Latest Articles

Thoughts on Pollan’s food-movement essay

I want to add a few thoughts on the significance of Michael Pollan’s recent essay in The New York Review of Books to Bonnie Powell’s summary.  Pollan posits the existence of a social movement geared to transforming the food system. He emphasizes that it’s loose, internally conflicted, and nascent — but all the same, “one […]

Ask Umbra on 8 things you can do to fight the Gulf oil spill

Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, This oil spill has really gotten me down. Countless millions of gallons flowing into the beautiful Gulf of Mexico and no end in sight. The leak just keeps on leaking. I hate to admit this, but I’m feeling helpless and a bit hopeless. I’m not a big […]

Louisiana residents paint mural for Obama and BP

Image of the day: Residents near Grand Isle, La. painted this mural for President Obama’s visit last week. Twitter.com/MacMcClelland Courtesy Mother Jones reporter Mac McLelland, who’s reporting up a storm from the Gulf.  

The fight over salt: Big Food vs. Us

Salty dog Alton Brown The biggest loser in Michael Moss’s New York Times exposé of the food industry’s fight against salt restrictions isn’t the food industry. It isn’t government, either. In my view, the real loser is television chef Alton Brown: With salt under attack for its ill effects on the nation’s health, the food […]

Fed investigation fuels White House/BP breakup

Trudging through sludge along the Louisiana coast.Photo: Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace USAWith Attorney General Eric Holder now huddling with Gulf states attorneys general, the uneasy relationship between BP and the Obama administration is taking the ugly but inevitable “see you in court” turn. The White House is so anxious to separate itself from the BP stink that […]

Cars and People Compete for Grain

At a time when excessive pressures on the earth’s land and water resources are of growing concern, there is a massive new demand emerging for cropland to produce fuel for cars—one that threatens world food security. Although this situation had been developing for a few decades, it was not until Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when […]

Latest podcast: A close look at the “town that food saved”

Ben Hewitt on his farm outside of Hardwick.Hardwick, a hardscrabble town in rural Vermont (pop. 3,200), once based its economy on a non-renewable resource locked up in its surrounding hillsides: granite. But then the granite ran out — taking the town economy down with it. More recently, the town has embarked on a wild experiment. […]

Why is India the poster child for the population problem?

A market street in Chennai, India.Photo: mckaysavage via FlickrJulia Whitty has written a smart, nuanced cover story on population for Mother Jones.  She addresses the important issues, she connects the dots, she knows her stuff. But I have a bone to pick. About half of the article explores the wide-ranging set of issues associated with […]

Six reasons not to trust BP

Okay, so Top Kill failed, and we’re on pause for the next few days while BP preps for Plan, um, is it E? For the sake of the Gulf Coast, we hope this next fix-it option, a new kind of cap, works. But it’s getting harder to pull for BP.  Here’s why: We don’t need […]

Wind electricity from flying energy generators cheaper and more reliable than coal?

A technology that might provide clean electricity that is cheaper and more reliable than coal is ready for testing. Some of the world’s leading scientists think it will work. So why aren’t we spending a few million (not billion but million) dollars to find out? The basic idea: wind blows harder and more constantly at […]