ethics

New EPA Chief Andrew Wheeler faces first call for ethics probe after less than a month

A top Democrat urged the Office of Government Ethics to review meetings between Scott Pruitt’s replacement and his former clients.

Scandals pile up for Interior Chief Ryan Zinke

Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt resigned amid at least 18 federal investigations. Zinke has tallied up nearly a dozen.

Whole Foods is selling you fish farmed by prisoners

According to a recent investigation by Pacific Standard, your tilapia may have come from a federal prison in Cañon City, Colo.

How can we get power to the poor without frying the planet?

Nearly 1.3 billion people lack access to electricity, but bringing them up to a western level of consumption of fossil fuels will fry the planet. What's the ethical path forward?

Do we have a moral obligation to stop screwing up the planet?

Barack Obama, Pope John Paul II, the Dalai Lama, and Ursula K. Le Guin walk into a bar book … No, it’s not a joke; it’s an ambitious project that aims to make a rock-solid moral case for environmental action. It started with the print book Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril […]

What’s a benefit corporation? And why should you shop there?

Benefit corporations are a sort of magic nonprofit and for-profit hybrid of social responsibility.

Without major capital investments, this generation of Americans will short change the next

From 1980 to 2007, total U.S. electricity consumption increased by a factor of 1.8, but total generation capacity increased by only 1.7 times. In other words, demand out-grew supply. For a while, that was fine — we had more toys than we needed, and real power prices declined for two decades as we made better […]

And the winner is…

  Where else but the Washington Post editorial page — that bastion of un-fact-checked disinformation – would you find a misleading and misguided piece attacking federal efficiency standards written by a guy who “teaches environmental ethics”?!  Or is that “!?” Now I can see a libertarian writing a misleading op-ed in defense of inefficient incandescent […]

Monsanto targets public radio to spread false biotech messages

Editor’s note: This post originally focused on NPR; but we’ve since found that the Monsanto ads run on Marketplace, produced by American Public Media, which isn’t directly affiliated with NPR. We regret the confusion. —————- Monsanto’s ad blitzFor years my alarm has been set to public radio so I can lie in bed for five […]