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Umbra on greening your wedding

Dear Umbra, How about some practical thoughts on “green” weddings? My daughter is planning an outdoor July wedding in Wisconsin — any tips? The reception is going to be outdoors at our home. Tomm G. Waukesha, Wis. Hi Tomm, This week’s theme is 10-foot-pole topics! Or love! They’re one and the same! And they lived […]

Biofuels force the choice on us

Lester Brown says the diversion is already happening:

Appropriate technology?

Here's an interesting article about a rabbi who converted a bus into a wood-fired matzo bakery ...

The impossibility of a green Wal-Mart

With its recent flurry of green initiatives, Wal-Mart has won the embrace of several prominent environmental groups. “If they do even half what they say they want to do, it will make a huge difference for the planet,” said Ashok Gupta of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Environmental Defense, meanwhile, has deemed Wal-Mart’s actions momentous […]

More on coal in West Virginia

OK, here's some rare good news in the fight against mountaintop removal mining. Last Friday, Judge Robert "Chuck" Chambers, a federal judge in West Virginia, ruled that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers broke the law in issuing MTR mining permits that would allow streams to be buried. This means that, finally, the Corps, which approves mining permits, will have to recognize and uphold the Clean Water Act!

They've been called out for illegally issuing permits that destroy vital streams, ecosystems, and the environment around mining sites. Never mind that they're supposed to be the ones in charge of protecting the environment and preserving the integrity of the streams and rivers that run through the all-but-devastated Appalachian Mountains. Now they actually have to do their jobs, not facilitate the kind of environmental destruction they purport to fight.

Hard to believe it took a federal judge and months of appeals and public outcry to make the Army and the government keep their word. Makes me wonder what else we should be holding their feet to the fire for. How does this affect Arch Coal's Spruce No. 1 mine, which I wrote about at the end of January? Well, it sounds like it'll take more time in court to come to a conclusion, so stay tuned. Friday was a great day, though; Judge Chambers decision set a remarkably important precedent.

Now for the bad news.

Way to channel that consumerism!

Jane Austen. Monty Python. Ricky Gervais. My Anglophilia runs amok, people.

And it just spiked again.

According to easier.com, 25 percent of British motorists are planning on buying a car in the coming year -- and a full one-fifth of them have made buying a "green" car their priority. That's three times more green-thusiasm than a year ago.

'Course the number of drivers looking to buy cars in the first place could use a little help -- one-quarter seems a tad steep. Still, a big pip-pip to the British isles for at least channeling their rampant consumerism in the proper direction.

Sacks Education

San Francisco approves first-in-nation ban on plastic bags San Francisco is the first U.S. city to pass a ban on non-recyclable plastic bags at major supermarkets and drugstores. Once it’s signed into law, the stores will have six months to a year to sack the sacks, switching to compostable, recyclable ones made from corn or […]

Don’t Make Me Pull This Cargill Over

Amazon soy export plant shut down in win for environmentalists Greens did a victory dance this weekend as Brazil forced U.S. agribiz giant Cargill to close a soy export terminal in the country’s Amazon region. The facility has long been the focus of a targeted Greenpeace campaign protesting rapid deforestation of the tropical rainforest — […]

It Just Gets In the Way

U.S. Interior considering revamp of Endangered Species Act, draft shows Last week, a U.S. Interior Department memo quietly changed where endangered species are protected. Now it seems the feds have been giving the Endangered Species Act an even broader rethink. A leaked draft shows that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has toyed with shifting […]

Climate contrarian blocks Gore concert plans

If climate change is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” then an all-star climate concert on the Capitol lawn has got to be some kind of descent into madness. So sayeth Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who’s vowing to indefinitely block a resolution allowing Al Gore’s Live Earth concert to rock the Capitol […]