Latest Articles

Umbra on baking soda

Dear Umbra, I liked your column about homemade cleaning products. I have a question, though: What’s up with baking soda? It’s frequently bandied about as an eco-friendly cleaner, but I have no idea what it is, where it comes from, or how it’s made. AmandaCharlottesville, Va. Dearest Amanda, Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, a naturally […]

Franzen in The New Yorker

This week The New Yorker is home to a piece by noted author Jonathan Franzen on birdwatching, environmentalism, global warming, and, um, his love life. No description can do it justice -- it really is an extraordinary piece of writing, weaving together personal history, acute political and sociological observation, ornithological detail, and an elegiac tone, with effortless grace.

As usual when I encounter stuff like this, I feel admiration and naked envy in roughly equal measure.

It isn't available online yet -- not sure if it will be -- but it's worth buying the magazine to read it. If I can track down an electronic copy, I'll paste some excerpts.

Forest meets felon in John Vaillant’s The Golden Spruce

The old riddle goes: If a tree falls in a forest and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound? The new one might go: If a tree falls in a forest and no one’s there to hear it, is it worth writing a book about? The Golden Spruce by John Vaillant, […]

Apotcalypse

Armed pot growers invade public lands When we say “growing pot in national parks,” what do you think of? Aging hippie, beat-up VW minibus, little dope field a few yards up the hill from the camp site? Yeah, those were good times … but where were we? Oh yes. Well, times change: California’s Sequoia National […]

Hairy Otters Are Now Half-Gone (Wince)

Alaskan sea otters being added to endangered species list Suffering population declines that are baffling scientists, the sea otters of southwest Alaska are being designated a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, which entitles the furry marine mammals to stronger federal protections. Government biologists plan to investigate why their numbers have plummeted from tens […]

One Meeellion Years

Feds create million-year health standard for Yucca Mountain dump The U.S. government has no plan for getting out of Iraq, balancing the budget, or repairing a hemorrhaging health-care system, but nuclear waste? It’s got that covered for the next million years. Yes, responding to a 2004 federal court ruling that the previous standard of 10 […]

What does the accusation mean and how should greens respond?

James Schlesinger had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal the other day called "The Theology of Global Warming" (paid subscription required, but really, don't bother). It's full of the usual skeptical blather -- if you're interested in the specifics, and in finding out why Schlesigner in particular is an unreliable source, I refer you to Chris Mooney.

I'm more interested in this general idea that global warming, and environmentalism generally, has become a "secular religion." You hear it a lot. It's become a favorite talking point on the right. (And let's be honest: When you hear anti-environmentalist talking points, it's coming from the right. I wish it weren't so, but it is.)

What should a green make of this charge?

I think it's strategically brilliant. It's a way for the leadership on the right to reach two constituencies simultaneously:

From Panties to Pledges

Eco-panties The world’s fascination with panties dates back to, oh, probably whenever panties were invented. At U.K.-based GreenKnickers.org, they make them from organic materials or oddball secondhand dresses. You got your eco, you got your panties — what’s not to like? Like Grizzly Adams, but crazy Photo: Timothy Treadwell. Self-proclaimed “kind warrior” Timothy Treadwell lived […]

Eating locally — part three.

For those of you who read the hundred-mile diet post and are hungry for more, The Tyee published the latest from J.B. MacKinnon and Alisa Smith about two weeks ago and I'm now getting around to linking to it.

In the third installment, J.B. provides a little more detail about what exactly they have been eating and offers up a few recipes for Breakfast Fritters, Hundred-Mile Pesto, and Fanny Bay Pie in the hopes to challenge you to try a Hundred-Mile Meal.

For the appetizer lovers, here's a little morsel to whet your appetite:

... There are a lot of Big Issues associated with the food system, and there will be time to write about several of them here as the Hundred-Mile Diet continues. The point of this dispatch is to forget about the politics and . . . rhapsodize. Eating locally is a grand adventure. It has taken us to 40-year-old family fish shops and introduced us to people who have grown their own soy beans for homemade tofu. It has left us calling our mothers to find out how to wash and cook whole-grain wheat. Best of all, every time I open the refrigerator to come up with something for dinner, I feel like a pioneer.

To the join them on their journey, go here.

Legalize it, don’t criticize it

The U.S. is the only developed nation that does not cultivate industrial hemp as an economic crop. The Industrial Hemp Farming Act could change that -- if it's passed.

Given the Bush administration's retrograde attitude toward pot (which yes, yes, I know, has nothing to do with hemp), I highly doubt this bill has a chance. But I could be wrong.

Joel Makower has the details.