Latest Articles

Happier living that happens to be more sustainable

U.K. Independent columnist Johann Hari has a post worth reading over the long weekend. If you’re too busy working to read it, well, that’s the point. Hari laments the American-style culture of overwork that he sees creeping into Britain, comparing it to an arms race. Everyone works harder and longer, or makes sure to look […]

FDA on BPA: Our hands are tied

The FDA finally released its report on Bisphenol A. The good news is that the FDA now admits that BPA — the endocrine-disrupting, heart disease–causing ingredient in plastic food packaging and can linings — isn’t entirely safe (contradicting the agency’s statement from 2008 that it was), particularly for infants and children. The bad news? There’s […]

The Climate Post: The only good strategy is a dead strategy

First things first: The White House, senators, businesses, environmental NGOs, lobbying groups, and the international community conspired this week to shred any discernible central narrative in the climate story. While this situation might be easily recognized as a normal state of affairs — coming after the singular focus on Copenhagen, and then the singular focus […]

Stopping the Murkowski Amendment

I suppose it might be sad to say that we were and were not surprised to hear this week that two dirty energy lobbyists helped craft the effort to neuter the Clean Air Act, which could next appear as an amendment to the Senate’s debt ceiling vote next week. If you missed it, the Washington […]

Mom-powered politics

Editor’s note: Anna wrote this post (and a few more) before she left on maternity leave. She gave birth to a healthy baby girl — Audrey — in December. All moms have a stake in public policies that affect the health and safety of their families. But as I’ve found throughout this series, pop-culture resources […]

Drought drives Middle Eastern pepper farmers out of business, threatens prized heirloom chiles

Editor’s note: This marks the launch of Climate Change and Food Culture, a series of posts by Gary Nabhan about how climate change threatens to stamp out some of the globe’s most celebrated foodstuffs, and along with them the farming and cooking cultures that created them. ————- Dazzling diversity under threat: a woman sells peppers […]

Dispatches from the Phoenix Green Building Conference

Recently, an interior designer and massage therapist named Becky Anderson helped me certify an Aspen Skiing Company building (Sam’s Restaurant) to LEED Gold. As a reward for her remarkable work, we sent her to the U.S. Green Building Council’s enormous, happening-like, and increasingly burning-man scale annual conference, which took place in Phoenix this fall and […]

Anti–school garden campaigner Caitlin Flanagan, on Colbert back in ’06

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Caitlin Flanagan www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy Okay, this post means nothing in the grand scheme of things. I really should have my nose buried in a report on consolidation in the agriculture sector, or be working on a real article. But ever […]

Raj Patel on Colbert

[vodpod id=Video.5067665&w=425&h=350&fv=] Raj Patel, author of the food-politics tome Stuffed and Starved, has a new book out on the failure of neoliberal economics. It’s called The Value of Nothing, after the immortal Oscar Wilde quote about how “nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” A couple of nights ago (above), […]

Everyone wants a piece of Belize

One day in December, the residents of the seaside village of Punta Gorda in Belize looked out to the horizon and saw something unexpected: Jamaican fishing boats. They had arrived, unannounced and without permits, to fish in Belize’s diverse waters. Many of Punta Gorda’s local fishermen still work the shallow waters inside the Belize Barrier […]