Umbra on battling cockroaches

Dear Umbra, Help! I’m having a mysterious cockroach problem. I found four in my apartment in two weeks, and not...

Try Me a River

Mississippi River may be redirected to build Louisiana wetlands How to protect and restore the Louisiana coast? A group of...

One of two individuals in DOE’s voluntary emissions program reports back

I’ll admit it: I’m different from most people. I have energy savings goals for my house and car. I usually...

Steve Irwin dies in freak occurrence

Irony, from the Latin ironia: incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result; example: earning fame and fortune wrestling crocodiles and being killed by a basically inoffensive marine creature.

As David pointed out, beloved naturalist Steve Irwin, aka "the crocodile hunter," was killed by a stingray during a diving expedition off the Australian coast on Sunday. The stingray's barb had pierced the TV personality's heart and he died within moments.

Silicon Valley investor Vinod Khosla chats about the promise of ethanol

Venture capitalist and ethanol booster Vinod Khosla. Billionaires are piling onto the biofuels bandwagon. Bill Gates is doing it. Richard...

How green will the 110th Congress be?

“You’d have to go back to the Enlightenment to see such a big change in worldviews.” That’s how Environmental Working...

PopSci announces this year’s top young scientists

PopSci has this month announced its fifth annual Brilliant 10 awardees. These are young scientists (average age: 34) just beginning to be noticed outside their respective fields and "changing not just what we know but the limits of what we think it's possible to know." PopSci explains the meaning of the Brilliant 10 honor:

By "brilliant," we don't mean smart. Or at least not just smart. Brilliance is marked by insight, creativity and tenacity. It's the confidence to eschew established wisdom in order to develop your own. It's the foolishness needed to set out for the edge of understanding and sail right past it, ignoring the signs reading "Thar be monsters" (not to mention "Turn back lest ye never be awarded a decent research grant again").

The work of the 10 winners ranges from the biomechanics of worm movement to birdsong "language" translation. And two of the 10 are working on eco-related projects.

A superb series on India and water

There is an excellent series about India and water in The New York Times (and its global sister publication The International Herald Tribune), including separate articles by Somini Sengupta about the immense problems of flooding during monsoon rains, an intensifying agricultural crisis as wells dry up, and the Indian government's systemic inability to deliver sufficient water to the immense and growing populations of its cities, a crisis once largely limited to the urban poor but now broadly afflicting even the middle class in New Delhi, India's capital and richest city.

Signs of hope in the elephant party

In a week's time, the political climate in America will change -- or so the experts tell us. Pollster Charlie Cook, the "Oracle of Washington," calls this a "wave" election, compares it to 1994, and predicts Republicans will lose "at least 20 to 35 seats, possibly more." In the L.A. Times, conservative historian Niall Ferguson compares this election to 1958. That year, a two-term Republican president found himself stuck with an unpopular war and a sluggish economy. The GOP lost 48 seats, setting the stage for a dynamic new Democratic president in 1960, and Democratic domination of the Congress for the next 20 years.

If the election goes as these pollsters predict, November 7th will be "the end of George W. Bush's presidency as he has known it," reported the Washington Post.

Will prospects improve for environmental protection? Probably. But much will still depend on the Republican Party.