Latest Articles

Child safety? A Father’s Day call for a longer view

Every year around this time, the father in me starts thinking deep thoughts about why I’ve dedicated my career to environmental awareness and, in particular, helping people who don’t consider themselves activists understand why environmental issues should matter to them. In more recent years, it’s morphed into an almost singular focus for me on why […]

Cameron Diaz films eco-documentary, takes on role as planet’s publicist

“How do we make this little planet of ours a big star?” asks actress Cameron Diaz in the cover story of Marie Claire‘s July issue. “The planet needs a publicist.” And this bubbly blonde is just the gal for the job. She’s long been an environmental activist — running around with an MTV video crew […]

Phoenix’s light rail project sparks journalism start-up

The following post was written by Michael Andersen of the Nieman Journalism Lab blog. When Adam Klawonn quit his job at a shrinking major metropolitan newspaper in 2006, he did what so many other journalists have: launched an online news operation that looked a lot like a newspaper’s web site, only with less stuff. On […]

Climate-news poem: apocalypse edition

This here is a cinquain! My seventh-grade teacher would be so proud. Check out the growing collection of weekly climate-news poems. Report: We’re in trouble. Frost, blight, drought, pests, high seas. We should move to safer ground now! But where? NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco and Obama science adviser John Holdren unveiled the government’s new, massive […]

Obama’s green team to kick off summer of community service

President Obama wants you — yes, you — to participate in a summer service campaign that he’s calling United We Serve. “From June 22 to September 11, United We Serve will begin to engage Americans from coast to coast in addressing community needs in education, health, energy and the environment, and community renewal,” reads the […]

Factory farms get the ultimate handout

Since the beginning of climate change legislation this session in Congress it has been clear that big agriculture would not be a part of a cap and trade program.  Yet, while the Waxman Markey bill has been making its way through Congress, the EPA has also been pushing forward its own agenda of climate related […]

Friday music blogging: Deer Tick

One of my happiest musical discoveries of the past year has been Deer Tick, a band originally out of Providence, Rhode Island. The band is sui generis — no description quite works. There’s a definite tinge of backwoods Americana, but also some raggedy low-fi freak folk, a little old-fashioned ’50s rock-and-roll, doo-wop, blues … it […]

Can we be ‘green’ and eat tropical products, too?

In Checkout Line, Lou Bendrick cooks up answers to reader questions about how to green their food choices and other diet-related quandaries. Lettuce know what food worries keep you up at night. ———————- Is your green cred slipping? Dear Checkout Line,We try to buy local food whenever we can. Some things just seem doomed to […]

UPDATED: Never mind! Lead levels in White House soil “ridiculously low” for an urban garden

First Lady Michelle Obama hosts the Bancroft Elementary School for the garden harvest of the White House in Washington on June 16, 2009Offical White House Photographer Samantha Appleton [MORE UPDATES:] Obamafoodorama looked into the issue in depth. Now the story is there’s no story. Here’s an expert commenting on the 93 PPM figure: that number […]

National Solar Observatory, NASA say no “Maunder Minimum”

The sunspot cycle is about to come out of its depression, if a newly discovered mechanism for predicting solar cycles – a migrating jet stream deep inside the sun – proves accurate.  And that will add a small amount of warming in the next few years, which were already predicted to be record-setting by two […]