Latest Articles

Ask Umbra’s Book Club discussion starts next week

Dearest readers, Next week, we’ll begin our discussion of The World is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One by Sylvia Earle. If you haven’t gotten your book yet, there’s still time! Take it to a beach or air conditioned coffee shop near you and dive in! It really is a fast and […]

Feds fund new rapid buses, leave out hovertrains

We’re starting to see some tangible progress from President Obama’s Smart Growth/Livability initiative — a joint venture of the Department of Transportation, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency — which announced $293 million in grants for urban transit yesterday. Much of the total goes to bus rapid transit systems, which […]

Obama admin announces Alaska drilling. What could go wrong?

“One of the most frustrating things about the Obama administration is the tendency of its leaders and communicators to project a message that’s absolutely demoralizing to progressive political activists,” writes left-of-center blogger Matt Yglesias. Demoralizing? I don’t know what he’s talking about: The Interior Department today announced plans to open 1.8 million acres of Alaska’s […]

Farming in Detroit: Schools of chard knocks

Avram Rodgers, 6, says he and I are secret agents. He takes my hand and pulls me to the rabbit pens in the back of a fenced-in, grassy area at the Catherine Ferguson Academy farm in Detroit. A handful of ducks waddle in a little pool in the center of the enclosure. Goats chew grass […]

The climate war’s western front

Gov. Schwarzenegger at a press conference. Photo: Office of the GovernorThe latest California ballot measure to make a national splash addresses neither marijuana nor gay marriage, but an even more contentious issue these days: cap-and-trade. Proposition 23 would suspend California’s statewide cap-and-trade plan, currently scheduled to take full effect in 2012, until unemployment drops to […]

My old Kentucky home: Threatened by mountaintop removal

Ashley Judd speaking about mountaintop removal at the National Press Club. Cross-posted from onearth. I love and am proud of being a hillbilly. I trace my family in the mountains of eastern Kentucky back at least eight generations. There is no better home than Kentucky. But the land I love and the way of life […]

Ashley Judd is Doing the Right Thing

My colleague, Sierra Club Conservation Director Sarah Hodgdon, just wrote this excellent piece on Ashley Judd and I wanted to share it here: Actress Ashley Judd has recently been the target of some very harsh criticism and language from the coal industry in Appalachia. This is not surprising behavior from the coal industry, since Big […]

Urbivore’s Dilemma, Week 5: Getting by with a little help from my friends

Raspberries, currants, snap peas, lettuce, mint, and fennel showed up this week.(Jennifer Prediger) It’s Week Five of CSA living, which I’m keeping a journal of here in this Urbivore’s Dilemma series. This week’s CSA share gave me a taste of the plenitude of summer with raspberries, currants, snap peas, lettuce, mint, and fennel.  I had […]

10 weird green news stories flying under your radar

Enough with all the heat wave blather and depressing analysis of the ever-shrinking climate bill. Here are 10 enviro stories you may have missed this week: Green on me:  China has dispatched its own flotilla of ships to battle a massive tide of slime off the coastline. Only it’s not oil, it’s algae — a […]

Stephen Colbert’s going on a hot, sweaty field trip

A few weeks ago, to inspire realistic discussion of immigration reform, the United Farm Workers launched a tongue-in-cheek campaign called Take Our Jobs — a website where American citizens can sign up for work in the field. Experienced farm workers were standing by to train legal residents and place them on farms in California, Florida, […]