Latest Articles

Reparations for Climate Chaos

Remember when the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and International Monetary Fund were constantly making global headlines for their fierce opposition from people’s movements around the world? Well, international Finance Institutions (including the World Bank) are rearing their ugly heads again — this time with the U.N. as their vehicle. Today, more than 50 […]

‘No compromise’ faction attacks climate bill

Courtesy Climate SOSGlobal warming activists endorsed by the preeminent climatologist James Hansen are working to defeat the climate and energy bill in Congress, and they’re using some provocative stunts to spread their message. Briefly: Activists handed out fake $2 trillion bills at a rally for climate legislation in New York last week, criticizing the size […]

The Climate Post: Gentlemen, start your lawsuits

First Things First: The Environmental Protection Agency proposed a regulation that if approved would force the largest industrial emitters, including utilities, energy-intensive manufacturing, and refineries, to invest in the cleanest available technology for new projects or major renovations. The announcement’s potential importance overshadowed the nearly simultaneous official release of the Clean Energy Jobs and American […]

Want a Strong Climate Bill? Then Pay Up!

The guest post below is by my CCAN co-worker, Keith Harrington. This past week, on the heels of “Climate Week” and attendant Copenhagen preliminaries in New York, Elizabeth Kolbert wrote a nice article in the New Yorker in which she mused over what it would actually take for the US to show real leadership on […]

War is peace; chemical ag is sustainable ag

“… I will mention that I support organic and sustainable agriculture. In fact, Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution and from my home state of Iowa, is credited for creating a sustainable agriculture system decades ago.” — Sen. Chuck Grassley (R.-Iowa), in a blustery, error-laden attack on Bryan Walsh’s Time Magazine article “The Real […]

Is privatization the answer to the school lunch mess?

Professional bloggers operate under pressure to produce a high volume of provocative posts. And there’s also the rule (often honored in the breach) that brevity is best–no one wants to slog through a tome on a computer screen. Thus we sometimes propound our opinions without taking time to tease out (or think through) nuances. Luckily, […]

The assumption of inconvenience

Cross-Posted from Streetsblog. Early this week, I noticed a number of my favorite bloggers linking to this Elisabeth Rosenthal essay at Environment 360, on the mysterious greenness of European nations. The average American, as it happens, produces about twice as much carbon dioxide each year as your typical resident of Western Europe. Rosenthal attributes much […]

Big Pork and Sen. Grassley: the Danes want you to know your hogs don’t need endless antibiotics

Must we be dosed daily with antobiotics? According to the meat industry, the debate over legislation pending in the House that would ban the use of sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics comes down to a simple “fact”: hog-farming on any scale without sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics is impossible. The National Pork Producers Council says so. The […]

Does anyone still care about “the land”?

So earnest it hurts.The new climate anthem is out — you know, the remake of “Beds Are Burning” that features such hip, 21st-century acts as Duran Duran, Bob Geldof, and Youssou N’Dour — and I can’t get it out of my head. Actually, it left my head pretty much as soon as the 4:02 video […]

Sardines head south

Emile Azran stands in the sun in front of his sardine processing factory in Safi, Morocco, smoking a cigarette. Business is slow because it is the Eid holidays but soon he says the chimneys will be pumping at full steam again. The smell is putrid. Sardines, once cheap foodstuff for the poor, have become a […]