Latest Articles

Former PepsiCo exec to take helm at Seventh Generation

Entrepreneur Jeffrey Hollender launched a mail-order catalog business 20 years ago and nursed it for more than a decade before it became profitable. That company is now Seventh Generation, and there’s no more catalog, but there certainly is a ton of recycled toilet paper — and all-natural cleaning supplies and non-toxic personal-care products. It’s a […]

Will Big Ag plow under Waxman-Markey?

Waxman and Markey prepare for the ag lobby. As the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill moves forward in the House, Big Ag interest groups are circling their plows and sharpening their pitchforks. Some of the largest corporations in the agribusiness sector–including the GMO-and-herbicide giant Monsanto–are pushing to control how agriculture would fit into the bill’s […]

Transparency at the Bonn climate negotiations

You might think that the international global warming negotiations are occurring in some backroom, filled with smoke, and outside the view of the world.  That is after all, what some opponents to global warming solutions would have you believe. But that is the farthest thing from the truth.  Let me give you some examples from […]

Agriculture: A necessary complication in the climate negotiations

Despite a sense that the international climate change negotiations, convened in Bonn, Germany this week, are grinding forward at a painfully slow pace, there is a momentum to the process that makes adding new ideas very difficult. It took several years of behind the scenes technical work and at least two years of carefully planned […]

Why are milk prices plummeting?

Dairy farmers are in deep trouble. Milk prices have fallen by half since last year, dropping to a 30-year low. Consumption has fallen in light of the slowing world economy and now there is a huge milk surplus, or so the “experts” tell us. It’s a nice theory: surplus equals low prices. Easy to explain […]

Do dirty coal plants make us more vulnerable to swine flu?

Scientists have discovered that exposure to a common pollutant may make people more likely to experience severe symptoms from swine flu — and it’s a pollutant emitted in large quantities by coal-burning power plants and other industrial facilities. The culprit is arsenic, a highly poisonous semi-metal which, according to a new study by researchers at […]

Ask Umbra on ungreen roommates

Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, I would like to reduce the amount of energy that my household uses as much as possible. But I have a problem with my roommate. She refuses to use CFLs. She gets upset when I turn off phantom loads, like the power supply for her laptop computer, […]

House approves “Cash for Clunkers” bill, enviros unimpressed

The House approved a measure on Tuesday that would give Americans a cash incentive to trade in their old, gas-guzzling automobiles for slightly more efficient models. The “Cash for Clunkers” bill passed through the chamber with a 298 to 119 vote, and the Senate could vote on similar legislation later this week. The bill would […]

Newt Gingrich: “I am not a citizen of the world.”

“Ich bin ein Berliner” – not! The other intellectual leader of the GOP – the one whose first name isn’t Sarah – summed up the narrow minded and ultimately self-destructive “every-country-for-themselves” mentality of the modern conservative movement Monday.  Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was keynoting the biggest GOP fundraiser of the year for the Senate […]

Waxman-Markey could save $3,900 per household and create 650,000 jobs by 2030

The energy efficiency provisions in the House energy and climate bill (H.R. 2454) could save $750 per household by 2020 and $3,900 per household by 2030, according to an analysis by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).   An ACEEE news release notes that not only will efficiency reduce the costs to consumers and […]