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Umbra on rooftop gardening

Dear Umbra, Growing your own vegetables is supposed to be healthy and good for the environment, but I live on a heavily trafficked avenue in Manhattan and my plants stay on my roof. Should I be worried that dirt from car and truck exhaust is contaminating my buckets of soil? Could I be poisoning myself? […]

McCain’s gas tax holiday from reality

John McCain has a brilliant, original idea: Let's encourage Americans to drive more by lifting the gas tax for a summer "holiday."

Presumably it's the same principle as the "surge" in Iraq: so many soldiers are getting killed, let's send even more!

Here are some guaranteed effects from McCain's brainstorm. It would:

• Deepen the federal deficit, thereby weakening the dollar.
• Increase gasoline consumption, in one stroke worsening highway gridlock, compounding U.S. oil dependence, and speeding up global warming.
• Transfer what used to be tax revenue -- potentially usable for public benefit -- to the oil companies and the Saudis by pushing up oil demand.

Terrific, eh? McCain could drive to a gas station, perhaps in a jumpsuit with a padded crotch, stand surrounded by Uzi-toting Blackwater thugs while a parade of Hummers top off their tanks, and proclaim Surge II a success.

Higher food prices mean crappier cafeteria fare for kids

As food prices rise, who gets hit first and hardest? Clearly, urban dwellers in the global south, where people spend upwards of half of their incomes on food. According to the Wall Street Journal, here‘s the ever-growing list of nations that have experienced food-price riots: Rioting in response to soaring food prices recently has broken […]

Governors gather to gab about climate

A group of influential governors will meet this week at Yale University to discuss taking the reins in the fight against climate change. The discussion will center around “blending a set of state efforts, some of which are already up and running, with an emerging federal climate system,” according to Dan Esty, the director of […]

EPA just doesn’t have time to make CO2 decision, says official

Remember how the U.S. EPA was instructed by the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether carbon dioxide should be regulated as a pollutant? And how that was more than a year ago? A senior EPA official said in a speech this week that “given the time frame available to the agency, it’s not realistic” to […]

True patriots would fight global warming

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

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As you'll recall, Barack Obama made a controversial sartorial decision last October about what he will and will not wear on his lapel. He declared he will not wear one of those American flag pins that have become so popular among politicians since Sept. 11.

"I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest," he said while campaigning in Iowa. "Instead, I'm going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great. Hopefully that will be a testimony to my patriotism."

His decision was instant red meat for a number of people who wear their patriotism on their sleeves as well as on their lapels. They questioned Obama's allegiance to his nation and to our troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bag Monsters to educate shoppers on evils of plastic bags

Lunchtime shoppers, beware: if you’re toting your purchases in a plastic bag in one of twelve cities tomorrow, you might encounter a Bag Monster. From your worst shopping-related nightmares the “you can’t make this stuff up” file comes a creation of cosmetics company Lush to support the ban of plastic bags and to raise awareness […]

Snippets from the news

• Sea levels will rise even more than you thought, says new research. • The U.S. Supreme Court will hear an important Clean Water Act case late this year. • Tesla Motors sues the designer of a green-car competitor. • Japan may raise the price of whale meat. • Oil prices hit a new record […]

Chevron runs ad attacking Goldman Prize winner

I attended the Goldman Prize presentation last night, and it was, per usual, a spectacular celebration of uncommonly dedicated individuals working to make this world a better place. The stories of their struggles and triumphs wetted every eye in the house, and they serve as a beacon of inspiration to all who care about the future of planet Earth.

Unless you are Chevron.

This morning, Chevron ran a full-page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle attacking one of the recipients, Pablo Fajarado. "Mr. Fajarado is a front man for a group of Ecuadorian and American trail lawyers pursuing a claim against Chevron."

No! Not trial lawyers! Chevron would prefer that anyone bringing suit against them be represented by fishmongers, not trial laywers. Or something.

I've met those trial lawyers -- and they are, as you might expect, incredibly overworked and underpaid individuals doing this work not for love of lucre but desire for justice. And, if I may project some of my own feelings at this very moment, righteous anger against asshole oil companies.

The rest of the ad is unforgivable character assassination and innuendo.

American filmmakers arrested in Niger Delta

Four Americans working on the documentary Sweet Crude, about the impact of the petroleum industry on the economy and environment of the Niger Delta, were arrested in Nigeria this weekend and are still being detained. A Nigerian man accompanying them was also seized. Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil exporter and the fourth-largest exporter to the […]