Latest Articles

‘Subprime carbon’: Risk or hype?

On the announcement that the Clean Energy Jobs (CEJ) bill cleared a key Senate committee last week, Friends of the Earth complained: The bill’s backbone is a poorly regulated carbon trading scheme that entrusts the Wall Street bankers who brought us the current economic crisis with the responsibility to solve global warming. Sheesh. Of course, […]

We have met the deniers, and they are us

Photo: Adam D. SacksJames Inhofe.Marc Morano.Richard Lindzen.Bjørn Lomborg.George W. Bush. Names of shame, ignominy, criminals against humanity, against planet Earth itself.  Agents of the lethal delays in our response to escalating, accelerating, catastrophic global warming. Yet, as deniers of climate change, they’re amateurs compared to us.  Us activists, environmentalists, scientists, and certainly Copenhagen politicians. Even […]

How the 40 year drop in the minimum wage helped cause obesity

I have written about the link between wages and obesity before — with wages dropping since the 60s and healthy food prices always going up, people eat more unhealthy food. But now two economists have drilled down into these issues and claim to have found a specific link between a drop in the minimum wage […]

Supermodels doing their part for the climate change cause

Apparently, a group of supermodels were on their way to a strip poker game when someone convinced them to say a few words in support of everyone’s favorite climate organization, 350.org.  Video here.    

Obama will go to Copenhagen — if he can seal a deal

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday he would travel to Copenhagen next month if a climate summit is on the verge of a framework deal and his presence there will make a difference in clinching it … “If I am confident that all of the countries involved are bargaining in good faith and we […]

The Copenhagen Conference on food security

For the 193 national delegations gathering in Copenhagen for the U.N. Climate Change Conference in December, the reasons for concern about climate change vary widely. For delegations from low-lying island countries, the principal concern is rising sea level. For countries in southern Europe, climate change means less rainfall and more drought. For countries of East […]

Lawsuit accuses Virginia power company of poisoning Dominican community with toxic coal ash

Here’s the damage from a coal ash spill in Tennessee.A civil lawsuit filed last week in state court in Delaware charges Arlington, Va.-based AES Corp. — one of the world’s largest power companies — with illegally dumping 160 million pounds of toxic coal ash waste onto beaches in the Caribbean nation of the Dominican Republic, […]

Coal Country CD benefits anti-mountaintop removal groups

As a companion CD to the provocative new film, Coal Country, the wildly eclectic Coal Country Music CD hits the stores today with a blockbuster list of Nashville's alt-country scene like John Prine, Kathy Mattea, Jason and the Scorchers, folk and bluegrass legends Ralph Stanley, Jean Ritchie, Tom T. Hall and Gillian Welch, rockers like Natalie Merchant and Bonnie Raitt, and a few other surprises -- as in, Grammy Award-klezmer band The Klezmatics and their beautiful rendition of Woody Guthrie's "Heaven."

Corporate agribusiness divides farmers

Most farmers Jim Goodman knows see organic farming as just another way to farm, curious, perhaps a bit backward, but to most conventional farmers organic farming doesn't even register. With agribusiness however, it's another story. They're not content with just 96.5 percent of the food system, they want it all.

Senate Finance Committee calls on polluter lobbyists to defend pollution economy yet again

Cross-posted from the Wonk Room. On Tuesday, Sen. Max Baucus’s (D-Mont.) Finance Committee will look at the effect of clean energy legislation on the “future of jobs.” Appearing before the committee are four industry or conservative lobbyists and one coal-industry union lobbyist, Abraham Breehey. The only economist to testify will be Margo Thorning, a lobbyist […]