Latest Articles

And Justice for All

NAACP’s Theodore Carrington chats about an environmental-justice tour After seven days of community visits around the country, the Environmental Justice for All Tour wrapped up in Washington, D.C., last week. It was intended to draw attention to the need for, well, environmental justice for all — including those who live near huge toxic spills, home-shaking […]

Things That Go Dump in the Night

Illegal dumps sprout up across the American West Amber waves of grain? Purple mountain majesties? These days in the American West, it’s illegal dumps that are proliferating under the spacious skies: heaps of car parts, furniture, appliances, and household trash discarded on public land. The Bureau of Land Management has identified 6,482 illegal dumps since […]

The New College Try

Maine college is first to pledge carbon neutrality College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, has pledged to become the first college in the U.S. to go carbon neutral. New president David Hales announced in his inauguration speech Sunday that the tiny college will avoid, reduce, or offset all greenhouse-gas emissions generated by campus […]

Keep on Hawkin’ in the Free World

Chemical-laden products banned by other nations are sold throughout the U.S. To protect their citizens from dangerous chemicals, the European Union, Japan, and other nations have tightened their environmental standards for hundreds of manufactured products in recent years. Meanwhile, the U.S. EPA hasn’t restricted any industrial compounds since an unsuccessful attempt to ban asbestos 18 […]

Governors’ races along Eastern seaboard could lead to big environmental gains

While the Mark Foley mess has everyone’s attention riveted on the fast-changing congressional landscape, enviros should also keep an eye on gubernatorial races this November. “The state level is where all the truly positive environmental action has been happening in recent years,” says Tony Massaro, senior vice president for political affairs with the D.C.-based League […]

He couldn’t have done this a year ago? Or 18 years ago?

He was arguably the most powerful man in Washington for more than 18 years, but former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan waited until retirement to finally come out in favor of a gas tax. Writes Daniel Gross in the NYT:

As a rule, Mr. Greenspan, a Republican by temperament and background who was reappointed twice by Bill Clinton, adhered closely to Republican orthodoxy on taxes: the lower the better. Mr. Greenspan was hardly a proponent of raising taxes on energy to encourage conservation, a policy prescription generally associated with the politicians and economists of the left.

Until now. In late September, as he spoke to a group of business executives in Massachusetts, a question was posed as to whether he'd like to see an increase in the federal gasoline tax, which has stood at 18.4 cents a gallon since 1993. "Yes, I would," Mr. Greenspan responded with atypical clarity. "That's the way to get consumption down. It's a national security issue."

Want to bet Ben Bernanke will wait until retirement before he comes to the same sage conclusion?

My trip to the Oregon coast

This past weekend I headed down to the annual summer retreat of the Northwest Environmental Defense Center. It was held, as it has been for many years running (around 20, I think), at a little camp called Westwind, perched on the Oregon coast at the mouth of the Salmon River.

An interview with Ted Carrington of NJ NAACP

The Environmental Justice For All Tour wrapped up last Monday in Washington, D.C., where the Northeast and Southern tours united to lobby their federal representatives and gain more national attention for the environmental justice issues they had seen around the country. After seven days on the road, with stops in multiple communities each day, tour participants were tired but energized by the outpouring of support and solidarity they found along the route.

Tour participant Theodore Carrington, second vice president of the New Jersey NAACP, took a few minutes to recap the week's events and talk about his hopes for the future of the environmental justice movement.

Mmm … cheese

Continued from last week ...

I like to start a cheese platter with a hard or semi-hard cheese. In the fall I like to use cheddar (you could serve a sharp one and a mild one), aged Parmesan, or aged Gouda. If you haven't tasted aged Gouda, I encourage you to try it. It's a bit pricey, but the flavor is so intense that a little goes a long way. Aged Goat Gouda is good too, though the flavor is very different. I'd pair aged Gouda with apples and aged Goat Gouda with pears. I also enjoy another Dutch cheese called Paranno that's also a type of Gouda and much more affordable. It's moister and less crumbly than aged Gouda and it has a wonderful nutty flavor that reminds me of a good Parmesan.

There are some flavored, semi-hard cheeses people tend to like, such as Cotswold (a double-Gloucester with chives) and Huntsman (which consists of two cheeses, stilton and double-Gloucester, in alternating layers), and the weirdly green Sage Cheddar. And, as Wallace and Grommet can attest, Wensleydale is smashing, and you can get it imbedded with cranberries.

I recently had Stilton with lemon rind (it's a white cheese and doesn't have the blue veins of mold found in a blue stilton). It would make an excellent dessert cheese. (I put a piece of it down to go answer the phone and when I came back I found that the Stilton was gone; in its place was my cat Echo, happy, suspiciously lemon-scented, and licking her paws contentedly.)

It’s driving me mad!

A while back I lamented about how much extra driving my family does, now that our older daughter has started kindergarten. (To recap: the school that my wife and I chose isn't in our neighborhood, and we're driving an extra 75 miles every week as a result. Ugh.)

Just before school started, my main beef was that all that extra driving would increase our family's contribution to climate change. I still think that's right.

But there's perhaps a more immediate impact worth mentioning. I'm spending a lot more time in my car on the typical weekday -- a little over double the time, as a matter of fact.

And at risk of sounding like a whiner: it's really getting to be a drag.