Latest Articles

Still another critic of real food – this time in the NYT

In Sunday’s New York Times, Damon Darlin has now weighed into a debate which I am suddenly making a career of noticing, that of publicly lambasting locavores. Normally a tech writer (and perhaps better suited to it), Darlin has wheeled out some of the same tired points that others have recently, making them officially clichéd. […]

Want to green the Olympics? Stop moving them around

Photo courtesy BinoCanada via FlickrFor all the efforts to minimize the impact of the Olympics, one big solution never gets taken seriously. So much of the environmental and financial cost of the games comes from cities trying to build facilities that suit both a massive, two-week influx of athletes and spectators and also the long-term […]

Citing Heritage, Dana Milbank attacks valid climate science as ‘bordering on the outlandish’

Cross-posted from the Wonk Room. In “Global warming’s snowball fight,” Dana Milbank, the Washington Post‘s premier Capitol Hill reporter-turned-columnist, applied his trademark snark to the political debate over climate change. His George Will-style column is based on the premise that “the greens” have been “hoist by their own petard” because they have “argued by anecdote […]

Collateral Damage of Clean Coal

No American leader has done more to advance a clean energy future than President Obama. Nor has any American president done more to invoke a mandate for stricter workplace safety and environmental regulations. And yet, ever since President Obama first visited my native southern Illinois coalfields in 1997 on a golf outing with a fellow […]

Save Winter – Stop the Oil Sands

Every day it seems as if we see another energy company trying to convince us of new ways to keep us tied to oil and coal. Yet these fuels always turn out to be dirtier and more expensive, especially when their environmental costs are considered. Liquid coal is one of these same old fossil fuels […]

Could transparency make up for a lack of a carbon cap?

If we can’t yet require companies to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping pollutants, can we shame them into doing it? The Obama administration and Democratic leaders in Congress have not so far succeeded in forcing big polluters to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.  But the U.S. EPA is about to force them to […]

What might Sen. Evan Bayh’s retirement mean for the clean-energy bill?

Sen. Evan Bayh Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh will not seek re-election this year, a decision that hands Republicans a prime pickup opportunity in the middle of the country. “After all these years, my passion for service to my fellow citizens is undiminished, but my desire to do so by serving in Congress has waned,” Bayh […]

Climate and political tipping points

There’s a famous quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” However, according to Wikipedia, it may be that this concept was first expressed by a U.S. labor leader, Nicholas Klein of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, in 1914. According to a report […]

Me, babbling on the radio about ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’

You read the first post; then you read the second post. But admit it: you still haven’t heard enough about why I think you should see Fantastic Mr. Fox, and why the esteemed ladies and gentlemen of the academy were putzes for stiffing it on a best picture nomination. So now you will listen to […]

Can Michelle Obama make the math work for better school food?

Launching her anti-obesity campaign — “Let’s Move” — last week, First Lady Michelle Obama vowed to add 1 million kids to the 31 million already being served daily by federal reimbursable meal programs while cutting back on the foods kids like most — refined grains, potatoes, sugar, salt — and adding things kids like least — vegetables and […]