Latest Articles

The administration’s lame lame-duck climate strategy

Mike Allen, Marc Ambinder, and Juliet Eilperin all report that the Obama administration has adopted a “lame-duck climate strategy.” The idea is to get a slimmed-down energy-only bill through the Senate the week of July 12, drag out conference committee, and send the bill back to both houses in a post-election lame-duck session, “when victorious […]

Heritage Foods’ Patrick Martins wants to put slaughterhouses back in the city [Q&A]

Rare breed: Patrick Martins moves old-school meat.(Les Meyers photo)After founding Slow Food USA in 2000, Patrick Martins went on to cofound Heritage Foods USA, a nationwide purveyor of meat from sustainably raised, heritage-breed animals, which he continues to head. And every Sunday, he records a radio show & podcast, The Main Course, from New York […]

Oil spill underscores need for Gulf-area economies to diversify

In the best of times, the three states most directly affected by the Gulf oil disaster have pretty fragile economies. Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi all rank among the bottom ten U.S. states in per-capita income. Obviously, the ever-growing oil spill isn’t just wreaking ecological havoc. It also threatens severe economic damage. The commercial fishing and […]

BP chairman ‘cares about the small people.’ WTF?

BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg must still be learning the finer points of crisis relations — here’s his explanation (before the White House press corps) of why President Obama is so frustrated with his company: [He’s] frustrated because he cares about the small people. And we care about the small people. I hear comments sometimes that […]

Swiss supermarkets to offer Think electric cars

Think CityPhoto: Think“Honey, could you run down to the store and pick up some milk, tofu, and one of those new Think City electric cars?” That’s a request you could be hearing soon in Switzerland (in French, German, Italian, or Romansh, of course) now that Norwegian electric automaker Think has struck a deal with Swiss […]

Where's the damn pony?

When life gives you lemons … add some lemon dispersant and they’ll disappear from sight.  Okay, wrong metaphor. Obama has suggested many times that he aspires to be a transformational leader like President Reagan, the “great communicator.”  Tonight, we may well find out to tonight whether Obama is a Reagan or a Carter.  Does Obama […]

NOAA: Warmest May, spring, and Jan-May on record

NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center has published its monthly “State of the Climate Report.” The combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record for May, March-May (Northern Hemisphere spring-Southern Hemisphere autumn), and the period January-May. The warming in May is greatest precisely where climate science suggested it would be – the […]

The talking points are better than the speech

Here are the key talking points the White House sent around with the speech: This economic and environmental tragedy underscores the urgent need for this nation to embrace a clean energy future.  For years, there has been little more than lip service given to the need to end our reliance on fossil fuels.  That failure […]

Where Obama’s climate leadership is really lacking

If you ever want to know what the inside-the-beltway conventional wisdom is, look for Politico’s screaming headline. “Deadly silence on carbon caps,” is today’s tea-leaf reading article, which asserts that Obama “may have put the dagger into his long-sought plans for a cap on greenhouse-gas emissions by opening the door for alternatives.” Speeches, while important, […]

Daily terror: We’re learning nothing from Gulf spill

The New Republic‘s Bradford Plumer has a post today — Why our reaction to the oil spill absolutely terrifies me — that’s, well, sorta terrifying. It’s about how the body politic seems just plain unable to deal with the Gulf oil leak in any sane way: What’s especially unnerving, though, is that the recklessness that […]