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McCain and Obama talk energy, groups sue over drilling in polar-bear habitat, and more

Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: 148 Days to Go Hell Nay! We Won’t Pay! Witnessing Bear We’d Like to Thank the Academies We’re Changing the Climb-It Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: Built for Two Splash Animation The Missing Links

Eco-celebrity, design, and social justice coalesce in a new Brooklyn green space

Sun, open space, and celebrity — the opening of Brooklyn’s “Garden of Hope” had them all. On an unseasonably warm and sunny afternoon last month, Bette Midler was in high spirits as she celebrated the transformation of a slice of land between two century-old brownstones from a paved walkway with a few trees into a […]

Cool idea of the day

Floating wind turbines that can be placed farther out at sea (and in heavier wind) than typical anchored offshore turbines. Next: high-altitude wind!

E.U. chemical-registration and testing law kicks in; industry gets huffy

The European Union’s comprehensive chemical law, REACH, is finally starting to take effect, requiring manufacturers and importers of chemicals to begin registering their products with a new regulatory agency. The REACH law was heavily diluted between its first introduction and final passage due to heavy pressure from the chemical industry, but it’s still expected to […]

What we learned from the stymied Climate Security Act, and what comes next

After months of engine-revving, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act sputtered to a halt in the Senate last week. Now attention has turned to what was learned — or wasn’t — and how things might play out the next time a climate bill makes it this far. Despite what looked from the outside like an unproductive […]

As storms rage on the prairie, strawberries and rhubarb bring comfort

A bright spot in the storm. Gaia has been hard on us prairie-dwellers lately. A dear friend who’s the director of the area’s largest CSA lost her 102-year-old barn to a storm this weekend. Swelled with recent rains, the Iowa River has been raging, sloshing toward levels never seen before. Fortunately, my restaurant sits on […]

Cheney: ‘Drill, drill, drill’

Dick Cheney has weighed in with his answer to the nation’s energy woes: Vice President Cheney yesterday called for a substantial increase in domestic drilling for oil and other natural resources, including in environmentally sensitive areas, saying that only increased production — and not new technology — will satisfy the nation’s demand for energy. “We […]

Something for everyone in the emerging green market

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Kari Manlove, fellows assistant at the Center for American Progress.

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Good news: Anyone looking for more environmentally responsible options now has choices. Green alternatives are turning up all over these days -- from children's toys to weddings.

Families concerned with all the reports in the last year of toys tainted with lead paint will be happy to hear there's a new market for toys that bypass lead and other potentially harmful chemicals completely.

Branch, a San Francisco-based sustainable design company, makes children's toys out of natural wool and bamboo. Nest and ChildTrek are similar companies offering natural toys made out of wood and other sustainable materials. Sensing the growing consumer demand, even Toys 'R' Us has "gone green," launching a new line of natural wood toys and dolls.

Toyota may have something up its sleeve

The first car I ever owned didn't have power anything. Today you will be hard pressed to find a car without power brakes and steering. But those features also consume energy. This explains how the first wave of economy cars from Japan got such notoriously high mileage (they didn't have power anything either).

One reason I chose a Yaris for my next car is that it has electric power steering and power brakes. In theory, you should be able to turn the engine off without losing power boost. I asked a mechanic at the dealership before I bought the Yaris if the power steering and brakes would continue to function with the engine turned off. "No, no," he said definitively. "It's just like any other car."

Surprise! The mechanic didn't know what he was talking about. I've turned the Yaris engine off several times now while going downhill and the power boost systems continue to function just fine. Don't try this at home.

[update] Seriously, don't try this at home. The mechanic was partially right. I've discovered that, given enough time, the brake boost system will eventually depressurize leaving you with insufficient braking at the bottom of a long hill. The Toyota engineers left power boost running just long enough to get you out of a pickle in the event of inadvertent engine shutdown.

Some shark populations in Mediterranean have collapsed, study finds

Populations of five shark species in the Mediterranean Sea have declined by an average of 97 percent in the last 200 years, principally due to fishing, according to a new study to be published in the journal Conservation Biology. Researchers combed historical records and collected other data to piece together the long-term population trend of […]