Latest Articles

Does Sen. Feinstein get global warming, desertification, and California’s looming demise?

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) appears to like deserts so much that she wants them to stretch from Oklahoma to California and cover one third the planet. The AP reported Friday, “Feinstein seeks [to] block solar power from desert land“: Nineteen companies have submitted applications to build solar or wind facilities on a parcel of 500,000 […]

Food-movement doc screens March 28 in Emerald City; Philpott, Alice Waters to attend

So, I’m featured as a talking head in a documentary on the sustainable-food movement called Food Fight. Other folks who appear include Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, and Dan Barber.  Food Fight will be screening this coming Saturday, March 28, 7 pm,  in Seattle as part of Green Festival. I’ll be attending the screening, and moderating […]

Regional climate policy is still moving forward in the Northwest

Over the last couple of weeks, there’s been a lot of hand-wringing about the state of climate policy in the Northwest. Washington’s citizen-backed renewable energy standard is in jeopardy and neither Oregon nor Washington appears close to implementing the Western Climate Initiative. Even British Columbia’s pioneering carbon tax is taking fire. Freak out! Everybody panic! […]

Boucher bill would put billions into carbon-capture-and-sequestration technologies

Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), one of the House’s biggest coal supporters, on Tuesday reintroduced a bill that would invest billions of dollars in the development of carbon-capture-and-sequestration (CCS) technology for fossil-fuel power plants. Like a similar measure Boucher introduced last year, the “Carbon Capture and Storage Early Deployment Act” would create a $1 billion annual […]

Springtime is peak time for naturally raised eggs — and bread puddings and meringues

Before moving on to the more glamorous spring harvests of asparagus, sweet peas, and strawberries, let us first praise the pastured farm egg. That’s right: Eggs, too, have a season. Spring has long represented the beginning of a new cycle, and eggs are the epitome of rebirth.  Easter egg huntshave their origins in ancient Pagan […]

Why the foodie press needs to do better work on seafood

I recently finished Taras Grescoe’s wonderful, vitally important book Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood. Everyone who loves seafood and would prefer to be able to enjoy it in 20 years must read it. Basic message: overfishing, pollution, climate change, and abusive aquaculture practices threaten to turn the oceans into […]

Newsom says San Francisco will adopt Berkeley green financing model

San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom said something that caught my ear: San Francisco is going to adopt Berkeley’s innovative financing program to fund not only rooftop solar (as Berkeley does) but other distributed generation and energy efficiency projects. That is excellent stuff. Hopefully SF can pull it off successfully and influence other cities to follow […]

A key climate and clean energy pick by Obama: Wellinghoff for energy commission chief

President Obama has stacked his administration with experts and advocates for strong action on global warming and clean energy. Now he has added one more — in an unusually important position as the Washington Post reports: Add a new name to the list of Obama appointees devoted to aggressive action on climate change. President Obama […]

Dave’s gonna blog from a green internet conference — awesome!

Just a reminder: I’m at the Earth2Tech Green:Net ’09 conference all day today. It looks like about half the people here are media, but if you don’t find the dozens of other outlets for commentary sufficient, you can follow along with the action on my Twitter feed. (Needless to say, Earth2Tech also has extensive coverage.)

Putting organic baby foods to the test

Mmm. When I had my son last year, I wasn’t lulled into thinking his body was a pure, unsullied canvas. I knew that babies are born polluted and that breast milk is full of rocket fuel. Still, it’s nice to maintain the illusion of purity, so as not to go completely insane. So I buy […]