Latest Articles

Ozone hole bigger this year than last

Happy International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer! Sad to say, the hole that plagues the ozone is already bigger this year than last, and will likely not max out in size until late September or early October. As of Saturday, the hole measured 10.4 million square miles; last year, at its biggest, […]

New Zealand conservative party introduces green agenda

New Zealand’s center-right National Party released its proposed environmental agenda last week. The center-left Labour Party and the Green Party both denounced it as tepid. Check out what’s included, and imagine for a moment that it had been offered by Republicans in Congress: • A legislated target of 50 per cent reduction in carbon emissions […]

Will New York Gov. Paterson gut the regional northeastern-state carbon cap?

New York State relies heavily on Wall Street as an economic engine. With the financial-services industry in its deepest funk since the Great Depression, New York politicians are extremely skittish about the state’s economic prospects. That’s why Gov. David Paterson has been scrambling to help prop up AIG, the wobbly New York-based insurance behemoth. And […]

Will train travel get annoying too?

As more trains catch up to air travel, time-wise, one thing that can put them over the top is the time saved avoiding the hassles of getting to the airport, parking, security, waiting, etc. But what if one of the first mid- or long-range train systems suffers some kind of attack, or even threat of […]

How to green your entertainment center

When it comes to watching television, it’s practically your environmental duty to gaze at Adrian Grenier on Planet Green and cheer on Major League Baseball’s efforts to become more sustainable. (That’s what we tell ourselves, anyway.) But did you know the chemicals in that idiot box could be rotting your brain even more than the […]

Future of Food director on ‘making soil sexy’

Filmmaker Deborah Koons Garcia burst onto the sustainable-food scene with her 2004 documentary the Future of Food, a biting, well-researched indictment of Monsanto and genetically modified food. I caught up with her at Slow Food Nation to discuss her current project, a documentary about a topic dear to my heart: soil.

15 creative ways that students and colleges are going greener

Kappa and Trade Green the Greeks, a student organization at UCLA, is trying to educate the school’s Greek system about sustainability issues. Frats and sororities use a disproportionate amount of energy, the group says, so it’s aiming to “harness the resources of the Greek community for the environment,” its website explains. The rush to get […]

Hillary Clinton stumps for public transportation

“Across America places that thought there would never be much demand for public transit are now finding that there is. We can’t keep burdening public transit systems without giving them the money they need to run.” — Hillary Clinton (who introduced the Saving Energy Through Public Transportation Act and testified about it before the Senate […]

WSJ special package runs the energy gamut

The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday produced a special report covering all things energy. The series warns that the gasoline engine won’t be phased out anytime soon; considers the newfound popularity of wood stoves and LED lights; takes a critical look at “clean coal”; peruses the latest in clean-tech; and surveys the energy situation in […]

Renewable energy promotion policies: non-transparent or hidden

Tax credit policies One of the ways the gap between market price and feasible price of renewable energy plants has been bridged is through tax benefits to investors. Just as the oil and gas industries have enjoyed various tax benefits to encourage investment in drilling, exploration, and production facilities, in the last couple decades investors […]