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A brief (stylish, animated) history of fossil fuels [VIDEO]

The conclusion: "Our best goal is resilience: The ability to absorb shocks and keep going." I've long argued that our best goal is laser-guided hovercars (no friction, therefore optimum fuel efficiency), but resiliency's a pretty good goal too.

China's top-down energy gigantism and a bottom-up American alternative

Instead of envying China for leading on coal plant research, why not focus on what the U.S. does well -- distributed, bottom-up, human-scale innovation?

Global communications industry has similar global warming effect as aviation

A comprehensive study shows that the IT, telecommunication, media, and entertainment sectors add up to three percent of global carbon emissions.

Time to kill the rooster

There’s a chore I’ve been putting off for some time, that I know will be one of the more unpleasant things I’ve encountered so far on our little farm. It’s time to thin my chicken flock.

Spill cleanup plans for Arctic ripped as 'thoroughly inadequate'

Desperate to start drilling off the coast of Alaska next year, Shell is working hard to reassure us that they're not BP.

Veterans Day, the new Earth Day?

It's a provocative argument that a clean-energy revolution depends on the military signing up. The good news is that it already has.

Even city chickens want rooftop gardens on their coops

You can keep your mother cluckers cooped up -- while you raise the roof with raised garden beds -- with this chicken coop that doubles as a garden.

Ruin porn, exurban sprawl edition

A while back, Sarah noted the proliferation of Detroit "ruin porn" -- images and films that depict abandoned houses, crumbling factories, and desperately unemployed masses without showing that intelligent life does, in fact, remain in the city. There's something of a parallel trend for sprawl: illustrations of the overbuilt, over-mortgaged empty subdivisions littering exurban America. The implied message is quite often that these places were built carelessly and are unaffordable, unsustainable, and damn near unlovable.

Fast food wrappers and popcorn bags leach fire-fighting chemical into food

Synthetic chemicals that repel oil and are used on paper packaging to prevent grease leaking, can migrate directly into food.

Rep. Ed Markey makes bid for ranking spot on Natural Resources Committee

Since his committee on climate change is being disbanded, and action on climate change is almost certain to stall for many years, Rep. Ed Markey is heading over to the Natural Resources Committee, where he can defend the EPA and investigate the oil industry.