Latest Articles

A car in every garage

Everyone in the world has already linked to this story about McCain’s 13 cars (Obama has one — a hybrid Ford Escape), but I just can’t get over the humor of this sentence: "The McCains also own three 2000 NEV Gem electric vehicles, which are bubble-shaped cars popular in retirement communities." I think the hypocrisy […]

Gingrich’s group is flush with victory and flush with cash

The Congressional moratorium on offshore drilling is set to lapse, and Newt Gingrich’s astroturf group, American Solutions for Winning the Future, is riding high: Las Vegas casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson upped his ante in former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s unregulated issues-advocacy group in August, with a $750,000 donation that helped propel the organization to the […]

McCain’s veep candidate lacks breadth and depth on energy issues

I have a new article in Salon on Sarah Palin, “The fungible candidate.” But it is really about the (lack of) judgment of John McCain. He famously said of his VP pick, “She knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America.” As we’ll see Palin lacks both breadth and […]

A visit to Alemany Farm in San Francisco

I drove right past Alemany Farm three times before I finally found it. That’s because I wasn’t looking up. The mostly volunteer venture that grows organic food (and green jobs) for low-income communities is located on a hillside, the rows and rows of green leafy goodness like rungs on a ladder leading skyward. Once I […]

U.K. Ministry of Defence: Global warming goes on, deniers are deluded

The U.K.’s Met Office issued a blunt statement on Tuesday, “Global warming goes on,” that begins: Anyone who thinks global warming has stopped has their head in the sand. The evidence is clear — the long-term trend in global temperatures is rising, and humans are largely responsible for this rise. Global warming does not mean […]

Palin’s narrow border

Words fail me.

Galbraith argues against the bailout and in favor of public investement

I cited James Galbraith last night while arguing that the financial mess should not deter us from making substantial investments in our future. (By the by, you should read Galbraith’s new book, The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too.) Today, Galbraith has a kick-ass op-ed in the Washington […]

Wal-Mart will slice use of plastic bags

Wal-Mart aims to cut plastic-bag waste in its global operations by an average 33 percent over the next five years, the retail behemoth announced Thursday at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative. And if you ever doubted that Wal-Mart is big, consider this: The move is expected to eliminate some 9 billion plastic […]

Green initiatives unveiled at Clinton Global Initiative gathering

The purpose of the Clinton Global Initiative is to bring together some of the folks working on specific global challenges, people who can support their good ideas, and those who would benefit from the solutions. These people get together, discuss, collaborate, and in some cases announce major initiatives that have come out of these partnerships. […]

Investing in clean infrastructure

Originally posted to the NDN blog. —– The debate now underway in the Congress on a financial bailout is not the only important piece of business before the Congress in its waning days. With a real economic recession now all but certain, Congress is considering a second stimulus package. But at this critical moment in […]