Latest Articles

If you can’t stand the smell, tough luck

Duplin County, N.C. stinks. And no wonder. Its human population is just under 50,000 people, but it is also home to 2.2 million [PDF] of North Carolina’s 10 million hogs [PDF]. Last week, I went on a bus tour of Duplin County as a part of the Politics of Food Conference to see how confined […]

Green, Inc. author says big environmental groups have sold out to big business

For my money, there’s nothing more delicious than a book that lays bare the rot of a corrupted industry from an insider’s perspective. In the hands of a skilled observer, the subject can spring to life. Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis’s hilariously disturbing account of Wall Street’s investment-banking industry in the late 1980s, comes to mind. […]

The Biden-Obama position on ‘clean coal’ is not a mistake

Today, my inbox is bombarded with emails from enviros and clean energy advocates, some of whom say that Biden’s (and Obama’s) support of clean coal is “abysmal, absolutely abysmal.” I could not disagree more. I have this argument with enviros all the time. Tuesday, I argued the point with Ted Glick, the national coordinator of […]

Constructing a green space for green biz

Driving along I-90/94W out of downtown Chicago, you can see London, France, the old Vassar Swiss Underwear Company building now under construction. A sign adorning the highway-facing façade tells you this will soon be the Green Exchange, a retail and office facility that will house some 100 businesses, all of them environmentally and socially responsible. […]

Disputing Shellenberger & Norhaus, part 2

(Those who have had enough of Shellenberger & Norhaus can skip this post, but I think this is a very important messaging discussion.) My critique of S&N has elicited from Nordhaus a sentence that encapsulates our differences, cuts through all the “barbs,” and makes clear just how dangerously wrong they are. Ted wrote here: We […]

Reflecting on (and fact-checking) the VP debate

With the lengthy discussion of energy and climate issues in last night’s debate, it was easy to miss some important aspects as the vice presidential candidates sped through their respective talking points. For example, Joe Biden’s repeated plugs for “clean coal” irked enviros, particularly the folks at 1Sky. It was a 1Sky organizer who asked […]

McCain looks to Palin for advice on energy

John McCain told NPR this week that, regarding Governor Palin, he has “turned to her advice many times in the past … particularly on energy issues.” Many? This would be especially scary when you consider that few people in the country are more misinformed on energy than Sarah Palin, the fungible candidate, a woman … […]

Phthalates linked to abnormal genitalia in baby boys

Mothers exposed to high levels of phthalates during pregnancy are more likely to bear sons with abnormal genitals, says new environmental research published in the journal Environmental Research. (See what we did there?) The study looked at only 106 mothers and sons, and the afflictions — undescended testicles, smaller penises, and a shorter anogenital distance […]

From Goldilocks to the Three Bears

Hedwig and the extra inch Blondes have more fun — if you call not being creamed by a truck fun. Which we do. Fore minutes to save the world Justin Timberlake’s got some summer love for golf, and his new course is n’sync with LEED certification. He’ll put those sticks in a box and go […]

Weighing Obama’s and McCain’s stances on food and farm policy

Will the next president be tough enough to defy the wishes of agribusiness? Apologies to Grant Wood Last month at Slow Food Nation, Michael Pollan made an interesting point about food policy and presidential politics. Food issues won’t likely play much of a role during the campaign’s stretch run, Pollan said, but the winning candidate […]