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Underground green economy employing millions

UPDATE: Thousands more people are now being employed in the “restoration economy” to clean up the oil spill. Jobs are just one more reason why we need a national effort to restore the Gulf ecosystem. There’s a new economy springing up around the country — but it’s operating almost entirely in secret. It’s called “the […]

The National Academies study, from a global point of view

A few days ago, I got mail from a colleague at Climate Action Network International, a communications guy, asking for a comment on the US National Academy of Science’s recent climate reports, or rather on the US emissions budget that is recommended / affirmed in these reports.   It turned out to be quite an interesting […]

Saudi oil cheaper than American oil

To offshore drilling advocates, the oil-soaked birds washing up on the Gulf shore are a regrettable sacrifice in our pursuit of a higher calling: energy independence. Oil is a nasty business, they admit, but to them, offshore drilling is better than continuing to buy our oil from hostile countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. […]

Friday music blogging: Fang Island

Imagine you’re 15 years old. You and your best friend have just gotten stoned for the first time, you’re laying around his rec room. Your shoes are off, the sun is shining through the windows, you’re listening to metal albums. You start to notice that in every song there’s that one part: The Awesome Part. […]

Michael Pollan chronicles rise of the food movement(s)

(Watershed Media)In what is ostensibly a five-book review for the June 10 New York Review of Books, journalist Michael Pollan has an epic essay charting the emergence and character of the food movement. Or, as he puts it, “movements.” They are unified, for now at least, by little more than the recognition that industrial food […]

Bike to Work Day and bike to work cities

Courtesy Billg1 via PicasaHere’s a late Bike to Work Day post. OK it’s a glorified retweet of Ezra Klein’s three-paragraph story about giving up his car in D.C., which is worth reading. Here’s the last two-thirds: The debate over auto ownership is unfortunately moralistic when, in my experience, the realities of auto ownership are almost […]

Big companies help do something right in Canadian forest deal

Boreal forest in Canada — safe from chainsaws for now.Photo: ForestEthicsMy first job in the social change movement was working for Ralph Nader.  I was a lawyer, one of Nader’s Raiders.  Not in the ’70s when it was cool and people actually knew what that was, but in the ’90s, when it was decidedly not […]

Four House Republicans give a nod to biking, walking

Are Congressional Republicans moving beyond blanket opposition to the Obama administration? Here’s an interesting signal: Four GOP House members signed a letter praising Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood for putting bikers and walkers on equal footing with autos in transportation planning. Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA), Michael McCaul (TX), Jack Kingston (GA), and Steven LaTourette (OH) […]

The Gulf spill video roundup

So, the Gulf oil spill has been going on for more than a month now. The open wellhead is spewing thousands of gallons of oil every day, and in that classic the-cure-is-worse-than-the-disease way, BP has been dispersing the rogue oil with highly toxic chemicals. Eleven rig workers are already dead. Now the lives of hundreds […]

Oil gusher forces State Dept. into awkward diplomacy with Cuba

Add this to every other sort of headache the Gulf of Mexico spill has caused: It’s now an international relations problem too. As Brendan DeMelle reports, the State Department has sent diplomatic notice about the spreading oil threat to Mexico, the Bahamas, the Marshall Islands, and even Cuba, a nation with which we do not […]