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Are you enjoying your daily chemical cocktail?

A 1970s-era Monsanto ad.Photo: Christian MontoneChemicals and additives found in the food supply and other consumer products are making headlines regularly as more and more groups raise concern over the safety of these substances. In a statement released this week, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) asked for reform to the Toxic Substances Control Act […]

What’s next for the enviro-business coalition that defeated California’s Prop 23?

Now that we’ve put together some green muscle, what will we do with it?Photo: Denis GilesMuch of the green movement has been mounting a rearguard fight in Washington to fend off attempts to gut the U.S. EPA in the wake of the Republican sweep of the 2010 elections. California, as usual, is heading down a […]

Salt of the earth: Environmentalists and urbanists collide in San Francisco Bay [UPDATED]

In a collection of salt evaporation ponds tucked between a freeway, a sleepy little marina, and the headquarters of Dreamworks Animation, the San Francisco Bay’s ecological future hangs in the balance. The ponds themselves look deceptively blank: Vast flat rectangles of shallow water once used by Cargill to produce salt, the two-and-a-quarter square miles are […]

National coal expert: ‘Mining is a loser’ in practically every way

Anytime coal’s cost to America is discussed, the coal industry reflexively talks about what an economic lifeline it is for the states in which it operates. Headwaters Economics, a Bozeman-based think tank focusing on natural resource issues, has a solid new study that’s getting national attention for undercutting those claims. For instance, the Headwaters study […]

Want people to get on board with a shift to clean energy? Shield them from economic insecurity

Some risks are more immediate than others.Photo: A SynYesterday I ran across a pair of posts that got me thinking about risk and resilience. (Confession: Almost everything these days makes me think about risk and resilience.) First there’s this extremely smart piece from economist Jason Scorse. It makes an argument that I wish had gotten […]

Did we just hit peak cars?

Phil Goodwin, a transport economist at Oxford University, has a pile of statistics saying that car use is already on the decline — in the U.K. In its place, walking, bicycling, and trains are roaring back to life.  Transport economists never predicted the precipitous drop-off in use of rail or buses in the early part […]

Alternative agriculture sprouts up in industrial-corn country [VIDEO]

This episode tells the story of several different farmers in and around Lucan, Minn. Located 150 miles southwest of the Twin Cities, you would never think this town with a population of 226 would have so much going on. Going against the agricultural grain, this blip in a sea of corn boasts CSAs, organic cattle […]

Royal wedding will be slightly greener wretched pile of excess than usual

I've noticed that I have zero posts in my Twitter feed about how awesomesauce the royal wedding is, and 2930820385 about how nobody else will shut up re: the royal wedding and its awesomeness. But clearly somebody somewhere is into this, so okay, this one's for you: Looks like Prince Harry and Princess Hermione, or whoever, are taking steps to turn their wedding from a completely over-the-top exercise in overconsumption to an eco-completely-over-the-top exercise in overconsumption.

City birds have bigger brains than country birds, says study

Will the intrusion of cities into the natural environment cause birds to become brainier? That appears to be the case, say a passel of ecologists in the April 27 issue of Biology Letters. (This story has no implications for humans. Really. It just illustrates a principle that might possibly generalize to other animals. Including apes? […]

A ton of carbon, an imported widget, and thou

It’s been a long time coming, but a team led by Glen Peters, of the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, has finally published a comprehensive “consumption-side” analysis of global greenhouse-gas emission, one that takes international trade fully into account.   Estimates of “outsourced emissions” or “embodied carbon” have been knocking around […]