Latest Articles

How Scott Brown’s victory can help get climate legislation over the finish line

So was that it?  With the stunning Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts, have we already reached the end of the Obama era?  After all — play dramatic cord — the Democrats no longer have 60 votes! I say good riddance.  Sure, if you’re a climate-movement activist, it’s not hard to be bummed, big time, by […]

Hanging EPA regulations around Democrats’ necks

It has been taken for granted on the left that if Congress doesn’t pass clean energy legislation, the EPA will step in to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The threat of that eventuality was supposed to bring intransigent industries and legislators to the table. Only it hasn’t really worked as intended — […]

How I Reduced My Natural Gas Use 75 Percent for Less Than $1,400

(Photo credit VA5LF via the Flickr Creative Commons license). Cross Posted from Biodiversivist This is an update to a post I did last winter titled: Weatherization Nation–How I reduced my natural gas use 60 percent for less than $400 In that post I speculated that getting the next 20 percent reduction (for my goal of […]

Electric Bicycle Rules

Cross Posted from Biodiversivist This is the battery pack that I built for my electric bike. It fits into a standard trunk bag behind the seat. I get a lot of emails from people who want to do the same thing (hook Dewalt 36 volt batteries up in a parallel-series configuration for 72 volts). I […]

All Aboard the Biomass Bandwagon

(Photo credit cindy47452 via the Flickr Creative Commons license). Cross Posted from Biodiversivist Books extolling the wonders of the coming hydrogen economy turned out to be works of fiction, as have several books about food-based biofuels. In fact, entire books have been written specifically to critique what is found in such books. Are we about […]

Why America’s greenest mayor got no love

Seattle Times environmental reporter Craig Welch profiles one of the more puzzling characters in recent urban politics, Seattle’s now-former mayor, Greg Nickels. The piece treads some of the same ground as my profile of Nickels last month: after demonstrating national leadership in rallying mayors on climate change, Nickels received no political credit back home. Seattle, […]

To address obesity, the First Lady will need to cast a wide net

Michelle Obama’s anti-childhood obesity agenda would have kids a little less round ’round the middle.White House Flickr streamWhile we await Michelle Obama’s speech this Wednesday to the United States Conference of Mayors that will likely launch her new campaign against childhood obesity, I thought I’d offer a little perspective as well as a few bits […]

After another massive recall, will the beef industry grope for techno fixes?

In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. ——— Massive burger recall: what would Meat Wagon be without one? The Obama administration still hasn’t chosen a director of the USDA’s FSIS — the office charged with overseeing the safety of the nation’s meat supply. Meanwhile, the new year […]

Tales from a D.C. school kitchen: What does ‘fresh-cooked’ really mean?

Ed Bruske recently spent a week in the kitchen at H.D. Cooke Elementary School in the District of Columbia observing how food is prepared. This is the first of a six-part series of posts about what he saw. Read parts 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Cross-posted from The Slow Cook. And check out the rest […]

Wild and Scenic

If you are reading this, you are likely sitting in front of a computer.  Which will make it easy to do yourself this favor: open your calendar, scroll forward about a year, and circle the date of the next Wild and Scenic film festival.  I just spent the past few days in Nevada City, CA–and […]