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Lost power source

Fans of the hit TV show Lost might have been wondering how the hatch/bunker gets its power. Last night we found out: geothermal energy.

Another example of a green energy source being mentioned during prime time television -- granted, it was for about five seconds, but we'll take what we can get!

And visitors to the Lost message boards can get a brief science lesson on how geothermal energy works from poster SlowElectron.

One family aiming to be half the population of Arkansas

Speaking of overpopulation ...

Hapless Wetlands

Supreme Court will hear two Clean Water Act cases The first U.S. Supreme Court session under Chief Justice John Roberts will feature two cases pitting government regulatory power against private property rights — precisely the area where greens most fear Roberts’ jurisprudence. Both cases originated in Michigan, and ask whether the federal government has jurisdiction […]

Jewel of Denial

Plastics plant on Texas coast blows up, no surprise to local activists Formosa Plastics is the self-proclaimed “Jewel of the Texas Gulf Coast.” But last week its plant in Point Comfort, Texas … how to put this … blew up, sending workers running for their lives. At least 11 ended up in the hospital. This […]

Throw Momma From the Pontchartrain

Some post-Katrina floodwaters cleaner than expected Some of the floodwaters pumped out of New Orleans by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — about 250 billion gallons all told, dumped mostly into Lake Pontchartrain — may not have been as toxic as initially feared. Researchers at Louisiana State University took samples five to nine days […]

Helter Swelter

2005 shaping up to be the warmest year on record Is it warm in here? Readings from about 7,200 weather stations worldwide indicate that 2005 will probably be the hottest … year … ever — breaking 1998’s record by about one-tenth of a degree Fahrenheit. The Northern Hemisphere is heating faster, with the average 2005 […]

For Robert Hass, poetry is part of the eco-arsenal

Robert Hass. Photo: Jeff Kearns. Readers of Robert Hass’s poetry are familiar with his fine-tuned and tender attention to the natural world. What they may not know so well are his efforts to take that devotion off the page and into boardrooms and classrooms. As United States Poet Laureate from 1995 to 1997, Hass turned […]

Who’s there? A joke contest

So, I claimed a few days ago that environmentalism is never funny. Apparently, there's some dispute about this matter. So we're going to settle it once and for all. And we're going to start with the most basic unit of humor on the planet, the unit of humor that dragged itself up out of the primordial swamp and flopped onto land, causing the other protozoa to giggle and roll their eyes.

Yes: the knock-knock joke.

You think environmental matters can be funny? Prove it. Leave us a green knock-knock joke in the comments. We dare you.

Explosion at Texas plastics plant just the latest in a record of malfeasance

For being the self-proclaimed "Jewel of the Texas Gulf Coast," Formosa Plastics isn't doing so hot. Lucky for us, Hurricane Rita, initially packing 185 mph winds and headed straight for Formosa's ill-prepared and sprawling 1,800-acre PVC plant in Point Comfort, Texas, decided to turn north at the last minute. Formosa dodged a bullet.

No bullet-dodging last week: On October 6, at 3:30pm and after 30 minutes of obnoxious chemical fumes that drove Point Comfort citizens into the streets to wonder what ill wind was blowing their way, Formosa Plastics blew, sending a Nagasaki-style mushroom cloud and three, four, and five explosions thundering over the blistering Texas landscape. Formosa Plastics and neighboring Alcoa plant workers ran for their lives, many throwing themselves into nearby Lavaca Bay, host to one of the nation's largest underwater mercury Superfund sites. But for those workers, the mercury was the lesser of two evils. The worst was Formosa's explosion, which sent 11 workers to the hospital, two with serious burns.

The Senate ag chairman balks at Bush’s subsidy-cut hints

Yesterday, I reported that top Bush administration officials have been openly discussing deep cuts in farm commodity subsidies. But the program, a $14.5 billion per year cash cow, is also a sacred cow.

Farm-state politicians, and the agribusiness giants that love them, speciously portray farm subsidies as a "safety net for the family farm." In reality, the program helps push commodity prices down -- and arguably helps drive farms out of business. In 1935, around the time the program started, there were 7 million farms in the U.S. By 1997, the USDA reports, only 1.9 million remained. Some safety net.

Well yesterday, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R.-Ga.), a man who reveres the free market so long as it doesn't impede his state's beloved cotton trade, lashed back.