Latest Articles

‘Tapped’ documentary pulls plug on bottled water craze

Only about a fifth of the plastic water bottles purchased in the United States are recycled.Courtesy producers of TAPPED.Tapped, a new documentary about the bottled water industry from director Stephanie Soechtig and the producers of Who Killed the Electric Car?, is a pretty damning look at how consumers have been tricked into spending too much […]

World’s top energy economist warns peak oil threatens recovery, urges immediate action

“Oil prices leapt above $70 a barrel Monday in Asia on investor expectations a recovering global economy will boost crude demand,” the AP reports. You might call those investors speculators – if speculation can be based on marketplace reality.  The UK’s Independent opens its interview with Dr. Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the International […]

Did Time's Bryan Walsh cut-and-paste a faulty critique of Obama’s clean energy efforts?

Exhibit 1, from an SF Chronicle op-ed by the disinformers of The Breakthrough Institute, published July 27: China alone is reportedly investing $440 billion to $660 billion in its clean-energy industries over 10 years. South Korea is investing a full 2 percent of its gross domestic product in a Green New Deal. And Japan is […]

GOP Lobbyist: ‘As an article of Faith,’ it is ‘pretentious’ to believe in global warming

In April, Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) said he knows with 100% certainty that humans can’t cause devastating sea level rise because God said in the Bible he would “never again” devastate humans with a flood again (see Rep. Shimkus: “Man will not destroy this Earth. This Earth will not be destroyed by a flood.” Rep. […]

What’s in a name? For the slimehead and toothfish, a makeover leads to rampant overfishing

“If the slimehead were still a slimehead, it wouldn’t be in this kind of trouble,” begins a good WashPost story today on overfishing of the Orange roughy and other fish with popular nom de plumes. As lakes and oceans have been depleted by heavy fishing, the seafood industry tried to dress up what was left […]

The only way to win the clean energy race is to pass the clean energy bill

Some 1970s-era liberals and old-school enviros think massive government spending is the only way to achieve the clean energy transition. They could not be more wrong, as a particularly uninformed post by the otherwise cutting-edge Grist online magazine makes clear. As a climate bill, Waxman-Markey is at best a B-, but as a clean energy […]

Boss Hog’s attempted regulatory coup in North Carolina

For the past two years, the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission has been crafting new rules to require water monitoring at factory hog farms, a significant source of pollution in the state. But last week, even with concerns growing over the environmental impacts of hog farms, the North Carolina Senate unanimously passed a bill that […]

From southern Spain, the king of summer soups

Spanish steps to the perfect summer soup.Like Penelope Cruz, my restaurant has a Spanish accent. I can’t quite say “theme,” because the menu is far from 100 percent Spanish; but we focus on tapas and serve classic preperations like paella and sangria. This time of year, our Spanish lilt mandates gazpacho. Some of the best dishes […]

James Lovelock and the End Times

British scientist and author James Lovelock has just had published a follow-up book to his 2006 book, “The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity.” This 2009 one is entitled, “The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning.” Throughout both books he presents scientific evidence to support his view that humankind […]

Ask Umbra on power-strip alternatives

Send your question to Umbra! Q. Hi Umbra, I know that the little trickle of electricity that so many appliances use even when they are “off” adds up to a significant amount of power. I also know that a power strip with an on/off switch can help. But there are places in my house where […]