Latest Articles

Obama hosts Facebook town hall, because what could go wrong when you combine politics and Facebook?

Listen up, Facebook nation: Obama would like you to stop friending and unfriending each other for a second and pay attention. He's hosting a Facebook town hall today at 4:45 Eastern, in order to, you know, get down verbally with the youth. The subject is "Shared Responsibility and Shared Prosperity," which sounds like a great excuse to bring up questions about energy policy, sustainability, and the environment.

One year after the BP oil spill, dangers remain

A year ago, the American public, government regulators, and Gulf of Mexico families had been lulled into a false sense of security over the safety of offshore drilling and the ability of the oil industry to respond in the event of a severe spill. After years of systemic complacency and mismanagement by the U.S. government […]

Boeing to build recyclable 787’s with 100% renewable energy

The 10 acre roof of the new Boeing 787 airplane factory in North Charleston, South Carolina will be covered with enough thin-film solar panels to provide a fifth of the plant's power. The rest will come from a nearby biomass facility, which will be powered by shrub and tree waste. The key to keeping costs […]

Amazon says America is buying green

We can learn two things from this map, based on Amazon.com's purchasing data: One, many parts of the country are at least buying green products and books about sustainability and conservation, which is a start. Two, Amazon needs a proofreader. There are more charts, too, breaking down who's buying books and products for water conservation, […]

Charles Manson does his best to kill green credibility

Boy, the green movement is just racking up the valuable allies these days, isn't it? Apparently cult leader/murderer/#1 Beatles fan Charles Manson has incorporated global warming into his particular brand of crazy, telling Spanish Vanity Fair: "Everyone's God and if we don't wake up to that there's going to be no weather because our polar […]

When you’re in love with a broken city

Baltimore in black and white.Photo: Callie NeylanCross-posted from 1934. Yesterday, I read the saddest thing I’ve ever read in my life. In an interview with Bill Moyers, David Simon, creator of “The Wire” — for which he won a MacArthur Genius Award — talks about loving Baltimore and the futility of the drug war. His answer to […]

Germans happily pay more for clean energy. Why don’t Americans?

In the U.S., any policy that raises taxes on anyone or causes anyone to pay more for anything — at least in a way that’s visible or traceable — has become verboten. It’s axiomatic in American politics that you can’t do it. The populace will revolt, right-wingers will demagogue you, you’ll be driven from office. […]

Faces from the Gulf Coast, one year after the BP disaster

It’s now been a year since the BP gusher started gushing. The leak was plugged up, but the mess isn’t gone. Meet some of the people whose lives have been turned upside-down by the BP disaster. Photos and audio came out of a collaboration between the Natural Resources Defense Council, StoryCorps, and Bridge the Gulf. […]

Fossil fuel industries kill and injure an awful lot of their workers

Oil production and oil refining has killed 77 workers and injured over 7,000 in the last 40 years.Cross-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. On the one-year anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster and the […]

A global green economy: ‘Let no man say it cannot be done’

America was able to convert from a peacetime to a wartime economy at a stunning speed.We need an economy for the 21st century, one that is in sync with the Earth and its natural support systems, not one that is destroying them. The fossil fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy that evolved in Western industrial societies is no […]