Latest Articles

Stimulus spending going to roads?

Reason to worry about the stimulus bill: Missouri’s plan to spend $750 million in federal money on highways and nothing on mass transit in St. Louis doesn’t square with President-elect Barack Obama’s vision for a revolutionary re-engineering of the nation’s infrastructure. Utah would pour 87 percent of the funds it may receive in a new […]

Oprah gained weight and confused the public about renewable energy

If I weren’t on vacation, I wouldn’t have read Oprah magazine. No really. But then I would have missed a piece of misinformation gratuitously foisted on her readers. For her legion upon legion upon legion of fans, the big news is the O has recently been losing her battle with weight (one legion does not […]

Obama’s NSA pick promotes ‘drill, baby, drill,’ clean coal, and nuclear

For a lot of the folks who voted for Barack Obama, promoting "national security" means weaning ourselves from dirty fuel sources. For the man Obama tapped as his national security advisor, James L. Jones, things aren’t so clear cut, Robert Dreyfuss reports in The Nation. Over the course of a long military career, James established […]

Clean coal, dirty press

The coal industry cannot be liking the kind of coverage they’re getting on, e.g., ABC. (Watch that video and tell me Joe Lucas doesn’t look like a buffoon.)

John Tierney is the country’s worst science writer, not Gregg Easterbrook

Science blogger extraordinaire Tim Lambert (aka Deltoid) has called me out. I wrote: Tierney is easily the worst science writer at any major media outlet in the country. Pretty much every energy or climate piece he writes is riddled with errors and far-right ideology, including this one. Lambert writes that he “must, however, disagree with […]

The right questions

This WaPo op-ed on the electrical grid is ho-hum. Turns out we need to improve the grid! But one thing jumped out at me: For real long-term progress, our leaders must invest in research so that we can find a way to capture and permanently store carbon emitted by coal-fired power plants. If we can […]

WALL-E takes top honor and Quantum of Solace disappoints

The best eco-movie of the year is Disney/Pixar’s Wall-E — easily one of the best movie dystopias ever. It ranks with Blade Runner, Brazil, A Clockwork Orange, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, the Matrix, Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, and the first two Terminator movies. Yes, Hollywood loves dystopias. Perhaps because it is one (OK, […]

Report highlights vital fact on energy: Efficiency gets cheaper the more you spend on it

A while back I did a roundup of reports. I left one out because I wanted to highlight it in its own post: Synapse Energy Economics Inc.: Costs and Benefits of Electric Utility Energy Efficiency in Massachusetts [PDF] Massachusetts recently passed the Green Communities Act, which significantly ramps up the state’s utility efficiency programs, mandating […]

Umbra on eco-actions for kids

Dear Umbra, In my city, environmental awareness might as well be some late-night, budget infomercial that nobody thinks about except to laugh at. I’m trying to organize a series of interactive presentations in area schools to educate and engage kids in a more progressive approach to greening up our lives and our city. Many of […]

Vandana Shiva’s powerful Soil Not Oil

Edible Mediatakes an occasional look at interesting or deplorable food journalism. —– In a recent essay in The Nation, the critic William Deresiewicz made a pungent observation about the U.S. cultural scene: An iron law of American life decrees that the provinces of thought be limited in the collective consciousness to a single representative. Like […]