Latest Articles

Pacific NW landowners team up to market forest offsets

Owners of forestland in the Pacific NW could benefit more under a national carbon offsets system, as trees common to the region store more carbon per acre than East Coast species. Pictured: Douglas firs in an Oregon forest.Courtesy Ecotrust’s sbeebe via FlickrThough most people probably think of national parks when they think of forests, more […]

Ask Umbra on corn plastic

Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, I’ve been noticing lately a lot of “green” businesses and restaurants in my area using compostable plastics, usually made of corn, if I recall correctly. I can’t compost (I know, I know, but I live in a tiny apartment on the third floor with no porch or […]

Surprise, surprise: NWF-sponsored poll finds support for climate bill

Hey, we couldn’t find a photo that screamed “polling,” so how about this period shot of Seattle City Light workers?Seattle Municipal Archives via FlickrThere’s some good news about public support for climate legislation in a new Zogby poll commissioned by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). Seventy-one percent of likely voters say they like the American […]

A new sound, a new economy

People often ask me what the environment has to do with poverty and why communities of color are getting so active in the fight against climate change. Earlier this week, Green For All released a video that gets to the heart of the matter. A New Sound communicates both the pain of the old economy […]

NYT: Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security

The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say. Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the […]

Climate analyst, author of ‘The Honest Broker’ urges people “Please Read Climate P

UPDATE:  Roger Pielke, Jr. is a Senior Fellow for an organization that is dedicating all of its resources to killing any chance of either a national or international effort to avert catastrophic global warming and to spreading disinformation about Obama, Gore, Congressional Democrats, and the environmental movement.  My bad.  I keep forgetting how many people […]

Climate disobedience: Is a new “Seattle” in the making?

This guest essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission. Research assistance was provided by Sean Nortz. Will climate disobedience heat up in the months before Copenhagen?In the early morning of October 8, 2007, a small group of British Greenpeace activists slipped inside a hulking smokestack that towers more […]

Dynegy out of the new coal business

This is the weekly post from Bruce Nilles, director of Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. Three years ago Dynegy launched plans to partner with LS Power and become the largest new developer of coal-fired power plants.  Yesterday Dynegy officially terminated those plans, including selling its shares in a coal-fired power plant currently under construction Coal […]

The obvious advantage of organic food over conventional

A bit of nitrogen with those veggies? A recent literature review [PDF] by the U.K. Food Standards Agency concluded that organic foods offer no nutritional advantages to ones grown with conventional chemical agriculture. The report quickly bounced around the media and the internets and has congealed into received wisdom. For example, in a recent chat […]

Alaska legislature rebukes Palin, but Alaskans may still lose

The odd saga of stimulus money and the state of Alaska drew to a close yesterday, ending in what should have been a big win for efficiency, as the state legislature voted to override former-Governor Palin’s veto of efficiency money. Unfortunately, this may be a victory in name only, as the Department of Energy has […]