Latest Articles

OSMRE nominee Pizarchik must be stopped

With so many qualified candidates for the directorship of the important Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, why is the Obama administration nominating a controversial advocate for coal ash dumping, who also admits he still needs to learn more about the even more controversial and huge issue of mountaintop removal? After eight years of […]

Cargill plant recalls nearly a million pounds of tainted beef

Not-so-total recall: Cargill’s got nearly a million pounds of tainted beef circulating.  In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. ——— Remember a couple of weeks ago, when news emerged that a Colorado grocery chain had churned out 466,000 pounds of beef tainted with antibiotic-resistant salmonella, sent it […]

JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon: Time to walk the talk on coal

This post is co-written by Mark Kresowik, Corporate Responsibility Representative for the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon professes profound concern for our future.  He has made numerous statements about how his company supports strong action on global warming. He waxes eloquent about how JP Morgan Chase is committed to investments […]

Cash for Clunkers is a hit. Does it work?

The unexpected popularity of the cash-for-clunkers program has sent congress scrambling to find more funding. About 250,000 people have taken advantage of the incentives to trade older cars for ones with better fuel efficiency, burning through the first billion dollars in about a week. The price tag of the program has given politicians something to […]

Forgery Farce

One of the more macabre aspects of the still-evolving scandal involving the forged letters to Congress on the climate legislation was the disavowal of all responsibility by the Hawthorn Group — the astro-turf lobbying group that has worked for nearly a decade to snooker public officials about allegedly “clean coal.” Since 2000, Hawthorn has worked for […]

Simple summer salads for staying cool and well-nourished

It’s getting hot in here ….It’s happening again. It’s gotten so damn hot that I fear the heat of the stove. I want to be at the beach, tubing down a river, napping in a hammock under a big shade tree. The problem is I still get hungry. Convenience foods abound to solve that problem […]

‘The Great Squeeze’ joins long list of doomsaying eco-films

Our planet’s supply of safe drinking water is rapidly diminishing. We have reached peak oil (according to some experts). The polar ice caps are melting, causing sea levels to rise and threatening coastal areas and island nations everywhere. The Great Squeeze, a documentary by director Christophe Fauchere (of 2007’s film Energy Crossroads), is full of […]

South Korea outlines a range of global warming reduction targets that they’ll adopt

For over a year now, South Korea has been undertaking an extensive dialogue to establish a target to cut their global warming pollution (see my discussion here and this ClimateWire story –sub req.– from last year). And now the South Korean government has outlined the possible targets that they will commit to later this year […]

Obama admin teams with grassroots groups to ‘Green the Block’

Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., president of the Hip Hop Caucus, discusses the Green the Block partnership. In the background (L-R) are Dept. of Energy Undersecretary Kristina Johnson, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan. Kate Sheppard / GristEnsuring that low-income communities and minority youth benefit from green jobs […]

Doerr and Immelt: To become the green tech leader, we need a price and a cap on carbon

The Washington Post finally let through a good op-ed, “Falling Behind On Green Tech,” by John Doerr partner in VC Kleiner Perkins and Jeff Immelt, chairman and CEO of GE. As I’ve been saying for over a decade now, the U.S. has lost its lead to other countries because conservatives have blocked the policies needed […]