Latest Articles

Yeah, But How’s Shiloh Doing?

Climate change gets splashy coverage in USA Today and U.S. News The paradigmatically middle-of-the-road USA Today is running a series on global warming this week — guess that means mainstream America is getting hep to the crisis. Articles cover the life of an eco-groovy family in Colorado, the greening of corporate America, and the likelihood […]

A Penny Saved Is a Penny Spurned

Bush admin looks to cut funding for energy efficiency To fund long-term research into speculative future energy sources, the Bush administration wants to cut guaranteed present-day energy savings: The proposed 2007 Energy Department budget would eliminate $152 million (roughly 16 percent) from its energy-efficiency programs. A program to improve the efficiency of heavy-duty trucks would […]

Bush’s pick to head Treasury Department is conservationist as well as financier

Many green leaders joined the Washington establishment and Big Business this week in applauding President Bush’s nomination of Henry “Hank” Paulson — Wall Street titan and heavyweight conservationist — to replace outgoing Treasury Secretary John Snow and spearhead the administration’s economic policy making. But while Paulson proved popular in many circles, a handful of right-wing […]

God

Check out this story in The Guardian on the tensions emerging on the religious right. It's got lots of juicy stuff, but like everyone else, I'm going straight to the money quote:

Public not sold on nuclear power

A new survey (press release PDF; full results PDF) done by Opinion Research Corporation (ORC), commissioned and released by the Civil Society Institute, finds what I at least consider good news:

Dependence Day

Today, Environmental Action launched a campaign called Dependence Day.

Why today? Well, today marks the symbolic end of America's domestic oil for the year. Proportionally speaking, for the rest of the year we'll be using imported oil.

According to Navin at EA, they've pulled together "a diverse coalition of groups including security experts, environmentalists, consumers, and labor unions -- all of whom agree that America's dependence on oil is one of our greatest threats and that it is time to move beyond decades of rhetoric to actually do something." Word.

Blah blah Pollan interview blah

Dozens of emails flagged. More than 15 tabs open in Firefox. Well over 100 unread entries in the "green" folder of my RSS reader.

These signs all point to one fact: I'm a bad, bad blogger.

I'll try to catch up a little tomorrow.

Do check out my interview with Michael Pollan. He's a smart cookie, and honestly one of the best pure prose stylists in the non-fiction world, IMO.

And here's a question for you: the interview we published is 2,000 words, roughly. But the original interview is much longer, around 10,000 words.

Would y'all have any interest in seeing the whole thing? If so, I could clean it up a little and post it on the blog, maybe in chunks.

How overfishing and pollution are changing our eating habits

I love fish as much as the next guy. Broiled, baked, fried, it doesn't matter -- as long as it's swimming in butter (no pun intended). But being an expert in the plight of our oceans precludes me from rewarding my palate at every opportunity. As the New York Times reports, "many [fish] varieties are nearly depleted and many have been tainted by industrial pollution."

So I constantly consult my pocket seafood guide (PDF) to remember which is the "good" fish and which is the "bad." It's a shame that our short-sighted, destructive practices have forced us to rely on such guides, but they are an essential resource. Hopefully they'll catch on more than Richard Simmons's deal-a-meal did.

Google maps go green

Check out Have a Green Summer, a collaboration between the Earth Day Network and Google that helps you find eco-friendly vacation destinations. Very cool.

Virtual ecosystem

Want to learn about the interconnectedness and dependencies of an ecosystem? Build one yourself.

In Second Life, a virtual world where people reinvent themselves, buy real estate, create and sell products, have sex, host charity events, film movies, etc., Laukosargas Svarog has created her own ecosystem on the virtual island of Svarga:

The result of a year's work, Laukosargas Svarog's island of Svarga ... is a fully-functioning ecosystem, adding life or something like it to the verdant-looking but arid pallette Linden Lab offers with its world. It begins with her artificial clouds, which are pushed along by Linden's internal wind system.

"If I was to turn off the clouds the whole system would die in about six hours," she tells me. "Turn off the bees and [the plants stop] growing, because nothing gets pollinated. And it's the transfer of pollen that signals the plants to drop seeds. The seeds blow in the wind, and if they land on good ground according to different rules for each species, they grow when they receive rain water from the clouds. It's all interdependent."

Cool!

(Via BB)