Latest Articles

Consumers Say They’ll Stick With Coke

Organic milk to flood U.S. market, Stonyfield yogurt hits Europe Batten down the hatches: organic milk is about to flood the U.S. A combination of consumer demand and changing practices — a ruling last year required organic dairy farmers to switch to feeding moo-cows 100 percent organic grain instead of 80 percent organic grain — […]

Reclaimed Brown Fields

Leading British candidate announces plan to create eco-towns Gordon Brown, the man widely expected to take Tony Blair’s place as prime minister of Britain this summer, has made headlines with a splashy green announcement. Brown, currently the U.K. finance minister, said he intends to create five eco-towns that would meet a demand for affordable housing. […]

Let’s Give ‘Em Something to Not Talk About

U.S. negotiators edit climate out of G8 climate draft Here’s a comforting thought for a Monday: your future is being played like a poker hand. Next month, the leaders of the G8 nations will meet in Germany along with the heads of China, India, South Africa, Mexico, and Brazil. With hopes of agreeing on climate-change […]

PBS interviews them some Grist

Here’s Grist Supreme Leader Chip Giller on PBS’ Now:

Encyclopedia of Life off to a slow start

A couple of emails and an article in the latest issue of Science have roused me to post on the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) website. The site is not functional yet but has a whiz-bang demo (completely fake) put together by a company called AvenueA|Razorfish that is well worth checking out.

However, that was the only thing that impressed me about the site. The article in Science just inflamed my skepticism:

A proclamation

I’m stealing this from Digby. Hats off you all you mothers out there — especially you, Mom! Mother’s Day Proclamation – 1870 by Julia Ward Howe Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears! Say firmly: "We will not have great questions […]

Yeah, that’s running out too

A few weeks ago I mentioned a study showing that coal reserves are not nearly as extensive as the "200-year supply" invoked by coal boosters. Now Richard Heinberg brings word of another study that reaches substantially similar conclusions. The main thrust is that the quality of easily accessible coal is declining and that prices are […]

More on Superfund

I’ve posted several pieces recently on the recent Center for Public Integrity study of the downfall of Superfund. There are two more pieces out this week that relate — this one on the EPA diverting funds from the program, and this one on the EPA giving clean-up cash to the very same businesses that created […]

This is getting old

Next month, German Chancellor Angela Merkel will convene a summit of the G8 countries, which will issue a joint declaration on climate change. Here’s how that’s going: A draft proposal dated April 2007 that is being debated in Bonn, Germany, this weekend by senior officials of the Group of Eight includes a pledge to limit […]

Garret Keizer burns in anger about ‘green capitalism’

The new Harper's (June 2007) contains a stunning and powerful "Notebook" essay titled "Climate, Class, and Claptrap," by Garret Keizer -- a minister, if I recall correctly. Keizer writes as well as Wendell Berry, but with a kind of righteous anger that the more ponderous Berry tamps down. This essay is about the contradictions inherent in the environmental community's fast embrace of "green capitalism" and wondertoys.

The intestinal tipping point came for me when a contingent of students from Middlebury College (annual tuition and fees $44,330) found both the gas money and the gall to drive to the town of Sheffield (annual per-capita income $13,277) in order to lecture the provincials on their responsibility to the earth and its myriad creatures. Not to be outdone, a small private school in our area (annual tuition and fees $76,900) has challenged the wind projects as a source of noise disturbance for its special-needs students. This could actually turn the tide. Like a bookie assessing the hindquarters of horses, I've learned to place my bets with a sharp eye on tuition and fees. Don't tell me where you went to school; just tell me what it cost.

Alas, the issue is not yet available online, but like every issue of Harpers, is well worth a read at your library or newsstand. (There is also a nice series of short pieces, including one by Bill McKibben -- of Middlebury College, I seem to recall -- on what needs to be done to repair the damage after W is impeached or limps home in disgrace in 2009.)

To whet your appetite, I'll further shred my carpal tunnels to share more of this powerful piece: