Latest Articles

I raise pigs on annual pasture crops. Am I farming sustainably?

Bob Comis with his porkers. Will they leave the land more productive than they found it? Photo: Zach Phillips The concept of sustainability isn’t very useful as a critique of industrial agriculture — all you have to do is create a friendly definition of “sustainable,” and the critique is turned on its head. However, sustainability […]

Giving clean energy developers cash works better than tax credits, stupid US policy notwithstanding

One of the great undercovered aspects of U.S. energy policy is the fact that most of it happens through the tax code. That’s one reason it’s so unbearably lame. Why do we do energy policy this way? There are many reasons, but a big one is that decades of conservative agitprop have made it almost […]

Study: Organic chicken carries significantly lower salmonella risk

Want it free of drug-resistant salmonella? Make it organic.Photo: sierravalleygirlThis study from the University of Georgia’s Center for Food Safety came out in November and has bounced around the internet, but for some reason I’m just now noticing it. It’s worth a look. The researchers looked at broilers — chickens raised for meat — from […]

Journalists eat sugar substitutes so you don’t have to

So maybe Tom Philpott convinced you to wean yourself off aspartame, or maybe you just think chemical-based sweeteners taste oogy. (Okay, ALL sweeteners are chemical-based, but you know what I mean.) Well, the folks at Salon have taken one for the team, eating a lot of gross cookies so you can know which sugar substitute […]

Wisconsin gov. Scott Walker ruins everything, including wind power

Can you get much more low-down than Scott Walker and his cronies? It's not enough that the Wisconsin governor stripped collective bargaining rights from unions in pretty much the slimiest way possible, or that important people who support him have been advocating both violence and fake violence as a way to silence opposition. No, he […]

Batteries are not the future of green cars, says smartest guy in room

Elon Musk is a dizzyingly accomplished badass as well as a quirky workaholic, which makes him kind of like Nikola Tesla minus the full-contact pigeon fancying. And hey, that’s exactly what he named his electric automobile company, Tesla Motors. Musk, who has built Tesla’s entire business on the advanced, computer-controlled battery technology his engineers developed […]

Michele Bachmann wants to kick the planet in the nuts, and she’s running for president

Michele Bachmann, the lunatic Minnesota representative who's come out against everything from minimum wage to evolution, is apparently planning to throw her hat in the ring for 2012. OMG OMG OMG I can't wait! You thought Sarah Palin was a goldmine for snark enthusiasts? Palin is downright complex by comparison. This will be like shooting […]

Plug-in Prius not worth it, economically

Bengt Halvorson of Green Car Reports did the math on whether or not it’s worth it to buy the forthcoming plug-in version of the Toyota Prius, and the math is ugly: The Prius has a small battery that holds only enough charge to take the vehicle 14 miles, but that battery charges relatively quickly — […]

How much should Japan worry about nuclear food?

Japan has discovered potentially harmful levels of radiation in Tokyo tap water, and contamination levels in some foodstuffs have been high enough for the U.S. to halt imports.  Even if you live in Japan, you're unlikely to encounter these potentially dangerous eats — contaminated food is being kept out of grocery stores. But just in […]

Germany continues breaking clean energy records

A German wind farm.Photo: Dirk Ingo FrankeAs the nuclear reactor accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant continues to dominate the world’s attention, Germany has quietly broken more renewable energy records. The conservative government of Chancellor Angela Merkel, struggling to stay ahead of public attitudes toward nuclear power in the run-up to regional elections, issued its […]