Latest Articles

Hey NYC! Lay off cyclists, already!

The New York City Department of Transportation has released a new ad campaign telling cyclists, "Don't Be A Jerk." Apparently the DOT staff hasn't left their office for a while, because if it's jerks they're looking for on the streets of New York, there's no need to single out cyclists. The DOT claims that the […]

Oil bigwigs whine about proposed subsidy cuts

Five oil bigwigs spent this morning complaining to Congress that cutting subsidies to their companies would be, at the very least, "anticompetitive" (Chevron's John Watson) and at worst "misinformed and discrimnatory" (ExxonMobil's Rex Tillerson). The Senate is planning on voting this week on a bill to cut subsides to the five biggest oil companies. The […]

Americans to Big Oil: We’ve got your number

Skimmed oil from the Gulf is pumped into recovery trucks.Photo: BP AmericaCross-posted from the Center for American Progress. This post was coauthored by Valeri Vasquez, special assistant for energy policy at the Center for American Progress. The numbers don’t lie. Tax loopholes allow Big Oil companies to ratchet up their annual earnings at the expense […]

Lessons from PFC Restrepo’s Mother

The incredibly brave work of the U.S. Special Forces team that killed Osama bin Laden brought some badly needed, uplifting news. It gave Americans welcome, if temporary, relief from steady news of American lives lost in the Middle East. You can really feel that weight of the sacrifice our people are making to defend America […]

Why are we so angry at the pump? Because we have no choice

Photo: A SiegelEuropeans want to know: “Why are Americans so angry about petrol prices?“ An article on the BBC earlier this week looks at the question from a very high-minded, almost anthropological perspective. You can almost see the reporter screwing in his monocle to observe the colonists’ colorful ways. Aside from a few man-in-the-parking-lot interviews […]

US Airlines Say they are “Green” while fighting Anti-Pollution Efforts

If an airline claims to be “green”, but is actively working to gut carbon pollution standards what would you do?  Since that is exactly what America, Continental, and United airlines are doing, major environmental groups sent a letter to the airlines asking them why they are spending their customers’ money on lawyers and lobbyists in […]

Keystone pipeline spilled tar-sands oil 11 times in past year. Do we really want to supersize it?

The routes of the existing and proposed Keystone pipelines. Image: RL MillerThe State Department is currently weighing whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry tar-sands oil some 2,000 miles southward, from Alberta, Canada, to Houston and Port Arthur, Texas. It would be an expansion of the now-operational Keystone pipeline that goes as […]

Critical List: Oil industry clinging to subsidies, Monsanto continues world takeover

Oil industry leaders will testify before Congress today. Their message: Cutting oil subsidies is discrimination! Expand oil and gas production, instead, because that’s somehow good for everybody. And, anyway, oil companies pay more than enough taxes, if you ask the oil companies. If you ask anyone else, they pay a lower rate than the average […]

The most danceable fracking explainer you’ll see today

"My Water's On Fire Tonight (The Fracking Song)" is "Why Does The Sun Shine?" for fracking. ("Your groundwater is a mass of incandescent gas …") It explains enough about hydraulic fracturing — what it's for, how it works, where it can go wrong, why your sink just went up in flames — for you to […]

I have cancer — a personal meditation on technology, sustainabity, and social context

I have cancer, but thanks to modern medicine, in terms of health it may be no big deal. The surgeon will use a scalpel to remove a thin layer of tissue from the floor of the mouth along with a tiny bit of the connection to the tongue. Then a laser will cauterize it, minimizing […]