Latest Articles

Ask Umbra on chippers

Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, Is it better to use a gas-spewing grinder/chipper to mulch up yard waste for plant beds or just burn it? I am thinking you will be tempted to say do neither and let it rot in place, but many don’t have a big enough yard to leave […]

Understanding offsets

As the struggle to pass the Waxman-Markey climate-energy bill showed, there is a certain price any political system is willing to bear for climate action. In China, that price is low. In the United States, it is medium. And in Europe, it is relatively high. But in every system, there exist two primary ways to […]

Cap-and-trade: filling up the political space that should be used for real solutions

One of the least discussed flaws in the Waxman-Markey bill’s attempt to tackle the climate crisis also illustrates the fundamental problem with cap-and-trade. The bill strips the EPA[1] of much of its existing authority to regulate greenhouse gases, in return for the new, weaker authority granted under Waxman-Markey. The existence of this authority is one […]

Fighting for the right to grow food in L.A.

South Central Farm activist Kati Lopez with armload of fresh corn leaves.Black Valley FilmsJust how much trouble can one community garden start? For starters, three years of court proceedings, two eviction notices, one assault charge, countless allegations of corruption, and $16 million worth of fundraising. Even with all the legal crap, the gardeners still had […]

Friday music blogging: Grizzly Bear

If you follow independent music at all, you know that the hype around the new Grizzly Bear album Veckatimest is deafening. It just came out this week and from critical reception (and the reactions of other musicians) you’d think it was the second coming of Pet Sounds. It is pretty good, though. This is one […]

University president quits Massey board after green group campaign

After a 14-week campaign by green groups, Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee stepped down from the board of directors of mountaintop-removal mining company Massey Energy today. Ohio Citizen Action, then Sierra Club, Greenpeace USA, Earthjustice, and Friends of the Earth, said that Gee’s relationship with Massey worked against his school’s efforts to develop […]

Monsanto dropped a cool $2 million on lobbying in Q1 2009

Jolly gene giantSource: ETC Group Monsanto dominates the global market for GMO seeds like Microsoft dominates the operating-system software market.  You don’t skirt around antitrust enforcement like that without having good friends in Washinton. And to make friends, you’ve got have guys in suits working the Hill and the agencies. La Vida Locavore’s ever-enterprising Jill […]

GOP wants 100 new nukes by 2030

In Finland, around the globe, and in every state, the nuclear industry makes people sing the same old song:  “What do you get when you buy a nuke? You get a lot of delays and rate increases….” This year, authorities permitted Florida Power & Light to start charging millions of customers several dollars a month […]

How to shut down 93% of coal without building new plants or reducing power supply

Two interesting observations: 50% of U.S. power generation (in MWh) comes from coal, while only 20% comes from natural gas. 32% of total U.S. power generation capacity (in MW) is coal-fired, while 42% is gas-fired. When it runs, the natural gas fleet emits just 50% of the CO2 of the coal fleet, which raises a […]

Vermont feed-in tariffs become law

Vermont’s feed-in tariff legislation became law at the end of business on May 27, 2009. H. 446 is the first legislation calling for a full system of advanced renewable tariffs in the US to pass the legislature and become law. The bill includes changes to Vermont’s Sustainably Priced Energy Enterprise Development Program (SPEED) that would […]