Latest Articles
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Hunting moose
Paul Theroux on the populist totem of the moment: All this talk about moose hunting! It is as though, because of the animal’s enormous size and imposing antlers, bringing one down is a heroic feat of marksmanship. Nothing could be further from the truth. As Henry David Thoreau wrote in “The Maine Woods,” killing these […]
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Obama campaign goes on the attack while McCain’s newest ad calls for more drilling
The Obama campaign is going on the attack today. It’s releasing a new ad, “Honor,” that strings together media quotes accusing John McCain of making false claims and running a sleazy campaign. And Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden is hitting McCain with a speech — unambiguously titled “Bush 44” — that argues the Republican […]
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Umbra on cruise control
Dear Umbra, To cruise or not to cruise? That is the question. Is it more fuel efficient to use cruise control when driving, or does it use more gas to use the cruise? Carrie Waterloo, Ontario, Canada Dearest Carrie, Whether ’tis nobler to travel at constant speed — that is indeed a question. And Edmunds.com, […]
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Judge tosses federal plan to allow more snowmobiles into Yellowstone
A National Park Service plan to allow 540 snowmobiles a day into Yellowstone National Park has been tossed out by a federal judge. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled Monday that allowing that many ‘mobiles would increase air and noise pollution and be disturbing to wildlife — conclusions drawn, he noted, by NPS’s own data. […]
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McCain/Palin energy lie about Alaska the latest to come in for media scrutiny
In her Friday interview with Charlie Gibson, Sarah Palin said that Alaska "produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy." McCain has said the same thing — in an interview with Univision that aired Friday, he said, "Alaska supplies 20 percent of America’s energy." It’s clearly an established campaign talking point. Thing […]
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Making environmental sense of the financial storm now raging
Interpreting reports currently coming out of Wall Street is like tracking a vast hurricane as it rages its way through the Gulf and toward a population center: Conditions are way too chaotic to make confident predictions, but preparing for the worst probably isn’t a bad idea. As recently as a year ago, no one could […]
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Everglades restoration deal could still benefit Big Sugar
When Florida Gov. Charlie Crist announced in June that the state would buy 187,000 acres of land from U.S. Sugar Corp. to “jump start” an Everglades restoration effort, environmentalists cheered visions of flowing, fresh water and pristine, untouched habitat. But that may not turn out to be exactly the case. Crist initially said he would […]
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Castens and Recycled Energy Development featured in Forbes magazine
Don’t miss this profile of Tom Casten and his company, Recycled Energy Development, in the latest issue of Forbes. (Of course Tom spawn and Gristmill contributor Sean gets off some zingers, but they’re about ethanol, so don’t read them! I know how you people get.) Recycled energy — otherwise known as cogeneration, or combined heat […]
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The GMO industry has been scraping by on bad science
In 2002, a most unlikely book came out: an oversized, lushly produced, coffee-table tome on the ills of mass-scale, chemical-intensive agriculture. Grandly titled Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture, the book contained stark photos of highly mechanized, monocrop farming, along with pungent, probing essays by Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, and other seminal thinkers of […]
