Latest Articles

Why climate change may have more to do with your shopping cart than your car

Anna Lappé might be called a green-diaper baby. Her mother, Frances Moore Lappé, brought out the seminal Diet for a Small Planet back in 1971, and has been agitating forcefully for a just, sustainable food system ever since. Her father, the toxicologist Marc Lappé, was an early, important, and persistent critic of the agrichemical industry. […]

‘Transition Towns’ get ink

The Christian Science Monitor — one of the best of a dying breed —does an excellent job on the "Transition Towns" movement here.

Ralph Nader criticizes Obama and McCain for not standing strong against offshore drilling

Read Grist’s interview with Nader to find out more about his campaign. —– As we begin to assess the damage caused by Hurricane Ike, which forced the shutdown of this country’s oil industry and sent adrift two oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, our members of Congress are poised to vote on legislation this […]

The key political, economic, and cultural needs of young farmers

This piece is co-authored by Severine von Tscharner Fleming, 27, director of The Greenhorns and farmer/activist in the Hudson Valley of New York. —– Coast to coast, though there are thousands inspired to dig in and grow food, but it is currently only a dauntless few who manage to gain access to the land, capital, […]

Gregg Easterbrook still knows nothing about global warming — and less about clean energy

Slate magazine is seen as liberal, but is in fact just another status quo publication promoting a do-nothing policy on clean energy and global warming. Why else ask for a review of Tom Friedman’s new call to action, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, from the American Bjørn Lomborg? And I don’t mean that in a good […]

Snippets from the news

• Green Party activist Peter Camejo dies. • New Zealand parliament passes carbon trading bill. • France considers tax on disposable dishes. • Google makes patent application for floating, wave-powered computer centers. • One blogger’s attempt to go veg just once a week. • Greenland doesn’t want its whale hunting under IWC jurisdiction. • What […]

The SEC chief fiddled while Wall Street exposed the public to billions in bailout funds

Remember the Securities Exchange Commission? The SEC got its start in the 1930s, when dodgy dealing on Wall Street triggered that massive economic meltdown now known as the Great Depression. The idea was that the SEC would impose transparency on stock markets and make sure that people actually knew what they were buying or selling. […]

Senate energy event highlights importance of efficiency; Republicans don’t absorb the lesson

An early version of this post appeared on Get Energy Smart Now, with follow-up on Think Progress. —– The Senate held a Bipartisan Energy Summit on Friday, attended by some of the nation’s top experts from MIT, Google, CSIS, CERI, and Shell. (Regrettably, the nation’s top energy expert, Sarah Palin, was unable to bring her […]

How do we build (energy) infrastructure?

The enthusiasm for unregulated markets in the last 30 years of American public policy has obscured how large pieces of infrastructure get built. Unregulated markets, to work according to their ideal, require economic actors to be able to create competing offers which are judged by consumers or buyers according to the total value they represent. […]

Companies move toward nontoxic chemicals and products

Here’s a crazy fact: A baby’s body contains nearly 300 chemical compounds by the time it takes its first breath. It’s the consequence of a chemical industry that has long paid little mind to where its products end up or what they do to people and the planet; of the estimated 83,000 chemicals on the […]