Latest Articles

Michael Pollan, Nicholas Kristoff, and others weigh in on USDA pick

For the first time ever, I would wager, an incoming president’s USDA pick has emerged from the back news pages and into the national conversation. On the radio, three shows I know of devoted significant time to the topic. NPR’s Morning Edition interviewed Michael Pollan this morning; The Takeaway featured New York State farmer Ben […]

Hilda Solis chosen to head Labor Department

Wow! This is amazing news. Solis has been one of the House’s leading champions of green jobs and environmental justice. She was the sponsor of the Green Jobs Bill. More on this soon, but … wo0t!

Reintroducing regionalism to green building

Ever since green building was wrested from the hands of hippies and tucked safely in the technology sector — there are probably more articles about it in Wired than Mother Earth News these days — we’ve been under the impression that the greenest buildings are the newest buildings. Those nifty, skin-thin photovoltaic panels and that […]

An ‘eco-friendly’ product that hits home

Sketchy “eco-friendly product” news: Restroom Guardian, a water-soluble packet containing “common granular chemicals,” creates a layer of foam in public toilets to protect your tush. Today’s Best Sentence Ever comes from Dental Economics: “Restroom Guardian helps eliminate unsanitary and unhealthy toilet micro splatter bacterial cross-contamination while greatly lessening unwanted restroom sounds.” You heard it here […]

Vilsack on organic ag and ethanol

If you’re digging around on Tom Vilsack, Obama’s nominee to head USDA, you might want to check out a couple of interviews, both done during his (brief) presidential campaign this year. The short assessment is: He seems committed on climate change and energy security, and committed on vastly ramping up ethanol, and utterly unaware of […]

U.S. proposes protections for seven penguin species

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week proposed listing six species of penguins as threatened and another species as endangered, a move that will have little consequence within the U.S. as wild penguins live in the Southern Hemisphere. However, the proposed designations could aid negotiations for international species protections. Species advocates generally praised the […]

California unveils comprehensive ‘green chemistry’ plan

California unveiled a comprehensive “green chemistry” plan this week that aims to both encourage the development of less-toxic products and compel manufacturers to reveal exactly what’s in their products and how dangerous they could be to the public. One part of the plan calls for an online database with info on hundreds of thousands of […]

Report finds widespread meddling with species decisions

Officials at the U.S. Interior Department improperly meddled in a number of decisions affecting imperiled species under the Endangered Species Act, a report [PDF] from the agency’s inspector general has found. The Bush administration agreed last year to reexamine a number of decisions made by Julie MacDonald, an ex-official accused of orchestrating much of the […]

Over 2 trillion tons of land ice melted in Arctic since 2003

Over 2 trillion tons of land ice melted in the Arctic in the past five years, according to the space agency NASA, together raising global sea levels by one-fifth of an inch. “The best estimates are that sea levels will rise about 18 to 36 inches by the end of the century, but because of […]

Hertz to offer car sharing service like Zipcar

Hertz is going to experiment with hourly rentals a la Zipcar. Here’s hoping they make a go of it, and the other national chains follow. Every person who realizes you can live well — and inexpensively — without owning a car is a plus for the environment.