Latest Articles
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Hexavalent chromium pollution linked to coal ash disposal
The landmark $333 million court settlement that propelled legal researcher Erin Brockovich to environmental stardom involved the contamination of a California town’s groundwater with hexavalent chromium, a toxic compound known to cause cancer. Now the same dangerous heavy metal, usually associated with steel manufacturing and metal plating, has been discovered seeping from coal ash disposal […]
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Raw-milk producers take the initiative on pathogen testing [UPDATED]
A week ago, Pennsylvania dairy farmer Edwin Shank did something no other producer of raw milk in recent memory has seen fit to do: he halted sales to his more than 1,800 customers, without any urging by local regulators. He made his decision based on private lab tests — tests over and above those periodically […]
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Can You Hear Me Now? Hanging Out with the EPA
This post was co-written by Craig Segall, Attorney for the Sierra Club Environmental Law Program. Two public hearings from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Washington, D.C., this week, will help decide whether our efforts to stop runaway climate change will rest on a strong foundation. First up, EPA will be hearing from the public […]
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Winter from hell: Don’t panic about having enough food, panic about all the crap we throw out
Nowhere to go.Photo: Sarah Goodyear When extreme weather is in the forecast, people stock up. They storm the markets, sweep the shelves clean, and load shopping carts with bottled water, canned goods, diapers, corn flakes, milk, batteries, Pop-Tarts, you name it. There are only three days’ worth of food on the shelves of American supermarkets […]
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How malls can save both the Earth and your ears
Photo: Carol LinWe’re big fans of anything that saves energy while generally improving your life — biking, for instance, or gardens. So we were psyched to hear that malls could save 1.18 gigawatt-hours of energy every year, and cut back 3,000 metric tons of CO2, just by turning off the Muzak. Enterprising Stanford students crunched […]
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Snappy answers to stupid questions about smart meters
Smart meters are a revolutionary technology that could save money, save the planet, and enable a switch to renewable energy, so you’d think they’d be really popular with Californians, right? Except that California is also full of right-leaning tin-foil haberdashers and left-leaning hypochondriacs, says the New York Times. The two groups have formed an unholy […]
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Why new dietary guidelines can’t solve the obesity crisis
Ahh, breakfast.Photo: Elana’s PantryThe USDA released a new set of dietary guidelines this week and the updated guidelines were enough to put nutritionist Marion Nestle in “shock”: I never would have believed they could pull this off. The new guidelines recognize that obesity is the number one public health nutrition problem in America and actually […]
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Bay Area hands out $3 million to install home electric car chargers
20 Blink commercial charging stations will be installed around the Bay Area.Photo: BlinkHere’s a mid-week dispatch from the green evolution in California. The Bay Area Air Management District on Wednesday granted $3.9 million to four companies as part of an effort to roll out electric car charging stations in 2,750 homes, as well as 30 […]
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Costs of inaction: the economics of high-end warming
Perhaps nowhere is the contrast between the science and economics of climate change as great as in the dueling metaphors governing the impact of high-end warming: “collapse” (following scientist Jared Diamond) vs. “reductions in the rate of growth” (following all standard integrated assessment models in economics, including those of Nicholas Stern and the IPCC). By […]
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Ask Umbra Book Club: Next week the discussion begins about Bill Bryson’s ‘At Home’
Dearest readers, I hope you’re reading this from the warmth of home. If where you are is anywhere like where I am right now, you’re glad to have good insulation, heat, and a roof over your head to keep the freezing rain off. But human beings have not always been so cozy. This and many […]
