Latest Articles

Salazar blasts Gulf disaster company Transocean for touting “best year in safety”

On Friday, Transocean, the company that operated the infamous Deepwater Horizon oil rig, told its shareholders that it gave its executives multi-million-dollar bonuses based on the company’s “best year in safety performance.” CAP’s Kristen Bartoloni has the what-were-they-thinking story of week. Today, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar lashed out at the global offshore drilling company, which […]

How public transport could make Milwaukee richer and less racist

Development policies in the Milwaukee metro area — formerly the fiefdom of transportation two-face Scott Walker, who was a Milwaukee county executive before he was the train-hatin’ governor of Wisconsin — are set up to encourage sprawl. That sucks for the obvious reasons (bad for the environment, forces car-reliance, etc.). But two new analyses suggest […]

Do environmental justice groups have a legitimate beef with California’s cap-and-trade program?

Photo: ItzaFineDayAn environmental justice coalition called the Association of Irritated Residents (not making that up) has sued to stop implementation of California’s AB 32 climate program, and it looks like they’ve won the first round. A judge has ruled that the state’s Air Resources Board didn’t fully consider alternatives to the cap-and-trade portion of the […]

Watch a baby eagle hatch on live streaming video

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.1011836&w=425&h=350&fv=] A fish hatchery in Decorah, Iowa is streaming a live feed of its bald eagle eggs. The first two hatched over the weekend, but number 3 is likely to go at any minute now (over the next couple of days, anyway). Keep an eye on the webcam for a rare chance to see […]

Bus Rapid Transit: a transit fast track without the track

As Dave Roberts pointed out in his post earlier today, if this country has any hope of getting serious about energy security, we’re going to have to get serious about transit. But what form should that transit take, exactly? If you look around the world, you’ll see a lot of cities embracing Bus Rapid Transit. […]

How America could easily add 6 nuclear reactors’ worth of hydro power

A new analysis by Oakridge National Laboratory (ORNL) says that America could generate 12.6 gigawatts of always-on peak baseload power just by adding electrical generation capacity to existing dams that don't already have it. That's 12 6 (big) nuclear reactors' worth — the average reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant produced only 0.78 GW. [Update: Jesse Jenkins […]

Portable velocipede is the ultimate steampunk/hippy mashup bike

If you’re the type of green-minded soul who prefers handlebar mustaches to dreadlocks and watch fobs to Tom’s Shoes, you definitely need this swank pennyfarthing bike. More to the point, you need it if you’re short on bike storage space at your home or office — it takes up roughly half the real estate of […]

A year after the deadly Upper Big Branch mine disaster, not much has changed

Today marks the one-year memorial of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster, which killed 29 workers. Massey Energy Co., which ran the Upper Big Branch mine, will idle production at its 60 underground mines today — but as safety reports and lawsuits pile up, it becomes increasingly clear that a one-day shutdown is not enough. […]

The missing piece of Obama’s energy security plan: cities

Dude, you forgot the cities — like Denver.I had plenty of complaints about Obama’s big energy security speech last week — see here and here. Most of them centered on his crassly political decision to put supply-side solutions first, despite the fact that supply is a red herring; all the serious solutions are demand-based. There’s […]

Budget fight threatens to turn Farm Bill into Industrial Ag Bill

Will eco-friendly and people-friendly farm programs get steamrolled?Will the next Farm Bill, scheduled for passage in 2012, put public policy in service of a food system that works for farmers, eaters, and the environment? Well, optimism over federal food-policy reform never runs very high in sustainable-ag circles. The agrichemical lobby is flush with cash and […]