Latest Articles

Raise High the Green Beam, Carpenter

Why is green building still so hard? Green building has come a long way, baby — but has it come far enough? Auden Schendler, who’s overseen numerous green-building projects for the Aspen Skiing Company, doesn’t think so. Schendler wonders why, for instance, you can’t buy an eco-friendly house in any average subdivision in America. He […]

Stick With Pickles and Ice Cream

Pregnant women shouldn’t eat canned tuna, says Consumer Reports We’re all aware that pregnant women shouldn’t overeat seafood because of mercury contamination, but the Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, recommends that moms-to-be skip canned tuna altogether. Most canned light tuna is skipjack, a species relatively low in mercury, but a Chicago Tribune investigation […]

Spore Losers

Climate change could make pollen rise and allergies worse Perhaps you’ve heard the argument that a rise in carbon dioxide levels is a good thing, because CO2 helps plants grow. Well, says Hah-vard’s Paul Epstein, “It is the opportunistic plants like poison ivy and ragweed that thrive.” That’s right, ye allergy-stricken: More CO2 means more […]

Kelp, I Need Somebody

It’s World Ocean Day, and the watery deep could use some help Happy World Ocean Day! You, land-dweller, have pitifully limited living space: The surface of the globe you ramble on is some 71 percent saltwater, and the depths plunge down as far as seven miles. These dark and deep blue seas and their myriad […]

David Helvarg: Blue is the new green

Happy World Ocean Day! The following is a guest essay from David Helvarg, president of the Blue Frontier Campaign and author of 50 Ways to Save the Ocean and Blue Frontier: Dispatches From America's Ocean Wilderness.

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Blue Is the New Green

Remember Earth Day? Very 20th century, kind of retrograde. Might as well call it Soil Day. Don't get me wrong -- I understand where this prejudice comes from. I'm a bipedal air-breather just like you. Still, on June 8, World Ocean Day, it's worth remembering that ours is a blue water planet. Seventy-one percent of the surface and 97 percent of livable habitat on this roving round space pool is saltwater.

On land, animals make their homes between the underground burrows of prairie dogs and the treetop nests of birds, maybe 300 feet of living space. The oceans, by contrast, provide habitat for living from their surface waters, where turtles munch on jellyfish (or plastic bags they mistake for jellies) down to the depths of the abyss, nearly seven miles below, in the crushing, cold, black waters of the Marianas Trench in the Pacific. Here, fish, crabs, starfish, and other creatures earn their living from marine debris raining down from above or, amazingly, get their energy from hot sulfur vents spewing from the planet's core.

Until 1977, photosynthesis of sunlight was believed to be the basis for all life in the universe. That year scientists aboard a deep-diving research submarine off the Galapagos Islands discovered sulfurous hot-water vents 8,000 feet below the surface of the sea. The area around these vents was colonized by giant red-and-white tubeworms, white crabs, clams, and other animals that contain sulfur-burning bacteria that give them an alternative means of sustaining life. Today, NASA scientists believe similar "chemosynthetic" life forms may exist around volcanic deep-water ocean vents beneath the icy crust of Jupiter's moon, Europa.

Americans and Climate Change: Setting goals III

"Americans and Climate Change: Closing the Gap Between Science and Action" (PDF) is a report synthesizing the insights of 110 leading thinkers on how to educate and motivate the American public on the subject of global warming. Background on the report here. I'll be posting a series of excerpts (citations have been removed; see original report). If you'd like to be involved in implementing the report's recommendations, or learn more, visit the Yale Project on Climate Change website.

It's perhaps the most disheartening facet of the global warming discussion: Every target for reducing emissions that's taken seriously in political circles is woefully inadequate. How can we begin discussing targets commensurate with the task at hand? That's what gets chewed over in today's excerpt. (It's another long one -- sorry.)

Sierra Club hooks up with steelworkers union

This is fantastic:

The nation's largest manufacturing union, the United Steelworkers of America, and the nation's largest environmental group, the Sierra Club, yesterday announced the formation of an alliance that will do something that labor and environmentalists rarely do: cooperate.

This tells me that the Sierra Club is hip to many of the criticisms of environmentalism raised in the Death debate and recognizes the need to build coalitions, reconnect with progressivism's blue collar roots, and emphasize workaday concerns like jobs and health. This will allow both the club and the union to reach new audiences.

Still, let's not get too excited. This is not a sea change for the steelworkers union. It's been part of the environmental coalition before.

We'll know a corner's been turned when we see coalitions with unions of autoworkers, or mine workers, or coal-fired utility workers. Once those unions see that their best interests are served by sensible regulation and private-sector innovation -- not by siding with corporate fat cats fighting tooth and nail to keep old, tired, backward-looking industrial practices afloat -- we'll know the message is sinking in.

Umbra on CFLs and dimmers

Dearest Umbra, Are there compact fluorescent bulbs for lights on dimmer switches? Why can’t I use regular CFLs in dimmers? Dimly, Julia L. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Dearest Julia, I feel like my brain is squinting when I try to understand electrical current and wiring, but here we go: the short answer is yes, there are […]

Gore vs. Tomkat

Last weekend, An Inconvenient Truth raked in more cash per screen than any movie in America. Al Gore's documentary whopped Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible by a factor of 10 to 1 in per-screen earnings ($17,615 to $1,756).

Hope Katie's not too jealous of Tipper.

Pombo crushes McCloskey

So, remember how retired Republican lawmaker Pete McCloskey, an environmentalist who co-authored the Endangered Species Act, was going to challenge enviro bête noire Dick Pombo in the CA-11 primary? And the environmental community was going to help him? Yeah, well, he got crushed.

The national Dem establishment didn't get what it wanted either, namely pilot Steve Filson (Filson's a veteran, and the DCCC is pushing hard to get Dem veterans on ballots across the country). Instead, wind engineer and grassroots favorite Jerry McNerney whomped Filson 53 to 29 percent.

Dem talking heads are sticking with forced cheer about McNerney's chances in the general, but given that he's already lost to Pombo once, and given that voters don't seem all that exercised about Pombo's alleged ethical lapses (much less his environmental lapses), I wouldn't put any money on it.