Latest Articles

If They Could Just Harness All That Hot Air …

While government representatives in The Hague quibble over ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions, Germans are making some real progress in adopting clean energy. In the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, home to 2.8 million people and numerous heavy industries, about 19 percent of the electricity is generated by wind, and in some areas of the […]

Bye, Buy!

Sit out the shopping frenzy this Friday and celebrate Buy Nothing Day, an inspired idea from the Adbusters Media Foundation in Vancouver, B.C. The day after Thanksgiving marks the start of an annual consumer rampage, but you’ll have more fun, create less waste, and save moola if you stay home and finish off the pumpkin […]

Reds Seeing Green

Even as tourism has begun to boom in Cuba, attention to environmental concerns is also increasing. In 1970, Cuban President Fidel Castro said, “Unless we conquer nature, nature will conquer us,” and for years he encouraged farming and manufacturing to expand with little regard to the environment. But now Cuba’s communist government is limiting some […]

Will the rest of the world bend to U.S. pressure to weaken Kyoto?

THE HAGUE, Netherlands Bill McKibben reports from The Hague: Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five An hour’s drive from the crowded convention hall where international negotiators are toiling to reach some agreement on fighting climate change, you can visit one of the enormous storm surge barriers the Dutch have built to […]

Turtles in the Soup

Environmentalists are outraged after Mexican authorities gave approval earlier this month to five hotel chains to build a tourist center in a sea turtle sanctuary in southeastern Mexico near Cancun. Enviros say the project, intended to span nearly 400 acres, would disturb a beach area frequented by endangered sea turtles and destroy endangered chit palms. […]

How Slow Can You Go?

Italians have launched a worldwide “eco-gastronomic” movement to save what they say are the latest endangered species — foods that are produced locally and organically, in contrast to mass-produced fast food and industrialized agriculture. The growing Slow Food movement, which has attracted more than 60,000 participants in dozens of countries, has as its symbol a […]

Is cheap meat worth the karmic cost of industrial animal production?

With Thanksgiving nigh, the question arises: What is the meaning of sustainable cuisine? Which came first? Kennedy with both a chicken and an egg. The word sustainable expresses the obligation that each generation has to the next to preserve the value of the natural world. It does not mean we can’t use nature. Humankind, a […]

The endless campaign shows it's time to change the electoral system

What is it we are learning in the aftermath of this crazy election? How powerful a single vote can be? Or how worthless a single vote can be, when 19,000 of them can be tossed out in one county? When boxes of ballots get lost? When recounts are demanded or stopped depending on their expected […]

Every Which Way But Loose Standards

Dissatisfied with the federal government’s efforts to control dirty emissions from buses and big trucks, 13 states have decided to join with California in trying to impose tighter controls on diesel engines. Nearly every Northeastern state, as well as Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, and Texas, is preparing to adopt strict clean-air rules that are being […]

Gym Dandy

To increase its chances of hosting the 2008 Olympic Games, Beijing has ordered some of its biggest polluters to clean up their acts. A $1.25 billion cleanup project is aimed at helping Beijing, notorious for having some of the dirtiest air in the world, approach World Health Organization air standards by 2006. A visit to […]