Latest Articles

Pollan says health-care reform will fail unless we change the way we eat

Michael PollanNPR’s Guy Raz: What if health care is overhauled and it doesn’t change the American diet in any way? Michael Pollan: We’ll go broke. If we don’t get a handle on these health care costs, the new system or the old system, we’ll go broke. And that’s why I think that really food is […]

The 2 billion ton test

Senators returned from their August recess with lots of ideas about how they would like to change the comprehensive clean energy and climate protection bill the House passed in June. This is a normal, and in many respects, healthy part of the legislative process. Some of these ideas, such as devoting more resources to building […]

When lobbyists cheer, the news can’t be good

As suspected, agribusiness is indeed turning cartwheels over the news that Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln is now chairman of the Senate Ag Committee. The public policy director for the retrograde American Farm Bureau told The Hill, “We couldn’t have handpicked a chairman better than this.” The giant sucking sound you’re hearing is agricultural reform rushing […]

Is the Dow Jones Sustainability Index worth a damn?

Recently, the web has been abuzz with stories about (and press releases from) companies ranked highly by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index review. The vaunted stock ticker-picker turned its eyes to green a full ten years ago to track the financial performance of “sustainability-driven companies worldwide.” Each year it releases a review of the companies […]

Ask Umbra on sex … chicken sex, that is

Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, Vegans don’t eat eggs because it’s an animal product like honey and milk and also because of how animals are treated. However, does eating an egg kill a baby chick that could have had a life? I am a vegetarian and people often argue that the eggs […]

Breaking: OSMRE Suit Cites Chronic Pizarchik Failure

Invoking an earlier promise to “use the best science and follow the letter of the law,” Lisa Jackson’s EPA, with a little help from her friends at the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Interior, announced Friday that 79 pending mountaintop removal mining permits in the Appalachian coalfields were in violation of the […]

EPA turns the lights on mountaintop removal

This post originally appeared at TheNation.com. The Environmental Protection Agency made good on its promise today to assert greater scrutiny and “use the best science and follow the letter of the law” with regard to controversial mountaintop removal mining permits in the Appalachian coalfields. In a highly anticipated announcement, the agency declared that all seventy-nine […]

This 9/11, urban communities remember and serve

This September 11th, communities are honoring those who lost their lives eight years ago by participating in service activities. Churches, schools, and community groups are holding nearly 100 Green the Block service events in more than 24 states. All across the nation, people are choosing to act on encouragement instead of discouragement, on hope instead […]

New film ‘Earth Days’ takes a sometimes devastating look at the history of environmental activism

In the 1970s, just after the first Earth Day and in the midst of oil shortages, recessions, and uprisings by restless youth, politicians were suddenly expected to show concern for the environment. President Jimmy Carter went above and beyond by installing solar panels on the White House in 1979. Solar panels on the White House! […]

Newly confirmed regulatory czar needs to close OIRA’s backdoor for special interests

Cass SunsteinAfter weeks of sustained attack from the right-wing on issues that are marginal to the job the President asked him to do, Cass Sunstein has emerged from the nomination process bloody but apparently unbowed (here’s yesterday’s roll call). He is now the nation’s “regulatory czar,” Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, […]