Latest Articles
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Ask Umbra on Annie Leonard and The Story of Stuff
Do you ever think about all the resources, the man hours, the stuff that went into making your iPod? Your cell phone? Your computer? The clothes you’re wearing? Annie Leonard did. And then she started talking to other people about it. You may have seen her animated 20-minute viral video, released in 2007, The Story […]
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Business + Stealth Greening = Fail
If a business goes green in the forest and no one is around…did it happen? That’s what a climate action plan sounds like if you don’t market it, according to George Washington University business professor, Mark Starik. Failure in Washington to pass cap and trade legislation and failure in Copenhagen to come to an international […]
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Florida Everglades restoration now a bailout for U.S. Sugar
Cypress trees in the Everglades. Photo: National Park ServiceThe New York Times published a monster investigative piece Monday on the disaster that is the Everglades Restoration Project. In some ways, it distills much of what’s wrong with both corporate and government culture in this country. Fun fact: the key beneficiary of the restoration plan will […]
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What’s driving our favorite fruit into decline?
The Calville Blanc d’Hiver, an heirloom variety dating from 15th-century France, will not be showing up in your supermarket, nor will the others in the slideshow below. Photo: Michaela/The Gardener’s EdenYou’ve heard the hackneyed phrase “as American as apple pie.” But America is not taking care of the apples — or the orchard-keepers — that […]
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Dear Vinod Khosla & Tom Friedman: No amount of sequestration makes coal ‘clean’ [UPDATED]
EVEN MORE UP-TO-DATE UPDATE (3/22): The New York Times profiles Calera, the Vinod Khosla-backed company that hopes to embed carbon dioxide in cement. Dave tells the full story below. UPDATE: Vinod Khosla sent in a response — see the bottom of the post. —— Tom Friedman had a column over the weekend lauding a couple […]
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American Petroleum tells lawmakers it supports carbon fee because it’s easier to demonize
Cross-posted from the Wonk Room. The effort of Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) to craft comprehensive clean energy legislation that caps global warming pollution has brought some positive words from Big Oil and their political allies. In particular, the senators are considering a proposal by ConocoPhillips, BP America, and […]
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Is it a problem that more industry groups are meeting with key regulatory officials than enviros?
Some small hope has been renewed for a climate change bill out of Congress this year. But if the legislative process fails to produce a law, Obama’s regulatory levers will become more and more important — and how they evaluate new rules will come under scrutiny. So is it a problem that industry groups are […]
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Cocaine addicts are snorting their way to a warmer world
Passetti via Flickr You may snort at the news, but it’s the real snuff: Cocaine is hard on your sinuses, but it’s not crazy fun for the planet either. Celebs’ favorite nose candy is knocking down rainforest in party favor of coca plants, thus speeding up climate change. In fact, “for every few lines of […]
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Sixty or Fifty?
60 or 50? So much depends on those numbers. The news went barely noticed a few weeks back: almost every school district in the state of Washington that put a levy or bond measure on the February ballot won voter approval. Despite the worst recession in decades, citizens stood behind their public schools and agreed […]
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Don’t buy Obama’s greenwashing of nuclear power
On Feb. 16, while President Obama was in Maryland announcing an $8.3 billion taxpayer-backed loan guarantee for Southern Company to build two new nuclear reactors in Georgia, inspectors at the Vermont Yankee reactor were finding dangerously high levels of tritium, a radioactive cancer-causing chemical, in the groundwater near the plant. The next week, the Vermont […]
