Latest Articles

Battery in the House

This is huge. Cross posted from Biodiversivist According to Physorg, Panasonic will market a battery for home use beginning next year. They claim it will  power a house for a week, which does not tell us much. Your average American house consumes far more energy than your average Japanese house. At some point they will […]

Soybeans threaten Amazon rainforest

Photo courtesy Kanko* via FlickrSome 3,000 years ago, farmers in eastern China domesticated the soybean. In 1765, the first soybeans were planted in North America. Today the soybean occupies more U.S. cropland than wheat. And in Brazil, where it spread even more rapidly, the soybean is invading the Amazon rainforest. For close to two centuries […]

A conversation with Indian youth activist Ruchi Jain

Ruchi Jain, 23, was working as a marketer in Mumbai, India, when she left her job to become a full-time climate activist. Today she works with the Indian Youth Climate Network and 350.org, and she traveled to Copenhagen in December to participate in the climate talks. I followed Jain during the two-week conference as she […]

Economics as pathology

I’m technically on vacation, but the wife and kids are watching Chicken Little up in the hotel room right now, so I’m going to sneak in here for a quick post. Ted Gayer — senior fellow and co-director of the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution — has an article in Forbes today, ostensibly […]

Boring conference food: our culinary future?

  The way of all cuisine? This is a guest post by David Gumpert, author of the Raw Milk Revolution. ————- When a good Jewish mother or grandmother knows she’s going to have a big group of special guests, she shifts into high gear to prepare meals. (Yes, I’m definitely stereotyping here, but bear with […]

Dear NGO leader: Still want my $100? Answer these five questions

Whoa!  This is much harder than I thought.  Not only did I receive several new email solicitations since I asked how each of us should spend $100 to support the climate movement; my head is spinning as I read the many persuasive responses to that post.  Why the confusion?  All these green groups do seem […]

How environmentally friendly is Washington’s congressional delegation?

The following was submitted by Environment Washington. Today, Environment Washington is releasing our annual scorecard on Washington’s congressional delegation — documenting the lawmakers’ environmental votes over the past two years. These scorecards are an important tool to educate the public about the voting records of their elected officials and to help citizens learn who is […]

Copenhagen blame game is obstacle to 2010 climate deal

The holidays are supposed to be the season of goodwill. But that has been in short supply over the past week and a half as governments and environmental groups blame each other for the disappointing outcome of the Copenhagen climate summit. Did the messy outcome at Copenhagen make it less likely that world governments can […]

George Will doesn’t get “This Land is Your Land”

The columnist George Will recently wrote about the new movie Up in the Air. While breezily discoursing on the emotional pain of the worst unemployment record in decades,  Will happened to mention that the “opening soundtrack” to the movie, featuring a new version of Woody Guthrie’s classic This Land is Your Land, was (and I […]

New EPA map shows the year in eco-enforcement

‘Tis the season for the annual year-in-review column, beloved by writers and editors desperate to fill pages and screens of blank space during these slow news weeks.  I’m going to forgo that annual holiday journalism tradition — sort of. While perusing various year-end and year-ahead trend story pitches that had popped into my in-box since […]