Latest Articles
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USDA chief flatters industrial ag while Obama honors its greatest critic, Wendell Berry
A year and a half ago, I complained that President Obama’s food and ag policy was “giving me whiplash,” because the administration seemed to keep zigzagging between progressive change and the agrichemical status quo. Since then, a definite pattern has emerged: The administration puts real policy power behind the status quo — see, for […]
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Pacific Northwest sends coal a Dear John letter
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Arial} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Arial; color: #1f0199} span.s1 {text-decoration: underline ; color: #1f0199} span.s2 {text-decoration: underline} span.s3 {color: #000000} Dear Coal, We’ve been together a long, long time, but I’m sorry, I’m leaving you for another. Don’t try to argue: like it or […]
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Don’t Mess With Mother Nature
A few weeks ago in Lamont, California, a fighting rooster killed a man, when the bird slashed him with the blades he had attached to its legs. A bizarre one-time oddity? No, just days earlier a man in India was also killed when his fighting rooster slashed his throat. Just what is Mother Nature trying […]
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How much could you save by riding transit instead of driving?
The ability to go somewhere without gassing up: priceless.Photo: JasonSo the Middle East continues to melt down, and gas prices are going up, again. This time, the jump is the second-biggest in the history of the gasoline market — 33 cents per gallon in just two weeks. According to the American Public Transportation Association, an […]
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We need big, brash, nonviolent climate protests. Are you in?
It’s time to get loud.Dear friends, Last week, a jury in Utah found Tim DeChristopher guilty for standing up to the oil and gas companies in an effort to protect our health and our climate. If the federal government thinks that it’s intimidating people into silence with this kind of prosecution, think again. This is […]
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Wording change softens global warming skeptics
This snowlady needs to rewrite her sign if she wants to be 6.3 percent more convincing.Photo: Amy GoodmanThis piece was written by Tom Jacobs. Are you convinced climate change is real? What about global warming? Yes, that second question is redundant. But new research finds the two labels, which are widely used interchangeably, evoke remarkably […]
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Florida lawmaker wants to make farm photos illegal
If we just don’t look at what’s going on inside factory farms, everything will be fine. Right? Along with mountains of oranges, tomatoes, and sugar, Florida’s branch of Big Ag Inc. is a reliable producer of bad news. Whether it’s the fight over proto-slavery conditions for its tomato workers, the push to perfect genetically modified […]
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Why companies don’t care about climate change
Businesses would be more interested in saving trees if money grew on them.Cross-posted from TriplePundit. In 2009, I cofounded a company called CO2 IMPACT to develop high quality carbon offset projects in the Americas. While I have a Ph.D. in business, I have frequently been too focused on my values to justify the business case […]
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Why climate change is now irrelevant to clean energy
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Arial} span.s1 {text-decoration: underline ; color: #1f0199} Clean energy isn’t about climate change any more, it’s about China. So says cleantech investor Alex Taussig. That’s his takeaway from last week’s summit of ARPA-E, the government agency tasked with funding energy innovations so crazy or with such far-off payouts […]
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Farming is the new hipster occupation of choice
Twentysomethings don’t know what to do with their lives. Industrial food can’t be trusted. The public image of farmers is (slowly) improving — but the average age is going up and up. These are perfect conditions for a new generation of farmers, people in their 20s and 30s who are starting small farms and joining […]
