Latest Articles

It’s Energy Star Change-a-Light Day

So, um, change one.

Info here; feel-good pledge here. (And act quickly, before those cads in Congress eliminate Energy Star altogether.)

When inheriting the earth isn’t such a good deal

I’ve seen my future, and it’s scary. It involves hurricanes, floods, destruction, mass evacuations, disease, and death. Hurricane Katrina and the week after it were a serious wakeup call for me. Youth the force, Luke. Climate change promises me that in my lifetime, I will experience many more events like this. As a young person, […]

Gore on the marketplace of ideas

Do you wonder why public dialogue in the U.S. these days takes place in such an atmosphere of surreal trivia, despite the vitally important challenges facing us? Wonder why global warming, a catastrophe of Biblical proportions, can get on TV only if it's cast as the malevolent face behind a hurricane? Wonder why Americans are so bogglingly ignorant of basic current events?

Al Gore knows. Read his extraordinary speech.

‘Naked Chef’ dresses down U.S. school lunches, demands ‘real food,

Ten years after sustainable-food doyenne Alice Waters launched her innovative Edible Schoolyard program in Berkeley, U.S. school lunches remain abysmal. In cafeteria kitchens throughout the land, de-skilled workers busy themselves opening cans and zapping pre-made meals in giant microwaves. Out on the floor, kids swill soda and dig their little hands into bags of fried stuff that may have, somewhere far way, once resembled food.

Waters' effort remains laudable, but it's limited to one school. No public figure, no celebrity chef riding the waves of a Food Network show and the opening of an eponymous restaurant in Vegas, has bothered to make decent school lunches a national crusade.

Enter Jamie Oliver, the "Naked Chef" of U.K. TV and cookbook fame.

New FOX show pins its plot on clean energy

So I've been watching this show on FOX called Prison Break. It's quite good -- not, you know, Deadwood good, or The Wire good, but fast-paced, fun, and surprisingly cerebral. It's like 24 but not horrible, stilted, and mean-spirited. Oh man, I genuinely hate that show, but don't worry, I won't make you listen to a rant about it. Wait, where was I?

Anyhoo. The plot revolves around this guy who gets himself thrown into prison in order to escape with his brother, who's on death row. His brother is accused of killing the vice president's brother, but supposedly was set up by the Secret Service.

Who really wanted the VP's brother dead? Well, apparently the VP's bro was a big environmentalist and advocate for clean energy. Matter of fact, his company, EcoField, had recently developed a "prototype electric engine." "Sixty dollar barrels of oil would be obsolete if this thing ever made it to the mainstream," says one character. She and a fellow investigator speculate about who might want him out of the way -- oil companies, or perhaps the government of an oil-based economy. "Like the United States," says fellow investigator darkly.

Indeeed ...

Find solar

Via TH, the launch of the very cool FindSolar.com, a site where you can punch in your zip code to find solar installation professionals near you, and find out how much such an installation will cost. Mainstreaming solar: love it.

An interview with green evangelical leader Richard Cizik

Polluters will have to answer to God, not just government, according to Richard Cizik. Vice president of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, Cizik is a pro-Bush Bible-brandishing reverend zealously opposed to abortion, gay marriage, and embryonic stem-cell research. He is also on a mission to convert tens of millions of Americans to […]

The Sound and the … Eh

Fisheries Service offers mild plan to preserve Puget Sound orcas The much-beloved and much-beleaguered orcas of Puget Sound in Washington state are the focus of a tepid new National Marine Fisheries Service conservation plan. It emphasizes cleaning up the sound, preventing oil spills, and trying to boost the salmon population — pretty much what the […]

Stan in the Place Where You Live

Mexico and Central America reel under latest gulf hurricane The name “Stan” does not typically inspire fear (even if it’s better than “Stanley”), but a hurricane with that moniker has been wreaking havoc down south. In what is sure to be another blow to North America’s hobbled energy supply, all three of Mexico’s crude-oil loading […]

Sport Futility Vehicles

SUV sales take a dive as gas prices ascend It seems America is suffering from some shrinkage. SUV sales plummeted in September, compared to the same period last year. Ford Motor Co. reported a 55 percent-plus freefall in sales of mega-SUVs like the Expedition and Lincoln Navigator; sales of its F-series pickup trucks also dove […]