Latest Articles

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 […]

Wellinghoff hypes IT for electricity

In his vision of an America transitioning away from fossil fuels, Jon Wellinghoff, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, sees information technology as the basis for tremendous financial and employment opportunities. And with the right policies and incentives, this could happen soon. But in our current political reality, it feels like light years away. Speaking […]

Awesome bird records its own habitat destruction

Robert Krulwich has a post up about the superb lyrebird (real name!), which is COMPLETELY RIDIC. What's so superb? How about the ability to mimic any noise it hears with astonishing faithfulness, that do anything for you? It's the auditory equivalent of that girl from Heroes who could copy anything she saw on TV and […]

Ron Paul hates energy subsidies, doubts climate change, and loves riding his bike

No war for oil, and no action for climate, says Ron Paul.Photo: Gage SkidmoreRon Paul kicked off his presidential bid on Tuesday, in the customary loosey-goosey exploratory-committee way. As standard-bearer for the libertarian wing of the Republican Party, the U.S. rep from southeast Texas has a small but diehard following. His fans will make some […]

Climate legislation advances in 16 major countries

A new study [PDF] released by GLOBE international — a coalition of legislators from around the world — found that “climate change is featuring prominently on the legislative agenda across the 16 major economies.” The study, conducted by the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at the London School of Economics, documents the kinds of actions […]

Students fight to save innovative garden-based public school in Detroit

When I visited Detroit last summer, I found it to be a place of extremes. On the one hand, a city buckling under the weight of decades of deindustrialization, white flight, and abandonment — a city so gripped by economic malaise that it contained not even a single full-service supermarket. On the other, it also […]

Strawberry grower shows how to make a profit without poisons

Jim Cochran on the farm in 2004.Photo: Swanton Berry FarmThis story was written by Laura Fraser. Along California’s rugged coastal Highway One, just north of Santa Cruz, a yellow vintage pick-up truck and tidy rows of strawberries mark the entrance to the Swanton Berry Farm. Inside the cheerful farm stand, decorated with old photos of […]

Why I’ve avoided commenting on Nisbet’s ‘Climate Shift’ report

Last week, Matt Nisbet, an associate professor at American University, released a report called “Climate Shift.” It argued that, contrary to what most people think, pro-climate-bill forces spent more than their opponents, media coverage of climate science has been generally fair, and Al Gore is just as responsible as Republicans for politicizing the subject of […]