nearby old-growth trees, eliminating the need to cut them down. Then we top it off […]

Barbie's fairytale interrupted by the roar of a thousand chainsaws

A long time ago, in a land far, far away, Greenpeace sent Mattel a letter. Our researchers had discovered Barbie’s not so magical secret: her packaging is linked to the destruction of Indonesia’s rainforests. For some reason, it took America’s biggest toy company two months to send any kind of substantial reply. Perhaps they were […]