Latest Articles

Can a new USDA advisory committee make the dairy industry less pathetic?

Much as I’ve long been taken with the romanticism of dairy farming and the visions of grazing cows and nurturing fresh milk it conjures up, I tune out when the talk turns to “the dairy industry.” That subject stimulates images of commodity trading, price controls, feed lots, and perhaps most onerous– a rigged system akin […]

2010 outlook for solar in California

Felix Kramer of Calcars thinks 2010 will be the year of the plug-in car. He’s got a good case: after years of advocacy and technology development, 2010 is the year that major manufacturers will finally make plug-ins broadly available, and rapidly decreasing battery costs are helping the conversion industry reach new customers and help retrofit […]

Taking distributed energy seriously

This week, in The New York Times’ Room for Debate, I was involved in a discussion on the brewing war among environmentalists over building large power plants on sensitive land — specifically, in this case, a solar thermal power plant in the Mojave desert. “Green Civil War: Projects vs. Preservation” saw contributions from: Randy Udall, […]

Developing nations continue to lead post-Copenhagen

It was one of the biggest surprises in the run-up to the Copenhagen summit, and it may be one of the best reasons for hope now that the meeting has ended in disappointment. Rapidly industrializing developing countries are pressing ahead with their plans to reduce the growth in their carbon emissions, despite the failure to […]

Polluter lobbyists, Senate staff: A murky relationship

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.)At first it seemed like simply one bad idea from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). But now we know the real story — a tangled web of public officials, polluter lobbyists, and efforts to gut the Clean Air Act.  And every day it seems we’re learning more — more about the revolving door […]

Failure to cultivate: Why school gardens ARE important

In the latest edition of The Atlantic magazine, Caitlin Flanagan has written a surprisingly harsh critique of the popular and growing movement to include gardens in our public schools. In a nutshell, she states that pursuing this activity over and above the three R’s will turn our children into illiterate sharecroppers. Right from the start, […]

Thoughts on The Atlantic’s attack on school gardens

Hands-on education at Berkeley’s Edible Schoolyard. Photo: Edible SchoolyardFor several years starting in the early ’90s, I worked as a remedial math and writing teacher at Austin Community College. At that time–and, for all I know, now–the Texas public education system was mercilessly stratified: high-income districts lavished resources on schools, while their counterparts in low-income […]

Scientists confirm link between BPA and heart disease in humans

The FDA’s new report on the safety of endocrine-disrupting chemical bisphenol A is months overdue and there is still no sign of when or if the agency will release the report. Perhaps they are waiting for that piece of “smoking gun” evidence that BPA represents a clear and present danger to human health? Well, thanks […]

32000 scientists dispute global warming?

If you’ve poked around on the web for information on climate change, you probably heard the meme – “32,000 scientists signed a petition debunking global warming.” 32,000 of the world’s leading scientists? Is that really true? Well, no…

A scientist chases penguins chased by climate change

University of Washington researcher Dr. P. Dee Boersma has spent nearly 40 years following her passion to learn about and protect penguins.Courtesy of Dee Boersma/Penguin Sentinels www.penguinstudies.org There once was a Michigan schoolteacher who gave her little girl a butterfly net and a suggestion: Every kid should have a hobby, could collecting insects be yours? […]