Latest Articles

House approves $25 billion in direct loans for auto industry

The House of Representatives yesterday approved  $25 billion in direct loans to help the auto industry comply with stricter gas mileage standards.   The loans will assist automakers in meeting fuel-efficiency standards set in last year’s energy bill that push fleet standards up to at least 35 miles per gallon by 2020. The funds can […]

Obama/Biden campaign releases science and innovation plan

The Obama campaign released a policy outline [PDF] today on science and innovation, pledging to double federal funding for research over 10 years.   An Obama-Biden administration, they say on their website, would change “the posture of our federal government from being one of the most anti-science administrations in American history to one that embraces […]

The new corporate threat to our water supplies

This is a guest essay by authors and filmmakers Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman. Their book Thirst exposed how the corporate drive to control water has become a catalyst for community resistance to globalization. This essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission. —– In the last few years, […]

Snippets from the news

• Global carbon-dioxide emissions rising rapidly. • Cities produce less than two-fifths of greenhouse-gas emissions, says study. • In 2002, EPA prepared to declare public-health emergency over asbestos contamination — then met with White House and decided not to. • E.U. lawmakers deny Big Auto more lenient emissions curbs. • Climate-change program that lost federal […]

On the road to Vegas, we spot two wind farms

Todd and I left San Francisco with one thing on our minds: “Vegas, baby!” But as we drove the long, hot, dry (did I mention long?) roads to Nevada, we got distracted by something shiny! wind turbines on a hill in the distance. So we tore off onto a service road and headed up the hill. […]

Why factory farming must be stopped

This is sobering: single concentrated animal feedlots that create more waste than a large U.S. city. There is only one word for this: insane. If you’re going to eat meat, don’t support industrial meat operations.

Gates Foundation wants to boost local agriculture in developing nations

Local agriculture in developing nations will get a boost under an initiative unveiled Wednesday by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and United Nations World Food Program. Under the Purchase for Progress initiative, the WFP will supplement food aid with surplus crops bought at competitive prices from poor farmers. WFP currently purchases 80 percent of […]

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 […]