Latest Articles

The problem with ‘green group’ bashing

As Democrats in D.C. and their allies struggle to cobble together a meaningful climate bill, many are lining up to bash green groups. Some recent pieces have been excellent: Johann Hari’s ‘The Wrong Kind of Green‘ in The Nation. Others have been predictable: the folks at the Breakthrough Institute have stayed on message.  Now here […]

A deepwater drilling moratorium might be a bad idea for Louisiana

We can’t all go cold turkey.This article is part of a special issue of The Nation magazine about green energy, “Freedom From Oil.”  PORT SULPHUR, La. — Captain Pete, as everyone in town calls him, has been an oysterman nearly his entire life. He started as a boy, learning the trade from his father, who […]

Two takes on antibiotic use on factory farms

In “Chewing the Scenery,” we round up interesting food-related videos from around the Web. The meat industry wants to be viewed through the softening lens of the supermarket meat case: the shrink-wrapped splendor of chops, steaks, and breasts, presented in affordable and bountiful stacks. For the marketing to be effective, the dirty work of getting […]

Bloomberg News Refuses to Correct Blatantly False Drilling Ban Story

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the answer is no. On Thursday I documented a blatantly false Bloomberg news story designed to mislead readers about the level of support for President Obama’s temporary moratorium on deepwater drilling. Bloomberg’s poll (PDF), which the story was based on, asked the following (bottom of page five): “Do […]

Ask Umbra asks readers for an accurate name for the oil spill

Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, I think we should stop calling it a spill. A spill is something that you can pick up with a mop and paper towels. Calling this catastrophe in the Gulf a “spill” is like calling the Holocaust a paper cut. 

It is a blowout. An oil volcano. Oil […]

Want to join the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement?

Art: Nina PaleyLes U. Knight (get it?) is the face and the force behind the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT, pronounced vehement).  Motto: “May we live long and die out.” It might sound like a strident or mean-spirited campaign, but Knight is certainly not a strident or mean-spirited guy.  He’s hit on a creative way […]

UPDATED: McDonald’s new ad campaign: Is it localwashing or not?

[See UPDATE below.] McDonald’s has a new localwashing campaign playing out on billboards in Seattle.  This one targets the Ballard neighborhood … Photos: Gilman Park … and comes with an amusing disclaimer: “Participation and duration may vary.” This one targets Seattle as a whole: Have you seen any ads of this ilk? Cheddar from Wausau, […]

Response To The Cornucopians

(Photo credit: Ollie Crafoord’s photo stream Flickr) Cross Posted from Biodiversivist There have been four recent articles in Grist (mine makes the fifth and I would not blame anyone for not bothering to read it) on the topic of population. I put it together mostly as a matter of record. Good luck keeping track of […]

A Few Final Thoughts on the Population Issue

I’ve looked over all of the comments on both population-related posts and I’ll end with a few final observations: 1. A lot of this argument is one of semantics and logic. Many of the population-is-the-problem folks posit the issue like this: A. Humans are doing destructive things B. There are lots of humans C. There […]

Part 1 of interview with local-food economist Ken Meter [PODCAST]

Local food economist Ken Meter(Jerry Carlson/Agri-Energy)Ken Meter, director of Minneapolis-based Crossroads Resource Center, is probably the country’s foremost thinker on the role of food in creating robust local and regional economies. I first encountered him at a Community Food Security Coalition conference in Atlanta in 2005, where he gave a presentation that forever changed the […]