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EPA requires emissions cuts by lawn mowers and speedboats

Gas-powered lawn mowers and speedboat engines will be cleaner under new regulations announced Thursday by the U.S. EPA. By 2011, engines in new lawn and garden equipment must emit 35 percent less smog-forming emissions, and recreational watercraft must cut emissions 70 percent by 2010. “EPA’s new small engine standards will allow Americans to cut air […]

In her big speech, Palin repeats the GOP’s big energy lie — plus three other energy lies

Excerpts from Palin’s big speech: Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America’s energy problems — as if we all didn’t know that already. But the fact that drilling won’t solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all. Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we’re […]

A few thoughts on an amazing event — and a recipe for a delectably slow-cooked pasta sauce

Say cheese: a sample of Slow Food Nation’s Taste Pavilion. Photo: Russ Walker It’s going to take me more than just a few days to fully understand the effects and implications of the first Slow Food Nation, held in San Francisco over Labor Day weekend. The brain power on display was impressive enough: Wendell Berry, […]

Stunning interview with incoherent GOP denier running for Congress

My brother Dave lives in Minneapolis and has been interviewing RNC delegates. Here is Barb Davis White in her own words (audio stream here): White: My name is Barb Davis White and I’m running for the 5th Congressional District against Keith Ellison for the United States House of Representatives, which is called Congress. Romm: Where […]

Under pressure from Big Canned Tuna, FDA lax in mercury regulation

Under strong pressure from Big Canned Tuna, the Food and Drug Administration is crazily lax in regulating mercury in tuna. Among many examples: In 2000, a draft advisory to pregnant women listed canned tuna as a product highly contaminated with mercury; after FDA officials met with the three largest tuna companies, the final advisory left […]

Schlosser: Food industry abuses workers as matter of course

Of all the panels I attended at Slow Food Nation’s series, the most powerful for me was the one convened by Eric Schlosser on creating a “new, fair food system.” It featured labor-rights advocates from California and Florida — the poles of industrial fruit-and-veg production in the U.S. Working conditions get little play in sustainable-agriculture […]

Google knows what you’re doing

Oh, Google, what would we ever do without you? Check out this Google Maps-generated image of the region near Cannon Beach, Oregon:   The strange patchwork of brown? Those are clearcuts in the Coast Range. And many of them appear to be recent. What’s really great is that you can zoom in so close that […]

Note to media: Pork queen Palin is an earmark expert, not an energy expert

If you google “Palin ‘energy expert,'” you’ll find more than 10,000 hits. It’s no surprise that conservative shills like George Pataki and Haley Barbour use that label — heck, a major conservative talking point is that she’s a foreign-policy expert because “Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia,” as Cindy McCain put […]

What I saw at the Iowa State Fair, the nation’s most popular annual food event

In “Dispatches from the Fields,” Ariane Lotti and Stephanie Ogburn, who are working on small farms in Iowa and Colorado this season, share their thoughts on producing real food in the midst of America’s agro-industrial landscape. —– Get your deep-fried Twinkies! My roommate at college (one of those snooty, Northeastern Ivy-league institutions) was from rural […]

Honda rolls out new cheap hybrid with familiar name

At the Paris International Auto Show next month, Honda will unveil a prototype of its new low-cost hybrid: the Insight. A lot has changed since 1999, when the company debuted the first hybrid to hit American roads: the, um, Insight. Has Honda exhausted its supply of car names? Nay, says the company: “The name Insight […]