Latest Articles

'Sister Wives' is latest reality show to glorify mega-families

TLC made fauxlebrities out of Jon and Kate Gosselin and the Duggar family with its 19 kids. How do you get bigger and weirder than that? Polygamists!

Watch Sylvia Earle, Fabien Cousteau, Van Jones, others explore plastic pollution and the ocean

Activists, innovators, explorers, and artists are gathering in Los Angeles on November 6 for TEDx:GreatPacificGarbagePatch. It's featuring a day jam-packed with videos and live speeches from a gyre's-worth of famous ocean-lovers and plastic-pollution-haters. Watch the livestream here all day Saturday!

Turning energy savings in London into solar for Africa

What if turning off the lights in your home or office could help people in Africa turn theirs on?

Friday music blogging: Best Coast

Best Coast is a Los Angeles indie trio that's gotten all sorts of hype over the last year. After a series of singles, EPs, and videos, their debut LP Crazy For You came out in July. The sound is pretty much a perfect storm of things that are hip these days: low-fi, echoing drone, chiming surf rock guitars, and sugary sweet, lovestruck sha-na-na vocals from frontwoman Bethany Cosentino (every indie kid's latest crush).

The greenest party schools

Which colleges make the green grade and know how to party?

GOP climate deniers vie to run House Energy Committee

The House Energy Committee is seeing an intense leadership fight, as four different Republicans are vying to take over the influential post. The four candidates -- Reps. Fred Upton, John Shimkus, Joe Barton, and Cliff Stearns -- all want to reopen the floodgates for a deregulated fossil fuel industry. But precisely how reactionary the committee will become depends on who wins. The frontrunner Upton is the only candidate who doesn't explicitly question climate science.

In praise of fast food

Yes, cooking is wonderful, and so is communal eating with family and friends. But there's something powerful about standing up in a crowded cityscape and eating something simple and delicious that has been cooked before your eyes.

The future will be sponsored by all your favorite products

Will the city of the future be one big branding opportunity? A couple of short films show just how creepy that might be. Or is the future already here?

The cost of smart-growth support for green groups

Nature lovers and urbanist types should be a natural alliance for the simple reason that people living in walk/bike/transit-friendly neighborhoods aren't sprawling out into forests, wetlands, or farmlands. Props to the Sierra Club for educating its members on this.

The focus on big projects holds back solar in U.S.

While the government lavishes loans and expedites project reviews on public land for multi-megawatt solar projects, it's solar PV that's turning sunshine into electricity.