Latest Articles
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Startling new report shines light on farm labor conditions — and they ain’t good
Like a factory in the field, except for the wage protections, benefits, and union. Photo: Vera ChangMost corporations involved in the food business quietly benefit from the invisibility of U.S. farmworkers. Bon Appetit Management Co., a U.S. subsidiary of the U.K.-based, transnational catering giant Compass Group, has done something odd: It has partnered with the […]
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Anti-EPA House votes to let agribusiness dump pesticides in our water
Cross-posted from Wonk Room. The Tea Party Congress doesn’t just hate EPA rules that protect against industry destroying our country with greenhouse-gas pollution, mercury, coal ash, and mountaintop removal. By a veto-proof margin, the U.S. House of Representatives voted yesterday to prohibit Clean Water Act limits on pesticide pollution of lakes, streams, and rivers. Lobbyists […]
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Medium is beautiful: why we need more mid-sized farms
Let’s fill meat counters with ethical, sustainable cuts.Photo: Anthony AlbrightRecently, I have made the argument in a couple of different articles (here and here) that in order to make local-regional meat broadly affordable and accessible, we should make a shift from the direct markets (farmers markets, CSAs, on-farm sales) to the existing indirect, arms length […]
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Why is the conventional wisdom of climate economics so pessimistic?
Cross-posted from Real Climate Economics. The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a hearing yesterday on climate change science, economics, and policy. It was fascinating to listen to, and will no doubt provide much rich food for thought and discussion (for starters see Andy Revkin, or Chris Mooney, or Steve McIntyre for a […]
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Farmers in U.S. running out of land
Despite planting record amounts of corn and soybeans this year, U.S. farmers are sitting on unexpectedly small stockpiles of both crops. Meanwhile, the demand for corn is crowding out use of land for other crops, including cotton. The USDA reports underscored that U.S. farmers are reaching the limits of arable land in the world's biggest […]
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Obama to encourage America’s truck companies to do thing they were already planning to do
A group of truck fleet-owning companies that collectively owns 275,000 vehicles is scheduled to get a gold star from the president today, as part of the administration's Clean Fleets Initiative. FedEx, UPS, AT&T, PepsiCo, and Verizon are the charter members of a group that is pledging to reduce its collective petroleum consumption by more than […]
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‘The beauty of just getting on your bike’ [VIDEO]
The other night I had the good fortune of going to a meetup of bikers and bikers who blog in New York. The evening very specifically was not about the tiresome political wrangling that has been going on in my city over bike lanes. It was about people who just f**king love to bike in […]
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Solar power from the moon is fake, but also real
Solar panels that transform light from the moon into usable quantities of energy: Fake! Solar panels covering the moon that would transmit massive quantities of energy back to earth using lasers and microwaves: Real! Or at least: proposed with a straight face. I think we can all agree that the slide labeled "Master Plan" pretty much sums […]
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Fukushima workers prepared to die; don’t even know how much radiation they’ve been exposed to
A piece in today's Guardian reveals that TEPCO, the utility responsible for the Fukushima Dai-Ichi reactors, did not until very recently have enough dosimeters for all of the employees who are working to stop an even worse catastrophe at the plant. Normally, dosimeters would be worn at all times in order to measure cumulative exposure […]
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High-def flyover video of Fukushima shows the extent of the damage
This stunning, sobering flyover video of the Fukushima plant was shot in HD, which means it's probably as detailed as you can get while trying to focus a camera from a plane. Some of the rubble is still smoking.
