Latest Articles

Economists weigh in for Obama

The Obama campaign’s got a new site up, ObamaForEconomy.com, where various and sundry economists and businessfolk weigh in explaining why they’re supporting Obama. [UPDATE: The site is not affiliated with the Obama campaign — it’s a labor of love by UC-Berkeley geneticist and computational biologist Lenny Teytelman. Good work Lenny!] I like this one: I […]

Impressions from Terra Madre in Turin, Italy

    After days of feasts — intellectual, social, and culinary — my mind is too scrambled to put together a more structured column. Instead, here are some impressions and observations from Terra Madre while they are still fresh, written on a train ride between Turin and Florence. There is more to report; look for […]

McCain adviser, unlike McCain, advocates stimulus spending

Martin Feldstein — a conservative Harvard economist and adviser to the McCain campaign — joins the call for stimulus spending: The president-elect should focus on developing a mechanism for identifying and funding spending initiatives that can occur quickly and that would otherwise not be done. While it would be good if some of the increased […]

Report shows how world can eliminate fossil fuels by 2090 while sustaining economic growth

We often hear about how the world "can’t" reduce emissions as much as it needs to, that we "have to" keep using coal because it’s abundant, that renewables "can’t" replace fossil fuels because of intermittency and cost, and that shifting to a clean energy economy would be "too expensive." As I’ve said here many times, […]

A guide to 2008 environmental ballot measures

In addition to electing George W. Bush’s successor, voters in 11 states will decide the fate of a diverse range of environment-related ballot measures on Nov. 4. Here’s a quick rundown of these measures and links to where you can find more information about them: California Proposition 2, or the Standards for Confining Farm Animals, […]

Starbucks will double its purchase of fair-trade coffee

Starbucks will buy 40 million pounds of fair-trade-certified coffee next year, doubling the hill of beans it bought this year and becoming the largest purchaser of fair-trade coffee in the world. The caffeine giant, though struggling financially and recognizing the price premium of sustainable bean-buying, has a goal of selling only “responsibly grown and ethically […]

BLM proposes opening wilderness-y areas in Utah to oil and gas drilling

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has proposed opening up relatively pristine natural areas in eastern Utah to oil and gas drilling, including Nine-Mile Canyon and Desolation Canyon, despite the agency’s own determination in 1999 that the areas have “wilderness character” and thus are good candidates for wilderness designation. “BLM is condemning these lands to […]

Polar warming directly attributed to humans, study says

Warming at both the Earth’s poles has, for the first time, been directly attributed to humans, according to a new study in the journal Nature Geoscience. “[Y]ou see a clear human fingerprint in the observed data,” said researcher Peter Stott. “We really can’t claim anymore that it’s natural variations that are driving these very large […]

Fungus associated with mass bat die-off identified

A cold-weather-loving white fungus associated with huge bat die-offs in the U.S. Northeast has been identified by scientists, but its role in over 100,000 bat deaths in the region is still poorly understood. “Essentially, hibernating bats are getting moldy as they hang from their cave ceiling,” said lead author David Blehert. “It’s decimating the cave-bat […]

Nevadans miffed by McCain’s glib comment about nuclear safety

The Las Vegas Sun editorial board isn’t too pleased by John McCain’s “safe, environmental, blah blah blah” comment: Republican presidential candidate John McCain has said he would support the use of Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the dump site for the nation’s high-level nuclear waste. That is one of many reasons […]