Latest Articles

Vancouver’s Olympic village aims for green, runs into problems

Vancouver’s vision for its Olympic village looks dazzling from afar, like the city itself. Up close the details get hairier.Photo: ecstaticistThe city of Vancouver, British Columbia, has a lot to brag about. It’s got an enviable location, wedged between the Strait of Georgia and the snow-capped Coast Mountains. It’s a perennial winner of “most livable […]

How should you talk to your cab driver about cap-and-trade?

Photo: Stephan Geyer via FlickrDuring my travels to the Rothbury Music Festival, I ended up in a cab in Grand Rapids, Mich., with a very cranky driver who wanted to talk … about cap-and-trade … at midnight, after I’d had a long day of traveling. He began with the standard, “Where to?” But then, skipping […]

Plotting Michelle Obama’s next food move

The First Lady and friends get busy in the garden. For anyone still doubting the food-related ambitions of First Lady Michelle Obama, the WaPo’s Jane Black wishes to disabuse you. In an article that charts the internal strategizing over how best to leverage the success of the White House Kitchen Garden, Black indicates that the […]

Why the Cheesecake Factory really is gross

Down on the farm: most salmon consumed in the U.S. comes from aquacultureIn a post on his group blog, the Internet Food Association, Washington Post blogger and food-politics columnist Ezra Klein poses the philosophical question, “Is the Cheesecake Factory Gross?” The context is a bet involving the highly regarded cookbook writer Michael Ruhlman, who recently […]

North Carolina governor asked to address hog industry’s health impacts

Environmental advocates gathered at the North Carolina legislature yesterday for a press conference and prayer vigil asking the governor to create a task force to study and take action on health problems associated with industrial hog farms. The action came the same week new findings were published about the critical role hogs played in creating […]

Despite Ban Ki-Moon’s complaint, G8 summit produced climate progress

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (right) greets Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy at the G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy.UN Photo/Mark GartenUnlike some of his predecessors, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon seems to be a brave man, for he has had the courage to chide his most powerful paymasters for failing to do enough to combat climate […]

Palin’s recipe for Baked Alaska

It was a surprise when Sarah Palin announced that she would step down as Governor of Alaska. But it isn’t so surprising that America’s biggest quitter doesn’t think Americans are up to the challenge of creating a clean energy economy supported by new industries, businesses and jobs. In her first act as “What the…??”-in-Chief, Palin […]

Ask Umbra on turpentine disposal

Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, I live in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where recently our city made a splash when our newly minted sewage system — which had been roundly celebrated for making the harbour swimmable for the first time in years — failed. Now we’re back to flushing it all into the […]

Sen. Voinovich stalls confirmation of EPA deputy, demands new climate-bill analysis

George VoinovichSen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) is holding up the confirmation of a deputy administrator at the U.S. EPA until the agency coughs up numbers on the House climate bill that are to his liking. Voinovich sent a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson [PDF] on Monday saying that he has placed a procedural hold on […]

Tennessee Republican comes out swinging against cap-and-trade bill

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), a day after he announced that he is not willing to work with Democrats on a climate change bill and instead unveiled his own nuclear-power-heavy proposal, is going out of his way to be a thorn in the side of Senate Democrats. During two hearings on Tuesday convened to focus on […]