Latest Articles

More on the media’s quest to manufacture a clean-energy backlash

A huge "amen!" to Joe’s post on the mainstream media’s desperate quest to find a backlash against green energy in the wake of the economic downturn. Read it if you haven’t. A while back, a reporter from … er, a reasonably prominent public radio show to remain unnamed gave me a call to see if […]

Slate encourages local dating for green’s sake

You try to eat locally, but do you, um, eat out locally? With the argument that long-distance dating hurts the earth, Slate says you should. The idea that many folks are “willing to be a locavore but not a locasexual,” as author Barron YoungSmith puts it, builds on the notion of eco-hypocrites who aren’t willing […]

Green group catalogs world’s 10 worst pollution problems

The world’s worst pollution problems kill millions of people each year and sicken hundreds of millions of others, mostly in developing countries, according to a new report from green group Blacksmith Institute. For the past few years, the group has ranked the world’s top 10 most-polluted sites in order to focus global attention and fuel […]

New LCV ad in Oregon calls for enviro backup in the Senate

The League of Conservation Voters is running this ad in Oregon promoting both Barack Obama and Democratic Senate candidate Jeff Merkley, whom the group has also endorsed. “How far would a rock star get without a band?” the ad asks. “Barack Obama will create new jobs and fight global warming, but he’ll need some help […]

Some mass-transit agencies hit hard by financial crisis

Even with increased ridership, some major metropolitan transit agencies are struggling more than usual these days as the credit crisis messes with their funding and ailing banks suddenly call in huge loans, asking for millions of dollars on short notice. Transit agencies in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., have been affected […]

The surprising benefits of seasonal eating

In Checkout Line, Lou Bendrick cooks up answers to reader questions about how to green their food choices and other diet-related quandaries. Lettuce know what food worries keep you up at night. Your food or mine?   Lou, I am curious about any benefits of eating seasonally — the foods or products that are traditionally […]

Maryland State Police wrongly list climate activists as ‘terrorists’

Chesapeake Climate Action Network founder and director Mike Tidwell, former deputy director Josh Tulkin, and another unnamed CCAN staffer were apparently classified by Maryland State Police as terrorists and entered in state and federal criminal intelligence databases between 2005 and 2006.   It seems the police are now acknowledging that they were wrongly classified and […]

Obama muses on the connection between energy/climate and our other problems

Obama sat down for a long and fascinating interview with Time‘s Joe Klein yesterday. It’s well worth reading the whole thing, but in particular there’s juicy stuff on energy and climate. The biggest problem with our energy policy has been to lurch from crisis to trance. And what we need is a sustained, serious effort. […]

California’s Prop. 2 spurs big-bucks battle over farm-animal treatment

You can bet that if all the animals in America had televisions — as they do in San Francisco’s SPCA shelter — they’d be tuned in to California’s election returns on Nov. 4. A free-range chicken. On the ballot is an initiative — Proposition 2 — that is as potentially transformational for the treatment of […]

One more communique dribbles in from the gamma quadrant

You don’t see super-wingnutty stuff like this very often in the mainstream media any more. This was my favorite bit: But didn’t the Nobel Peace Prize go last year to Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for their eco-warnings? Yes. And the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by a committee of […]