Latest Articles

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

As we approach the beginning of the Fifteenth Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen in December, international negotiations are focused on developing a climate policy framework for the post-2012 period, when the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period will have ended.  In addition to negotiations under […]

State of the Climate Movement: Can fasting and asceticism save the world?

Despite all the doubts surrounding Copenhagen’s political outcomes, global climate activists can take heart in the fact that the conference may result in the next best thing to a binding climate treaty: a smarter, more galvanized, and re-energized global grassroots climate movement. More than a mere geographical convergence point for our movement, Copenhagen has already […]

More power, less roadkill: How one professor’s landscape has shifted

I took Environmental Studies 101 during my first college semester 20 years ago with Dick Andrus, a professor who has just marked 36 years of teaching at Binghamton University. I thought it’d be good to check back with him and see what he’s talking about in that class now. Q. What are your new Envi […]

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, What is the greenest way to dispose of pet waste? Scoop and flush, or bag and throw in the trash? Jenifer M.Vienna A. Dearest Jenifer, Flush or toss?The greenest way to dispose of pet waste is to dispose of your pet, I suppose. No pet, no waste! […]

The Climate …Skeptic

Cross-posted from Biodiversivist You know who I’m talking about, that stereotype who inevitably appears in the comment field armed with irrefutable evidence that climate change is a giant conspiracy theory. He dares other commenters to engage him in nuanced debate so he can bury them with the (erroneous) data he’s gleaned off the internet. As […]

On ‘climategate’

Jeff Masters gets at something in his great piece on the “climategate” e-maelstrom that most press coverage leaves out: this isn’t our first time around the track. The Manufactured Doubt industry has been around for decades, working to thwart regulatory constraints on large corporations that make dangerous products. Not only are all the same techniques […]

Climate deniers, hold your fire!

I went through a tough half-hour of disbelief this week, when I encountered a very ordinary story in the Boston Globe.  It was about the revised estimates of sea-level rise for the next thirty years and how they will affect our city (guess what?–more of it will be underwater!) The article was short, unremarkable, grim […]

GoodGuide scanner makes healthy food shopping point and click

Last year, a colleague suggested I check out a startup with the intriguing, and so-very-California, name of Tao It. Founded by Berkeley professor Dara O’Rourke, Tao It aimed to tap a multiplicity of databases to rank consumer products according to their health and environmental attributes. The idea: If people could instantly learn online whether there […]

Monterey Bay Sustainable Seafood Card–Not Worth the Paper It's Printed On?

My wife brought home tuna for dinner the other night. My fifteen-year-old daughter, member of her school’s environment club, 4-H, and a consummate organic gardener, whipped out her Monterey Bay Aquarium seafood card to see how tuna ranked. Yay! There it was on the Best Choices card. In fact, the card had six variations of […]

Nerd alert …Mass Production of Multi-purpose Large-capacity Lithium-ion Battery Packs Begins

Cross-posted from Biodiversivist Found this press release over on Green Car Congress: SANYO to Mass ProduceNew Large-capacity High-voltage Lithium-ion Battery Systems This is big. I’ve been waiting for this announcement. The pack for “light” electric vehicles (the one with the disembodied hand) has twice the amp hours of my electric bike (but about 25% lower […]