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Congress should not try to stop the Europeans from controlling aviation's carbon pollution

Why would a reauthorization bill for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have anything to say about the steps that Europe is taking to reduce carbon pollution from aviation?  The answer should be nothing.  But unfortunately the US Senate is considering language passed by the House of Representatives that would signal unhappiness with Europe’s efforts to […]

Great places, great food: part one

Is this your idea of a great place? Didn’t think so.Photo: Robert TerrellDavid Roberts has been sketching out a positive, unifying agenda for progressives under the banner of what he calls “great places.” It isn’t enough, David argues, to rail against the snarling philistinism of Sarah Palin or engage endlessly in the “decrepit political arguments […]

E-I-E-I-Oh no: Decades of antibiotics in farm animals lead to deadly superbugs

When cows kill. This article was syndicated with permission from OnEarth. Stuart Levy once kept a flock of chickens on a farm in the rolling countryside west of Boston. No ordinary farmer, Levy is a professor of molecular biology and microbiology and of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. This was decades ago, and his chickens were […]

Starry-eyed U.N. chief says we need to limit climate change to 2.7F of warming, not 3.6F

This week in the annals of wishful thinking, the executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change declared that the world's nations — you know, the ones with the record carbon emissions last year — should commit themselves to warming of no more than 2.7 degrees F, not the previously agreed-upon 3.6 degrees […]

Carbon President: Why does Obama keep OK’ing big fossil-fuel projects?

The future’s looking hot.Photo: The White HouseThis essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission. In our globalized world, old-fashioned geography is not supposed to count for much: mountain ranges, deep-water ports, railroad grades — those seem so 19th century. The Earth is flat, or so I remember somebody […]

Bill Clinton: Go for the low-hanging fruit

Bill Clinton urged mayors at the Large Cities Climate Summit to go after a pollutant 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide: methane. By capturing it from landfills, from which it leaches in prodigious amounts, cities could use it to generate power. Wrestling CO2 could take years, but harnessing methane could make a big difference […]

Oops: Germany’s nuclear shutdown will cause 100s of million of tons of CO2 emissions

Riding a wave of anti-nuclear sentiment in the wake of Japan's Fukushima disaster, the German government has decided to phase out all nuclear power plants by 2022. That’ll certainly prevent nuclear meltdowns. On the flip side, though, analyses by experts suggest that eliminating those plants will lead to a short-term increase in coal burning, resulting […]

MyConservationPark is a Facebook game that’s actually good for something

MyConservationPark is a Farmville-style Facebook game that lets you administer a nature preserve, juggling animals, plants, structures, and people to protect the habitat of endangered wildlife. But this isn't just a whole new way to annoy your Facebook friends with environmentalism; it also makes a difference in the real world. Fifteen percent of any in-game […]

Introducing your new food pyramid

Here's the USDA's new food guidelines, in an appropriate graphical form: the plate chart. (A pie chart would have too much refined sugar.) It lacks the mystical and ancient appeal of the food pyramid, but is perhaps more relevant to your daily food-eating life. (But is it kosher or something? Why is the dairy on […]

Next stop, the food desert: Fresh produce gets on the bus

The payoff scene in this video about a new mobile produce stand on Chicago’s West Side comes about nine minutes in. A young boy is urged to eat an apple by the women staffing the Fresh Moves bus, which just launched with the mission of bringing fresh produce to an inner-city food desert. The boy […]