Latest Articles

Bloomberg wants to cover New York City’s landfills with solar panels

New York City's mayor Michael Bloomberg puts birds on things, if by "birds" you mean solar panels and "things" you mean the city’s myriad defunct landfills. The so-called greening of brownfields is a nationwide trend, since landfills and other plots of ruined land close to or even within cities are often not suitable for other […]

U.S. Gives South Africa Coal for Earth Day

An Open Letter on U.S. Support for New Coal Plants in Africa, from Mary Anne Hitt, Director of the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign, and Bobby Peak, Director of groundWork South Africa. Dear Export Import Bank President Fred Hochberg, As Earth Day approaches we write to express our shock and disappointment at the Export Import […]

The iPad of electric cars will be available in 2012 — for as little as $8,000

The Mitsubishi i-MiEV is so button-cute it makes the BMW mini look like the smash-faced cyclops from Jason and the Argonauts, and if you are one of a handful of lucky Americans, you might be able to pick one up at a price that matches its diminutive size. The list of requirements you have to […]

Take a ride on a Barcelona streetcar in 1908 [VIDEO]

Sometimes, on a Friday, all you want is to look at something that is just plain wonderful. To that end, I submit this film, shot from a Barcelona streetcar back in 1908. It’s a delightful artifact of a time when streets functioned very differently than they do today — with bicycles, pedestrians, horsedrawn carriages, trams, […]

150 MPH bus is basically a public transit Batmobile

Hey, life imitates Onion! A physicist in the Netherlands has designed the "Superbus," a sleek 23-seater that can go up to 150 miles per hour. And it's electric! You're not drunk, the video is in Dutch, but we assume he's saying "dude, this thing is fast as BALLS, and look at all the Delorean doors! […]

15 ways to celebrate agriculture on Earth Day

Agriculture: it doesn’t have to steamroll the environment to be productive. For over 40 years, Earth Day has served as a call to action, mobilizing individuals and organizations around the world to address environmental challenges. Agriculture, often blamed as a driver of these problems, is emerging a solution to environmental problems. It’s a source of […]

Don’t spray it: Ask Umbra on air fresheners

Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, According to their new ads, Air Wick air fresheners now have 100 percent natural propellants. OK, so they got rid of the solvents, but what about the other horrible chemicals that are in the product? Isn’t this greenwashing? Brozafan Wynnewood, Penn. There’s no substitute for truly natural […]

Texas governor launches bold prayer-based climate initiative

Texas is facing unprecedented droughts and wildfires that have consumed more than a million acres. Combating climate change could mean staving off conditions that would make droughts and fires on this scale much more common. So Rick Perry, the Texas governor, is taking swift action to remediate the climate by … calling for three days […]

Chicagoans Push for Clean Energy

Today residents of Chicago watched as the city council delayed a vote on their health. In a committee hearing on the proposed Clean Power Ordinance, the city aldermen delayed a vote on the measure that calls for the two coal-fired power plants within city limits (the Fisk and Crawford plants owned by Midwest Generation) to […]

Suburbs and cities: Stop the name-calling, already

What’s in a name?Photo: Ryan BowmanWhat is the difference between a city and a suburb, anyway? It’s an important question because so many times, the debate about the allocation of resources in our country is framed this way, as if there were some kind of obvious dichotomy between suburbs and cities, some bright line that […]